Shake, rattle the roles: Britain’s cabinet reshuffle
Economist Podcasts
The Economist
4.3 • 5K Ratings
🗓️ 16 September 2021
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has re-allocated a number of key government posts. We ask how the changes reflect his political standing and what they mean for his agenda. A first-of-its-kind study that deliberately infected participants with the coronavirus is ending; we examine the many answers such research can provide. And the rural places aiming to capitalise on their dark skies.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. |
| 0:08.7 | Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. |
| 0:17.5 | Scientists can learn a lot by rigorously monitoring the public as a virus makes its way around, |
| 0:22.6 | but it's far more efficient to bring that kind of work into the lab. |
| 0:26.6 | We examine a first-of-its-kind study that deliberately infects its participants with the coronavirus. |
| 0:33.6 | And when's the last time you saw the arc of the Milky Way in the night sky? |
| 0:38.3 | It takes a lot of darkness, a difficult thing to come by these days. |
| 0:43.3 | We visit one of the rural places aiming to provide those dark skies, |
| 0:47.3 | and hoping that brings an economic boost. |
| 0:57.0 | But first... Britain's Prime Minister starts today with a very different cabinet than he had yesterday. |
| 1:05.0 | One peculiarity of British politics is the cabinet reshuffle, a sudden reordering of who's in charge of what in the government. |
| 1:13.8 | This one was well telegraphed, and members of Parliament had been pressing Boris Johnson on who shouldn't be in charge of much. |
| 1:20.3 | With all the talk of cabinet reshuffle, can the Prime Minister guarantee that the Foreign Secretary will finally be sacked in any reshuffle, or does |
| 1:28.9 | he intend to reward incompetence? |
| 1:32.5 | Reshuffles serve many purposes, rewarding loyalty, punishing perceived foolishness, and setting or resetting |
| 1:39.5 | a political agenda. But they're messy and embarrassingly public. Ministers shuffle past the cameras outside |
| 1:47.0 | Downing Street toward their new fates. Sir, what is your new job? Are you expecting to be sacked? |
| 1:52.0 | Are you expecting a promotion, sir? Are you the new education secretary, sir? Foreign secretary, |
| 1:57.1 | are you pleased? Are you pleased with your new job? It might not seem like a great time for such disruption, with the country focused on what the pandemic will bring next and on Britain's role in the crumbling of Afghanistan. But the Prime Minister has plenty of other business still to attend to, and now a new team to tackle it all. It was expected that Boris Johnson would hold a reshuffle. |
| 2:19.9 | He has the space to do so now. |
| 2:22.8 | Anne McElvoy is a senior editor at The Economist. |
| 2:25.3 | Britain is coming out of the pandemic enough to do something like that |
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