Q&A general election special | The News Agents

In this week’s general election Q&A special Emily, Jon and Lewis answer your questions on safe seats, compulsory voting, and the constituency they’d choose to stand in if they were running for parliament. All that and more.

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the news agents it’s the election Q&A and we’re going to start with a Q dear news agents love the podcast especially now we’re gearing up towards a general election I’m from angle SE so my question is there any other constituency that’s been held by four major parties at one time or another labor con lib pled Etc in hism to Welsh listeners at this point Angley is in hism oh sorry it’s fine sorry that is the official name of the constituency of course okay okay everyone well you going to answer the bloody question uh the answer to the question uh this lovely question love this question um there are right on my street um look there are there are a few that have had had four um it’s not I mean it’s quite unusual it’s not completely unusual one that might surprise people actually is um where it would be true is Brighton Brighton pavilioned MP they’ve never had pled but they’re saying they’re saying not yet get everywhere like a politician no no no no it says by four major parties not just ply this is not just well Allan is not being so prescriptive he’s just talking about four in general otherwise he’s answered his own question which is in his mind but Brighton for example has had uh conservative liberal labor and now green and that might surprise people because of course might think of Brighton being a very Progressive kind of leftwing sort of place even as recently as the 80s it was a conservative constituency although actually on the plied Point here’s a good one right which is the only ask my own question which is the only Mainland British constituency to have been represented by an Irish nationalist party that is not the question no but it’s the pled it’s the plied point right it’s the plied point it’s the it’s the Nationalist point right so it’s going back to what John was saying about National so hang on so British Mainland seat with an Irish nationalist part so this particular seat has been represented by four and one of them so it’s is answering the question by four different parties and one of them was an Irish nationalist party which probably isn’t a major party uh well it doesn’t exist anymore it was an old party which doesn’t exist anymore I tell you what if we don’t get on with the rest of the episode if we don’t get off with the rest of this episode and you don’t shut up leis goodle this episode’s going to go past the answer is Liverpool Scotland constituency which had an Irish nationalist MP until partition and that party dissolved welcome to the news agents it’s John it’s leis it’s Emily is anyone left are are you still listening to us this is what they want give the people what they want oh my God that’s been exhausting we’ve got really good questions to come as well as Allen we’ve got voice notes we’ve got ones from Scotland we’ve got people asking about propor representation oh you love that little all coming back now um should we kick off with Kate hey news agents so I wanted to ask how important you think Scotland will be in the this election and what are your predictions for Scotland do you think Le will be able to win back seats from the SNP or not uh cheery by well jury by thank you Katie I mean I would say Katie you’ve only got to look at how many trips K dama is making to Scotland to know how important that SNP vote is to him right now there’s been a lot of launches and speeches and visits to Scotland my sense and I think Scotland is very very important to what labor does overall my sense is that labor will not get back as many seats or get as many seats as they want to I think the S&P vote which looked really really shaky about three months ago might now be hardening up a bit look are they going to do better than last time yes hard to do much worse yeah exactly so are they going to get a number of seats and I think that it depends what time frame you look at if you say say over the last 3 or 4 weeks have things steadied for the SNP then yeah absolutely they have but given the chaos that there has been the S&P position is much weaker than it was and that labor are kind of ticking up the number of seats that they think a winable uh in Scotland yeah I think they’ll do well I mean the most recent polls and MRP polls actually suggest basically an almost complete restoration of the pre25 situation which is Complete Labor dominance in the central Bel and the S&P reduced to seven or eight seats basically going back to their old far more rural heartlands which the S&P used to dominate and used to send to Westminster time and time again I mean so I think you know labor are feeling very very chipper about their prospects in Scotland that means it it is really really important because it makes the task in England much easier in terms of getting a majority if you don’t have that comeback in Scotland you’ve got to win seats which are so far down your target list against the conservatives in England so it’s absolutely