YouSaid · the spoken record

Mel Stride

lines on the record: 40
first: 2025-06-13
most recent: 2025-06-13
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

“Yeah, I think she beat me pretty thoroughly. Probably fool's mate in about five moves, I think, Nick would be the result of that. So I will not be challenging her at chess. And I do admire, actually, that she was a chess champion, because I did used to play quite a lot. And It's a great game and it's a great skill if you can be very good at it.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I admire somebody who has risen to that position in our political firmament. I admire somebody who has shown the resilience to take the brickbats and let's face it she's not had an easy time and let's set aside whether that's her fault or whatever I admire that I've only sat down with Rachel a couple of times but we sort of sat down and had a cup of tea and a chat and she's likable nice person. I have no issues with her at that level so I do.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The tour guy. Well, first of all, I should explain that this was a hobby, right, not actually a job as such. I did it because I was interested in history and I did do the training. The answer is the British Museum, the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Stonehenge, Windsor Carson, all sorts of things. Well, yeah, it was a long time ago. I mean, incredibly rusty. So don't start asking me about the Rosetta Stone or the Elgin marbles or something because I probably won't know the answers. But it was a fascinating thing to do. But no, I would say it's not about necessarily explaining things, although it is part of that, and I think it is a skill that politicians have to have. In some cases, quite complicated things to explain it in a way that people readily understand. But equally, I'm just interested in our history. I'm interested in people, I'm interested in places. I'm inquisitive by nature. That's part of what I am.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But that doesn't mean not being vigorous. We have to fight tooth and nail against reform and against this government and so on. Got to be an effective opposition, express our values. We've got to do all of that. Strain at every single fiber. But we've also got to accept that getting back attraction with the electorate is going to take time and we have to hold our nerve.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that is a challenge, but I do believe that we can. I'm optimistic about our ability to do that. But the critical thing is we have time. Now, Nigel Farage has got to keep this spinning plates act that he has, right, up for another four to four and a half years. So let's talk again in four years' time and see where they are.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you shine a light of truth on people like reform and you expose what it is that they are offering and on the economy to say, for example, that you will take everybody out of income tax up to £20,000 worth of earnings, which the IFS says will cost between 50 and £80 billion. You explain to people that that is the equivalent of about a third to a half of what we spend on the health service every year with its one point three million employees, and then you say to the public, you've got to ask Nigel and Co, how are they going to fund that? And if they can't answer that problem, we were talking about the mini budget a minute ago, you're going to end up, if you have reforming government in a very, very dangerous place in terms of the economy.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't mind being labelled as a pragmatist. I think that if you want to create a society which is harmonious and people can get on together, I think you have to listen very carefully to all views in a thoughtful way, as we've discussed. So I don't resolve from that.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a debate, Nick. It was a debate, and it was an intervention that occurred to me, and I thought it was an interesting point to put to him. And I have to say, I think he responded incredibly well. But that was at the Oxford Union, I think, wasn't it? Indeed. Back in the 1980s.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was supportive of Margaret Thatcher, absolutely, as the Conservative leader. And as I said, I'd grown up in a household for which she created the Zeitgeist and for me as a person.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, that's certainly not true. And I think what I've taken you through in terms of my approach to the economy and what I've turned responsible radical reform speaks to lower taxes, it speaks to a smaller state, it speaks to getting net migration down, it speaks to looking at our skills offered, getting on top of welfare, freeing up all the supply side constraints that the economy has. And that is pretty radical agenda. And I've said already that there is no scope now.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well that was one little snippet, you know the sugar tongues went into what I said and they picked out the little strand that made the interesting headline. What I actually said was that being leader of the opposition is probably the toughest job in politics. We all learn as we go through our political lives, of course. I also referred to get back to Margaret Thatcher again, that when she became leader in 75, there were many criticisms. She wasn't good enough for the dispatch box, her hair wasn't right, the pitch of her voice wasn't right, the clothes she wore weren't right, and so on and so forth. And it wasn't really actually until she'd won that election, and some would argue even beyond that with the internal tensions within the party and the cabinet were kind of resolved by the time of the eighty three election, that she really arrived as a fully formed politician who appeared to be unassailable. So we're all on a journey, but Kemi has.