The damning verdict on Boris Johnson

This is an audio transcript of the Political Fix podcast episode: ‘The damning verdict on Boris Johnson’

Stephen Bush?
I’m bored of Boris Johnson, and I would like the committee to stop investigating him so we can stop ever having to hear the words Boris or Johnson in conversation again.

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Lucy Fisher
Hi. Welcome to Political Fix, your essential insider guide to Westminster from the Financial Times with me, Lucy Fisher, the FT’s Whitehall editor. You heard there the FT’s Stephen Bush on the devastating report into Boris Johnson’s behaviour. We’ll be reflecting on what it all means for the governing Conservative party and for Johnson’s future. Plus, we’ll head to Edinburgh for an update on the political upheaval in Scotland too. And here to get the ball rolling, our Political Fix regulars, FT columnist Miranda Green. Hi, Miranda.

Miranda Green
Hello, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
And columnist and writer of the FT’s Inside Politics newsletter, Stephen Bush. Hi, Stephen.

Stephen Bush
Hello, Lucy.

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Lucy Fisher
So before we get down to business, Stephen, what else has caught your attention this week?

Stephen Bush
So I’m gonna cheat slightly. And then the other thing that’s happened this week is the death of Glenda Jackson, double Oscar award-winning, Tony award-winning actor, but of course, also a Labour MP for 23 years. And I rewatched actually one of the first, sort of major parliamentary controversies I had to cover, which was her speech in the tributes to Margaret Thatcher, and Glenda Jackson doing this wonderful sort of bit of Commons theatre, essentially doing this very powerful, whatever one thought of the content, very powerful delivery, which ended with this variation of “a woman, but not on my terms.” So I rewatched that upon hearing the news, and it’s yeah, a brilliant House of Commons moment still.

Miranda Green
So I’m sort of tempted to try and kind of wrestle in a Ken Russell manner with Stephen over wanting to have Glenda as my own moment of the week, because I do agree with you, listening to her in the chamber when she was in full flood was just the most incredible experience. I mean, that voice had so much power, you know, and we’re all used to dealing with politicians who like the sound of their own voice. But boy was that an amazing thing to have in our parliament, you know, so she’ll be much missed. I was gonna have a slightly, you might say lesser figure, as my moment of the week. I always love it when minor characters in politics are suddenly sort of catapulted into the middle of a big story. And of course, with the Boris Johnson privileges committee report, one of the senior Tories on there, Sir Charles Walker, in a way quite a senior backbencher but not a household name. But I was reminded of his weirdest moment of fame, which was in lockdown. He was an opponent of lockdowns and in March 2021 he decided to start a protest that was utterly surreal. He was filmed with a pint of milk, because you were allowed to go out for essentials, saying, for the next few days I will walk around London with a pint of milk on my person because that pint will represent my protest and there may be others who will choose too to walk around London with a pint of milk on their person as well. Utterly surreal, utterly bizarre, and not really delivered with Glenda Jackson’s aplomb. But there we are.

Lucy Fisher
Well, that’s great. And I’m sure we’ll get on to the other members of the committee. For me, my moment of the week was on Thursday, when the new defence procurement minister, and I swear they must have had about four in the past year, finally came to the House of Commons to give an oral update on a report by a KC into the Ajax armoured vehicle. Now stay with me because this is just an absolutely symbolic example of MoD procurement gone wrong. It’s an armoured fighting vehicle that was supposed to enter service in 2017. It has already cost £5.5bn and in the trials in recent years for this vehicle, it suffered problems with noise and vibrations that meant the soldiers involved in the trials had to be discharged from the military altogether with hearing problems. So it’s had real-world effects on individuals and their careers in the army, and it’s just been catastrophic. So finally we had this week about the systemic cultural and institutional problems at the MoD that have led to this colossal cock-up of procurement. But as ever, the minister insists the programme has turned a corner and that we should see all 589 vehicles in service by 2029. So let’s see.

Miranda Green
It kind of puts one’s own errors into perspective, does it not?

Lucy Fisher
Well, quite.

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Let’s move on to the much-anticipated privileges committee report into Boris Johnson. It finally dropped 14 months after the probe began on Thursday morning. We’re recording just a few hours after that. Here’s a flavour of how we got here and the reaction.

Boris Johnson
I’m here to say to you, hand on heart, that I did not lie to the House. When those statements were made, they were made in good faith and on the basis of what I honestly knew and believed at the time.

