Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a podcast from Politics Home, with me, your host, Alan Tolhurst,

and this week is the second of our party conference specials, recorded live in front of an audience

at Labour's First and all get together with them in power since 2009. Despite a monumental

landslide victory, the mood music in Liverpool was far from the celebration

one might have expected, which was instead pretty dower going in, thanks partly to the rouse

of a party donations, briefings about Chief of Staff Sue Gray, and the constant messaging about

the dire nature of the country's finances.

On Monday night, I spoke to Chris Bryant, Minister for the Creative Industries,

arts and tourism, as well of data protection and telecoms, about why there was a less festive

atmosphere now they were in power, what he wants to do to fix the arts in this country,

whether the rows of the cash and freebies have held the new label administration below the

waterline, or whether the government can push through and rebuild the country. So here's our conversation recorded in the conference centre, starting with me trying

to introduce Chris to our audience, but being interrupted by the minister, a recurring theme in what

is probably probably the funniest conversation I've had during this podcast, and certainly

the most professionally honest by a serving minister. So enjoy. So Chris, you know, you were, it'd be the MP for Ronda,

now Ronda at Ogmore in South Wales since 2001. You were previously a Church of England priest

before becoming an MP. We're not doing my whole autobiography. Not the whole autobiography, very quick.

The reason I ask is that you were a minister under Gordon Brown, deputy leader of the House,

then in the foreign office, and you're now a minister again.

So I'm going to start asking you, how does it differ being a minister in that administration

to being a minister in this administration?

The thing that I've noticed is that civil servants are much more timid now than they were

...