YouSaid · the spoken record

Pat McFadden

lines on the record: 44
first: 2024-07-12
most recent: 2024-07-12
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

“Oh goodness me if I get time for it I think the just one thing will be to take up the running habit that I stopped when the election was called so I can get physically fit again so do your park run your five K that's my just one thing”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or quite a few. I'm a devotee. And after that, I hope to get over to Donegal for some beaches, some mountains and a few pints of Guinness.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Deput She spent a lot of time in the cell and she made it all work. And played a huge role in the campaign too. So it was all quite close to home. And I'm glad the intensity of that is over. But now we've got a whole new chapter. I said to the young labour staff I was working with, you know, take pride in the achievements of the Labour government of 1997 to 2010, distancing ourselves from that was a mistake. We shouldn't have done that. Take pride in those achievements, but also they're in the past. It's time for a new chapter. It's your time now. This is your moment. If we win this, we get to write a new chapter. And we're just on the first page of it.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We did, I spent many hours a day in, we called it a cell, actually, with Morgan McSweeney, our absolutely wonderful campaign director. And there would be a roving cast of other staff and politicians and other characters who would come in depending on whether we were discussing policy or polling or strategy or the comms plan or briefing people going on the media and so on. And campaigns are intellectually and physically Very tiring things. They're exhausting things. And it's not”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why the election was called in July I don't think we had a satisfactory answer to that during the campaign, but when you take that prisons issue and the awful decisions facing the new Secretary of State for the new Lord Chancellor, the new Ministry of Justice head when she came in and other things too. I think we're beginning to discover why the election was called and it certainly wasn't because the plan was working, but was because the Conservatives knew that things were even worse than they were letting on.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, we are. First, I should say on this prisons issue, this isn't a question of policy, this is a question of legacy and necessity, and we had a very informative interview from Alex Chalk, the former Justice Minister, saying that he knew exactly what this legacy was, he'd tried to make the decisions being forced on us before the election, and had been blocked from doing so. That doesn't make them go away. It just delays them for a couple of months. I've never been quite sure”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That people rely on every day, so too is the level of economic growth and the question of who enjoys the benefits from that and try to deliver on that will be a good thing for people in Scotland. As anywhere else.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We had great results in Scotland, and I was challenged a few times during the campaign. Why aren't you doing better in Scotland? Why aren't you doing better in Scotland? But they were really great results. I think we should respond to this with respect. Nationalism hasn't gone away. And during the campaign, we didn't say to people, you have to stop believing in what you want to believe in. What we said was don't send a message. Send a government. And it's for us as the Labour government and the only party to win a majority of seats in England, Scotland and Wales for a long time to make sure that nationalism and the Constitution isn't the only issue in Scottish politics. It is an issue in Scottish politics, but so too are the public services.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The honest answer is I'm not pretending to be an England fan. But I do hope that England win this final on Sunday night because it will make my constituents really happy, it will make the country really happy, and it will prove that England only ever wins anything under a Labour government.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First, you know, the point is to win a majority of seats. And there's some of this stuff about vote share. I think it's like winning a football match and somebody's saying, oh, but the other team had more corners. That's not the point is to win a majority of seats. And that's what we did. That's how British government is decided. Of course you never take anything for granted. And you have to work hard every day in a democracy, the accountability is constant. And that's a good thing about it. But I do also think after fourteen years out of power, the Labour Party can enjoy its moment of victory. And I hope that they do, we do.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it was. It was wonderful to see Over four hundred labour MPs standing there in church house and it's a great result for us and I hope we can do good things for the country on the back of it.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look there might be in, I think. You know, this debate is so hot that it's been quite difficult to communicate on it. One of the first calls that Keir Starmer made was to the Prime Minister of Israel expressing enormous sympathy for what had happened on October 7th, but also calling for a ceasefire, calling for more aid, asking him to work towards a solution that ended up with a Palestinian state. That was one of the first calls he made at the weekend. It's quite hard for us to get a hearing for some of that in parts of the community, but we'll keep going.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You want free debate, but I don't want to see candidates hounded, surrounded by people filming everything, trying to goad them into a reaction industry. It happened to Jonathan Ashworth. It's happened to other people too. It's not acceptable.