The Mel Stride One
Political Thinking with Nick Robinson
BBC
4.6 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 13 June 2025
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Shadow Chancellor sets out his vision for a more "thoughtful" politics and faces up to the challenge of winning the argument before the next general election.
Sir Mel Stride reveals what he admires about his opposite number, Rachel Reeves, and why a world war two commander is one of his political heroes.
He also has a warning about what the British economy would look like under Nigel Farage.
Producer: Daniel Kraemer
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello. As a country, we've lost the courage to say the obvious that government can't do |
| 0:11.9 | everything, that the state can't fix every problem. So said the leader of the Conservative Party, |
| 0:17.8 | Kemi Badock this week, after the Chancellor relish-making promise after promise of extra spending. |
| 0:24.8 | My guest on political thinking this week is the man who will have to work out |
| 0:29.2 | what government might not do if the Tories return to power. |
| 0:34.6 | He's the shadow chancellor, the former welfare secretary, Mel Stride, |
| 0:38.2 | who recently promised that never again would his party pledge tax cuts without spelling out |
| 0:45.0 | exactly how they'd be paid for. Mel Stride, welcome to political. Thank you, Nick. Good to be. |
| 0:50.7 | You gave a speech the other day, which struck me. You talked about the importance of thoughtfulness in politics. Why did you feel the need to say it? |
| 1:00.6 | Because I think there are dangers associated by not being thoughtful. Look, we all want to be frivolous and enjoy our lives and get excited about things. And there's room for that. But if you're talking about an economy and how you run an economy, it's really important that it's done in the right way, otherwise you can end up in a bad place. |
| 1:18.3 | So I think we need to spend more time thinking, for example, about things like fiscal responsibility, whether the numbers add up, whether it's realistic, you can just endlessly |
| 1:28.4 | promise to spend ever and ever greater amounts of money without actually properly explaining |
| 1:32.7 | how it's going to be funded. So that's what I mean. And I think we need to try and get back to |
| 1:36.9 | that. It's a struggle in this world of TikTok and social media and everybody gets their news |
| 1:42.0 | on the go on their phone and all of that kind of stuff. |
| 1:44.3 | But that's what we need to fight for. |
| 1:45.7 | Yeah, you said some years ago that you were nostalgic for a sort of older and better style of politics. |
| 1:51.9 | Is that what you mean before, as it were, there was a need for an instant headline and an instant soundbite? |
| 1:57.4 | Yeah, what politics ultimately has got to be about is a kind of pursuit of the truth, |
| 2:02.8 | isn't it? So that's what you try and do on the Today program every morning, is get to the |
| 2:06.3 | bottom of what the facts are, what the truth really is. And it's only on that basis that you can |
| 2:11.6 | make rational policy or go to the polling booth and vote for a particular party |
... |
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