finished at home? - ring before bath time is finished at home?- ring before bath time is finished at home? the other side of chris finished at home? the other side of chris mason s - finished at home? the other side of chris mason s life. i so what was it like standing in downing streetjust before borisjohnson came to the podium? you could see, like all the staffers and you could see his few remaining supportive mps. they were all sort of hugging each other, looking. what was it like? yeah, and his wife and their daughter in a little sling thing. you just get a sense in those moments of the kind of human and then the political and then the constitutional, because they re all wrapped up in the same thing. and, you know, borisjohnson coming out to the podium, and, you know, a man who s crushed a man who s gone from winning a colossal majority less than three years ago to being out on his ear. and felt a little bit defensive about it, as we ll hear now. in the last few days,
died in hospital in spain, he was 79. nearly four decades of power, marred by allegations of nepotism and corruption, his family enormously wealthy. at 10pm, jane hill will be here with a full round up of the day s news. first, newscast. newscast from the bbc. hello. it s adam in the studio. emma here. and it s chris. chris, i m looking at your phone to see if someone s going to phone with, like, a historic message as we re recording this podcast. because ijust, i assume that just what happens to you all the time now. you got to deliver for newscast as well. yeah. no, i m afraid. exactly. nothing other than are you going to ring before bath time is finished at home? 0h, mikejust managed to do that once we finished the other side of chris mason s life. so what was it like standing in downing streetjust before borisjohnson came to the podium? you could see all the staffers and you could see his few remaining supportive mps. they were all sort of hugging each other, looking. wha
as i was going to bed, got a call saying, oh, tomorrow morning on the today programme you re going to talk about this owen patterson thing. i was like, what owen patterson thing? and that was the first kind of brewing of the fact that the government was going to try and change the rules about how mps were disciplined for breaking the rules. and that actually is probably when the real rot really crept in. and i remember thinking that wednesday morning, have they gone from like quaffing champagne in the hotel on tuesday night to actually, this is the start of the downfall now. and i remember you were there as the minister on duty doing the media that day, and i don t think we chatted about it or maybe we did, but i m just suddenly remembering, you were there for day one of the start of the downfall. thank you for reminding me of that time. - yeah, because they were riding so high. well, like, so, what i will say about that was this. - it is a really good example of a contrast of this - g
what is obvious to mps or ministers outside downing street isn t - obvious to people inside. i think in this case you re saying that it s a function of the structure of how the country is run rather than borisjohnson being stubborn or deaf to or not not aware of reality. more than one thing can be the case at the same time, right? so there s a bit of that, too. i wonder how do you reflect in the round on boris johnson at this moment? because the thing i m struck by, i m fascinated by character, and how important character is, that in many senses, the essence of his character is what makes him a great campaigner, butarguably as well, made him not well suited to governing. one of my colleagues who knows the prime minister better- than i do described him as, - and this is a colleague who is not prone to histrionics, - and he said he s the most charismatic person he s ever been around in his entire life. and the impact of such a personality on people around them can be - quite transfor
tell us what you think about the herd comment. did you feel part of the herd? what struck you about that comment at all? i think that the prime ministeri with that comment is obviously suggesting or implying that some colleagues were only saying they wanted him out| because other people were. and if i may have misinterpreted. that, but if i have interpreted that correctly, i think that s incorrect. you know, it s a very big thing - to change your leader after having won a big majority only two and a half years ago. - it s a big deal. i don t know when the last time, if ever that has happened. - so mps don t just do that - because somebody else said so. one of the difficulties - about being any prime minister is that you do live in this sort of downing street bunker, i and the job of the building - is to protect the prime minister. and that s right, - because it s a tough world out there. but sometimes that. means that information doesn t fully permeate i through and sometimes