This week we have a special episode looking at democracy in the UK today, not with one of our academic colleagues, but with the leader of a UK political party.
Regular listeners know that normally on this podcast we have conversations with our academic colleagues here at UCL. But this week we’re doing something a little bit different. In the first of what we hope will be an occasional series of episodes with real-world political actors, we’re discussing the state of democracy in the UK today – and what can be done about it – with the leader of a UK political party.
That party is the True and Fair Party. And its leader is Gina Miller.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, politics, party, democracy, mps, government, lords, mp, checks, moment, system, vote, elected, proposing, deliberative, operate, ucl, real, business, public
SPEAKERS
Gina Miller, Alan Renwick
Alan Renwick 00:05
Hello, this is UCL Uncovering Politics. And this week we have a special episode looking at democracy in the UK today, not with one of my academic colleagues, but with the leader of a UK political party.
Hello, my name is Alan Renwick, and welcome to UCL Uncovering Politics – the podcast of the School of Public Policy and Department of Political Science at University College London.
Regular listeners will know that normally on this podcast we have conversations with our academic colleagues here at UCL. But this week we're doing something a little bit different. In the first of what we hope will be an occasional series of episodes with real-world political actors, we're discussing the state of democracy in the UK today – and what can be done about it – with the leader of a UK political party. That party is the True and Fair Party and its leader is Gina Miller.
Gina Miller shot to fame by twice defeating the government in the courts: first on the process of Brexit; and second on whether the government could prorogue (or suspend) parliament in order to get its way. Now she's leading a party that characterises its central mission as 'cleaning up politics; modernising democracy; and fighting corruption'.
And I'm delighted to say that Gina Miller joins me now. Gina, welcome to UCL Uncovering Politics. And let's go straight to the heart of the matter. You want to strengthen our democracy. What would you say is wrong with it at present?
Gina Miller 01:39
Whichever day you wake up, whichever headline you read, I think there are exemplary stories of what's weak in our politics. And this hasn't happened overnight: what I see is the decay of a democracy that started some two, three decades ago; is the lack of checks and balances; is the fact that we've relied on what many call the 'good chap model of government', where politicians will take it upon themselves to behave within certain parameters of integrity, honesty, compassion, and put the country first.
And I think that is a very naive approach. And we have to address that. And I think we're seeing on a daily basis that modern day politicians are now stretching the elastic in that naive system to breaking point. So I do think we are at breaking point – I think we are at a point of democratic crises.
Alan Renwick 02:36
So you've focused there on a lack of checks and balances. I mean, I suppose we've seen a period when those in power – particularly Boris Johnson, also Liz Truss – their view was essentially that in a democracy, delivery by government is the fundamentally important thing. Kind of, democratic process isn't something that people really care about; what they care about is the delivery of policies, and sometimes that requires government to perhaps run roughshod a bit over all of the rest of the niceties. Why are they wrong?
Gina Miller 03:10
Well, they... What I was going to say is that they would say that, of course, wouldn't they. But delivery, as in business [and] every walk of life, depends on the quality of the individuals that are doing the delivery, the transparency of the processes, and the ability to redress when things go wrong. And none of that is applicable at the moment in the political landscape. For some reason they have gotten away with, if you like, pulling, you know, the wool over people's eyes; of saying: '"Well, politics is different. It's different from every other walk of life. We don't have to obey the same rules and regulations, same governance, same levels of transparency, conflicts of interest."'
You know, there are many things that are happening in the political arena that would not be allowed in most other walks of life. And I think that is the problem. In every other area, we've been seeing a push towards better governance, better accountability to consumers. And we as voters are the consumers of our democracy, as well as, you know, partaking in it. But it's been... Somehow politics has been able to be carved out and put to one side – that these rules don't apply there. And because of that, I think we are seeing the weaknesses in the delivery mechanisms. And when it comes to value for money – which is our taxpayers' money and our money – I would say the delivery of value for money is exceptionally poor.
Alan Renwick 03:56
And what would you base that on? Can you give us some examples?
Gina Miller 04:44
I would say if you look at the conflicts of interest, if you look at the lack of due diligence...I mean, at the moment in British politics, we have – you know, forget about what's actually going on in procurement, VIP lanes, PPE, all those sort of things – we have a live example at the moment in a company called Britishvolt, which is supposed to be the biggest example of new battery technology for electric vehicles. When you look under the bonnet, the lack of due diligence of the two individuals who co-founded this company against the background of what would happen in any other sector – be it money laundering checks, due diligence on backgrounds on CVS, on criminal records – it's astonishing that they were given the multimillion-pound budgets that they were to develop a business strategy that has no reality when it comes to developing or operating in the car industry. It was basically a paper strategy.
