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Hello, welcome back to Political Thinking.

In a moment, my interview, a relaxed conversation, not a news interrogation, with someone who

shapes our thinking about what has shaped theirs.

My guess this week is Nadine Doris.

First though, a thought on the time we've been off air when so much has changed and yet

so little.

There were those who thought that by now Boris Johnson would be facing a full-blown leadership

crisis, indeed that he might be out of office.

Not me as it happens.

It's not in my view that the war has changed everything.

It hasn't.

It's not the key starmer's little local party difficulties have ended the pressure on

Boris Johnson over law-breaking.

Those hundred fines are a reminder that that hasn't happened either.

It's not even that Rishi Sunak no longer looks quite the alternative that he once did.

There are other alternatives to Boris Johnson.

No, if anything in truth, his problems have actually got harder.

As the full scale of the economic crisis and the cost of living squeeze, they're related

but they are different, has become clear.

As Hemingway once wrote about someone going bankrupt who has asked how it had happened,

it happened he wrote gradually, then suddenly.

...