Hello and welcome to the political party. Today's guest is Stephen Noon, former chief strategist

to the Yes campaign in the 2014 Scottish Independent Referendum and since then, oh boy, what a

life he's led. Many years training to be a Jesuit priest and now he's in academia at

Edinburgh University. Now this isn't just about his experiences of running a referendum

campaign or helping one a referendum campaign and strategising on the Yes side, the Scottish

Independent side of that referendum campaign, but also why he felt he had to go and do something

arguably completely different, arguably maybe not, but also his ideas for the future. Now this

isn't just a reflection on the recent Supreme Court ruling or the First Minister's promise

to hold the next election as a day factor referendum, although you may not be surprised to

hear if your family was Stephen's work and his interviews and he gave a brilliant interview

to the Times in August. So I'll put a link to it. I'll put a link to it in the blurbs

that you can find because it is excellent. It is behind a paywall, but if you google him,

you'll be able to find basically what he's about. It's just very thoughtful, very calm

and clearly very keen to change the way the debate about the Constitution is being held

in Scotland to take a longer, calmer, more collegiate and less adversarial view, which

I think we should all agree with. So it won't surprise you to hear that he disagrees with

the idea for instance of holding the next general election as a day factor referendum,

but there's way more detail in that. And also it's just a lovely thoughtful interview

with a really thoughtful person who has been at the centre of something, then not been

and reflected on it and really done years of thinking. And that really shows this.

So before I give you the treat of an interview with Stephen Noon, just to let you know, I

can announce some very exciting guests for the coming weeks and months. So some of these

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