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He wouldn't have objected to it. It may well have been very different. Look, often get back to Margaret Thatcher for a minute. Now, Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Lawson did bring taxes down, but the sequencing was important. So the first dragon to slay was inflation back in that time. And once they'd done that and they got the fiscal space to cut taxes, they did it in a responsible way by showing how it could be funded. And that is the only way to do it. So I think the mistake was that it was, as I say, tens of billions of tax cuts, no explanation of how it was going to be funded. The OBR were kept out of the whole equation as well, and it basically spooked the markets, and then you're in trouble. So we will never ever, under my watch, under this conservative party, go anywhere near that again.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“the actions at that time the haste with which it was done and so on and that I think is part of the lesson there's interesting”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Happen well, Nick, I'm the one on your show, right? And you're quite right before it happened. You were right, they were all wrong. Well, I warned against it before it happened. I warned against it when it happened and I've spoken very clearly about it since. But look, we're under new leadership. And what I would say about that time is two things. One is the aspiration to have a higher growing economy, lower tax economy, you know, controlling public spending and so on is absolutely, totally and utterly right. But the second thing I would say, which I did set out in my speech actually, is if you look at what happened there, I think it was bred of a broader frustration that we for too long had had managerial incrementalism as our lodestar for the economy. So for decades we'd had that growth rate that was relatively anemic. And nobody had come up with a radical approach, a responsible radical approach to actually address the issue. And that was the frustration, I think, that drove...”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because what I am saying, which is very clear, is that a mistake was made and putting one's hands up to that, and I talked in my speech about showing contrition and being honest and upfront about what happened and owning that, but at the same time making a very clear statement that never again will fiscal responsibility be anything other than deep within the DNA of my party, as it has otherwise always been. And I think in a world in which you've got a Labour Party that's messing up the economy, we'd have a long chat about that, and the Reform Party who are running around promising the earth with no credible plan as to how they're going to deliver all of that stuff, we have to be the grown-up party that re-establishes our credibility around fiscal responsibility going forward. And that's what I am absolutely determined to do.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What matters is reflecting on. Why can't you say sorry? Well, no, I think let's not do that then. Let's not do that, Nick. If you don't want to do it, there's no need to do it, is there? No, but”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, of course not. But what I was saying was something very profound and serious, which is that that mini-budget at the back end of 2022 was a huge mistake, and it came with consequences, and to reflect on the fact that that is something that we will never ever do again. Now, what was it that went wrong or what went wrong was tens of billions of unfunded tax cuts into a fairly inflation rate. And the lesson there.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think it's fair to say that we need to go back to the drawing board on all these fundamental issues and do that deep thinking to come up with those solutions. And the prize will be enormous if we can do it. Do you know, if we just got back to the trend growth that we had up to 2008 and the global financial crisis, the economy would be 25% bigger than it is today. Just think of what we could do to look after our elderly, get a better deal for young people, drive entrepreneurship, get taxes down, the prize is enormous, and that's why it's worth doing the hard yards to work out how to unlock it.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not really drawn in Nick and ingenious, though, that question is. You're not a professional journalist by any chance. Drawn in sort of making lots of headline catching statements of that nature. But I think it's fair to say that there wasn't.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are many different approaches that one could take to all these different issues and problems. What I'm saying is that rather than sort of chuck ideas on the table every five minutes and try and get attention, what we need to do is to go back to the drawing board.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We will have a fundamental look the way in which the state works, the way public services work, and all of those questions and many more will be in the mix. But what I think I'm saying to you today is that there is no quick glib of the One second answer to that it needs real deep thinking to come up with the solutions. But of course you have to get people to get people to get pe”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we're swimming against a tide, that's undoubtedly true. Look, we've got a top-heavy aging population. We've got the geopolitical challenges you've identified in an extra percent on GDP on defence of twenty five billion pounds. We've got intergenerational challenges around how do we have a fair deal for younger people and so on. And all of that's going to need a very different economy. And now that different economy is going to have to address a number of different issues if it is to grow at the kind of pre-global financial crisis trend or better, and that is around tax, it's around the size of the state, it's around skills, it's around getting net migration down, it's around gripping welfare and the budgets in welfare. It's around supply side things about building houses and railways and roads and energy costs and much more. But it could also be about...”