Alan Renwick 05:39
It's really interesting you're saying this because a lot of people in the world of politics – I guess, particularly on the right of politics, people in the current government – complain a great deal that the public sector is too constrained by rules and regulations and constraints and 1,000 people having to check before any decision can be made. And they're imagining that, you know, the public sector is a place of too many checks and balances, whereas the private sector is a place where entrepreneurialism can run free and can create new things. And you, of course, are someone who has come in quite recently to politics from the private sector world. So you're saying that, actually, it's the other way around – it's in the private sector that there are constraints and checks and balances?
Gina Miller 06:27
It is the other way around! I mean, you know, the amount... Anybody trying to put £10,000 into a bank or withdraw £10,000 knows the questions. Go on your app. You know the questions you get asked. You can't just withdraw money, when, you know...
Ordinary people have to live with this. If you have a fine, you know, in a car, if you're charged or stopped, you have to pay a fine. The way we have to live our lives, not just in business and operating, but in every walk of life, there are constraints, there are checks and balances, and there are laws about that we have to obey. There are rules.
And in business, you know, there are very strict rules of conflicts of interest – I mean, in some cases, not strict enough. But you know, the corporate responsibility for management for executive level is significant. And coming... In financial services, in pharmaceutical, it is not true. What they're trying to do (the political classes and some of them at the moment), I would say is to suggest that, actually, wholesale reduction of checks and balances is their end goal because they do not like the direction of travel that business has gone in.
And I have been a particular campaigner for nearly 20 years now, calling for more transparency and checks and balances in the world of business and financial services, especially those that led to the global financial crisis in 2008. And they don't like it. Many of these – the people who fund our political system, the ecosystem involved in our political system at the moment – are not happy with the direction of travel. So of course, they would use it as an excuse to say, '"Well, what we need to do to have more flexibility to promote growth is to actually take down barriers"'. The only thing there are barriers to is better cultural behaviour, better responsibility and better transparency. It's not a barrier for consumer protection; it is a barrier to profit without real purpose, or without real accessibility or accountability or understanding social capital.
Alan Renwick 08:30
So we've diagnosed the problem as you see it. What do you think are the key solutions?
Gina Miller 08:36
I think we have to address three things fundamentally because the word 'broken Britain' or whatever you want to say, 'the broken system', 'the gate', seem so insurmountable. I think one of the truths that I'd say we need to accept is that systematic failures within our machinery of government is where we need to start. The trickle-down effect, if you like, of doing that I think will create cultural change because we have to accept that even good people who go into politics can be corrupted by power. So therefore, those checks and balances have to be in place to ensure that there isn't that corruption.
It is going to happen. It's happened to lots of good people in politics throughout the ages, in not just politics, but in public life or in positions of power. So it's putting in those checks and balances before good people can stray if you like.
So we have to have a machinery of government that has the checks and balances in place, but also is modern, because we are still operating in a way that's very antiquated when it comes to digital voting, proportional representation, age of voting, the way that we do, you know, citizens' assemblies. There are very many mechanisms that I believe need to be brought into politics to make it a more modern machinery that people can access, because there are... You know, there's this idea, which I absolutely agree with, that democracy does not work unless we really have engagement from people. And the lack of trust and the decaying of that machinery has led to an ever-growing disenfranchisement and disengagement with politics, which also is a two-edged sword. So not only is politics not working, but the engagement in politics isn't working either.
So how do we address that? I think we have to get the machinery in a much more engaging, accessible, modern machinery so people can engage. So that's the second thing I'd say.
The third thing I think I'd say is that I think we also have to look at who goes into politics. I really don't believe that politics should be a profession. I think, you know, like so many countries, I would question how long people go into politics and hold office, how often cabinets shuffle. Again, there's these nuances about, you know, it is up to a prime minister to do his cabinet shuffles. But to introduce a different sort of politician with a different sort of culture, I think what you'll see is a different way of operating.
Alan Renwick 11:13
It would be great if we can follow up on all three of those points. I'm guess I'm particularly intrigued by the third of them there. So you said you don't think politics should be a profession. How should it be organised? How should it work?
