Hello and welcome to rock and roll politics, the podcast with me, Steve Richards,

and as ever, we have got a lot to cram in in our time together. If it's okay with all of you, I'm not going to reflect much.

It will probably come up in the question time session in the podcast on the war because

things are moving fast and the analysis is familiar. Trying to work out what Trump will do, that dangerous partnership

with Netanyahu, etc. is much explored. And by the time you listen to this, there could

have been a greater escalation or not. I suspect a greater escalation, but who knows?

So I'm going to steer clear for now.

There have been many reflections from the Rock and Roll Politics Cooperative and myself on it,

which remain absolutely vindicated in my view by what has unfolded.

But I'm going to look at another question. It's sort of related to the

podcast from the end of last week, where I did an almost kind of sentence by sentence analysis

of Michael Gove's article for The Spectator. He, of course, edits the Spectator on Ed Miliband.

And Gove's argument that Ed Miliband is running the country, it's a disaster for the country, the death of the Labour Party, and so on.

By exploring partly another article that appeared over the weekend, actually. But to get to that

point, I want to, first of all, reference an email from Professor Tim Bale,

who is a regular contributor to the podcast and the authority on the Conservative Party's written.

Many books, which goes into the layers of the Tory party and most

significantly the membership, which of course has huge power in determining the direction

of the Conservative Party. It elects the leader, as we know, and indeed prime ministers,

as we know only too well. So I'm going to begin with that, then go on to a

reflection about the art of leadership and the centre ground in terms of defining the centre ground,

partly via an article written by Phil Collins for the observer. And then after that, we'll come to some brilliant

...