Hello and welcome to this edition of The Westminster Hour with me, Ben Wright and my guests coming up with no sign of an end to the Middle East War.

What should the government be doing to ready the public for possible fuel shortages and further price hikes is more drilling

for North Sea oil and gas the answer. We'll have a primer on the mega-May elections for local

councils in England, the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senov. Are the big parties facing a drubbing

from their smaller rivals? And what is the point of Prime Minister's questions? After recent

poorly reviewed performances, is it becoming a pointless political pantomime? First, let's meet my panel.

Shammy Chakrabati is a lawyer and led the Human Rights Organization Liberty before becoming a Labour

peer. She was Shadow Attorney General under Jeremy Corbyn. And I'm

pretty sure that you're our only guest this evening who's carried the Olympic flag alongside

Mohamed Ali, Shami. Does London 2012 feel a long time ago now? A very long time ago. And of course

there was no genetic testing required or indeed athletic prowess for that particular role.

Jesse Norman is the Conservative MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire and joins us down the line from this evening. Hello, Jesse.

Hello, Ben. Jesse's the shadow leader of the Commons and is a former minister in the Treasury and the Foreign Office.

Like Shammy, Jesse is an author of biographies and now fiction.

The political skullduggery of Jacket Beer in England was the setting for your first novel, wasn't it?

Are you cooking up another?

No, I'm not, but...

Well, you're very busy.

Well, yeah, one or two other things happening at the moment, you may have noticed, Ben, yeah.

Alex Wilson is with us, too, for the first time.

He used to be a Tory councillor, but left the party over its handling of COVID.

He now leads the Reform UK group on the London Assembly, although it's fair to say, Alex, you're a small group at the moment.

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