James Lyons

It provided some clarity and some focus.

Then the local elections hit and, yeah, things started to go awry.

No offence intended.

It's nearly 10 years since I left, so I'm nearly 10 years clean.

Insult.

Well, very kindly to say so.

Certainly, I've been around a long time and done some interesting things.

And it is fascinating, right, that in a time when the kind of main medium is short form video, that we sort of had three or four politicians picking up their quills in the last week to write to each other.

And in my head, when I've been reading them and rereading them to speak to you today, I had in my head,

the kind of voices of Prunella Scales and Patricia Routledge in Radio 4's Ladies of Letters.

Because there is that kind of Passag tone to a lot of what is going on.

Oh, that is so true.

I think maybe Wes, who knows?

I mean, I thought the line I loved in the prime minister's riposte was where he went on about, you know, obviously Tony Blair, Labour's great election winner and quotes, it usually pays to listen to him.

Well, I mean, it's fair to say that this isn't the first Substack.

They launched the Prime Minister's Substack some while ago.

And I actually think it's a really good idea in the same way that, you know, I was working with the new media unit during my time in government and we were sitting the Prime Minister down with creators so that he was speaking to,

And I think this is one of my favourite pieces of comms while I was in there.

And I can say this because I had very little to do with it.

When Universal Studios announced multi-billion pound investment in Bedford, in amongst all of the traditional media we did, the prime minister spent 10 minutes chatting to a guy who reviews roller coasters on TikTok.