Gina Miller 11:26
It's interesting because I've often looked at and I think I look at other countries and I like the idea of secretariats – the idea that there are people or boards who serve ministers – because you do have to have an elected individual who's responsible to the electorate. So I do think you have to have ministers in post – that is a given. But if you have them going into posts where they have no real-world experience of that particular department or that particular policy area, then I believe you have to have an independent secretariat of experts who actually can inform and support. So a technocratic level that supports the elected level, which also means you take some of the politics out of it, if you like, the small-p politics or the party politics, and we get...
The other elephant in the room, which is very often not addressed, and I think at this moment in time is looming, is the short-term nature of our policymaking when you're trying to address long term problems, such as lack of growth, our educational system, the environment, my gosh, you know, the NHS. How can we possibly have really, in effect, three-year policy cycles because they then spent two years trying to figure out how they win the next election? You would not do that. Again, I go back to business – we would tend to have a 10-year strategy. You know, you have to have a longer-term strategy and more collaboration.
And the key to all of this, everything we're discussing – because this is such enormous change we're talking about for systems, infrastructure, institutions – for me, the key starts with proportional representation. Because if you have the system of two main parties who benefit from the system, where is the incentive for real change and real reform? And where is the incentive to collaborate and look at things on a much more collegiate, collaborative, longer-term basis? I know people say there are ills with the proportional representation system. I think no system is perfect, as Churchill would say, but a key for me has to be proportional representation.
Alan Renwick 13:48
It's really interesting because a lot of what you're saying, I think, is emphasising the importance of a more deliberative, more thoughtful, more inclusive kind of democratic process. And, you know, I think there are a few people who would argue against that. And actually, we in the Constitution Unit at UCL have been doing lots of public opinion research recently that shows very clearly that people do want a more deliberative, more thoughtful approach to politics.
But people are also quite conflicted. You know, they want that. But also, we asked them a question in a survey that we did around what the key components of democracy are, and the one that came top was basically voters' ability to throw the rascals out. It was accountability.
And there's often a bit of a kind of tension in a democracy between deliberativeness on the one hand, which involves, you know, taking into account different views, being able to admit that maybe you were wrong, negotiating things between elections, all of that on one side. And on the other side, accountability, where voters have a definite thing that they vote for; they can see whether they get it or not; if they don't get it, they can throw those people out of office and get someone else. And of course, PR, you know, tends towards the more deliberative, more consensus-based approach to politics.
How do you reconcile that with this real public desire – that I think is maybe particularly strong in the UK because of our traditions of democracy – to have that strong accountability as well?
Gina Miller 15:25
I think none of this is black and white, and I think we have to have steps of change if you like. You know, reform doesn't happen overnight. What you do, I think, in a responsible reform agenda, is you trial it step by step and see what works and doesn't work, and then you build on what works. But one of the things I think is very important is the ability for, well, the electorate, midterm in whatever term of parliament, to be able to hold a particular elected representative to account. The idea that you can have an MP who is elected on a particular manifesto or on a particular colour of party, but then can sit as an independent if they stray or they do something. They can just literally say, '"Well, I'm still staying"'. This is just an example I'm giving you. You know, you can stay as an independent for another two to three years, but you were not elected as an independent.
So I think there has to be a much more robust system of redress mid-term for an MP that means that they have to be answerable to the electorate or there's a by-election. I just don't understand how you can then sit for two to three years independent when you were never elected on that mandate. So I think that's just an example of the sort of redress I think we could bring in without too many problems.
The other one I think is very important that we think about – actually not even think about, but is a must for me – is that the ministerial code has to be put into law. We cannot operate by code any longer. I think we have to have ethics or what I call a 'truth law'. We have to have a contract of employment. I mean, how is it possible that we have MPs or ministers, [i.e.,] people we elect, who are paid for by the public purse? There is an implicit contract that we have with them. But there's nothing it's written down; there's nothing to hold them to account.
I mean, even something as simple as... An MP does not have to hold surgeries: they do not have to have surgeries on a weekly basis. And I am aware of so many MPs where their constituencies haven't seen them for two, three years, because that's not required. There are no contractual terms for your pay as an MP.
So I think these are things we could bring in that are not too controversial and I think the public would accept, because this is the norm they have to live in other parts of their lives, that would signal a cultural change. Because sometimes you don't need to – I give an example of murder – you don't have to legislate for 'you cannot kill somebody with a nice big chair', you know, 'a knife'. You don't have to go into those – the overarching principles are there.
So I think it's about bringing in legal checks and balances – the signal that we, as an elected body, people expect our elected individuals to behave in a different way, to be answerable to us, and to deliver for us and not just their party.
