John Smith

I do think, I wonder whether that for all that, you know, we've talked about Andy Burnham kind of, you know, rejecting what Tony Blair has said and Wes treating the same.

And understandably, because actually they're in the middle of an election, potentially.

you know, kind of in a beauty parade where there might be an election for who's going to be the next prime minister, almost proving Tony Blair's points at some point in that essay.

I think that what you're seeing is Tony Blair has...

has made an argument about certain things, and we've talked about them on the podcast before, about the growth in welfare spending, the kind of huge, sort of almost exponential growth that is going on, and the number of people with mental health issues.

And I know you're about to speak to Alan Milburn about some of those issues in a moment.

But I think that these are points that I think people probably across all parties agree with.

And that Labour, you know, this government, Keir Starmer's government, has singularly failed to address.

Now, Keir Starmer is sort of, in policy terms, he's in certain places, in exactly the same places Tony Blair would like him to be.

It's just that actually...

It's not been the policy.

It's been the politics that has let Keir Starmer down.

He has failed to manage his party.

He has failed to convince people that this is the right things to do.

And so it's not been so much the policy in that area.

It's just been the politics and Keir Starmer not being up to it.

John Smith wrote, "...God, being angry with us, plagued us with such famine and sickness that the living were scarce able to bury the dead."

Smith, unimpressed with his fellow settlers, wrote, Most of our chiefest men were either sick or discontented, the rest being in such despair as they would rather starve and rot with idleness than be persuaded to do anything for their own relief.

Before a fire upon a seat like a bedstead, he sat, covered with a great robe made of raccoon skins and all the tails hanging by.

On either hand did sit a young wench of sixteen or eighteen years, and along on each side the house two rows of men, and behind them as many women, with all their heads and shoulders painted red, many of their heads bedecked with the white down of birds, but everyone with something, and a great chain of white beads about their necks.