News clip, woman speaking
Boris Johnson is not only a lawbreaker, but a liar. He’s not fit for public office and he’s disgraced himself and continues to act like a pound shop Trump in the way in which he tries to discredit anybody who criticises his actions.

News clip, man speaking
I don’t think this is a good report. I think it’s fundamentally flawed. The real issue with it, the real problem with this report, is how it harms position. If you have judged it before you become chairman, you ought not to take up the chairmanship.

Lucy Fisher
Well, there’s a lot to unpick from this report — 108 pages, 30,000 words. Miranda, even for us seasoned Westminster watchers, this report was even more damning than we expected, wasn’t it?

Miranda Green
Yes, it was. And I think what’s been interesting about it has been the willingness of the committee and all members of the committee, which is, of course, Conservative-dominated, to really leave no holds barred in their condemnation of a former prime minister who’s ended up with an unprecedented sanction of 90 days suspension. And also the language used on the extent of the unified condemnation did take everyone by surprise, I think. And the problem with the Rees-Mogg attack on the committee, which we heard there.

Lucy Fisher
Yes.

Miranda Green
Is that it tries to persuade people that because the chair of the committee, Harriet Harman, is Labour, that this in some ways kind of party political bias, whereas this is a cross-party Conservative-dominated committee which is there to make sure that parliament can do its job properly. That’s why it’s called the privileges committee. It’s trying to make sure that parliament can operate in this unique way. And if people mislead parliament and knowingly lie to their peers, not peers in the House of Lords, other MPs, then the executive can’t do its job properly and it can’t be held to account by the Commons. So it’s actually a really serious moment.

Lucy Fisher
Yeah.

Miranda Green
And, you know, Boris Johnson’s kind of praetorian guard of loyalists like Rees-Mogg have tried very hard to kind of pick off individual members of the committee to try and say that they compromised in some way and also to say that it has political bias, but it’s pretty hard to do at this point. How that develops next week, I think, when it goes before the whole House of Commons will be quite interesting to see because there are rumours of some Tory MPs actually staying away rather than actually being put on the spot.

Lucy Fisher
Yeah, and I think that’s being actively, if not encouraged, then certainly facilitated by the Tory whips who are handing out slips, which is permission to skip the Commons to any MP on Monday who wants to go and campaign in one of the by-election seats. So I think that is an option that might be taken up.

Stephen, Let me recount the five counts that have led to these repeated contempts as Boris Johnson has been found guilty just so I can feel like I have put to good use reading all 108 pages of this report and to remind listeners that Boris Johnson was found to have lied to MPs, lied to the committee, to have breached the confidence of the committee when it passed its draft findings to him last week, to have impugned the integrity of the committee and to have been complicit in the abuse and attempted intimidation of committee members. Now all that said, Stephen, there is some concern that this 90-day suspension, the longest suspension handed down to an MP since 1931, bar Keith Vaz, who got six months. That is the committee overreaching. What do you say to that?

Stephen Bush
I think it both is and it isn’t overreaching, right? Partly because the 90 days is very much a kind of yeah, it’s sort of like slightly unedifying, you can’t fire me, I quit-style sanction in that he would have got enough to trigger the mechanism of the recall act for more than 10 parliamentary days. He would not have got 90 days if he had not already said, well, I’m taking my bat and my ball home. So I would say the 90 days is slightly performative, but equally then, I do not believe for a moment that any of the people who’ve said to me, oh, you know, I agree with this, but I think the 90 days is too far, would not have found another oh, but I think X is too far. Because if you’re a Conservative MP and you are thinking about your own future, your own position within the party, and you think it’s in your interest to leave some space for yourself to not have said, yeah, he’s awful and I’m glad, you are going to find something that they’d done that didn’t meet your standards and the 90 days is it, right? That’s the thing that it’s gonna be.

Miranda Green
It’s literally a conversational compromise . . . 

Stephen Bush
Yeah.

Miranda Green
 . . . isn’t it. And no more than that.

Stephen Bush
Yeah. I think if it weren’t 90 you’ll go with 30. If it weren’t 30, well I think that footnote was a bit mean. Well, you know, I think Harriet should have recused herself or she shouldn’t have sent those tweets saying he’d lied or. But actually, in many ways, the number of days is irrelevant because we all know that anything over 10 he would have been recalled. We know that given the opinion polls and the fact it is a fairly marginal seat on its current boundaries, then he would have lost it, right? So in some ways the 90 days is just theatre.

