The Johnson administration fell apart during COVID and it fell apart because of what has become known as Party Gate.

Which from an American perspective sounds so quaint as a scandal having a party during COVID.

Party COVID. Yeah, with the gate tacked on.

Hello and

and welcome to the Hello and

happy July 4th,

happy July 4th, interestingly enough to celebrate our independence from Great Britain,

we're actually going to talk about their upcoming election.

I guess the tie in there is that this would have been our election had we not secured that independence

I don't know just go with it but anyway the UK is holding its first national election

in nearly five years on Thursday, July 4th, the polling suggests the Labor Party

will make historic gains booting conservatives from power for the first time in

14 years. Now to cover this event we're going to do something

very very special which is reassemble the talking politics podcast and do a crossover.

Folks who have been listening for a while might remember back to the days of Brexit

when we were regularly doing crossover podcasts with the folks at talking politics.

That podcast does not exist anymore, but David Runsman and Helen Thompson have been kind

enough to reassemble just for this occasion.

So without any more preamble, let me get to it.

Here with me today is Helen Thompson, Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University and host of the new

podcast These Times. Welcome to the podcast Helen.

It's great to be with you Galen.

...