Working as an MP in these turbulent times

Newsnet Radio Podcast

English - July 28, 2017 04:00 - 18.1 MB - ★★★★★ - 2 ratings
News newsnet scotland scottish politics current affairs interviews election coverage derek Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed

Previous Episode: Does Brexit invite a creative response?

Next Episode: Where next for the independence movement?

This week's keyword is "turbulent". Brexit, Trump, you name it. Turbulent politics and politicians. A turbulent electorate and the social fall-out of the economy, immigration and the rest.

Podcast host Maurice Smith invited Chris Stephens, MP for Glasgow South-west, to discuss all this, as well as his experience at Westminster. As a member of the SNP's much-vaunted intake of 56 MPs in the UK election of 2015, as the party rode the crest of a post-refendum surge, he has witnessed a Tory administration "in action" and up close.

The SNP suffered a setback in June 2017, but Stephens - who joined the party as a teenager following Jim Sillars' stunning Govan by-election victory in 1988 - survived. Here he looks ahead to what today's politics mean for his constituents, and his party as it attempts to plot the way ahead.