Lucy Fisher
It’s just, he’s grasping at straws. Yeah, I’m certainly struck by some Tories I’ve spoken to very much admitting privately, obviously, that they are worried about the membership, the activist base that they rely upon when it comes to the general election, being largely very pro-Boris. And now there is this splinter group within the party, the so-called Conservative Democratic Organisation, which is literally all the Johnson loyalists, many of whom would like to see him return to parliament, even retake the helm of the party. So I think some might use that get-out-of-jail-free card on Monday to avoid the vote, just to avoid being seen to endorse the report. But Miranda, Stephen makes his point about Harriet Harman’s tweets. You know, Boris Johnson’s made a big point of, you know, the chair of the inquiry, having expressed prejudice towards the very matter being investigated. And as we just remind listeners, Harriet Harman is only chair of the committee for this particular investigation, because the usual chair, Chris Bryant, he recused himself for doing basically exactly the same thing, having already commented and made clear his view on the matter to be investigated. So Johnson has a point here, doesn’t he?

Miranda Green
Well, I think there’s a sort of spectrum, because it would have been quite hard to find somebody that senior who hadn’t expressed any opinion at all on partygate. But let’s remember that the investigation and the report from this committee is actually about whether he misled parliament, not about the parties themselves, as it were. But I do think it’s important to remember Harriet Harman standing down the election. Lots of the other MPs on this committee are actually standing down at the coming election. They’re very senior in all of the parties that they’re drawn from. And Harriet Harman, the mother of the House, the role of the committee is actually to defend parliament. And so in a sense, I think it’s fair enough for them to actually have expressed an opinion about the importance of those rules. You know, I mean, I sort of go back to my earlier point. It’s true, you know, as Stephen said, there have been other sort of egregious cases of crimes and misdemeanours. But for a former prime minister to be censured in this way and to have sanctions this serious against them for something that happened while they were in office, while they were occupying Number 10, this is a really unique situation historically. And so Harriet Harman, you know, in that position as a very senior about-to-retire MP, I think is an appropriate person to defend the way that parliament should operate.

Lucy Fisher
And Stephen, just we’re on the subject of members of the committee, something kind of buried in this report is that they are going to write another special report on the attack they came under from other MPs. Now they don’t name anyone, but we know the people they’re talking about: the Johnson ultra-loyalists, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Andrea Jenkyns, who called this a kangaroo court, there are a handful of other MPs and peers. Do you think it’s right that the privileges committee is saying essentially that it shouldn’t be criticised while the investigation is going on, or is that an uncomfortable sort of stifling of free speech?

Stephen Bush
Obviously it is an important constitutional safeguard that the committee exists to mark MPs’ homework. But it’s also important whether MPs want to say, you know, well, I think it’s actually still inadequate dealing with, you know, sexual harassment. But there is obviously a difference in degree between criticising the committee and calling it a kangaroo court, which is a claim that it is very hard to see how one could substantiate. So I think, I essentially feel like if the committee were to suddenly start going, you know, 10 days for Andrew Jenkin, 10 days for Jacob Rees-Mogg, yeah, that would be an inappropriate level of sanction. But I think it is reasonable to do a subsequent report going, here’s why this was not true, here’s why it was not inappropriate to say so. But I do also — I’m letting the tail wag the dog here — my extreme desire never to hear the words “Boris Johnson” or “partygate” (Lucy laughs) ever again . . . I mean, this thing is ultimately like the majority of voters think that he lied. The majority of Conservative voters think it’s time that he goes. At this point, right, it’s just, it’s very naughty, right? I’m bored of it. I’m bored of Boris Johnson and I would like the committee to stop investigating him so that we can stop ever having to hear the words “Boris” or “Johnson” in conversation again.

Miranda Green
Yeah. I must say I strongly second that emotion. (Laughs)

Lucy Fisher
OK, so let me put this to you guys. (Overlapping chatter) Is there a hope in hell of this actually happening? I mean, he is the phoenix that rises from the ashes again and again, isn’t he?

Miranda Green
He is. And I was very amused to see Allegra Stratton, his former spokeswoman, you know, who, again, was dragged into the whole partygate affair at the time because of the footage that emerged of them sort of joking about lying, essentially. She wrote saying, I don’t write or talk much about Boris because it would be likely only to perpetuate a story I think most of us want to end. So, you know, even the people sort of involved in the saga know that the British public really has had enough of this.

