Reviving New Labour: Starmer’s Only Path to Victory?

Rock & Roll Politics with Steve Richards

Podmasters

News, Politics, Society & Culture

4.7 • 910 Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2023

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week, I’m in conversation with the chair of Compass, Neal Lawson, who argues the current challenges facing the UK are incomparably different to 1997 — and demand more daring solutions from Keir Starmer.

Rock & Roll Politics is live:

Birmingham March 21 https://1000trades.org.uk/events/

King's Place London Mar 23 https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/words/steve-richards-presents-rock-n-roll-politics-2/

Belfast Black Box, Hill Street Mar 26 https://imaginebelfast.com/events/steve-richards-the-rocknroll-politics-show/

Ropetackle Shoreham Mar 29 https://ropetacklecentre.co.uk/events/steve-richards-rock-n-roll-politics/

Witham Barnard Castle Apr 1 https://thewitham.org.uk/event/steve-richards-rock-and-roll-politics-2/

Old Market Theatre Brighton April 24 https://www.theoldmarket.com/shows/steve-richards-rock-n-roll-politics-2023

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I'm I'm Hello and welcome to rock and roll politics, the twice weekly podcast with me, Steve Richards.
0:34.2	Thanks so much for tuning in, wherever you are in the UK and indeed in the rest of
0:39.1	the world. Yeah, thank you for tuning in. And we've got in a moment a conversation with the chair
0:45.9	of Compass, Neil Lawson. Neil I first met when he was working for the 1997 campaign for Labor
0:54.1	and was at the time a passionate new Labour devotee.
0:59.3	But he has reflected and changed as that government took shape.
1:04.9	And anyway, I'll talk about why I'm interviewing him in a moment.
1:08.2	But first, a bit of context, really, to our discussion.
1:12.9	Our favourite word, by the way, for new listeners, context. Only can make that sense of things with
1:18.3	context. And I was reading a letter in last week's New Statesman magazine, which I thought I
1:24.9	would read out to you now. In 19, this is the letter, in 19, and it's not one of
1:30.6	your emails for the rock and roll politics cooperative, emails to me will be next week, of course.
1:37.4	But for now, this is a letter in the new statesman from Dr. Stephen Watkins. In 1962, I was a conservative. I believed privilege could only
1:47.7	be justified by service. High taxes on very high incomes were necessary to prevent an entrepreneurial
1:54.7	economy becoming a rentier economy. And Keynesian growth would finance public service improvements and a welfare state
2:02.9	that steadily reduced inequality. I was suspicious of ideologically driven large-scale change.
2:09.8	These were the mainstream policies of the McMillan government at the time. In 60 years,
2:15.4	I've moved from centre-right to hard left without changing my opinions.
2:20.1	And there's a kind of reminder of the degree since 1997 of the change in the Conservative Party,
2:27.1	away from that McMillan one-nationism that enabled Dr. Stephen Watkins to vote Conservative when he had the chance to do so in the early
2:37.9	1960s. And of course that has pulled the whole of British politics rightwards. So if you reflect on
2:46.2	1997 and the new Labour pitch then, it was to the right, say, of the SDP, who themselves were reacting
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Podmasters, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Podmasters and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.