YouSaid · the spoken record

Chris Bryant

lines on the record: 55
first: 2021-12-03
most recent: 2021-12-03
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“No, I don't know. A whole load of us went to the cinema to see Daniel in the first one. And we all dressed in black tie in Leicester Square. And what was amazing was that moment when he does the kind of Ursula and dress moment and comes out of the sea, everybody applauded. Literally every, and I think I don't think anybody would have applauded for me coming out of the sea.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Could I be an actor? No, it all went wrong when I got glandular fever and I was playing Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet. And we realized that in our production, in Act V, Juliet is meant to sort of wake up and turn to Tybalt and say, in thy bloody shroud, but our Tybalt was playing a guard in the last act. So I had to put on Tybalt's sweaty because I died as Makusha in Act three. I had to put on his sweaty tights and lie on his caterfalc. But unfortunately, I fell asleep every night. And sometimes, you know, I'm meant to be a dead body and sometimes I turned over. Now, I couldn't even play a dead body.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, no, some very distinguished people. Douglas Hodges is kind of my best friend from that time. We went on tour playing Richard II and Good Lads at Heart and various other shows. And Doug's in nearly everything you watch these days. And Daniel Craig having, well, I shouldn't speak for Daniel, but I was having a very difficult time and we both had a very close friendship with Ed and Brian who ran the National Youth Theatre and they were phenomenally helpful for us. And so we ended up becoming sort of friends for a while as well.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I feel very mixed about that. There's so much I feel passionately wonderful about in the work I do. And the Ronda has been phenomenally generous to me and I've tried to be generous back.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's crowded out a lot of very decent people from politics. Lots of people, you know, I meet people at parties and so on and they say, God, I would never do your job because it's just so hateful. The death threats and the social media has contributed to this because people living in an echo chamber and all the rest of it, which is why you have to just sit very light by it. And I've said often that I think you have to have skin that is thin enough to be sensitive to the world around you, but thick enough not to sort of fall apart the moment or to be bruised the moment somebody touches you. And that's quite a difficult balancing act. And it means that quite often, you know, we get it wrong, bumping along like a shopping trolley, I guess.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I remember somebody was, I was at a by election and one of the researchers was driving me somewhere and I said, are you sure we're on the right road? And he said, I'm 100% certain. And I said, I wish you'd said 95% certain because that would have meant that you checked. And of course, he proved to be wrong. So I always prefer people to be 95% certain rather than 100%. It's that absolutism that leads to, sorry to bring him back again, but Putin and Orban and Trump and she and so on. And I hated it in religion, in Iran or wherever, or in the UK, and I hated in politics as well.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's crucial to me being me, I think. And I'm not a fundamentalist either. I mean, I love the fact that, you know, the Church of England doesn't really believe anything too strongly. I couldn't possibly belong to a church that believed in anything too strongly because that kind of fanaticism kills people. Yes, I have lots of friends on the conservative benches, genuine friends, people I would go for a drink with, and we will have a good old row and a barney. I don't take it personally. And I just think that's a really important part about recognizing the importance of representative democracy.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, no. He was on the other side of the fence always. And in fact, I think one of the reasons we went to live in Spain was because he quite liked Franco.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, I think because of the way our family played out because of mum and I was looking after mums and it felt as if everybody was taking sides and all of that kind of stuff. I'm actually rather fond of dad. When dad and I speak on the phone, we speak in Spanish because that's the memory of a happy time and he taught me Spanish. And I think dad is proud of the fact that I'm the MP for the rendezvous. But he wouldn't ever vote Labour. And he's been absolutely, he's never would in my marriage and never, ever would vote Labour. No, no, no.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's trying not to get into it. I mean, I know I brought this up. I'm being hoisted on my own petard here, but I'm just describing an emotion that I feel at the moment. I don't wake up every morning and think I'm going to be gay bashed, but it's still a very strong part of people's experience of modern Britain. And I just worry about some of the language.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of course, yeah. I'm just saying, I don't want to overstate this. I'm not accusing the Prime Minister of being homophobic, but I do feel less safe, physically safe than I did 30 years ago as a gay man, as an openly gay man, to use the phrase that you used earlier. And incidentally, if you look at the number of hate crimes, they have risen dramatically over the last few years, the number of kids taking their own lives because of their sexuality is still at a very high level, six times more likely than straight kids. And then when the government takes the pop at Stonewall, takes a pop at diversity role models and things like that. I just want to go, I'm sorry, I thought we'd moved on.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Somewhere in that mix, I think there's a world of people who think that that's politically advantageous. To stir that pot and that makes me genuinely fearful because I don't think Margaret Thatcher was homophobic, but she still introduced Section 28 because it was necessary politically.