The Common Sense Revolution Podcast

Two years ago this month Kemi Badenoch took over a party that had lost 244 seats, got through five prime ministers in eight years and was about to be overtaken by Reform. The defections have stopped, nobody is writing letters, and the Conservatives are second in most polls. So this week Gavin, Patrick and Peter ask the bigger question: has she made the party credible again, and if so, what does it do now?Peter wants a reckoning with the Boris wave and a Secretary of State for Border Control. Patrick thinks voters have moved on and would rather hear about the economy. Gavin isn’t convinced any of it matters without a crisis to prove the point, and thinks an early election is coming. Along the way: whether anyone can name the deputy leader of the Conservative Party, why Andy Burnham flew eight hours to give a six-minute speech, what the Q3 growth figures owe to AI, and a PMQs that split the panel. Recommendations this week. Patrick has In Rome’s Long Shadow [https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/453369/in-romes-long-shadow-by-gianoutsos-jamie/9780241608333] by Jamie Gianoutsos, reviewed in this weekend’s Times, and I, Claudius on BBC iPlayer. Peter has Ross Douthat’s interview [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2aC8lAOQbg] with Donald Trump and Rod Dreher’s Substack essay on the cost of refusing to forgive [https://roddreher.substack.com/p/what-we-do-when-we-refuse-forgiveness]. Gavin has the New York Times’ reporting on the Nvidia chief executive’s resignation [https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/11/12/business/nvidia-jensen-huang-resigns].

Graham Brady chaired the 1922 Committee for 14 years and saw five Conservative prime ministers come and go. He’s the author of Kingmaker, and he joins Gavin, Patrick and Peter, who knew him at Conservative Central Office, to talk about Kemi Badenoch, Andy Burnham and the chance of an early election. He also says where the letters were kept, and what he made of the rules that changed after he left.Once he’s gone, the three of them turn to the Commonwealth visit and the reparations row, and whether it was an up week or a down week for the Conservatives.Recommendations: Patrick is off to see Suede and the Manic Street Preachers at the O2, Gavin saw Transvision Vamp [remember them!?] in Belfast and loved it, and Peter has found research from the Institute for Family Studies that points to K-pop as one reason birth rates in East Asia are so low [https://ifstudies.org/blog/celebrity-culture-predicted-fertility-decline-in-japan-and-south-korea].

Four pence off a jar of gherkins and two pence on a pint. Gavin, Patrick and Peter ask what John Healey’s first Budget was for, why the Sun summed it up in three words, and whether a Chancellor who resigned over defence spending has just delivered a Budget that doesn’t fund it. They look at Kemi Badenoch’s response, a PMQs that for once mattered more than the Budget itself, and what Andy Burnham’s answers on Europe tell us about where he’s heading. And the argument they can’t agree on: Burnham says no election for twelve months. Two of the three don’t believe him.Plus the weekly verdict on whether the Tories are up or down, the case for stockpiling pickles, and the recommendations: Peter on Simeon II of Bulgaria [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simeon_II], Patrick on The Diplomat [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diplomat_(American_TV_series)], and Gavin on Politics Unleashed with David Davis and Guto Harri [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq91Vu3LK7Q&t=12s], and Bob Woodward’s New Yorker piece on his friendship with Dick Darman [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/10/26/the-danger-of-getting-too-close-to-a-source].

A week out from John Healey’s first Budget, the Conservatives are second in the polls and Kemi Badenoch has given a speech almost nobody watched. Gavin, Patrick and Peter ask whether the Tories have started squeezing the Liberal Democrats, why Andy Burnham’s war on private car parks and headphone dodgers might be smarter than it looks, and what Badenoch got wrong when she mocked it at PMQs. Then the world gets in the way: Trump eases up on Russia, Paris burns, and the polling says a President Le Pen is now the likeliest outcome in France. What should an opposition say about any of it, and who should get on a plane to Rome? Plus a former colleague who thought politics was about making legislation better, and this week’s recommendations: Cray Wanderers reaching the FA Cup first round after 166 years, Babylon Berlin, and Ari Emanuel’s memoir Roll the Calls.

The Conservatives came home from Birmingham in good spirits. A week on, the polls have moved, Labour has seen off Zack Polanski in Keir Starmer’s old seat, and Andy Burnham has said something about Russia and Brexit that he then spent Monday afternoon in the Commons trying to unsay.Gavin Megaw, Patrick Kidd and Peter Franklin, three former Conservative Central Office colleagues from the Hague years, ask whether the public noticed the Tories’ good week, how Kemi Badenoch fared at PMQs against a Prime Minister who praised her, and whether the Budget in two weeks will tell us if Burnham is planning an early election. Patrick and Peter fall out over whether Labour could take Britain back into the EU without a referendum. Nigel Farage announces a plan to close the asylum system for five years, with a very expensive press conference. And on the centenary of Winnie the Pooh, Patrick decides which of the Hundred Acre Wood the three hosts are.Recommendations this week: the Winnie the Pooh books and Ashdown Forest, Nick Timothy on Michael Gove’s Quite Right podcast [https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/britain-must-come-down-like-a-ton-of-bricks/id1822769271?i=1000794559034], and Alice Thomson in the Times on Britons who coast [https://www.thetimes.com/article/dd524931-41e3-4863-9d02-f6244615431a?shareToken=e2d096fac2a81d1eae99d8a386590364].

