Show 310 - Johanna Baxter
Matt Forde's Political Party
The Political Party
4.7 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 31 March 2023
⏱️ 73 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Johanna is the Chair of Labour's NEC and this is the most exciting chat about internal party machinery that you will ever hear. In fact, it's going to make you want to join a political party and get involved. It's a great inside account of what some of Labour's most infamous NEC meetings have been like, including the recent one that voted to bar Jeremy Corbyn from standing for the party. Johanna has so many great stories about helping the party function as a volunteer, what it's like having to chair party conference in an arena and how seating plans can defeat factionalism. It's a positive, optimistic and funny defence of political activism.
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3 April: Ruth Davidson
17 April: Jess Phillips
22 May: David Blunkett
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Welcome to the Political Party. Today's guest is Johanna Baxter, Chair of |
| 0:14.9 | Labour's National Executive Committee. And this is an absolute thrill. If you're ever, |
| 0:21.0 | I mean, I'm obviously a political nerd and I love all the internal stuff, but this is |
| 0:25.0 | internal stuff made very, very accessible. And why, I'm just any political party, we |
| 0:30.8 | talked specifically about Labour and why it has the structure that it has, how it works |
| 0:35.3 | and also what those meetings are like, including the one just a few days ago that voted by |
| 0:42.0 | 22 to 12 to prevent Jeremy Corbyn being able to sum for the Labour Party a future general |
| 0:49.1 | election. So what are those meetings really like? How precious is the atmosphere? But also, |
| 0:54.2 | why do people give so much of their free time, you know, not just joining a political party |
| 0:59.3 | and wanting to get selected for parliamentary elections or local election, but also to |
| 1:03.2 | serve the party internally as a volunteer when there's so much responsibility on your |
| 1:09.7 | shoulders. Now, Johanna is just such a positive and chirpy person and it's had to be positive. |
| 1:17.9 | There's some very difficult experiences. As you can imagine, as someone who's not a |
| 1:23.5 | Corbyn supporter being on the NEC join us years and some of you may remember the very |
| 1:28.0 | moving television interview with Johanna outside Parliament. So it's just, this is just |
| 1:34.9 | a great defense of why you should join a political party. Now, obviously, that's not |
| 1:39.0 | advice I'm going to take because I'm not going to join a political party again, but I |
| 1:44.6 | love politics, obviously, and I just have so much respect, obviously, having been a party |
| 1:51.0 | member and a party staffer. I just, actually, I found it so inspirational to talk to someone |
| 1:56.4 | who just still defend being a member, getting involved, doing stuff and just the energy |
| 2:01.8 | and stamina and positivity you need. And it's not about what faction you are, whether |
| 2:06.4 | you're left wing or right, there'll be people in every political party across the UK |
... |
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