The Oliver Letwin One
Political Thinking with Nick Robinson
BBC
4.6 • 2.5K Ratings
🗓️ 29 March 2019
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A former Thatcherite with a record of gaffes, is he now usurping the role of prime minister or has he become a Mr. Fixit taking responsibility to tackle a national crisis?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts |
| 0:05.6 | It is March 29th 2019 and we're out. Except we're not. More than a thousand days after |
| 0:15.3 | that referendum, we've reached the date we've talked about for so long and we barely moved |
| 0:22.4 | an inch from where we were when the country voted to leave the EU. We are instead lost |
| 0:29.9 | in a sea of meaningless jargon, a babble about parliamentary process and procedure with MV3 |
| 0:39.3 | and IV2, common market 2.0 and opinions about whether this or that will break the latest |
| 0:48.0 | agreement with the EU. Now you'll remember that the deal, as we keep |
| 0:52.6 | referring to it, it has a legal part called the withdrawal agreement and a political part |
| 0:57.7 | unbinding, nonbinding, a political declaration. And the ploy is that MPs would tomorrow vote |
| 1:04.5 | on just the withdrawal agreement part. So this is kind of like MV3 and a half. This is |
| 1:10.5 | all moving as we step back for a minute. We are facing as a nation a big, historic and |
| 1:18.3 | you know, really rather simple choice. One that we've struggled with since the birth |
| 1:24.0 | of what became the European Union. Do we want to be part of it? Do we want to be entirely |
| 1:31.4 | separate from it? Or do we want to return to what we thought we were joining? Or many |
| 1:37.0 | people did? The so-called common market. You can add as much complexity as you like, but |
| 1:43.6 | in truth, that is the simple choice that MPs are still struggling with and the public |
| 1:50.9 | were never asked to consider. Tonight at 10, Theresa May tells Conservative MPs, she will |
| 1:57.0 | step down as Prime Minister if they back her Brexit deal. And now as if all that wasn't |
| 2:03.4 | enough, we're having to consider who might be our next Prime Minister during this crisis. |
| 2:09.0 | As a matter of fact, the House of Commons Prime Minister urged colleagues to back her |
| 2:12.4 | deal despite their deep reservations. Much has been said, much has been written about |
| 2:17.7 | why Theresa May had to offer up her own scourge this week. But I think what has not been |
... |
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