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the place that they've taken the debate about trans has contributed to that. The fact that they're not prepared to do a proper ban on conversion therapy. Boris's own history about tank top bum boys and all of that, saying that gay marriage, if you were to allow gay marriage, why not allow two men and a dog to marry? All of that kind of stuff. It fills me with a great deal of unease”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's funny because I now feel more nervous as a gay man in Britain than I have for thirty years. And I've discussed this with people who work in Downing Street. It's because I think that they're very happy to have culture wars because they've learned this trick from America, from Trump. And in the end, culture wars will always pick on... And that means the gays are always, you know, the gays, the Jews, the blacks, I mean, that's always the list that crops up whenever any populist government gets into power.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I remember him very well. Nothing's changed. Literally nothing has changed. It's all the same old, I think, fake show. Well, I remember very clearly at university him coming into the Oxford Union and his hair was perfectly well combed and he then ruffled it.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm just one of the things about being the chair of standards is you do have to be very non-partisan and you have to sort of surrender. And God knows I can be partisan. So part of what I think about politics is there's a poem by Browning, Takar of Gallupi, and it has the line, hark the dominance persistence till it must be answered to. And it's a musical term, but I just think that sometime persistence.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think on some issues, it's right that we should have a completely independent body, which is what we have for sexual harassment and bullying cases in Parliament. That's chaired by Sir Stephen Irwin, a former High Court judge, and that is entirely appropriate because you don't need any specialist knowledge other than about sexual harassment and bullying, which could come from any workplace environment. And I hope that, and I feel that that is now beginning to turn the tide on some of those issues which have been around in all the time that I've been in Parliament. On questions like whether you've used your stationery inappropriately for electoral purposes when it should only be used for parliamentary purposes, I think it's quite valuable to have a mixture of lay people. We have seven lay members of the public and MPs on it. And it's interesting quite often how often the lay members say, you know what? It's really useful that you just pointed that. We had no idea that that's what you do and how the whip works, for instance.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's quite a lot of joy in working out a clever way of getting something on the order paper. I mean, listeners will take a whole series of different views about Brexit, for instance, but I chaired the group, which we call the buses and trains discussion group, so that nobody could see what we were actually talking about if they were looking over our shoulders, which was the group of rebel toys, Dominic Gree and all that lot, and the rebel labour anti-Brexit pro-EU people. I chaired that group all the time, and Dominic and I and Oliver Letwin were coming up with all the little wheezes and the plans to try and take forward our agenda. So, yes, understanding the rules, what's the first rule of politics? Turn up. Second rule of politics, learn how to count. Third, don't leave until the vote is taken. And fourth, make sure you remember to vote. And so knowing all the rules, I think, is just a really...”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, but the thing is, and this is where I would draw a distinction with the kind of good ambition, because I think there are things I much prefer getting things done. I've had a battle for the last eight years, I think, about acquired brain injury. I really care about the rugby players in my patch who've suffered lots of concussions and now suffer from dementia and depression, and the people who've had road traffic accidents whose lives are saved now, many more are saved today than used to be, but they don't get the support they want. And I'm very hopeful that by the end of the week, the government will have announced a fully-fledged strategy for dealing with acquired brain injury. And that is the good ambition, getting things done.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know. I never, ever wanted to or thought I could. I remember once telling James Pinnell that I thought I was of middling talent and I might knock at the outside of a cabinet door one day.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think I wanted everybody to see me when I first arrived in Parliament, and in particular the Prime Minister, so he would make me minister for Dillywinks or whatever.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I think I've always wanted to climb the greasy pole if that's the sort of the angle you're going to. I mean, I've always, not least because”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, that got me into trouble as well. So she used to look after Shelley Batty's wigs. And I met Shirley Bassy. I'd always wanted to meet Shirley Bassy. And I met her at a party about four years ago and went up to her and said, Dame Shirley, I think you might remember this, but my mother used to look after your wigs. And she looked at me and she said, Do you think, young man, that you should mention wigs to an octogenarian and just turned on her heels and walked away?”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I told I was now a youth chaplain in the Diocese of Peterborough. She was coming to stay with me. She was sitting in the car with me and she said, I should always have known. You walk so funny. Which was like kind of not the right answer. But it wasn't. And then she said, Oh, and all her friends when she worked in makeup, but the BBC used to go to Citches in Spain on holiday and had a gay old time and stuff. So she was, I think, pretty relaxed about it.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because it was a pretend family relationship. That's the phrase that really grated. Yeah, so undoubtedly that added to it, but it wasn't the bit that got me there first. I think the bit that got me there first was some people have a rough life and the state should be there to provide support for them when they need it.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It wasn't only that. I mean, it was a criminal offense. The age of consent was 21 when I was at university. What gay sex might or might not have had, Nick, and I'm not going to invite you to ask, but would have been completely illegal. And the other thing was that Michael Howard introduced an amendment, Section 28, to the Local Government Finance Act, which treated homosexuality as worse than dirt.