The Westminster Hour

Hello and welcome to this edition of the Westminster Hour with me, Ben Wright, and my guests.

A place for robust but convivial conversation.

Coming up, new Chancellor, same old problems.

We're in the middle of a revolution.

But don't let's pour a lot of taxpayers' money after something which isn't competing, however difficult that is.

You're listening to the Westminster Hour with me, Ben Wright, and our panel this evening, the Labour MP, Emily Darlington, the Conservative peer, Kate Fall, and Alex Wilson, who represents Reform UK on the London Assembly.

James Heal, the Deputy Political Editor of The Spectator, is with us too.

Well, not so long ago, Reform UK was riding high.

Hello and welcome to this edition of the Westminster Hour, a place for robust but convivial political conversation.

Coming up, Parliament bursts back into life with the new Prime Minister at the Dispatch Box for the first time in that role.

We'll discuss the challenges facing him and how Burnham v Badenoch is likely to play out at PMQs.

And so the problem with this is that it erodes public trust.

And we are responding to a narrow issue when we actually need to start looking at the whole system to be able to unpick it and fix it.

You are listening to the Westminster Hour with me, Ben Wright, and our guests this evening, the Labour MP Tom Hayes, Conservative Joe Robertson, Salma Shah and Jessica Elgert from The Guardian.

Well, the autumn party conference season will be upon us soon.

And I well remember, as will Jess, that over the opening weekend of Labour's gathering last year in Liverpool, the question we were all asking ourselves and each other was, What's Andy Burnham up to amid speculation about his leadership ambitions? I was among a scrum of journalists and camera crews laying siege to a fringe event at which he spoke about proportional representation.