Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a weekly podcast from Politics Home.

I'm your host, Alan Tolhurst. I'm with me this week to check in on how Richie Zinnock is getting on with his five pledges, as he marks six months in the job as Prime Minister.

I'm delighted to say I'm joined by the Conservative MP for Mansfield, Ben Bradley, as well as Scarlett Maguire,

director of the pollsters, JL partners, and Laura Dunn, former communications advisor to several senior Tories and cabinet ministers.

So I'll start with you, Ben. You were at Checkers on Sunday last weekend, having been invited by Rishi Sunak,

along with some of your Tory colleagues to celebrate St George's Day. Tell us what was the mood like amongst your colleagues and what was kind

of Sunak's message to Tory MPs? Good mood to be honest. It's always a privilege to be able to go

and have a look around that place anyway. Only a couple of times I've been able to go in in five,

six years. So we're always jolly when invited. think, and then, you know, it was funny. My wife

came along with me. She's not met Rishi before and was impressed, I have to say, with his engagement

and the way that he kind of approached it. So all good stuff. And I think over the course of six months,

I started quite skeptical, to be honest, in terms of I didn't support him in the leadership elections and he's impressed me actually

both ends of the way that he's steady the ship and and his engagement and the way to just

put himself across so positive mood and he was just talking about you know looking ahead to local

elections and to next year just that it's it's kind of all to play for really yeah absolutely

well we'll come on to those kind of five pledges and elections in the future but few the few to give him, I suppose, then, a grade six months on. How's he getting on?

We're going for like a B. B, Bob. Yeah, he speaks out of the right things and the priorities

that resonate with my constituents, the challenge having, particularly on things like, you know,

small boats and that kind of thing, we've talked about it for a long time, haven't we? Yeah.

You know, so I think the proof will have to be in the pudding,

and there's a lot of sceptical people out there who just say,

look, I believe it when I see it.

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