And to your question and Stephen’s answer about whether the follow-up for the privileges committee is appropriate, I think there’s also a danger of, you know, boring everyone into submission on both sides. Also, you know, the Covid inquiry is going on in parallel. That’s the thing that should really matter. But with both, people don’t really want to go back psychologically to that time. I think that Boris Johnson, his team, hope the fact that people wanted the waters to close over the horror of Covid meant they’d get away with it actually hasn’t meant that whatsoever.

But also, I do think that there’s a great desire to move on. I mean, not least for poor Rishi Sunak, right? I mean, I thought one of the most interesting things this week was how he’s caught in this terrible trap of not knowing whether to endorse the committee report fully. What should he say about it? I mean, he was very outspoken earlier in the week before the report came out. But now, for the reasons that you outlined, Lucy, in terms of the Conservative grassroots and, really, fear of his own party supporters feels he can’t really be wholehearted in sort of welcoming the report and its conclusions is a very tricky situation for him. I bet he’s hoping the whole saga stops quite soon.

Lucy Fisher
Well, I’m sure he is. I agree. I thought that on Monday his decision to, I felt for probably the first time, stand up for himself and stand up to Johnson over the resignation honours list was a really pivotal moment. I think we’ll look back at that as the beginning of a new tack from Sunak because heretofore he’s always had this kid-glove approach, hasn’t he?

Miranda Green
He looked visibly angry. Do you agree?

Lucy Fisher
He did. And I think before now, he’s always been very careful to actually praise Johnson and his legacy on Brexit and his legacy on leading the international response to Ukraine. And I think he probably made the right call from a political stance on Monday to finally say, enough. He asked me to do something I wasn’t prepared to do. If anyone doesn’t like it, tough. Stephen, do you think Johnson himself has changed tack? Because I sort of detect in the resignation statement last Friday and in the response to the committee on Thursday of this week, an ever more sort of sensationalist, almost, dare I say, Trumpian tone in the language he’s using. And if you’ll permit me just to read a list of the way he derided the committee’s report, he said it was rubbish, a lie, deranged, patently absurd, a load of complete tripe, ludicrous, preposterous, a charade, utterly incredible artifice, wilfully missing the point and a rehash of non-points.

Stephen Bush
Yes. So I think there has been an escalation in his language, but I think that is, as always, the story of Boris Johnson, right? When things aren’t going his way, he kind of starts with his kind of like, ohoho-aren’t-we-all-good-chaps kind of humour. And then if it doesn’t work, he becomes more and more like a sort of angry but eloquent toddler. And then of course, what tends to happen is he blows himself out. He realises, oh, actually, wait a second, I don’t have the stomach for the, you know, right at him deciding to pull out when Michael Gove blew up his first leadership campaign. And I think we’re kind of seeing that in Michael because you’re exactly right. The big moment I think of the week is Rishi Sunak realising that this let’s kind of try and manage everything nicely in the party and look there’s a way we can all sort of come together through bonhomie, has not worked and he needs to explicitly go, I’m different from him, I disagree with it. I’m the leader, hear me rule.

You know, I suspect one of the reasons for the change in tone is the realisation that this “strategic”, in heavy inverted commas, decision to for them all to flounce out is a disaster for them, right? They voluntarily left the House of Commons. Well, Nigel Adams and Boris Johnson and Nadine Dorries will presumably soon follow. Yeah, ultimately the party leader gets to decide if you’re a Conservative MP unless you are already selected. Unless the Conservatives are at some point led by someone who both doesn’t care enough about the electorate and they have like a politician who’s more unpopular basically than every single active politician. And also they go, oh, I’d like to have as a centre of internal dissent on my backbenches in the shape of Boris Johnson. There is no way back. And so I think the main reason why the language has been going up and up is this realisation of, oh, is it this time? I’ve had my grumble and I’m now in a weaker position than I was. And it’s, I think, an irrevocably weaker position than it was.

Lucy Fisher
Yeah, I agree. It’s a low ebb, but I still think he could return. Stephen, Miranda, thanks.