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I don't. No. I mean, look, I mean, I've been singing protests. The only things I know how to play on the guitar are Latin American protest songs. And I know the words of all of them. So whereas I don't know, the Internationale, oddly. So, you know, I'd caught the bug, and I'd been working in a shantytown in Lima, for heaven's sake, where everybody had a dirt floor. The walls were made out of a steromatting. And I'd made phenomenally close friends. I'd studied liberation theology. I was reliably on the left, I think, by the time I got back to the UK.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I wrote to three politicians to Simon Hughes, who was the LibDem sort of overseas development person who said you should write to Chris Patton. To Chris Patton, who never applied, and to George Cabinet Minister at the time, and to George Fuchs, who was the Labour person. And he brought me into the House of Commons, asked questions, and we had the sale of tear gas canisters stopped. That's when I joined the Labour Party.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. Yes. So I was meant to be three months in Chile. But almost the day after I arrived, two young Chileans had had, Pinochet was still in charge. Two young Chileans had had petroport over them and had been set fire to by the Chilean police. And one of them died, and I took part in the funeral. I was asked to say some of the prayers at it because I was staying with Roman Catholic priests. It was in the big cathedral in the middle of Santiago, and we were all singing gracias salavida quaramada dado, which is a wonderful song, protest song of that period. The police came in and the army with tear gas and water cannons sprayed the bishop off the coffin and all that kind of stuff. And I saw that all the tear gas canisters said made in Britain.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And also it's a combination of that and my mum because in all of these things I knew what it was like to be on the tough end of life where things just weren't working out or everything was just completely chaotic. It wasn't a question of putting yourself up by your bootstraps. That just wasn't the kind of option. You had to have a world that could support people. And then as part of my training, I'd done three years at Oxford reading English and then I did two years at Oxford reading theology and I went to the bishop, Richard Harris, and said, look, I can't do another year. I mean, I'll just be a vacuous idiot. Tim, but nice but dim. And he said, well, why don't you go to Latin America for a year? So I went and I did some training. I stayed in a, I lived in a shantytown working in a shantytown in Peru for three months and then six months working in a human rights organization in Argentina.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, absolutely. Because this was the time of Thatcher and I did placements in local churches. So I had three months working in Newcastle in an inner city parish, which was just like a completely different world for me. I've been infected a bit with the socialist virus, as it were, by the National Youth Theatre too, because I think in the National Youth Theatre, which I was in for quite a while, I was the only public schoolboy. And so I had seen a completely different world.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Every time we drive house a house and I go, why don't we live in a house like that? You go because you gave the blasted money away, you Nan”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's many millions a long time ago, and I refused to because I knew it would just change me, it would turn me into a different person from the person that I wanted to be. My husband is furious with this now.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Disaster zone and very, very upsetting. And she was in a terrible, terrible state, and I had to get her off to hospital and stuff and sort all the place out. And I remember going up to stay. They're called the Gracies, these three sisters, and they were wonderful from a completely different world from today, as it were. They were lovely to me. They were oddly, they wanted me to inherit all their estate, and I refused to.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I suppose the thing I thought was that after all of that, I could have come out as a mess and I wasn't a mess. I mean, there's all sorts of bad things about me. I know my failings better than anybody, but I hadn't, and that was partly because I must have a strength of character, which wasn't something I had to boast about. It's just it was a fact. And also I had three elderly relatives. They're my mother's mother's cousins who lived together, three spinsters. They were very wealthy. They lived in Abimore and in Edinburgh. They were absolutely lovely and phenomenally supportive of me. And I remember once coming back after an Oxford term, coming back to the house where we lived in Cheltenham, and mum had not got out of bed for three months for anything, I mean literally for anything. So it was a medical.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because she expected a gin and tonic at 11 o'clock in the morning. Though in fact, it was always vodka, and I've never drunk vodka partly Which may be pretty unusual. But when mum and dad did finally split up, she had a flat, she got into some really bad company, which was pretty violent and abusive. And she flooded the flat twice. She ended up in a mobile home. And then we don't really know whether she took her own life or she had just taken too much alcohol and paracetam altogether.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I mean, there were light-hearted moments. We could never work out quite how mum was getting so drunk in the kitchen because we could never find her drink. But I don't know, you're old enough to remember when avocados had become a fashion and everybody had an avocado stone with cocktail sticks suspended above water. And it was meant to put that, we could never work ours never put down a root. And it's because mums had vodka underneath, not water. It took us ages to work that one out. And we laughed. I mean, she was, you know, in many ways, she was wonderful and she was a great artist. She went to Glasgow School of Art. She was always the life and soul of the party. And I wondered sometimes whether there are time in Spain, which was like being on an endless holiday was sort of what had ruined her.