May I have your attention please you can now book your train tickets on Uber and get

10% back in credits to spend on your next Uber ride so you don't have to walk home in the brain again.

Trains now on Uber. T's and C's apply. Check the Uber app. Hello and welcome to the Red Box Politics Podcast on The Times.

I'm Matt Chorley.

Joined today in his lovely Lime House flat by Matthew Paris times columnists former

sketch writer former TV presenter former MP former aide to Margaret Thatcher and

you'll hate me for saying this one of the nicest men in politics and journalism and political journalism.

I love you for saying that.

Thank you.

It isn't true, but it's a nice thing to say.

Now Matthew, we're going to come to everything during the course of our half hour

chat or so we'll talk about Theresa May and Brexit and who's going to be the next

Prime Minister we'll talk about the fact that it's 40 years since she became a Tory MP

but I do feel like we're sitting here we're looking out on the Thames on a slightly gray day, and I feel like I must ask you about the time you tried to swim across the Thames.

We're looking almost at where I disembarked from.

So you're on the other side?

Yeah. I've always wanted to swim across the Thames.

You sit there looking across it and you feel I should have swan that bit of water if I'm to live here and I kept

telling people I was going to do it and they kept saying well go on do it and my 60th

birthday approached and I still hadn't done it so I said all right I will

a friend of mine is only in his 20s said well do take some kind of flotation device

with you.

...