This is Hugo Rifkind. Before we get on with the podcast, this episode of Politics Unpacked is sponsored by SSE,

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Now, if you want to find out what's really going on in British politics, you need to read Tim Shipman

in the Sunday Times every week, and also his series of books covering the most

dramatic, consequential and downright chaotic events that have taken place since the 2016 EU

referendum. The fourth and final installment of his Brexit Quartet is called Out, how Brexit got

done and the Tories were undone, and it tells the story of how Boris Johnson took over from Theresa May,

and with the help of Dominic Cummings, won a landslide.

Then there was COVID, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, and the near extinction of the Conservative Party.

All that. Tim Shipman joins me now. Hello, Tim. Hi.

What a pleasure to have you here. What an unusual occurrence.

Absolutely. It's very nice to be back. Look, just from the summary of this book, this period covers, this book covers a period in which decades of political drama were condensed into weeks, right?

Yeah, I mean, Cummings on one occasion, contacted someone, I forget which of them particularly mad days it was, but there's a quote, I think, from Lenin, isn't there about, you know, sometimes.

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