crucial I would predict they will they will probably win back or take back about 10 seats from the SNP but I don’t think it’s going to be a wipe out and the thing that you have to look at with the S&P vote is that a small shift in polling numbers can make a massive difference in terms of the number of seats because so many of them are so marginal that you could lose on sort of on 2% or 3% of of the sort of polling margins you could actually see eight or nine seats change hands I think they’ll do well I think they’ll get between I don’t know I’m going to say 9 and 11 I think I just said 10 uh seats La yeah but but I don’t think we’re going to see the collapse of the S&P I just I do not think that vote is going to go southwards in the way that many people obviously expecting the conservatives because I think that um swinny coming in at this point I mean I would have said this probably under ham yusf not for anything that he was particularly doing wrong but just that there was a sense of the S&P being very much at Sea I think swinny has come in and sort of Taken hold of the party again it sort of reminded people what the S&P was like under Nicholas sturon and I think he’s kind of got the Reigns back that’s for the S&P the most recent ones well I I mean see Emily I would say I I’m prepared to lay a bets that you’re wrong but seeing as I haven’t had a payout yet on getting the election done you were wrong on your no I was I was the closest to it and I still haven’t had the sweep stake money so I’m not even going to bother to bet with you I reckon labor will get far more gains than 10 okay where are you I I think that’s right I think they’ll they’ll end up with between 25 and 40 seats all right we’ll come back to that one back to that one Katie thank you very much for that one next question if voting was made compulsory like in Australia and guaranteed us say 100% turnouts how do you think it would affect the outcome of the election would it favor any particular party and that is from Tedy cool that’s a difficult you’re our Oceanic correspondent John aren’t you so I think this is very much in your field yeah um I mean obviously what you’ll end up with is far more sport ballot papers because it is you know you resent the fact that you’ve been told you’ve got to go and vote and so you do go to the polling station but you Mickey Mouse it you Mickey Mouse it um and that is entirely legitimate to do in Australia so you get a far higher percentage of spoiled ballots um I think that it probably wouldn’t make that much difference to the outcome of an election if you forced people uh to go and vote because it’s like saying that those who abstain normally have a particular political acts to grind and therefore I don’t know maybe Fringe parties would do better I would say I’ve just seen the recent polling from IPOs from Kieran Pedley who says that 45% of people have told ipsos that they may still change their mind now there is a scenario in which if you’re not quite sure of where you’re going to vote you might stay at home you’re not you’re not enthus you know we always talk about the enthusiasm Gap it is possible that if you find yourself in a booth or you know online I guess in Australia isn’t it however you have to do it if you find yourself in a position where you have to vote you go for one party or another whereas if you don’t actually have to go there you remain undecided and maybe back on the sofa uncommitted to any of them in a way we’ve got the control right we’ve got Australia because they’ve had compulsory voting since 1924 so for a long time and obviously there’s been lots of studies as to kind of the changes made I think is really interesting because there are two kind of broad areas where it might make a difference one is to the outcomes and one is to the culture so on the outcomes most of the study suggested it’s probably benefited the left a little bit because they tend to draw their support from more marginalized groups groups poorer voters who don’t tend to vote and it tends to be the Australian labor party which is against driving against changes to the system and the liberal party which is in favor of it but I think what’s really interesting about Australia is more like the cultural changes it makes so it means that because there compulsory voting it means that the Australian government makes it really easy for you to vote you can even do it in some cases by telephone you can vote in literally any polling station across the country you don’t just have to go to your local one cash point probably well yeah and and it becomes a really big Civic event they sort of give out sort of hot dogs at the vote polling stations it becomes a really kind of big moment for the country and so because you have to vote and you’re punished if you don’t the state basically makes it as easy as it can be for you to vot as possible which is opposed to we’ve been going in our country in the United States where we’ve had us particularly indeed where we’ve had voter suppression and the state making it harder and harder for you to vote so in way I think the thing that I would find most appealing about compulsory voting is the idea that it basically makes the state make it