Mark Hennessy
speaker
218 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 26 Jun
Mark Hennessy’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 — 2 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
who are economically inactive and getting to a point where once they get into their early 20s, it becomes ever more dangerous and ever more likely that they will remain politically inactive or economically inactive.
And so you have all of those sort of issues going on.
It is an incredibly damaged economy that has major structural issues with low productivity, low economic growth, and none of that changes regardless of who you put in number 10.
Well, if you look back at Starmer preparing for government, he hired Sue Gray, a top British official.
She was poached out of the civil service to lead his office, an extremely able individual in so many ways.
And the plan, her job was to create the plan.
Now, we got into government and there was no plan.
Now, Sue Grain knows how to write a plan.
So there was obviously things going on within the Labour Party that we haven't seen full sight of that explained why they were so appallingly prepared for power.
Starmer was effectively chosen and supported by people
Largely because he was dull.
He was seen as being sensible and studious and the kind of fellow you could trust in the wake of the British public's aversion to the years of Johnson and Liz Trust and everything else.
They saw him as being your country solicitor who would never let you down.
They weren't looking for excitement.
They then got a prime minister who wasn't exciting, who couldn't communicate, and he suffered all the predictable problems.
So the very things that people saw as a political advantage for him going into office became dead weights around him after he took up office.
And there are certain elements of Starmer's character that make one, you know, really surprised that he managed to rise as high as he did within the world of politics because he doesn't have a political bone in his body.
And, you know, one of the things it should teach us is that politics is a craft and when it is performed well by able people is a craft that's worthy of being admired.
That skill of being able to bring people together to develop policies and to bring them through and to create unity amongst disparate groups who are angry about X, Y or Z, but getting people to a point where they can agree on something.
That is a very considerable skill in life.
Showing 41–60 of 218 · page 3 of 11
← Previous
Next →