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Lucy Fisher
As well as the chaos in Westminster this week, there’s been a lot of action north of the border in Scotland too. I think it came as a surprise to many people that Nicola Sturgeon was arrested last weekend, held in custody for seven and a half hours for police questioning before being released. And of course, we must say that she denies any wrongdoing. Is this all part of the wider investigation into the SNP’s finances? To hear more about this, I caught up with the FT’s Scotland correspondent Lukanyo Mnyanda. We had a lot to discuss, not least the SNP brewing in behind Sturgeon, sending her flowers and Humza Yousaf, the current leader, reportedly telling other MSPs to get behind her or quit.

Lukanyo Mnyanda
What people must remember, Sturgeon was still quite popular when she resigned, you know? Like it came as a shock in Scotland, and I think the latest survey Ipsos showed as having a 52 per cent approval rating in terms of a government first minister. This shows us she was still quite a big presence in Scotland. And she was a very popular leader. Of course, Humza Yousaf did stand as a continuity candidate and he was you know, like spent most of the campaign praising Nicola Sturgeon. Even this week, he said, you know, she was one of the best politicians in Europe.

Lucy Fisher
And you discussed a bit how Yousaf and the loyalists in the party have stuck by her. Is there a wider kind of reappraisal of her record in office in Scotland? There’s been you know, a lot of interest, certainly in London media about drug deaths in Scotland, you know, going up under her premiership, you know, mistakes and errors in health policy, education.

Lukanyo Mnyanda
And completely. In the last election, no, she said, education and closing the attainment gap in Scotland was a defining mission of her premiership, which she never really delivered on. I think that is one of the criticisms that of Nicola Sturgeon, that she was a good presenter and a good speaker but that policies were not always thoroughly thought of. You would have this big, big announcement without much thinking behind the scenes, how it can actually be delivered.

Lucy Fisher
And what does all this mean for the independence movement? I wondered in particular whether Alex Salmond’s Alba party has picked up voters or activists amid all the disarray engulfing the SNP.

Lukanyo Mnyanda
Hmm, while support for the SNP has fallen, no doubt about it. But still racking up a rating quite high. I think the last Ipsos it was at around 41 per cent, which is 10 percentage points down from December from earlier in the year. Alba still rates very lowly in Scotland and that survey that I mentioned is only running at 1 per cent. And having said all of that, independence in Scotland, that the support for independence is still relatively strong, still around 50 per cent. So the movement itself overall is not gonna go away anytime soon. So that’s why I also like if I was a Labour, I would not be, like, counting my chickens yet because you’ve got a half of Scotland that still believes in independence.

Lucy Fisher
But you pre-empted my final question there, which was exactly about the Westminster elections next year. Of course, at the moment the SNP have 44 seats. That’s more than two-thirds of the 59 Scottish seats in the Westminster parliament. I mean, I put this to you, I’m told by sources in Scottish Labour that they’re hopeful of improving their current standing of just one MP north of the border to between 12 and 25 next year. Does that sound too ambitious to you?

Lukanyo Mnyanda
I mean, based on that on the polling, SNP is down, definitely. The question is whether or not it will go down further from here. But it is down to a level where Labour can be confident of making some gains. But you know, there’s still a long way to go. I mean, the SNP does have a new leader and he’s on shaky ground, but he’s got time to recover. You could probably say the same thing about Rishi Sunak down south, so I wouldn’t count anybody out yet. You know, support for independence is still quite strong in Scotland and SNP is still that main voice for that constituency, which is basically half the country. So a lot of work to be done for Labour if they want to overcome that.

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Lucy Fisher
That was the FT’s Scotland correspondent, Lukanyo Mnyanda. So, Stephen, where does this leave Labour in Scotland and more generally in the UK, in your opinion?

Stephen Bush
So I would say in Scotland, it’s far from certain, right? Broadly speaking, corruption scandals do not do that much damage to political parties. Standing its competence and delivery scandals that are a big problem. In the UK however, I think it leaves them in a much stronger position and quite rightly, Conservative MPs can, will and indeed already are complaining to me about this dynamic, which is that basically at the election, the broadcasters which will really matter, will prioritise what they think fits the story of the election. So in 2015, we have loads and loads of questions about a Labour-SNP deal because the story of the election was well, David Cameron can’t win a majority, you know, he’s in trouble, whatever. Let’s have lots of exciting conversations about coalition permutations.