easier for you to vote and take part in the Democratic process totally I think that we don’t need to go down the route of compulsory voting but what would be absolutely bloody fantastic is if it’s not just on Thursday at a polling station make it easier for people to vote wherever they want on a Saturday for example again for that re to make it easy why why is it on a working day that you have to go and vote why not make it the weekend when people have got more free time well it isn’t I mean it’s from 7:00 in the morning till 10: at night so there’s a bit of that where you’re probably not working and it’s a postal vote we will probably be almost in postal voting season right so you have got you know my mom who’s 92 nearly we’ll probably do it by postal vote a lot of people aren’t organized I mean What mo I mean you know we are unusual in having it in the in European terms most of them do on on the on the weekend yeah exactly I love the Thursday you’re all done by the weekend perfect but I’d also say that it is interesting to your point that we are now making it harder for people in terms of the ID I mean we’ve talked so little about needing your ID this time you know we’ve just about got used to it for the local elections for the maral elections but this will be the first time when you may or may not see a drop off from people who have forgotten because they haven’t been engaged in elections up till now their ID and turn up and get you know thrown away exactly not thrown away so much as sent away let’s hear now from Nick hello news agents this is Nick from hartfordshire um I think growing up I was never the kind of election nerd that I imagine that LS was correct but one thing that I remember being properly properly interested in was the concept of a safe seat and I used to always want to know what makes a safe seat and is there a threshold for something to be categorized as a safe seat what are the safest seats going into this election and are there any safe seats that you guys would guarantee would stay that way by the time we get to July the 5th I hope that makes sense # safe seats thanks guys I’m glad you got the hashtag again I don’t know what gave Nick that impression about my youth no there’s nothing geeky about you at all right right nothing not a bit not a bit Liverpool Scotland save seat is somewhere that nothing bad can ever happen to you ever so I look I crime is very crime is very people are so gentle with each other they thank each other but it’s amazing how sort of demography changes I mean I from 11 to 18 I lived in Finchley in North London Margaret Thatcher’s constituency and it seemed as the safest seat you could ever imagine for the conservative party now it’s kind of you know in this election uh labor think they’ve got a very strong chance of taking it lab won it in 97 and lab won it in 97 as well and so you kind of think that there are these seats that are just they have to always be that and like some of the S seats that we’ve talked about um you know so Sur Heath where Michael Gove is standing down you think I’m sorry Heath oh my God you just weigh the majority you don’t actually need to count it you just weigh it um and those are suddenly marginal seats I mean I remember um the 2017 election where we saw Canterbury we saw Kensington we saw all these crazy places that had been DieHard blue seats right proper conservative nailed on safe seats suddenly sort of oh I think we might have a recount there oh we’re going to wait a little bit longer to get these because they turned red and I guess that is the point in a way Nick that calling something a safe seat is a bit of a poison chalice because it sets up this idea that the MP can’t possibly lose and this time round places that in 2019 we absolutely thought of as die hard and safe are no longer so you know we talk about the Portillo moment of Enfield South this idea that somewhere and somebody who we thought could not possibly lose then lost lab sedgfield Tony Blair’s constituency that’s why I think so many high-profile conservatives are now standing down because they don’t want to be this iconic person that should be in the very very safe seat that then goes historically you would tend to regard a safe seat as if you’re using sort of new pure vote terms probably as soon as something gets into the five figures so it’s 10,000 plus you would tend to regard that seat as certainly being as being safe-ish I think it’s absolutely true to say that there is more with there is more and more electoral volatility which means that as we’ve seen if you think about the Electoral cycle since 2015 first of all in Scotland I mean you know if we’ve been sat here in 2013 say we would have regarded the labor seats in Scotland as perhaps the safest in the country that basically if you in those Central belt seats you basically had a seat for Life come what may we saw what happened those seats as we were just discussing potentially could now return so there’s way more electoral volatility but there are still safe seats I mean you know if I were a labor candidate in say Liverpool Walton all the my seat certainly for this electoral cycle has been completely safe I think Maiden head probably Theresa May all