The Conservatives have had a good 'no drama' week in Birmingham, and Gavin, Patrick and Peter want to know how much of it was real. Who the party is trying to win back, and in what order. Why the exhibition hall needed a 70-foot tapestry. What your supermarket says about how you vote. Which shadow cabinet speech ended in silence. Plus Kemi's hour on stage, her answer to Suella Braverman, Patrick's story about Jeffrey Archer and a phone call from Margaret Thatcher, Gavin's afternoon in Archer's penthouse, and the Tory performance of the week that didn't happen at the conference. Up or down? Listen to find out.Patrick recommends Words and Music on BBC Radio 3 this Sunday, 11 October. The programme marks a hundred years since the first BBC broadcast of Choral Evensong, from Westminster Abbey on 7 October 1926, and takes the parish church as its theme, with readings from John Betjeman and Thomas Gray and an extract from P.G. Wodehouse's The Great Sermon Handicap. Patrick's wife produced it. He thought it goes out at seven o'clock, but he wasn't sure, so check the Radio 3 schedule before you print a time.Peter recommends Jacob Rees-Mogg's interview with Tucker Carlson, recorded at Rees-Mogg's home and released on 2 October, in which Carlson questions whether Britain should have fought Hitler and Rees-Mogg puts him right on that and on the size of the Russian economy without raising his voice. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RShf_IUpLEA]Gavin recommends Walt Disco, a six-piece from Glasgow, and their third album, which is self-titled and came out on 2 October on EMI North. Bowie, Roxy Music, Orange Juice and Franz Ferdinand are the reference points, and it came by way of the brilliant Bending Sounds record shop in Bangor, County Down.

Andy Burnham used his first conference as Prime Minister to put the state pension triple lock up for grabs and open the door to a new relationship with the EU. Patrick, Peter and Gavin, who all worked at Conservative Central Office together, ask whether it was the smartest speech from a Labour leader in years or a trap he's setting for himself. Then: what Kemi Badenoch needs to do with the opening he's left her, going into her own conference in Birmingham.And three decades of conference disasters from the people who were there for some of them: a dead parrot on a tabloid front page, a shadow cabinet confessing to cannabis use one by one, standing ovations organised in advance, and the speech that fell apart live on stage behind Theresa May.Recommendations: The Pope in France from Peter [https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2026-09/video-highlights-pope-leo-last-day-in-france.html], Tom McTague's Burnham profile from Gavin [https://www.newstatesman.com/cover-story/2026/09/andy-burnham-seizes-control] and Flying Pianos, the eccentric birth of British Aviation by Charles Spicer [https://oneworld-publications.com/work/flying-pianos/].

Three parties are all promising to cut your taxes and none of them can afford to. Patrick has a go at Andrew Griffith over a tweet involving an imaginary young woman in a million-pound flat in zone one. Peter finds the Liberal Democrats trying to out-flank Reform on tax cuts and struggling to explain how they'd pay for any of it. And Rishi Sunak reopens a fight about who gets to call themselves English, which Gavin didn't think needed reopening. Plus the week's polling, an MRP that has Robert Jenrick losing his own seat, and the usual verdict on whether the Tories are up or down.Recommendations: Golden Boy at the Almeida [https://almeida.co.uk/whats-on/golden-boy/]. Chernobyl, on Sky [https://www.sky.com/watch/series/119a15a4-c006-4945-bce5-16fd7b9a284a] and Lord Graham Brady's Kingmaker [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kingmaker-Secrets-Truth-about-Ministers/dp/1804188263].

Our first ever guest. David Davis has views on where Reform's mega donations came from, what Labour plans to do about it, and why the response may be a gift to Farage. He tells the story of a Friday phone call from David Cameron that shaped the 2010 coalition, delivers a verdict on Kemi Badenoch she may or may not thank him for, and explains why he's not expecting an early election. This week's recommendations: David plugs his new podcast with Guto Harri, Politics Unleashed, launching mid-October, and the magazine he reads every month that's currently scaring him. Peter recommends his own ConservativeHome piece on the Prime Ministers we nearly had [https://conservativehome.com/2023/09/05/peter-franklin-nine-prime-ministers-we-nearly-had/], David among them, and how differently 2010 might have gone. And his piece for UnHerd about a Tory/Reform pact looking unlikely [https://unherd.com/newsroom/a-tory-reform-pact-is-further-away-than-ever/]. Patrick has finally caught up with Ludwig, and brings news of a parliamentary inquiry into Britain's Eurovision record. He encourages you to watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnoikRec67k And Gavin picks William Hague in the Times on party donations, from a man who took a few himself as leader of the opposition [https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/pay-politics-reform-ben-delo-donations-cs99qsjss].

Reform's conference week had everything: a pact with Marine Le Pen's party to stop the boats forever, a Channel 4 undercover investigation that cost Farage two of his most senior aides, and masked men blocking roads in Dover and Portsmouth. And underneath it all, a fact almost nobody believes. Boat numbers are falling.Patrick, Peter and Gavin, three veterans of Conservative Central Office, ask what it all means for the Conservatives. Was the Bardella signing a stunt or a genuinely clever move? Is Farage running out of time, and why does his party's vote skew so much older than the AfD's? Is Zia Yusuf the successor, and would he be a bigger problem for the Tories than Farage himself? After the balaclavas, can Kemi Badenoch reach angry voters without repelling everyone else? Plus Burnham's line at PMQs that may follow him for months, the weekly up or down verdict, and a recommendation each, from James Herriot to a rival podcast [https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/not-another-one/id1749531924] to a paper on AI [https://ai-2027.com] that Gavin can't stop thinking about.