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pretty aggressive Jonathan himself was subject to some pretty ugly intimidation on the street, other candidates were too, and in responding I think we've got a right to point that out as well because you have to stick up for your values. So I do want to understand it fully, but I want to stand up to campaigning in the right way.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First, on Jonathan Ashworth, I should say, I mean, I regret any Labour colleague who lost her seat, but just personally, I worked really closely with him. He was a really important part of the election campaign, and we talked a lot, we met a lot, he was really part of the core team that helped shape the Labour campaign. So I deeply, deeply regret the loss of his seat. I think two things on the point you're making. First of all, there is clearly a level of anger with us in parts of the community that contributed towards those results. And we have to see that and think about it and think about how to react to it and respond to it and where we've lost trust and support. You always want to work to get that back. But there is another thing, is that the campaign in some of those seats was”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You should always remember You're serving. And I think Care stammer deserves credit for changing the Labour Party's job description. If the job description is I'm just going to keep my activists happy and stakeholder management becomes the day-to-day job and it might be this stakeholder or this interest group then you lose touch with the voters when you do that. You also fail to fulfil your job description. What he's done is he's changed that and said it's got to be country before party and if you're putting country before party then it's a good guide not to get dragged down the road of stakeholder management and doing things on whatever issue because there's a very loud group who are demanding that you do it. You've got to put country first and I think that will be very strongly his instincts as Prime Minister.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I really ask you about wokeism. That's fine, but I relish taking on that fight because I think it's really important. And an issue across the progressive, the whole opinion, if you like, what side are people going to be on when we're having that argument?”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“on, but I noticed two important things that were said which I think will inform us one was reforms disparaging of the NHS and the model Now we think the NHS needs modernised, needs changing needs renewed but we're not going to ditch the model the model is important it's dear to us we're going to keep the model I don't think a lot of the working class voters in the country Fully got into that argument in the election. The second thing was the apologism for Putin and him marching into Ukraine and this notion that somehow it was the West's fault.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think let's look at the results. Before we get too defensive about this, I represent a black country seat and I watched working class voters desert the Labour Party over recent elections. When I first got elected almost 20 years ago now, we won Labour held 12 out of the 13 black country seats. We were reduced to three in 2019. That's how lower working class support had come. We won a whole clutch of those seats back the other night. So I think working class communities have found a Labour Party they can vote for this time in a way that wasn't the case in recent elections. So I think that's a really important point to make. It is true we are going to have to think of how to take this new opponent”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those are much more fluid and uncertain picture emerging and I genuinely without being partisan about this being interested I'm very interested in what is now going to happen in the Conservative Party will it face down reform and try and fight reform or will it become more reform like?”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I spoke at his event the other day and in and I said in the context of this changing political landscape that curiosity is a duty of political leadership. I was brought up on traditional labour Tory fights. They were in the main about tax and spend. Not always, I mean, in recent years Europe became more of a feature of them, but mainly about tax and spend. I think we are now probably in a different political landscape. It's quite interesting what's happened. In the Labour Party in the last five years, we've changed into more of a recognisable centre-left party, if you like, compared to where we were five years ago. But on the right...”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Stuff done really quickly and efficiently, that would be good, but also from a governmental point of view, can you get better value for money? And if you can get a better citizen experience and better value for money, that's two pretty good things, especially in an era where money's pretty tight.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think he's right about the importance of technology. We are in the midst of, or in the foothills of, an enormous change. And the public sector challenge is to make sure that these changes which tend to go quite rapidly in the way that we live our private lives, maybe the way that we work or buy things or find things out or the way that we get educated, that that quickly translates into what government does. We're creating this new digital centre of government. In fact, I visited the early parts of that today. Peter Kyle and I will be working really closely on this. And there are two great prizes in it. One is a better experience for the citizen in their interaction with government. Are they always going to think of it as a big unwieldy bureaucracy? Can it be a place where you can get...”