seat I think that’s pretty I mean Henley Boris Johnson’s former seat is marginal now Maiden head I think is yeah of hard T still and Henley um has actually I think Henley there’s a couple of seats which have basically been in the conservative party’s hands since 1885 which is you know third Reform Act and Henley is one of them so if Henley were to turn or if it’s being in danger look we saw rishy sunak there this week do you remember the livb Dems had their stunt with the little boat small boat behind rishy sunak with all the libd flags I mean the the big thing about that moment was not that the lib Dems put up a stunt but that Rishi sun was campaigning what is rishy sunak doing in Henley I’ll tell you what he’s doing he’s fting off the lib Dem no no completely but that is astonishing exactly sorry it was rhetorical I was yeah there’s a difference I didn’t understand that there’s a difference between a question which has a genuine question mark at the end of it and a question that is rhetorical and of course the other thing with the safe seats is we were discussing with the boundary commission I think in the last Q&A they can just come along and completely change the boundaries and so in the end what what starts off as a safe seat becomes extremely marginal one right this is a really good question from GA why do the live Dems often do so well in the southwest and Southwest London compared to other parts of the country very good question I think it’s a great question um is it non-conformism yeah I I mean it’s it is weird it’s a religious thing of kind of you know they not so much the Anglican Church in the southwest and so you get much more of a non-conformist uh Outlook and therefore the that has tended to help uh the liberal Democrats in places like Devon and Cornwall and you know bits of Somerset yeah and indeed um places in Scotland as well some of their old heartlands in Scotland as well particularly in the highlands and so on so yeah I mean it is really interesting I mean I think there’s two factors one is um which are sort of linked one is you just alluded to it John with some of the historical factors around yeah non-conformism basically not being Anglican and that you that was a sort of key part of the old liberal party’s support base and it has sort of endured although the religious questions obviously died away and that links to this to the second element which is basically where the liberal party used to have its strongest Roots it did endure despite the fact that it was basically destroyed as a National Party in the 1920s and in particular in places where the labor party did not fully supplant it so the Southwest is a good example in the sense that the labor parties hold on the Southwest or viability in the southwest it’s always been quite weak in the southwest of England largely because it is so rural there are very few big Urban population centers and very few places historically where the Trade union movement was very very strong which was basically the kind of centrifuge of the labor party so mean at some extent to some extent in the southwest the kind of 19th century political setup a liberal conservative fight endured through to the 20th century and in a few other places as well I also think it’s I mean there’s a simpler answer to that which is that if labor dominate sort of the cities and the metropolises and you know the sort of urban areas and the conservatives dominate in mostly the very large rural areas then the lip Dems take the suburbs you know and the southwest of London is the leafiest of leafy suburbs if you look at parts of the cotsworld or if you look at the other side Chelmsford you’re seeing places that are generally sort of not quite as affluent as the big rural places and they’re not quite as poor as you know the inner cities but I think the southwest of the country is really interesting because that was always this sort of blue yellow blue yellow battle between the Tories and um the lip demems if you look at predictions now that whole taale down into Cornwall looks as if it will go red it looks as if it will all be taken by labor which we haven’t seen since before 2010 they were actually quite strong in some of the old mining towns then got completely pushed out until George Osborne in 2015 frankly stuffed the lib Dems oh and and stuffed them brilliantly yeah and and and turned that whole sort of coastal area Southwest England blue and the other I mean the other answer is is that the lib Dems I mean in Southwest London in particular because there’s a sort of question is you know there are other very leafy parts of London why aren’t they more why aren’t they stronger there part of it is just sometimes when they get a hold on a place lims are great political Street Fighters once they get I mean like conservative and labor MPS would often sort of get really worried if the lib Dems like got one counselor somewhere cuz they would they say they’re like a virus you know they get one seanese they get they get one seat then they take all three seats in the ward then they take the council and then they come for your seat they’re really good Street Fighters and when they kind of get embedded somewhere they tend to endure and