Liz Bates

Yeah, no props.

She has risen.

I know what you mean though. At what point in your life do your Christmas decorations go to the charity shop? Is it when you die?

It feels relatively appropriate.

Yeah, it has. So I was here, I was on maternity leave when we were talking about the actual general election. So I was watching that as a viewer. There were just so many beautiful images, like, you know, Rishi Sunak in the rain. I think that was a defining image of this kind of conservative era. And it was just quite funny, just him getting soggy.

And then going back to work, covering the Labour government. I don't know. I mean, it's quite, it's in some ways interesting. It's quite, in some ways, quite a boring government, I think. Definitely more boring. A lot more policy-based stuff. And I think there's a sense of kind of mild disappointment.

Not kind of rage, but yeah, a bit of mild disappointment. But not things coming at you from all sides.

The last government I felt was a kind of political bukkake in that sense.

Yeah, I think it does. And I think the reason that it kind of encapsulates, particularly the final throws of the Conservative government, is because it just didn't work. You know, people in this studio are very left wing. The country is much more centrist and right wing. But the problem with the end for the Conservatives was nobody believed that they could do anything.

They just did not believe them. When Rishi Sunak stood up and said, I'm going to stop the boats, people were like, no, you're not. No, you're not, because you can't even get your flagship policy to work. And I think that is, in the end, why they called the election so early, because they just stopped being able to do anything. It became a government of incompetence from the top to the bottom.

But I have to say that level of self-esteem is something that I really sometimes think I'd just like to try it out for a day. Incredible. You aim for a job. You get it. You fuck it up. Just so spectacularly. Historically. It's just, it's humiliation on the biggest scale possible. And at the end of it, you're like, God, well, I did great. I did so great. Well done me.

I guess everyone else was against me, but that's fine. I'm going to write a book about how great I did.

Look, I think at that point we were living in the shadow of the kind of Boris Johnson era, right? There was so much incompetence, so much lying, party gate, all of that. And I think that by the time we got to Frank Hester, under normal circumstances, that would have been a much bigger scandal. Yeah.

But, you know, we went through this bizarre period where you had ministers going on TV saying the comment wasn't about race or gender when he literally said black women. He literally pointed out her race and gender. That's what it was about. Over and over.

So we were in the twilight zone where you're sitting, you know, you're sitting across from a minister and you're like, but you're just saying something that is...

total nonsense it's wrong and and I think by that time there was just so much frustration around the government the reason that they didn't give the money back I think they probably would have liked to give the money back but they couldn't because he's such a massive donor um side note he's a massive lot of things he's a I won't say it But side note, he made his money from NHS contracts.

So it all goes round in a big circle.

It's like, it works like this, right? The government oversees a structure via which there is privatisation in the NHS. People like... This total wanker, Frank Hester, I think I can say that with complete impartiality. That's objectively true based on what he says. He makes loads of money, then he sends it right back to the government so they stay in power so that he can keep making money.

And, you know, in between that, he just says, like, loads of random racist, sexist shit in meetings. I mean, that's... And that is the world that we live in. But again, it's like... Happy Christmas, everyone. LAUGHTER

No, I mean, we were all hit. We sort of watched it all happen. And yeah, it was just a mess. It was just a mess. And I think it was, when you look back on it now, you can see the drizzle was sort of perfect because the whole government just felt soggy. And he just seemed knackered. And the people that I was talking to that were working behind the scenes were just looking for jobs.