Alan Renwick 18:36
I guess most MPs would say, and I think probably most kind of close Westminster observers would say, that MPs are incredibly hard-working people. You know, they spend most of the week in Westminster doing parliamentary business and then a lot of their weekend just spent doing constituency activities as well. I mean, it may be that some of them are employing slightly different models and versions of what it means to be a hard-working MP, but I think quite a lot of them would push back quite hard on what you're saying there, that a lot of them are not really doing the job. And I mean, I know you've recently criticised some MPs for laziness, in not holding weekly constituency surgeries. I think a lot of them would say, '"Well, we've changed how we interact with our constituents, but we're still trying to do it as much as we can."'
Gina Miller 19:27
I can only tell you I did 36 tours of the country last year, [and] that is not what people are telling me. We go up and down the country and people say, '"We do not know... We don't even know who our MP is. We've never seen them. They're never mentioned in Parliament."'
Whatever they say, I'm more interested in the facts. They can claim... You know, the rest of us, all of us work. We work. Yeah, we have something, we have to go to work, we have to clock in, clock out. We know when we're working.
It is actually quite difficult to pin down what many MPs are doing. And I will tell you. So if it's difficult to pin it down from their point of view, we go to the electorate, and we talk to people in their constituencies. And many people we have met, and I have met, say they do not believe – not only do they not believe, but they have not seen their MP. They don't know who their MPs are; they don't attend meetings; they don't come to hustings. This is not any one particular area; this is across the country. And this is not even one particular party. But this is something that I have seen on the doorstep, in real terms, not from what the MPs are saying.
Alan Renwick 20:33
I am really struck by what you're saying, that you're talking about a need for radical change in our politics and our political culture and so on. At the same time, a lot of the specific changes that you're talking about are quite technical changes in some ways that, you know, many people would maybe think are kind of tinkering with the details of the system and putting a code that already exists onto a statutory basis, for example.
And I was reading what you had written about a report that Gordon Brown produced just towards the end of 2022, when he proposed a set of quite radical reforms to the structure of the Union within the UK with much more devolution of power and also replacing the House of Lords with an elected chamber. And you describe that report. I was quite struck by the phrase you said: it was 'more utopian than utilitarian'.
Gina Miller 21:30
Yes.
Alan Renwick 21:30
And that was a criticism that you were giving of those reforms. So it seems to me that there's something very interesting going on in what you're proposing here: that you're suggesting that we need big, big change, but you're also suggesting that we need to be very careful about how we pursue that change, and some kind of utopian mindset going into the democratic reform process is just not going to get us anywhere. Would that be fair?
Gina Miller 21:57
Yeah that would be fair because I would say the cost of doing that utilitarian and radical reform in one bite, if you like, is something that I don't believe is realistic. We don't have, we are already... We have to look at the contemporary backdrop that we're living in. We are at a time of crises financially, globally. We have to be... You can only bring in change that is realistic. You can't, you know... What happens is if you if you propose reforms and changes that are so seismic at a time – because timing is always very important – at a time where it is impossible, what happens is it just gets kicked down the road.
I mean, I'll give you an example: the NHS. I think there have been 24 reports on the NHS. I mean, Gordon Brown's report. How many other reports have there been on the reform of the House of Lords? You know, and they all end up sitting on shelves. I haven't seen any of them particularly enacted in any real, real meaningful way.
And my experience as a campaigner for 13 years, or 30 years (sorry, not 13, 30 years), is that we do change – it's a steppingstone to the other side. You don't just leave a gorge in one go; you take steppingstones to the other side of getting there. And that way, you bring people with you, people who may not always agree with your position at the beginning; you test the veracity of the changes you're proposing, because something in theory is never actually the same when you put it into practice; and the third is, you have to be very, very mindful of the unintended consequences when you have many actors and many other people, because the trickle down of your change is that it affects more people than you initially thought. And I can say that from experience. So for that reason, I tread with caution. And I prefer the steppingstone approach rather than jumping to the other side.
Alan Renwick 23:59
What then would be the first step, this first steppingstone?
Gina Miller 24:02
I think the first step would be to put the ministerial code into law, the prerogative power into law, and changes into the House of Lords, such as limiting the numbers in the House of Lords. I've proposed 400: practically, because there are 400 seats; but also from the point of view of the whole process of electing people to the Lords. There is a whole raft of reforms you can do which again change the nature of the operation of the institution.