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fraction of that. Productivity in the health service in particular has gone backwards since the pandemic. So this is a crime we need to... I would have a clear plan, which this government clearly does not have. I would have a clear plan. They would say neither did you when you're in office. Well, we did actually in our last budget we had several billion actually set aside to tackle exactly this issue of capital investment and productivity increases in the health service. But you are right about the bloated nature of the state. Now, you mentioned the number of civil servants. We had 365,000 civil servants before the pandemic. We have 515,000 today. That does not compute, and it speaks to a broader bloating when it comes to government. So this is something that absolutely has to be addressed and can be.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We'll get rid of some mangoes. Yes, it's very easy to say. But this is where your thoughtfulness comes in, isn't it? We need a proper debate to really probe these arguments. You can't just stand up and say, well, I'll slash spending left, right and centre and it'll all be fine. But look, when I'm a Secretary of State at work and pensions, that is a department that employs 90,000 people. It receives every day 20,000 people of correspondence, which back in the day were being opened and read by individuals, by staff. We now have AI in that department, a project that I was working on called White Mail that reads that stuff in about an hour or two, and it's better than that. It spots patterns and it works out the priority people, the most vulnerable people that are writing in and prioritizes them. That is an example of how you can do an awful lot more, actually, with an awful lot less. And that's what we need to be getting sort of bedded in right across government.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In order to address that point, so I think there's an argument that has to be one that has not been won, which is this idea that the only way you get better public services is to tip ever more money into them. We have to land the message that we need to have more efficient services rather than necessarily constantly putting more money in behind them. And I think that's the kind of building block, if you like, from where you can move forward in that sense.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we say, right, gosh, you've dug around a bit to find that. We have. Who spilt the beans on that? This is the loads of money, isn't it? Well, I don't know about that, but it was a rather nice car back in the day. No, I set up my business after university. It was exhibitions, conferences and publishing. And I built that business from scratch here, and then I went over to the United States with it and sold that business a bit later. On but I had a great time doing that it was a really valuable thing to do. And I think when I started, which was in the later eighties, there was that zeitgeist that really valued that kind of activity. It was cool to be doing that. And I think we've lost that to some degree and we've got to get it back.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think we ever would have labelled ourselves as anything back in those days actually. I see my parents as just thoroughly decent people that wanted a happy family, a loving family, wanted to provide for them, had a father that was clearly very ambitious and went out and set up his businesses, his small businesses. And it was a journey, and we were all kind of on that journey. But as I say, Nick, it was in an environment of kind of popular capitalism in a way, in which there's like...”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Did you know we weren't a political family at all in the sense of conservative labour or what have you, but the lessons that I learned were deeply political. So what I grew up in was a family that had come from pretty basic background, but loving, caring situation, but nonetheless quite a tough background in a way. But I saw my father set up a business and take the risks and get up early every morning and go out and fight the good fight. I saw as I grew up the moments of near despair where something had gone terribly wrong, but I saw the great triumphs when things had gone right. And what it taught me was that if you work very hard and you are growing up in an environment which encourages enterprise and opportunity, in the way that Nigel Lawson cut taxes and got red tape out of the way when I was in business and I set up my own businesses later on in life, then great things can happen.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And achievement. Now, we've got to try and get that back. And I'll give you one visual metaphor for this, Nick, because I think it's important, that image of her and Richard Branson going down the Thames, okay, with the sunlight playing on the water like an endless stream of opportunity. I can see it in my head now. That's what we've got to recapture. And that's why I'm so optimistic for our country, because we can do it.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that was a particular moment in our history from which we can learn a great deal because we come through the 70s, as you know, into the winter of discontent and huge challenges, inflation, trade unions, strikes and all that kind of stuff. And here we had somebody who had done that deep thinking, thoughtful thinking that I'm talking about. She'd done it between 75 and 79 and came up with an approach that was transformational. Now, I grew up in that environment. into Otsford University got a place there, the first in my family to go to university. My mum and dad left school at 15 and 14 years old and I ran as far and as fast as I possibly could with that opportunity. I never looked back, not once. And after that, I set up my own business, around the kitchen table, getting the ideas together, climbing those metaphorical mountains with teams of other people in an environment that Margaret Thatcher had created a zeitgeist that was about opportunity aspirations.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You've got to do the work to regain that trust, and those that say, oh, well, you've just got to press this button or do that or jump up and down or shout a bit louder or whatever it is are wrong, it will take a bit of time. We have to hold our nerve.