they tend to remain as a a a sort of fighting force in that place and that can just be really contingent on like loads of slightly random historical factors matless you and I need to spend less time together if we’re going to start finishing each other s Japanese not weed I mean honestly we do have that Japanese not weed club though remember you know members only we’ll be back after the break welcome back and uh we are now going to hear from Tom hi news agents Tom from scarra uh a question about proportional representation at the moment labor looking to win a massive majority under first pass the post I’ve been unable to work out how this election might look if we were in a proportional representation a PR model so my question is to you is how would it look or do we simply not know do we not have the data to understand how each party might be affected under P many thanks love the show yeah I mean look it’s it’s interesting is and it also like gets into the question of what comes first is it people’s voting intentions or does the system alter people’s voting intentions because if we had a PR system it is entirely likely well first of all we wouldn’t be where we are now because we’ have had a whole different series of Elections up to this point but also it’s totally possible that you would have seen a left wi split from from the labor party they would form their own party they would absorb people’s preferences and votes and then and likewise you could say the same thing with the conservative party reform would be even stronger as a potential for so it’s kind of like chicken and egg and which it’s wi of ptro getting on or off that tube and the sliding door isn’t it really I mean I suppose the obvious answer to that is you’d expect the greens to have more power and you’d expect reform to have more power in other words the parties that get a lot of votes but can’t turn them into seats because of the vote distribution you’d expect that to be but actually I think fundamentally leis you’re right that we just we’d see so many more people start their own parties because what have you got to lose right yeah but it depends if you’ve doing it as a national list or a partial list system like or whether you keep 650 constituencies if you keep 650 constituencies and it’s alternate vote I think that helps liberal Democrats because you end up I think under that voting system with the the party that people mind least rather than the party that people want most because you have your preference do you remember with the AV referendum it was the way people tried to explain it was you choose your favorite flavor of crisps and when that goes you have to choose your second favorite flavor and so you end up with the one that most people agree on so you end up with plain crisps oh not me but maybe maybe as a country you a PR cocktail flavor crisps anything except plain can’t stand ready saled ready saled is a waste of a calorie you see I think this is more interesting this is than our voting system um but obviously if you were saying it is pure PR for the whole country and the polls on polling day are 45% labor 30% conservatives or whatever it happens to be then that’s how many representatives they vot nobody votes tactically of course because you just go for your own little you know place if we were to assume that like the latest polls ended up being translated into whatever Parliament we had and it was PR and it was roughly roughly proportional then we would basically the result would basically be that labor would either govern us a strong minority government with support on a base case-by case basis with greens and libdems or whatever or they’d form a coalition with them it would be as simple as that there would be no alter there would be no viable if you were just to take the polling numbers as we’ve got put them into Parliament then there would be no viable right wi Co but this is why you hear MPS like former MPS like Andrew Jenkin um who sounds you know slightly kind of um shrill saying this will be the end of any future conservative government if labor get in because the worry for some in the in the conservative party is that labor will change the system and labor would always be able to work with other Progressive parties in power thereby keeping the conservatives out forever I’m pretty sure that once labor gets into Power if they get into power they will never change the system I mean they didn’t last time round although of course if all of this if we are genuinely in this Canada 93 territory where the Tories actually get wiped out under first pass the post then they would be wishing we did have PR because at least then they would have 20% of the seats on 20% of the vote or roughly speaking you know first P the post has been an incredible asset for the Tory party for basically his entire history there is a possibility in this election we might be looking at the first time that it properly properly disadvantages them a question from John H um should labor include a preemptive rejection of a sunac honors list in their Manifesto also should labor finally set up a truly independent body to oversee and suggest honors including the right to take them back if they fail to