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Today in Focus

The 14 years that broke Britain, part 2

Today in Focus

The Guardian

Daily News, News

4.65.7K Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2024

⏱️ 45 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In part two of our miniseries on how 14 years of Tory rule have impacted the UK, Jonathan Freedland explores how chaos from Brexit to Partygate destroyed trust in politics Listen to part 1: austerity. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/infocus

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is the second part of our two-part election series looking at the UK after 14 years of Tory rule.

0:18.0

If you miss the first one, which was about David Cameron and George Osborne and the era of austerity, you might like to go back and

0:24.7

listen to that one first.

0:26.7

But today, how the chaos that followed destroyed trust in British politics. It is one of the great ironies of the period that usually coalition government is associated with instability and yet it was the coalition years where the Tories were

0:54.7

governing with the Lib Dems that were pretty stable for those five years stable enough

0:59.5

that when David Cameron went into the 2015 election, with a straight face, he could say,

1:05.6

do you want to have chaos with Ed Millerband or stability with me?

1:11.6

We learned at the weekend what he can achieve in one week in Doncaster where he couldn't open the door,

1:17.6

he was bullied by small children and he set the carpet on fire, just imagine what a shambles it make of running the country.

1:25.0

That appeal worked and he won a majority and so it was on course to be yet more

1:30.7

stability you would have thought. Instead the train came off the tracks.

1:34.8

The Cameron and Osbourne era ended abruptly in the summer of 2016 when their gamble to

1:40.8

hold a referendum on EU membership backfired and the UK voted to leave.

1:46.6

So we'll have a new Prime Minister in that building behind me by Wednesday evening.

1:51.2

Thank you very much. From that moment on, we've lived through eight years of scarcely believable mayhem.

2:04.0

And Brexit was just the start.

2:06.2

There was the unlawful shutting down of Parliament.

2:09.3

Judges being declared enemies of the people. Coneyism and profiteering in one of the nation's darkest

2:16.0

hours, parties in Downing streets while the bodies piled high and the Queen mourned the

2:21.6

death of her husband alone.

2:23.0

A Prime Minister so useless that she was outlasted by an iceberg lettuce.

2:28.0

And right now, just days before the country goes to the polls,

...

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