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, look, his mission is to get the weighting list down. We enter government with the lowest level of public satisfaction with the NHS ever recorded. West Street is saying quite rightly is, look, we love the NHS, but we're not here to turn it into a shrine. This is a thing that's much loved but isn't working as well as it should. And we might as well uncover all that and expose the problems and then start to deal with them. Now, what's the difference between this and any other Secretary of State for Health who would say that? I think we're going to try to work together a bit more so that if he's got a blockage somewhere, which isn't part of the Department of Health, there's a forum for raising that and dealing with it. And it's an age-old Whitehall problem, this, all the silos and so on. So if I can, and if number 10 can help with sorting some of that stuff out, then hopefully that will be a good.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The sort of chaos of the reshuffles, but it wasn't just the chaos of the reshuffles. You had loads of churn and top civil servants, and it meant lots of policy discontinuities. And people just looking at the UK and saying, it all feels a bit chaotic. And I think he would like to bring a sense of order and direction to that.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“what he means by all that is, I think, two things. One's just trying to think a bit long term. I liken it to a ship on the ocean where if you haven't got the engine on, you're just going to get buffeted around by the weather. And there's always the political weather, there's always headlines and issues and things you didn't, you know, McMillan said events and so on. There's always that, but it is easier to navigate if you've got the engine on and you know where you're going. for the Prime Minister and for the government the sense of mission around five key things is the sense of direction and what he's saying is you don't do this overnight but it's your long term goal and your short term policy should be aligned with that I think one of the things that frustrated him watching the previous government was all the”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well We've been out of power for fourteen years. And we shouldn't waste a moment. This is the chance to implement change. And we're in a position now where we've got a good majority for the next few years. I do also have to say though, this was an argument during the campaign as well as after, having a big majority doesn't give you any more money. It doesn't magic up money. Nor does it mean, as some of the right-wing newspapers were suggesting, that somehow there would be this change in the character of the Labour Party if it had a big majority, that somehow we'd all become things that we are not. That won't happen. But I do believe we are there to govern things. And insofar as we can, accepting the economic constraints and the inheritance that we've got, which if anything is worse than we...”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was a more mature approach to this, and one that you needed to do in order to get the chance to change anything in the first place.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But there was another lesson which I was talking about these tests of trust that political parties have to pass and for me passing the test of trust on the economy and public money was just as important as the other major one which is national security and I always think you're not going to get listened to on policy unless you pass those. So it was a shared endeavor. Kirstam was really bought into this, Rachel was bought into it, I was bought into it and to be fair all that stuff about eyebrows and so on we didn't really have to have a lot of fights and arguments in the shadow cabinet about this. I think people realised that writing a big Christmas wish list Of public spending and calling it radicalism just wasn't the case.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a shared endeavor. And it's an important point, actually, because we had to take account of the situation changing. Interest rates went up 14 times. Liz Truss crashed the economy. I get the policy point.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was the youngest. My older siblings are... Half of them are retired and having a very good time. Why me'd have to ask the Prime Minister that I think over, we haven't known one another for very long, in truth. We really only started working together two or three years ago. That's become closer. And first, when I was serving alongside Rachel Reeds in the shadow treasury team as the shadow chief secretary, but particularly over the last year when he asked me to be the campaign coordinator for the general election campaign. And then we were working even closer than before. I had a lot of contact with him and talked to them a lot.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All those things. Enforcement sounds a bit harsh, but yeah, he wants another cabinet minister at the centre of government is really the prime minister, the cabinet office and the treasury. And things can work well when they're all pushing in the same direction.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This goes back to the sort of 1300s and Henry III, so we could be here all day, but in its modern incarnation, this title has been used really as Minister for the Cabinet Office, the Secretary of State in the Cabinet Office, who is really in the engine room of government. That means working really closely with number 10 on a whole range of issues and it's a coordinating role, it's an unblocking role, it's trying to get stuff done. And that's in the spirit of this Prime Minister because he's not a massively ideological figure. He's a person that wants to get stuff done.