The Weekend Intelligence: The state of Britain
The Intelligence from The Economist
The Economist
4.6 • 3.6K Ratings
🗓️ 29 June 2024
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On July 4th Britain will have a general election, one in which is widely expected to result in dramatic losses for the ruling Conservative party. If so, it would bring to an end 14 years of Tory rule. It’s been a turbulent period; the twin catastrophes of Brexit and Covid, set to the grinding and gloomy mood music of the 2008 financial crash. The Economist’s Andy Miller travels up and down the country, to the towns and cities shaped by these events, to get a sense of how Britain is feeling.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BP is working to roll out EV charging hubs in the UK and we're keeping oil and gas |
| 0:06.0 | flowing from the North Sea. It's and not all that's how BP is backing Britain. |
| 0:11.8 | While today we're mostly in oil and gas. We increased the proportion |
| 0:15.8 | of our global annual investment that went into our lower carbon and other transition businesses |
| 0:20.6 | from around 3% in 2019 to around 23% in 2023. |
| 0:25.8 | BP.com slash and not all. The Economist. |
| 0:40.0 | Since the 1920s, notwithstanding wartime, Britain has been bouncing back and forth |
| 0:45.0 | between being led by labor governments on the left |
| 0:48.0 | and conservative or Tory governments on the right. |
| 0:51.0 | When I first got here, it was the Tony Blair years, labor, or new labor |
| 0:57.0 | as I came to learn, a little less trade uniony and a little more market forcesy than the |
| 1:02.3 | party had traditionally been. |
| 1:04.9 | Then it was labor again under Gordon Brown, Tony Blair's Chancellor, his finance minister. |
| 1:11.6 | All of that seems so very long ago because in 2010 the pendulum swung again and we had a |
| 1:18.4 | conservative Prime Minister and then they just kept coming, some for longer than others. |
| 1:25.0 | Next week, though, Britain heads to the polls again, |
| 1:28.0 | and this time, unless every pollster in the land is wrong, |
| 1:32.0 | it's going to be Labor's turn. Their inheritance, though, |
| 1:36.6 | it's not pretty. |
| 1:40.6 | I'm Jason Palmer, and this is the weekend intelligence. The economist's special |
| 1:46.4 | correspondent Andrew Miller has been traveling the length and breadth of |
| 1:50.0 | Britain trying to take stock of a country on the verge of profound political change. |
... |
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