The Dangerous Allure of ‘The Centre Ground’
Rock & Roll Politics with Steve Richards
Podmasters
4.7 • 909 Ratings
🗓️ 28 June 2022
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In a week when Matthew Parris claimed Rishi Sunak was a ‘centrist’ and Keir Starmer proclaimed that Labour was on the ‘centre ground’ I wonder where the ‘centre’ is and what it means… if anything. Plus your brilliant questions on Mick Lynch, Boris Johnson, the by-elections and much more.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, our Hello and welcome to rock and roll politics, the weekly podcast with me, Steve Richards. |
| 0:29.6 | Thanks so much for tuning in wherever you are in the UK and the rest of the world. |
| 0:35.3 | And as ever, you won't be surprised to hear. We've got a lot to cram in |
| 0:41.4 | in our time together. This is how we'll be spending the time if it's okay with all of you. I'll give |
| 0:47.6 | a couple of announcements, our assembly notices, I call them these days. Then again, if it's okay with all of you, I'm going to reflect |
| 0:55.7 | on the term the centre ground, which crops up in this podcast quite a lot. Alarm bells started |
| 1:03.0 | ringing in my mind about this term, this, I think, treacherous term, imprecise and dangerous in its allure. Two kind of things that I read got me going |
| 1:16.3 | about it, which I will explain in a minute. One, a column by Matthew Paris, which I think cast light |
| 1:23.4 | inadvertently on the problem with this term, and another by Kier Stama. |
| 1:29.2 | Then we will turn to your brilliant questions which cover everything. |
| 1:33.8 | The rise of Mick Lynch, Lynchy, the new hero of Twitter because of his media performances |
| 1:41.9 | during the strikes last week. |
| 1:45.5 | Quite a few questions on that. |
| 1:47.5 | Continue the debate about the situation in Northern Ireland and Ireland |
| 1:51.8 | and all kinds of other things. |
| 1:54.8 | Obviously, the future of Boris Johnson. |
| 1:57.5 | That will be a recurring theme and much, much more. |
| 2:02.5 | So, yeah, well, what a lot to cram in. |
| 2:05.5 | A couple of notices. |
| 2:06.9 | First of all, for those of you who don't know, |
| 2:10.0 | the show will be coming live at the Edinburgh Festival, |
| 2:13.8 | and tickets are now on sale at the fringe website. |
... |
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