uphold the values of the institution uh they represent um there’s a kind of number of different bits in that question John are you talking to yourself yeah I am not for the first time of course well because no one John H with an H oh I’m not going to speak now I’m going silent matless you’re starting this I think it’d be a very easy win for laor that to say we’re not going to have um leaving on his lists because they definitely didn’t like Boris Johnson’s yeah so they probably could do that and I think they probably should oversee the I mean we know that kiss Arma doesn’t like the shape of the law anyway doesn’t really like the Lords at all but they don’t want to spend time um sort of doing anything big about it if they did something small but loud about it like this I think they’d probably get sort of you know easy points and spend little time I think it would be a great thing to completely reform it and I don’t think there’s any chance it’ll happen I think I mean starm has clearly already basically promised a load of pages to these labor MPS who have stood down at the last minute and they’re going to end up in the Lord so I think we just say they are denying this they are denying it but I would be find it I be amazed if at least we don’t see a rush of verman for at least several of those labor EMP what does that look like a rush of verman fluffy fman A Rush of ver maybe both sweet scented um uh and I just think the incentive the incentives for any particular political party you’d have to be so high-m minded to decide to basically get rid of many of the bobles and the patronage that particularly when you’ve been out of office for as long as labor has and suddenly there’s a lot of people to thank yeah there’s a lot you suddenly find you got a lot of people to thinkk should say called Blair and brown didn’t do res so you know they did stuff I mean they did s stuff few people pointed to the House of Lords controversial um I suppose that it’s just that you know when a labor government if a labor government wins the general election and you’re going to have this whole list of priorities and everyone’s pet project and you are going to have the most eye-wateringly tight spending round you know is labor going to commit to doing things which are going to take up a lot of time and just get bogg them down and just slow everything up and I just think something that looks like an easy win ends up being quite complicated and then they and then they just back away from it and we’ve got a final voice note um it says from tener I’m assuming this is the place rather than the person Hi news agents this is Cle wlin from and ten maybe your biggest tenie based fan anyway my question is relating to the people that I kind of represent I work for a local Town Hall where you have over 7,000 British people as residents and regular visitors and brexit had a huge effect on them as I know because quite often I’ve had to deal with the Fallout I wonder if you think any of the political parties or any of the politicians are really going to give the after effects of brexit a second look during the election campaign thanks a million for all you do bye well thank you so much and biggest fan in Tarif yeah I wouldn’t put money on that we’ve got some more you reckon we’ve got bigger who knows I tell you what I think that’s a bloody good question I think it is absolutely unbelievable how little brexit is being spoken about in this election and my prediction would be it’s not going to be spoken about in this election because for all sorts of reasons for the Tories it draws attention to failure for the labor party it says you’re trying to reopen Old Wounds and therefore you know if you’re trying to win back the red wall why do it and so it’s just going to get ignored even though as you rightly say there are huge questions about the post brexit settlement that is doing Britain Great damage even lib Dems don’t want to talk about it I mean is amazing to consider I mean I was watching some of the clips back from the 2019 debate we’ve had the the debate this week obviously completely dominated by brexit every single way did not get a single mention even sunak didn’t mention it right I think we talked about brexit more than the parties have yeah without this campaign fly enough without a doubt and I think that obviously the really interesting long-term question in British politics is is the demographics are clear the polling is really clear that there is you know particularly as you go down the generation ations a bigger and bigger majority to if not rejoin then certainly look again at the settlement and the interesting question is does that in the end exert some sort of political gravitational pull or May and that is a sort of receive wisdom or maybe it doesn’t so I’m interested in for personal reasons but um you know I think there is a sort of comparison with what happened in Norway in the mid90s right which is that that you know you’ve basically got all of the political class all the political parties in favor of joining apart from some joining the uh EU and it doesn’t happen because it’s narrow rejected in a referendum and even though the most of the big political parties there now kind of