But I just go back to Gordon Brown's report and that report on the House of Lords. I think it started like many of the reports I've read on the House of Lords. To my mind, just in my humble opinion, is that I think we're starting in the wrong place, is we have to design the purpose – what is the role of the Lords. Unless we actually can ascertain collectively what the purpose of the upper chamber is, I don't think we can start talking about reforming it.
Alan Renwick 24:57
This will be music to the ears of my colleague Meg Russell, with whom we did an episode of the podcast just before Christmas, where we were talking exactly about these issues. And she has a very similar perspective on the Lords that, you know, whatever you might think of as the desirable endpoint, the idea that you can achieve radical reform in one step is just not borne out by the history.
Gina Miller 25:20
It's also in real practical terms. If you look at the legislation that received royal assent on the 28th of April last year (2022), which were, you know, acts that definitely diminished our rights on the streets in, you know, the Policing Act, the Electoral Reform Act, the, you know, the National Borders Act – all these acts that received royal assent. You know, it was the Lords who were actually picking over that legislation. And we're seeing it now with the Northern Ireland Bill and the, you know, electoral bill on retaining EU law: it is the Lords – oddly, it's the unelected chamber, that is a public pastime to criticise, that is actually really scrutinising the legislation and asking the questions of the government, you know, when it comes to, is this actually in the best interest of rights and freedoms and fairness?
Alan Renwick 26:18
Okay, and what's your strategy for achieving these changes then? You've set up the True and Fair Party in order to pursue these objectives. What's your kind of theory of change, if you like? How are you thinking the party is going to be able to promote this agenda?
Gina Miller 26:34
As I said, many people believe... Maybe I'm being utopian in viewing that a small party can actually create change. And I always said I would never enter politics, and I would definitely not go down this route. But it was actually... Having been a campaigner for three decades, but sitting last summer and reading those draft legislations, I realised that when we have a majority government, it's performative politics, and that really campaigners have very little sway.
And I come back to this key proponent, which is proportional representation has to be the red line. But also post-COVID, there is a different sentiment in the public and in amongst voters. We as a nation, I think one of the things that's always frustrated me and possibly many other people, is that we have not traditionally been people who have been particularly involved in politics and discussing politics and, you know, being worried about what happens to our democracy. We sort of, we have this maybe unconscious bias that if people come from the right school and speak properly, they know what they're doing, and let's leave them because they're cleverer than us. But I think that social dynamic – the veil, if you like – was lifted during COVID and then Boris Johnson governments. And many things that I and others have been worried about since sort of, for me personally, it was after it was ’98 and that government and the way they were using particular powers.
So I think with that veil being lifted it's now become a ‘common known’, if you like. Rather than before of being an unknown, it's a known amongst the public that things are not right, that 'them and us', that there are no checks and balances. These are now conversations happening in homes across the country, intergenerationally, which have not really happened before, or, I think, in the magnitude we're seeing at the moment. And that is, I think, because of COVID and the government that's happened that we've seen recently, the last three prime ministers.
And because of that, we have an opportunity. And so the True and Fair Party has come up. I think we are opportunistic. It is a time where three things have aligned. One is the public sentiment has changed and is now aware of the weaknesses of our system. They're also very much disenfranchised. So the one strand of the public that we know is growing is those who feel politically homeless, disenfranchised, and are saying it's not just one party, that they're all the same. I mean, this is much bigger than the expensive scandal. This is the expensive scandal on steroids for all parties. So they're not looking for politicians. And the third thing I'd say is, we are daring to say the things that probably is an open secret to most people, political observers, academics – all know, practitioners know. But the general public don't necessarily know it in the terms in which we're talking about. It's engaging them.
And for me, the True and Fair Party's success – it would be great if I won my seat in Epsom and Ewell, but it's not about that – how do we elevate the conversations about changing these issues? Because by doing that, I say we're a campaign in political clothing. Because when I read the Elections Act in particular, my belief was that we do have to have political clothing: we have to have that party political clothing to be able to operate and say what we're saying, because I haven't seen, and we still haven't really understood, what the secondary legislation for that Act means. But I think there will be closing down of the ability for charities, campaigns, campaigners and other organisations to be able to operate in as effective a way as they have done in the past.
And then the third thing I'd say is, I don't think the polls are as clear as maybe some of the headlines are suggesting, and the hung parliament is a possibility. If that is a possibility, then for small parties with a few votes, who believe red lines are proportional representation, this is a once in a lifetime generational opportunity. Why wouldn't I take it?
