The Defectors Part 1: A Festive Series - Reg Prentice (Labour to Tories)
Rock & Roll Politics with Steve Richards
Podmasters
4.7 • 909 Ratings
🗓️ 24 December 2025
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Reg Prentice was a Labour cabinet minister after the 1974 elections, but was threatened with deselection by his local Labour party for being on the right. There were rowdy meetings as Prentice’s cabinet allies spoke in his defence and by the time of the 1979 election Prentice had defected to Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative party.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the rock and roll politics podcast with me, Steve Richards, and the first |
| 0:06.6 | of a festive series for all the rock and roll politics cooperative. For those who subscribe to |
| 0:13.9 | Patreon, as you know, there's a whole kind of vault of bonus podcasts which go back many |
| 0:20.1 | years. There are loads of them on Patreon, and Patreon |
| 0:23.9 | subscribers are about to get a new series of bonus podcasts on the theme of when prime ministers |
| 0:31.0 | fall. I can't think why we're exploring that theme. They will begin in January in the new year. But for the Christmas |
| 0:40.3 | series, I thought I would pluck some of the bonus podcasts which revolved around a theme which is |
| 0:47.1 | very potent at the moment. And that is the theme of defections. Why people defect. As I reflect on some of the podcast |
| 0:59.4 | you're going to be hearing over the next few days, it is quite a good barometer at measuring |
| 1:05.1 | the political mood and showing which parties have momentum, which are in trouble. This year has been punctuated |
| 1:15.6 | by defections from Tories to reform, and more recently from Labour, in terms of councillors and so on, |
| 1:24.5 | to the Green Party. That tells us something. But each defection in a way is also a |
| 1:30.8 | great, fascinating, personal drama. And let's go to our first one, which is, we're going back |
| 1:40.1 | through the mists of time here, Reg Prentice, who defected in the 1970s from Labor, he'd been a |
| 1:48.6 | Labour Cabinet Minister to the Conservatives. Anyway, I set it all up in the podcast and its |
| 1:54.2 | wider significance. So here we are then, Reg Prentice, still to come. A really dramatic, strange defection. |
| 2:04.8 | Sean Woodward, who defected from the Conservatives to Labour in the new Labour era. |
| 2:12.8 | That will be your next one. And then finally, two defections in the space of a very short period of time, |
| 2:20.1 | which was Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless from the Conservative Party in the Cameron era |
| 2:26.3 | to what was then UKIP with many consequences. They're still to come. And I say thank you for those who do subscribe |
| 2:36.1 | to Patreon, another bonus series coming your way in January, along with live events of much |
| 2:43.0 | else. So if more of you like these, do subscribe to Patreon. Helps us keep the whole thing going. |
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