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

Thank you very much for tuning in. And as ever, we've got a lot to cram in in our time together.

I'm not even going to tell you where I'm recording this. Suffice to say, it's in a rather surreal

place. I've been watching Kier Starrmer's speech on the Monday morning and the Q&A that followed

it and have rushed off to record a short podcast. For new listeners,

we usually have a question time with members of the rock and roll politics cooperative.

But if it's okay with all of you, I'm going to not have time for the question time element in this podcast,

which means that at the end of the week,

when I will either be in the plush Podmaster's studio or in my equally plush recording studio in my

boudoir at home, we will have time to delve deep with your thoughts as well.

I put together some brilliant questions

and points that have been emailed in. We will come to them, but I'm sorry, not today. Also,

I've got to get ready. It's King's Place Live tonight. By the time you have heard this,

some of you will have gone or watched the live stream or the recording of the stream or whatever.

So some days are just crammed, and politics is very rock and roll at the moment, as in all shook up.

So here are some brief thoughts that hopefully will be timeless, because the other thing at the moment is things might move quite quickly or might not.

It seems to be a constant possibilities of fast-moving events or slow-moving events,

and you never quite know which you're up against when recording podcasts.

But in terms of Stama's speech, what I thought was most interesting was his recognition of the need

to explain why he was doing things, not just what he was doing. It's quite a leap. I remember

talking to him early in his leadership in opposition when he was in trouble post the Hartlepool

by-election about the centrality of the why question if you want to win arguments as a leader,

...