Chris Gray
speaker
586 appearances
5 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 11 Jun
Chris Gray’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 3.
Appearances
And I remember her talking about things like, oh, we need to have a big national conversation to change our mindset about what defence is in 2026.
Yeah.
I made a joke about like, oh, you're saying we need to bring back dad's army.
And she said, no, I don't mean that.
But we need a conversation where everyone, every citizen realises they've got a bit of a role to play here.
And we haven't had any of that, have we?
No.
And I think this this will be, you know, if the arc of the conversation around, you know, countries like the UK and their defence posture in the next couple of decades follows the trajectory that many think it will.
In other words, you know, heading towards defence.
Government's attempting to get to those targets by the mid 2030s, etc, etc.
You can see this being a kind of early chapter title in that story, because there's so many people I've talked to around Westminster and beyond in the last couple of years, in fact, more than a couple of years around exactly that.
You know, that sense of having to have a sustained national conversation around all these huge trade-offs because otherwise, frankly, you won't win the political argument.
You have to do that within political parties but beyond political parties to try and make that case.
And perhaps this, alongside the, if you like, what seems like more micro or short-term politics that this is taking place in the context of,
that John Healey's resignation is a symptom of that and perhaps the lack of clarity around that debate made both within and beyond the Labour Party.
And Chris, in terms of politics, I mean...
At the start of the week, Starmer's friends were let it being known that he would stand and fight in any leadership contest, not that one's been triggered yet.
And they were feeling quite chipper because of things like Andy Burnham had done that interview on Newsnight with Victoria Derbyshire, which some people interpreted as him not knowing what the fiscal rules were in the Treasury.
And it felt like Starmer's team had a little bit more oomph this week than they did in previous weeks.
What does this do to the oomph levels in Downing Street?
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