Hello and welcome to the Political Party podcast. It feels like ages since I last did one, but I think it's because during the election

I was doing one every day. Do one once a week now. Just feels like a famine for my mind. I mean, I'm not, certainly not suggesting that you're

necessarily missing them, but for me, oh man, I felt like I was in there every day and now I'm like, oh, I sort of feel like a football fan

I can't get to matches anymore, but it's great to be back. Give us one hour of course last week, but it is lovely to be back. And today's guest is someone who I have wanted to

interview for a very long time and someone who I first started following on social media is a fascinating person to follow his Robert Colville. He's

directed the Centre for Policy Studies, a think tank co-founder by Margaret Thatcher in 1974, editor-in-chief of CapEx and author of the Tory

Manifesto, Gebregs it done on leash Britain's potential. I began by asking him how we ended up writing a manifesto.

Well, so co-author, I should be very clear on that. I mean, essentially, I'm, I run a think tank, but I'm also a former journalist. I worked at a telegraph for 10 years

ending up running a comment section. A large part of what I do in my day job is just editing. So I knew Manimera Merzo and Rachel Wolf, who were the people who were writing the manifesto.

And yeah, they basically said come in and you know, and with your sort of journalist hat on and and help us to sort of to with the with the document. So yeah, so so I can think

absolutely no credit for any of the strategy, any of the any of the sort of key decisions, any of the numbers in world, but if anyone spots a typo, that's on me.

So obviously have that journalistic background and the editing skills. Have you done anything like this before a document for political party?

No, I mean, I've I mean, obviously we're doing you know, policy work all the time. So I, you know, I'm sort of familiar with that that world. But

I mean, I only you know, I only joined a story party when I when I got when I got this current this current job. I you know, because when I was a journalist, I thought you probably shouldn't do anything.

You know, I thought you probably shouldn't be sort of on one side or the other. Yeah. So then you end up so you get the call. I mean, was there any part of you that thinks no, I don't want to do that.

Yeah, well, it was like, you know, it's it's very clearly you're going to be a sort of fairly stressed stress, stress, process. But ultimately, you know, I know, I mean, I just hate you.

I mean, I'm not really, I mean, I'm not not not personally, but you know, it was, you know, I am I'm really I'm I'm so opposed to what he sounds will do the things that he wanted to do.

Yeah, you know, I just thought it would be a disaster this country. And I also, you know, I did want to get Brexit done. I I voted remain back in the back in the day. But, you know, I think, you know, when most of the population vote for something, you probably have to.

And I can just picture people. Most people didn't turn out. But, you know, ultimately, you know, so and you know, and fundamentally, I tend to think that free market ideas and, you know, capitalism and that sort of thing have been quite good for good for us.

So there wasn't it was it was it was it was it was sort of terrifying. There was the responsibility of doing it was terrifying. But I didn't have any sort of doubts about about saying yes, if they thought that I could I could do it.

So in terms of the job itself, did you then have to work out of CCHQ could you do this from home? What was the process?

You probably have to, well, I mean, you know, I'm you probably have to, you know, obviously, you know, you don't want to be sort of wondering around the streets of Westminster with the, you know, the toy manifesto, you know, you know, in a briefcase, I mean, you know, or no.

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