Well, plimey, this week I went to Conservative Party conference in my beloved Manchester,

had some lovely chats, to check out the Conservative Party conference video we did.

I think this is the best one we did, thanks to the excellent material that was on offer.

Now I do want to talk about my interview with Eric Pickles, who's the former chairman

of the Conservative Party, who served under David Cameron as sectionist date for communities

and local government. He was constantly on the airways in that period defending government policy.

Let's just listen to the encounter that I have with him in Manchester and have a little chat about it.

How are you doing? How's it going? This is a tradition we've interviewed you for this before.

I could love it. You're now a lord. How long you been a lord for now? Since 2018.

Obviously we've served under David Cameron. It's always gone through quite a few iterations since then.

What does being a Conservative stand for in 2023? What's the philosophy?

At 2023, it's always going to be about serving the country, not becoming terribly dogmatic,

allowing yourself to be taken over by extremists. Would you like some other bathroom in you mean?

How does a refugee, a gay refugee, prove they're gay? That's what Salo Rahman talks about.

I mean, I have a view about this, and I think that neither the Conservative Party,

nor the Labour Party have got the answer to this at all. I think we've become obsessed by the

pull factor, and I think we need to do a little bit of thought to the push factor. Why are these

people risking their lives? Why they wanted to travel? Because we've got rid of safe and legal

roots for the vast majority of the world. What we need to be able to do is to ensure that the people

don't need to do that travel, that they have a better life. So you want safe and legal

roots to be expanded? What we need to ensure, what's the other problem that he's offering,

is a safe and legal root in Rwanda, so that it can be processed off country. That means they're

...