do want to reopen it they don’t because it’s almost like reopening those wounds is just potentially politically so problematic for them because it divides their internal coalitions because the public at large is generally hostile to it it’s interesting that basically even if you can have basically a large group of politicians who all privately agree think that something should be looked at they don’t just because the memory of reopening those Civil Wars even going back quite a long way in this case back to the ’90s they just leave it alone so it’s possible that this sort of weird settlement just kind of endures for longer than we think it does I think you cannot overstate the demographics on this one which is the really dark thing that nobody wants to talk about which is that more of the people who have died since 2016 have been the brexit voters and that more of the people who have got their first vote will be remain voters and actually that will end up dictating I think how quickly the party feel that they can start talking about it because when they are looking at a whole generation of people who broadly feel the same thing coming through becoming firsttime voters or second time voters or even MPS themselves they will have to start treating this question seriously it’s quite sort of ghoulish to think about it in terms of those who’ve died and those who are still alive but we’re going to have to wait a little while is my answer I mean I don’t think it’s going to happen and the EU doesn’t want to reopen it I no the EU thinks oh my God please no you know that’s that’s the other of it we don’t look at is the extent to which yeah Britain might suddenly decide oh yeah we got that wrong can we come back in things have moved on the things have moved on there’s no come back in no there is no rejoin there is join there is you join and you will join on the conditions that they set for you not the conditions we had when we were in and they would want to set conditions such that it would become impossible for us to leave again which almost certainly means the Euro so once you start actually looking at the question of re it becomes fishlyn the whole bit yeah we will be back with one more question after the break so before we go this is a great question from Lyndon if you were running for any parliamentary seat which would you choose M I’m going to suggest somewhere where it’s got to have a lot of good place for wild swimming good runs you hate the flat it’s got to have Hills IDE lots of embassies you can go spend time do we have an MP in jabral I think that is my my perfect constituency somewhere sunny and quite close to Spain yeah if we had the French system where they have all their overseas terit exact that would be you or you could do the British overseas territories I do all of them all martinque West and we are now joined by the MP for Martinique West Emily mat I think I think from this you understand that I will never ever ever stand for high office or low office or any office I don’t even want to be the milk monitor okay were any of available were any of us prefects at school no uh I was no oh my God I always had you down the ins I was bringing the system down from within oh yeah you are you are as establishment as Nigel farage oh that was a good question I’m glad I asked that g where’s yours I don’t know I’d want to go somewhere that was a lovely part of Britain I mean the problem is that you get the most beautiful constituency Western is and and then Westland but then you’re slapping up and down to Westminster and you think oh God it’s you know it’s a long way way you just be like leave me here well you know so whereas if you get you know City of Westminster you know if you’re the Westminster MP God you don’t have any R sky and laa that’s got to be the that’s got to be the Prett tell you which as you will know is Western ARS is Angus O’Neal’s seat for the S SMP I I was looking at a projection of that going red this time round for labor I I don’t think I’ve ever seen labor that high up or that far off be labor okay not a while ago but yeah in on the new labor that be quite pretty that’s very that’ be lovely yeah but not if you had to get down to the house of Comm every Wednesday well Ian Blackford who’s the MP for rosar the had um uh told me that uh he has to drive from Sky where he where he’s got his Croft it takes like 3 hours to drive to iness which is basically the closest airport yeah and the and and then you have to fly back down so I mean it is it is yeah I mean back in the ‘ 80s I mean you remember John all the all the labor Scottish labor MPS used to get the same train together from Edinburgh and whatever be a whole Carriage full of them whatever you should have the prettiest constituency name which I think is South Holland and the deepings but is a very very and it’s not in sou it’s sort of full of tulip field just by your TR is fantastic T ands winds perfect have some G on the way across right we will be back on Sunday yeah Sunday our new Sunday show did I Su speci report on Sunday we’ve got a special report the Northwest yeah from lisis goodle we will see you then bye-bye bye the news agents this is a global player original podcast [Music]