A Good Year For The Roosevelts

Is Build Build Build just Talk Talk Talk? With its £5bn shopping list of infrastructure spending, is Boris Johnson’s so-called New Deal really as big and Rooseveltian as he’d like the world to believe? Does the sudden departure of Sir Mark Sedwill indicate that the Government is just building another brand of groupthink? And as Leicester locks down again, does a ‘whack-a-mole’ COVID strategy make sense if you can’t see the mole? 

Special guest Robert Shrimsley, chief political commentator and editor at large at the Financial Times, joins us to examine the economics beneath the announcements. 

• “Someone described Johnson as ‘Brexity Hezza’… This is a Prime Minister who will intervene before breakfast, lunch and dinner.” – Robert Shrimsley
• “This is not a free trade government… and there’s a tension between that and its post-Brexit free trade rhetoric.” – Robert Shrimsley
• “We’re going to spend the next 15 years negotiating and renegotiating its trade agreements with the EU.” – Robert Shrimsley

Presented by Bronwen Maddox with Cath Haddon, Gemma Tetlow and Raphael Hogarth. Audio production by Robin Leeburn. 

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