Second in Command?

Inside Briefing with the Institute for Government

Institute for Government

News, Politics, Government

4.6 • 252 Ratings

🗓️ 10 April 2020

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Corona is straining Government as never before outside peacetime – and Boris Johnson is still mostly incapacitated. David Lidington, Theresa May’s former deputy, explains exactly what happens when the understudy must step up. How much power does Dominic Raab actually have right now? And do we need a US-style formal succession programme? Plus: When should the lockdown be eased? Does virtual government work? And what is Parliament doing during this strange recess? “The Whitehall machine had already been working with the dial in the red because of Brexit when this crisis hit.” – David Liddington Presented by Bronwen Maddox with Cath Haddon with Hannah White. Audio production by Alex Rees. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Inside Briefing, the podcast from the Institute for Government.
0:13.8	I'm Bronwyn Maddox.
0:15.2	Prime Minister is in intensive care, a reminder of just how serious COVID-19 can be.
0:20.9	All of us at the IFG wish him well and like everyone else, our first thoughts are with
0:24.7	Boris Johnson and his family during this time.
0:27.5	But like everyone else, our attention has also turned to the question of who is running
0:31.0	the country during this fast-moving crisis.
0:33.9	Johnson has nominated Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, as his deputy, when necessary.
0:38.3	But that careful ambiguity has only sharpened the question of what authority and scope of action Rob actually has.
0:45.3	That question will only intensify as major decisions approach, not least over the government's exit strategy from the corona-in-virus-inforced lockdown,
0:53.3	and whether the UK
0:55.1	needs to venture where so many other countries have gone and write down formally what the rules of
1:00.0	delegation and succession for the Prime Minister should be. As well as a hospitalised Prime Minister,
1:05.2	we have a Parliament exiled from its normal home, but could the enforced shutdown at the Palace of
1:09.7	Westminster force new ways of doing
1:11.6	democracy? A new IFG paper this week explores the options, and we're going to be taking a closer
1:16.6	look at that today. We'll be asking how a government functions when the person in charge is
1:21.7	absent from the room where it happens, even if that room is a virtual one on Zoom, and how MPs can
1:27.4	still hold that government to account.
1:30.1	Before we start, a quick reminder about our new sister podcast, IFG Live,
1:34.0	all the panels, talks, updates that we usually hold in our London offices are taking place online,
1:38.9	and you can listen to them as podcasts.
	...

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