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think breaking all that up does no harm, you know, and breaking things open a little bit, whether you'd go so far as to say a governing class, I don't know. But the things that you've just described there, as a proportion of the population, it's a pretty narrow, you know, it's a pretty small number. And, you know, to break that open and maybe get away from the kind of groupthink that comes from all that, I think that's a good thing.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Day thinking about it. But if you look around the country at who wields influence and who's got the sort of key jobs in the UK, you can't deny this still matters. So I think it is at least notable and I hope it will help guide the politicians around that table remembering where they came from and trying to do things for people from similar backgrounds to their own.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's, um, well, first of all, I think are not necessarily working class in themselves, but around that table you've got a lot of people who by family background grew up where their parents did Working class jobs, they won't have earned a huge amount of money, it's the most state-educated cabinet in history, I believe. What is it important? It's not a qualification for leadership in itself. I don't believe it is, but I do think it's notable, particularly in this country where so many of the leading jobs in the country, certainly in the professions, aren't going to people like that. And this has been an issue in the UK for many, many years, whether it's senior judicial figures or around the different professions. I did an interview with somebody during the election and he was asking me about this one of the journalists. And he said, do you really think this still matters in Britain of 2024? And I thought, are you kidding? Of course it matters. Not in the sense that I wake up every day.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cabinet, and two thoughts struck me. One, all his friends who had been working in politics with for many years with the shadow dropped. So I'm looking across the table at Secretary of State for Health West Street. On my left is Secretary of State for Education Bridget Phillipson and so on around the table with that team. The second thing that struck me, and there's been some commentary on this, is Around that table are more people from ordinary backgrounds than has ever been in a cabinet in British history.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I guess there is. I guess there is. And you're right. I'd been in number 10 before in different ways. I'd been a staff member there during the Tony Blair years. I had been a Minister of State when Gordon Brown was Prime Minister, but this was the first time where I'd been appointed to the Cabinet, as it were, in my own right, as a full cabinet member. And it's not just me. I mean, I looked around that table on Saturday morning when the”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The first time I had been in the door, I think I'd been there as an MP to hand a petition in with a family from my constituency. But that moment Being in the And we took our children and seeing the Kostama arrive in the car seeing the new Prime Minister step up to the podium with mostly labour staff and family and friends and so on. Was a really for me a really wonderful, beautiful moment.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably not wildly, I guess he too was very relieved. So he was in London at that point. I'm still in Wolverhampton and I don't come back to London until about 8 o'clock the following morning.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not the second, but we spoke pretty quickly As you can imagine that was a very nice warm call. As emotional as Keir and I get.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, one of the curious things is you get the exit pole and then nothing happens for hours you get a result from Sunderland Gateshead where they're really quick at counting the votes and then you don't get many more results for hours. So it's really only by, once you get to sort of 2.30, 3am when they start to come through really, really quickly at that time. And that is another sense that this is real. Because even when the exit poll comes out, there's part of you thinking, well, this is quite a multi-party system now. There's a lot going on here. Is this accurate? And it turned out as the exit poll has most of the time in recent years to be pretty close to the mark.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was real and it's a curious psychology in a campaign because the polls didn't really move very much during the campaign and so throughout the campaign we did these polls and you're ahead, you're ahead, but the Labour Party's been burned so many times before that we were the ones running around saying this election is not decided, not a seat's been won or lost, this is all disrespectful to the electorate and one of the things we were worried about was the notion embedded in the voters' minds that this was a done deal so some people wouldn't vote. I think a little bit of that happened on the turnout in some areas and we didn't want that because to get people out to vote you want a sense of jeopardy, you want a sense that as the phrase we used particularly in the last 10 days of the campaign change will only come if you vote for it.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was an enormous relief. I was sitting In my house in Wilverhampton, where I'd been campaigning during the day and in the Nearby target seat for us in Dudley and it's such a moment. Looking at the clock and its five minutes to ten, it's four minutes to ten, and the Then it just flashes up. The emotion was relief not ecstasy just after so many years out of power, after so many lost elections that we'd done it.”
2024-07-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Pat McFadden in Power One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source