I think that the fact and basically the kind of the two safe takes, as it were in Westminster now are, Humza Yousaf is terrible, the SNP are holed below the waterline. This means Scottish Labour will make gains, means that if you’re Keir Starmer and you’re looking at your risks going into this election, you will be able to say in an interview, well, no, of course we are not doing a deal with the SNP. And the matter is not going to arise and people go oh, that seems legit. And which if the polls are right, does seem legit. But in of itself, the fact that people believe that’s true makes it more true, right? So the SNP looking like they are vulnerable and the fact that that is kind of the . . . you know, we kind of saw it in politics in England, right?

Then there was a long period when the Conservative lead was going down, fuel prices going up. But like the kind of Westminster’s default was still like in the kind of horrific results for Labour and the Liberal Democrats in England in 2021. And it took kind of North Shropshire for people to go, oh, wait a second, actually the political situation has changed. And seeing as I don’t think there’s going to be an external event that allows the SNP to reset the kind of bubble consensus around them is great for the Labour party because it just increases that mood music of, oh, they will get 20 seats in Scotland so they will be able to get a majority overall. So we don’t need to have this back and forth about coalitions, etc, etc other than of course the possible Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition. But broadly speaking, no one is frightened by a Liberal Democrat coalition.

Miranda Green
I think the other thing is in terms of this kind of overall narrative, how can it be bad for Labour to say, well, the leader who triumphed both sides of the border in the 2019 election has since imploded and those two parties are in crisis. If both the SNP has been in genuine meltdown and the Boris Johnson Tory party has been shoved out and had to be replaced by Sunak, looking increasingly desperate about the state of the economy. This is only a benefit for Labour. And also, people in Scotland say Labour gets a double benefit from that. If the narrative is that Labour can sweep into Downing Street, they get that added boost to their vote in Scotland to then get them, you know, that those MPs that they’re aiming for, which is quite a high number, I would say 20. But you know, up from one, right? The only way is up.

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Lucy Fisher
Now to finish up, let’s move from Political Fix to cultural fix, shall we? Stephen, what have you been up to?

Stephen Bush
So as listeners will hopefully have noticed, I’ve been away for two weeks. So the main thing I was enjoying was the art scene in Milan. And so if you are going to Milan — which you should, it’s a great city — the Museum of the New Century, which is their 20th and 21st century art museum. I, as a result of that, have been reading a lot about futurism. Yeah, that’s my culture recommendation, go to the Museum of the New Century. And what’s your cultural recommendation?

Lucy Fisher
Well, mine’s a bit of a cheat. I’ve had a pretty culture-light week in many ways because it’s been so busy on the political front.

Miranda Green
I think we’ll let you get away with that, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
I’ve been the recipient of a lot of absolutely delicious Yotam Ottolenghi meals cooked by my partner. In our household, we are not cooks at all. So when we do cook, it has to be this incredible sort of theatre and involves the buying of ridiculous levels of new ingredients that then sit untouched ever again. But the promise I have made is that I’m going to use this weekend to also make some of the recipes from Yotam’s latest book. And final note on that is that despite the great chef himself being so famous for using a gazillion different ingredients, I’m always struck by an interview he gave to the Beeb a few years ago. When asked what he himself has for lunch, his ideal lunch, he said, oh, well, you know, a ham and cheese sandwich, which I just thought was amazing. Miranda, what about you, what have been enjoying this week?

Miranda Green
Well, I actually went to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. And fabulous sunny day, everybody drifting around in brightly-coloured sunny dresses, looking at a really colourful set of rooms. They’ve painted the walls on which the paintings are hung. It’s an incredibly sort of fun, diverse collection of art in that great tradition of people sort of submitting works from all around the country, both professional and amateur artists. And they’ve hung it really beautifully this year. It’s really fun, I really recommend it. It’s a kind of really delightful outpouring of creativity and also contains, I have to say, a knitted portrait of Yoko Ono, which was my favourite exhibit in the show, and I highly recommend for the weird factor.

Lucy Fisher
Great. I’ll have to check it out. Miranda, Stephen, thanks for joining.

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Lucy Fisher
That’s it for this episode of the FT’s Political Fix. If you like the podcast, do subscribe. You can find us through all the usual channels to receive episodes as soon as they’re released. We also appreciate positive reviews and ratings. It really helps spread the word. Political Fix is presented by me, Lucy Fisher, and produced by Anna Dedhar and Audrey Tinline. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Sound engineering and original music by Breen Turner. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. And special thanks this week to Andrew Georgiades. We meet again same time, same place next week.

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