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I'd gone to the movies. It was the first time I and a friend of mine, we'd both taken two girls to the movies and it was quite a, we didn't see much of the movie. It was New York, New York, as I recall. And when we came home, mum had fallen in the kitchen and had cut herself on her nose and there was pints of blood on the floor. Dad had just got back from a course or something and was taking her in an ambulance off to hospital. And my poor old brother was sort of stuck there watching it all. And I ended up having to clean up the blood. And I just remember very... Clearly the whole business of It hadn't coagulated. Anyway, I can still see in my hands.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it was It was just a terrible time. She, I mean, it meant I learned to cook and to iron because mum was not able to do that. I think it was terrible for my father as well. Mum was a very unhappy woman. I took her through withdrawal, probably very dangerously I now know several times she had terrible seizures and fits and stuff and she was in and out of various different institutions. I felt very angry about it a lot of the time because there were just so many lies. I can't tell you how many bottles of vodka I've poured down the drain. I sort of talk breezily about it now because I think I've sort of Processed it”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Few years at home were a version of hell, really, because mum was drunk every night and there were all sorts of difficult, horrible times and there was a period when my mum and dad got divorced when I was 18 during my A-levels. I sort of had to look after mum for quite a while. And that was, and I needed a lot of help and support. And Sam Salter and his wife, Margaret, looked after me in my final year at school. And their daughter, Rebecca, is the first president of the Royal Academy. And she's my sort of surrogate sister.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly, and then the second bit, and then phase two was we were living in Cheltenham. I remember mum coming into my bedroom on my 13th birthday and telling me that she drank too much. And the next...”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are two parts of my childhood. I think one was my parents met because dad left school was relatively few qualifications, went to work in Spain in the summer holidays, in the summer to work in a hotel. This is like 1950s and play rugby back in Cardiff and Ponty in the winter. My mother went out on holiday and when she was doing makeup for the BBC and that's how they met. And Spain became a very important part of my childhood. We lived there for five years. I speak fluent Spanish and there's a little bit of me that is forever Spain. It's quite nice that there's a Ronda in Spain as well, though it's got fewer letters than the Ronda in Wales. The Ronda B.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's why I say I think I thought, but I was quite late in working out that I was gay. It was around about the age of 24.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I had, you know, and when I went to theological college, I had a girlfriend, and it was she who told me that I was gay one morning when we woke up together. And I don't suppose really at theological college you're meant to be sleeping with your girlfriend”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I'm sure he wasn't trying to help. It's like saying with all due respect, which means with all no respect whatsoever. I'm a very different person from the person who arrived at Oxford back in 1980 in hundreds of different regards, not least because at the time I think I thought I was heterosexual.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, the thing is, I was brought up as a conservative. My parents, my mother ended up not voting conservative, but I think my dad certainly would have done, though now he would say that the Conservatives are far too lily-livered and left-wing. So I was kind of brought up a conservative, and it was only really when I went to university that I started thinking about these things for myself. But in my first term, I met some people who wanted to make sure that William Haig never became head of the Conservative Association of Doctorate. And I was up for that. So I joined and stood for the Oxygen University Conservative Association Committee and got elected, which was very, very weird.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Blast. I thought if I said it then, then we wouldn't come back to it, whatever it is. But no, it's a serious point. I'm not very judgmental. I think MPs should have a fair hearing. The committee is a good balance. We have seven lay members and seven members of the House of Commons cross party and all the rest of it. We came up with a unanimous report on Owen Patterson. And normally the House should just agree that.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, they seem to have gone back to liking the rules now, so let's hold them to the sticking point, to quote Macbeth. I think we are in a better place now. We and the Standards Committee are revising the code. As it happens, there's a bit of an irony about me being the chair of the Committee on Standards because I've been in loads of scrapes of my own over the years.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, who knows? I mean, we would have been in this strange kind of limbo because they wanted to set up a committee that was going to look into it all, which was going to be chaired by somebody who didn't want to chair it and was going to be cross-party, but nobody from any of the other parties wanted to sit on it. So, I mean, it was just a massive set, one after another of mistakes by the government, I think largely out of Downey Street and out of the leader of the house's office. But we're back to steady state now, which is good.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Seem to be. I'm terribly sorry. But if a Prime Minister has to announce they're not a corrupt country, you do start to think, hang on, what's going on here? And it does worry me, not least because it's a pattern of behavior, you know, proroguing parliament illegally lying to the queen, all that kind of stuff. I passionately care about parliament. I care about it because through parliamentary democracy, you can change people's lives. When I was born, homosexuality was illegal. When I entered parliament, there was no such thing even as a civil partnership. And I was able to sit, as you said earlier, next to you at a dinner with my husband. That's because parliament changed the law. I desperately care about making parliament work.”
2021-12-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Chris Bryant One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source