Hello and welcome to rock and roll politics, the weekly podcast with me, Steve Richards.

Thank you very much for tuning in.

We've got a lot to get through this week with a focus on your brilliant questions.

There have been so many of them that I'm only going to make a couple of brief reflections

before we get going on the questions because I think the questions will in themselves kind of get us

all over the place politically, I mean, in terms of ideas, as well as a kind of structural chaos.

Anyway, that in a minute, before all of those things, just a brief reminder that on Monday, October the 19th, rock and roll politics is live at a socially distanced King's Place. And you can get tickets on the King's Place website. You can also get tickets and join a global audience for the live streaming of that event and then you can look at it

afterwards if you can't make it live. That's also on the King's Place website. So the live streaming

and live at King's Place on October the 19th at these events as those of you who attend will testify,

we delve deep and you and deeper than we have time to do on the podcast because we're there for an evening.

And it will be fun as well.

And by the way, the next one, October the 19th, it will just be after that EU summit where the fate of Brexit will probably be sealed.

So after four years of frenzy and our predictions for those of you who are at the rock and roll politics gigs a couple of weeks ago about whether there will be a deal or no deal,

by the time we all gather together

again via the stream or live at King's Place, we should have a better idea where this Brexit

saga is moving. It's going to be a big moment. Anyway, that's all to come. For now, just a couple of reflections. One of familiar theme that you'll have heard a lot of on this podcast. I'm becoming more, more obsessed by it. I think the key question triggered by the pandemic is where does power lie in England in particular because the other parts of the UK

have their own sets of rules but I suspect the questions will apply in different ways there too

where does power lie and where should it lie those questions are at the heart of this

latest nightmare in you know this the heart of this latest nightmare.

You know, the record of the British test and trace system, this world beating, world beating,

is just a shambolic embarrassment with dangerous consequences.

But the repercussions and the post-mortems are so illuminating, or illuminating in the sort of weird way they shed no light at all.

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