Show 267 - Blair McDougall
Matt Forde's Political Party
The Political Party
4.7 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 17 March 2022
⏱️ 103 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This is a masterclass in political strategy. Blair McDougall ran the Better Together campaign in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, which resulted in Scotland voting to stay in the UK. He tells the inside story of the referendum, but also delivers nuggets of pure political gold on how to reject your opponent's framing and how to exploit weakness in an opponent's argument. Blair also takes a longer view on what strategies have and haven't worked since 2014. This is political judgement at its clearest and calmest.
Buy tickets to The Political Party, live at The Duchess Theatre including the next show with TOM TUGENDHAT on Monday 21 March here: https://www.nimaxtheatres.com/shows/the-political-party-with-matt-forde/
Buy tickets to Matt's brand new stand-up show Clowns To The Left Of Me, Jokers to the Right, touring across the UK including at The Bloomsbury Theatre on Saturday 23 April: https://www.mattforde.com/2022tour
Forthcoming guests at The Political Party include:
21 March: Tom Tugendhat
4 April: James Cleverly
11 April: Jacob Rees-Mogg and Rosena Allin-Khan
18 April: Rosie Duffield
16 May: Lisa Nandy
13 June: Gary Neville
27 June: David Davis
Email the show: politicalpartypodcast@gmail.com
Follow Matt on Twitter: @mattforde
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the political party. This episode features Blame of Dougal, who ran the |
| 0:15.0 | Better Together campaign to keep Scotland in the UK in 2014. This is an exceptional lesson |
| 0:22.2 | in strategy. Everything he thinks about is strategic. I know strategy gets overused in politics |
| 0:29.2 | and in management, but he really thinks carefully about every issue and how to respond to it. |
| 0:35.2 | It's fantastic. Before I come on to that, thank you for all your messages about the Neil Kinneke |
| 0:39.6 | episode. I know I said at the start of that it was emotional and so many of you have been in touch |
| 0:44.4 | on Twitter and over email to tell me how much you loved it. You can email the show political |
| 0:49.6 | party podcast at gmail.com. That was, I mean there's so many of these, I go, oh, I'm special |
| 0:55.0 | what it makes it gets to, of course, it's always true, but it was particularly special. So if |
| 1:00.4 | you haven't listened to that yet, you do need to go back and listen to it. And thank you to all |
| 1:04.4 | of you who've been coming to see me on tour. I record this the day after the Newcastle gig, |
| 1:08.9 | which was just absolutely just such a pleasure and a privilege. It's just so exciting to be |
| 1:15.4 | in out on the road again and performing in these amazing venues and the tour continues |
| 1:21.1 | across the northeast in Annick, I think I'm pronouncing that right. And hexham. And then on the 23rd of March, |
| 1:30.3 | I mean, made stone the 24th of March, Norwich. I've never played it before on tour. I'm coming to |
| 1:34.6 | the playhouse. Friday the 25th of March, Cambridge, Monday the 28th, Edinburgh, Monday the, |
| 1:40.8 | Tuesday the 29th, Edinburgh, two nights at the Edinburgh stand and Wednesday the 30th, Glasgow, |
| 1:46.4 | 30 the 31st, Leicester, Friday the 1st of April, Northampton and loads more of the places |
| 1:51.2 | won't include in Bath, Brighton, Eastley. For the Cambridge, Glasgow, two Edinburgh gigs, |
| 1:58.4 | I don't think there are many tickets left if any. I think a couple of those have already sold out. |
| 2:02.4 | So do check, matford.com for all the latest tickets. And of course, you can get tickets to come and see |
| 2:09.3 | this show live, the political party. And the next couple of guests are incredible Tom Tugan hat |
... |
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