Why Doesn't Westminster Work?

Inside Briefing with the Institute for Government

Institute for Government

News, Politics, Government

4.6 • 252 Ratings

🗓️ 19 May 2023

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How does our system of government work? Why does it sometimes fail? And what can be done to fix it? Join the IfG podcast team – and political commentator and author Ian Dunt – for a journey through the corridors of power to discover where Westminster goes wrong. Are MPs doing the job their constituents need – and good government requires? Is No10 really the right building to house the centre of UK government? How much power does a prime minister actually wield? And has the relationship between civil servants and ministers ever been this bad? All this and more on this week’s wide-ranging, thought-provoking and problem-solving Inside Briefing. Hannah White presents. With Alex Thomas and Cath Haddon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this episode of Inside Briefing, the podcast from the Institute for Government.
0:14.4	I'm Hannah White. A hung parliament, the first coalition in a generation, then minority government,
0:19.8	three referendums, three cabinet secreties. Brexit, then COVID, war a generation, then minority government, three referendums, three cabinet
0:21.3	secretaries. Brexit, then COVID, war in Europe, then a cost of living crisis. A year with three
0:27.1	prime ministers, record-breaking numbers of ministerial resignations, an increasingly strained
0:31.9	relationship between ministers and the civil service. And somewhere in all of that a whole
0:36.4	lot of policy and parliamentary drama.
0:39.0	The last decade or so has tested the machinery of Westminster to its limits and sometimes beyond.
0:45.0	Sometimes our system of government has worked, sometimes it hasn't.
0:48.2	So why not? What's the problem?
0:49.9	And can it be fixed?
0:51.3	And did things really used to be a whole lot better?
0:53.3	Or are we all guilty of looking back
0:55.4	through the lenses of rose-tinted spectacles?
0:58.0	Well, that's what we're going to be exploring today,
1:00.2	a subject that definitely needs more than one podcast,
1:02.9	but we are going to give it a go.
1:04.8	So I've called up a pair of the IFG's finest brains to help me,
1:08.4	our resident historian Kath Haddon and our expert on all things
1:11.5	government and civil service, Alex Thomas. Hi both. Hello. Hi, Anna. And I'm delighted to be
1:16.0	joined by Ian Dunt, the political journalist and commentator whose new book is called How Westminster
1:21.2	Works and Why It Doesn't. Hi, Ian. Thanks for joining us. No, not at all. Thanks, thanks for having
	...

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