The Rundown by PoliticsHome

This week The Rundown is coming from Birmingham as the PoliticsHome team tick off the final conference of the season at the Conservative Party’s annual gathering.Later in the episode host Alain Tolhurst chats with Festus Akinbusoye, one of those hoping to be the Tory party’s candidate for London Mayor, alongside PolHome colleague Harriet Symonds, about his campaign to replace Sadiq Khan.But first PolHome editor Adam Payne joins Alain minutes after Kemi Badenoch stepped off stage having given the keynote address to round off the conference and give some instant analysis of her speech.To sign up for our newsletters ⁠click here⁠ Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced and edited by Ewan Cameron and Nick Hilton for ⁠Podot

This week The Rundown is coming live from Liverpool, where the team have been at the Labour party conference, Andy Burnham’s first since he took over as leader of the party.Later in the episode is a fantastic interview with one of his Cabinet ministers, the environment secretary Angela Eagle, about working with Burnham again after their time together in the Blair/Brown governments, her frustrations with getting things done in Whitehall, and her plans to tackle the water industry and waste crime.But first up host Alain Tolhurst speaks to PolHome editor Adam Payne and Sienna Rodgers, deputy editor of The House magazine, just minutes after the PM came off the stage after his big speech to members, to discuss huge announcements on the triple lock, electoral reform and public ownership. To sign up for our newsletters ⁠click here⁠ Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced and edited by Ewan Cameron and Lulu Goad for ⁠Podot

This week on The Rundown features a fascinating interview with former veterans minister Johnny Mercer, who has just published a bombshell new book - No Way to Run a Country - about his time in politics, and what he sees as the broken system at the heart of it.He spoke to Alain Tolhurst about his own shortcomings as a politician, being lied to by successive Prime Ministers, but despite that helping set up an Office for Veterans Affairs, the mission he had set for himself after leaving the armed forces and becoming an MP in 2015, as well as the absurdity of life in Westminster and the machinations of the Tory psychodrama he became trapped inside.To sign up for our newsletters ⁠click here⁠ Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced and edited by Ewan Cameron and Lulu Goad for ⁠Podot

After a pair of record-breaking donations to Reform UK, host Alain Tolhurst looks at the role of big money in politics, the influence it can bring, why campaigners want to see caps on the amount people can give to parties, and where the pushback against these changes is coming from.Joining him to discuss whether the two £36million donations from crypto-billionaires Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne to Nigel Farage’s party will lead to changes in the way our politics is funded, are the Labour MP Stella Creasy, who is leading the charge in Parliament to change the law, as well as Olly Buston, director of the campaign group Clean Up Westminster, alongside award-winning journalist Peter Geoghegan, founder and editor of the Democracy for Sale website.To sign up for our newsletters ⁠click here⁠ Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced and edited by Ewan Cameron and Lulu Goad for ⁠Podot

This week The Rundown takes a look at another political party as it heads into its annual conference, this time the Greens, looking at whether after a huge surge in membership and popularity under new leader Zack Polanski their support might be plateauing after Andy Burnham took over as Prime Minister and it suffers the growing pains associated with all insurgent movements trying to break out into the mainstream.So to discuss where the party goes from here, as well as Polanski’s chances of making it to Parliament after he threw his hat in the ring to replace Keir Starmer as the MP for Holborn and St Pancras, host Alain Tolhurst is joined by a former Green Party leader, Baroness Natalie Bennett, along with Russell Warfield, who has written a new book entitled The Green Socialist about the party’s rise over the past 18 months, and joining them are Louis O’Geran, researcher at the pollsters More in Common, as well as PolHome reporter Zoe Crowther.To sign up for our newsletters ⁠click here⁠ Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced and edited by Ewan Cameron and Lulu Goad for ⁠Podot⁠