Alan Renwick 30:49
Well, it's interesting what you're saying, though. You said it's not about winning the seat that you're running in Epsom and Ewell, it's about ensuring that you have a voice and you're able to maintain that voice despite the restrictions of the electoral laws that make it hard for non-party campaigning organisations to take part.
Gina Miller 31:09
Yes.
Alan Renwick 31:10
And some have expressed concerns that rather than just having that campaigning impact, there's a danger that you also split the vote among those parties that support, broadly speaking, the sort of agenda that you're advancing. Do you think that's a reasonable concern?
Gina Miller 31:31
It was one of my major concerns, bearing in mind that I started Best for Britain, which was probably the biggest, you know, tactical voting campaign we did against Mrs. May in 2017. And I ran one, Remain United, in the election in 2019. I'm steeped in tactical voting; I understand how that works. But I'm afraid my experiences from both of those is that the parties do not tactically vote, that, you know, we do not have a Progressive Alliance. I think that's a myth. We don't have it. It doesn't operate in an effective way. Our parties do – they're obstructive. So splitting the vote is not, in a tactical voting way... Sorry, not speaking about... Tactical voting, I don't believe, works in reality.
When it comes to splitting the vote, we have been absolutely meticulous in the data. So our seats that we've chosen to date – there are nine, there'll be six more – are outside of Labour's top 350 target seats and outside the Lib Dems’ top 50 seats. Now, if you really want to be practical and achieve change, what you do is you concentrate, realistically focusing your resources on the seats that you can win. In Epsom and Ewell, Labour and Lib Dems have had 21 years – six elections – to try and overturn the incumbent Conservative MP. They've not managed to do it. So I would suggest that it's not, you know, do you carry on doing the same thing over and over again? I think that's called madness. Or do you actually try something different? We have polled very carefully those swing voters and those disenfranchised in what I call the 'blue corridors' withstanding, and people are not looking to party politics of the old. They do want something new, and they want a system that's changed.
So our proposing of systemic change is the attraction. It is not that we're a new party. It's what we're advocating that is attracting people.
Alan Renwick 33:31
We're going to have to wrap up in a moment, but just one final question before we do. So you're a person who has come into politics, wants to change politics. Lots of our listeners also care a lot about our democracy: lots of young people who, you know, have the vote for the first time or have recently had the vote for the first time who really care about the future of our democracy. What can they do in order to make a difference in the democratic system?
Gina Miller 33:56
I'd say number one is to engage with their peers and get them to turn out and register to vote. It is so important that you understand that, you know, you have to be part of the process. You cannot just sit by. And in this next election, there will be barriers because of the ID that's required, the photo ID that's required. So I say young people have a massive job to do, which is mobilising other young people to have the right paperwork, the right ID, and register time to vote. You have to be part of the system. You have to be part of... If you're silent, you're sitting by, you can't complain [about] what happens next. You have to make your voice count. So I think that's a very, very important message to them is: make sure that your voice matters, make sure you can vote. So that's number one.
Number two I'd say is think carefully about where you register to vote because it's not about, you know, where you're educated or where you're living. So think carefully about where you register because that is also a tactical choice. And it's a very important choice.
And the third I'd say is look very carefully at which parties are actually putting forward policies that will mean that you do not have to clear up the future. Because at the moment, there is an awful lot of, you know, plastering over the problems, which means that the next generation will be the ones who have to pick up the pieces. And you know, I heard the Institute of Fiscal Studies say the other day that we could be entering the second decade of despair, and I agree with them. I do not believe we can leave it to the next generation. We have to be responsible. And I'd suggest they need to support parties that are being responsible as well.
Alan Renwick 35:44
Sounds like very sound advice. Thank you so much, Gina Miller, it's been so interesting to talk with you about these things. And it would be great to have you back again sometime and hear how the campaign is going. So thank you so much.
Gina Miller 35:57
You're very welcome. It's been my absolute pleasure.
Alan Renwick 36:01
As I mentioned at the start, we are hoping that this will be the first in an occasional series of episodes with people from the real world of politics, so do look out for more in the months to come. In the meantime, next week we will be looking at the recent troubles at Twitter and how they might affect the world of politics.
Remember, to make sure you don't miss out on that or other future episodes of UCL Uncovering Politics, all you need to do is subscribe. You can do so on Apple or Google Podcasts, or whatever podcast provider you use. And while you're there, we'd love it if you could take a moment of time to rate or review us too.
I'm Alan Renwick. This episode was produced by Conor Kelly and Eleanor Kingwell-Banham. Our theme music is written and performed by John Mann. This has been UCL Uncovering Politics. Thank you for listening.