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Boring. What we need is no, but say. And do the hard yards of working out how to come up the solutions to fundamentally rewire our economy, which is a big job, and it needs to be done. In the way in fact that Atley did it after the war, I wouldn't be doing it in the way that Atley did it incidentally, and Thatcher certainly did in the 1970s. We're at that kind of stage in our political history, and that does need that deep thought. But that's not the same thing, Nick, as saying, that we don't need to be out there sticking it to the opposition, out there getting the headlines, out there expressing our values, and yes, on some occasions, our policies too, at this stage. But we have to be realistic. We've lost connection with the British people. On the day of that election, when my majority had gone down from over twenty thousand to seventeen thousand to sixty one votes, the visceral anger towards my party was palpable. I was going into villages that were typically Tory and there'd be a posters in the window saying the tactical vote to get the Tories out is labour. That's where we were.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thoughtfulness deck. You know, if you're going to solve the kind of problems that our country faces, right, you can jump up and down and get headlines. You can...”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and he was resourceful, and we were fighting the Japanese in Burma and the jungle, and he had a ragtag army that needed to be brought together, and he showed incredible leadership. Because what he did with every single person under his command was to explain what they could do rather than dwell on the size of the challenge, and he was a great motivator and he did great things. And I think for me as a hero because it's about leadership. And he wrote a whole book on it actually after the war. Yeah, on that statute, on leadership.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How on earth are you going to come back from that? All of these things are possible, but we will only do it on the economic side by demonstrating fiscal responsibility that with a grown-ups in the room when it comes to the economy, that we will never promise to do anything without explaining how it will be funded. Unlike a Labour Party that has taken the economy off the road and reform who are promising all sorts of things without explaining how they can deliver them.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a really tough moment, Frau Potty, huge electoral defeat at the general election, and in the local elections we've suffered very badly too. But no, I am an optimist and I totally believe that we can come back and indeed more than that we can come back and win the next election, but that will take time, a lot of deep thinking, a lot of things that we have to do to address the lessons of those defeats. But let me just give you a couple of quick things, Dick. So if I was Pierre Polyev, the Canadian politician, and you were interviewing me a few months before that general election in Canada, I was 23 points ahead in the polls, you just said I was a shoe-in. Well, he lost that election and he even lost his own seat. Albanese in Australia, a similar effect. If I was a socialist before you, heaven forbid today, and it was just after the 2019 election, you'd be saying, Melstride, you've suffered the greatest defeat the Labour Party has experienced since the nineteen thirties.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of course I didn't know. I think it was just past 10 o'clock, wasn't it? And the poll had come out and you said Melstry, they say you're going to lose your seat. And I said, well, let's wait and see, Nick. But of course it was in the balance. It was a difficult moment. Well, you did more.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think that the most important thing is that when important issues are in play, that people have the opportunity to really weigh up the arguments based on the evidence, etc. And if it gets the space to do that, gets narrowed down to a tiny sliver, a flicker on the screen of your phone or whatever it may be, then it's quite difficult to do that. And you see that with fake news, for example. By the time some fake news has gone halfway around the world, the truth has barely had time to put its trousers on. And I think that's a difficult environment for politicians to navigate, but I think it's down to all of us actually to try and make that space in order to come up with the rational answers and decisions. And it's important for the future of the country that we spend time trying to do that.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What politics ultimately has got to be about is a kind of pursuit of the truth, isn't it? So that's what you try and do on the Today program every morning, is get to the bottom of what the facts are, what the truth really is. And it's only on that basis that you can make rational policy or go to the polling booth and vote for a particular party if it's been really properly, truthfully laid out about what it is you stand for and what it is you're suggesting. And so I think we need to fight for that space, that thoughtful space in the public square.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there are dangers associated by not being thoughtful. We all want to be frivolous and joy our lives and get excited about things, and there's room for that. But if you're talking about an economy and how you run an economy, it's really important that it's done in the right way, otherwise you can end up in a bad place. So I think we need to spend more time thinking, for example, about things like fiscal responsibility, whether the numbers add up, whether it's realistic you can just endlessly promise to spend ever and ever greater amounts of money without actually properly explaining how it's going to be funded. So that's what I mean. And I think we need to try and get back to that. It's a struggle in this world of TikTok and social media and everybody gets their news on the go, on their phone and all of that kind of stuff. But that's what we need to fight for.”
2025-06-13 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mel Stride One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source