BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts

Hello and welcome to Political Thinking. A couple of weeks back, you may have heard me

talk of the party gate scandal as being a little bit like snow that builds up on a roof.

It builds and builds, nothing seems to change, and then suddenly it slides off, dumping

onto the head of anyone standing underneath. Well some people believe that the police investigation

would be the moment that the snow fell on Boris Johnson, others that the Sue Gray report

would be that moment. Well it turns out they were wrong. The snow though is still building.

The Prime Minister's attempt to defend himself by insisting he hadn't a clue what happened

anywhere in the building other than the few minutes he was actually in one of those parties.

His insistence that it was one of the duties of being a national leader to go to staff

leaving do's and give a speech surrounded by bottles and party snacks, something I couldn't

find any mention of in the rules during Covid. All of these have added to the pressure on

that snow, on that roof. But in truth, perhaps the reason he survived and the reason he's

still in trouble is the other great problem that was focused on in British politics. One

cabinet minister told me this week about the meeting at which they discussed what Rishi

Sunak should announce. The economic problems he told me are heading towards us like a speeding

train and no one seems to understand that. When Boris Johnson opened the discussion, he

asked people whether they could remember the 1970s. The last time these sorts of problems

with inflation were experienced the last time there was this sort of energy crisis. What

struck him? What struck people at that meeting, I'm told, is how few in the room had any

first hand knowledge of the 1970s. My memory in my youth, I remember the candles of

the three-day week or the problems of the winter of discontent, is that inflation, first

...