🌳 Prime Minister hustings - the build up
🎭 The three different audiences
🍫 The pre match snacks
🎧 Their Favourite Podcasts
✊ Protestors / lobbying from the camps
✍️ Chief Writing Officer
🚀 BGF Scale Up Week
Welcome to the 24 new subscribers. If you are new here, my name is Jimmy McLoughlin, a former Downing Street adviser turned podcaster. I write this notebook on the most interesting things I have seen on the future of work, jobs, technology and politics.
🌳 Prime Minister hustings
A week ago I was preparing to interview the two candidates to be Prime Minister - the biggest job of them all.
My job was under huge scrutiny too, so this notebook mainly focuses on my thought processes in the run up. I’ll write another post in the coming weeks on post match reflections, so make sure
🎭 The different audiences
Whilst interviewing and asking people questions is a big part of what we do at Jimmy’s Jobs of the Future, this was a completely different style to what I was used to.
There were three different audiences: a thousand Conservative members in the Eastbourne Winter Gardens itself, 40,000 or so live viewers on Sky News, BBC etc. and then there were the 20,000 or so podcast listeners, so quite a diverse group.
I was conscious that my role would be different to other interviewers like Nick Ferrari, Harry Cole, Tom Newton Dunn and Seb Payne. I am a Conservative, have advised a couple of Prime Ministers and would also like to have a working relationship with the new Prime Minister!
However, with the Bank of England predicting the day before the hustings that inflation is predicted to be over 13%. Leading towards one of the biggest economic squeezes in history, and you have to remember there has been a Tory government for twelve years, you cannot hold back.
The other challenge is how do you get them to say something a bit more revealing, something that they haven’t already said thus far on the campaign - quite tricky when they are answering around 100 questions a day on record.
So how do you balance those audiences, without coming across as a patsy, but whilst also trying to tease something a little more interesting and different out of the campaigns?
Oh, and to achieve this I had 12 minutes, before handing questions to the audience who then had 15 mins.
Ultimately, I knew that I would only really get 5 to 6 questions, so went hard early, segued into jobs, and then tried to tease out some more illuminating insights out of the candidates.
For example, Liz Truss said if she was starting her career now she would be quite interested in working in the UK’s growing wine sector. They also had some interesting advice for bringing up two daughters in the 21st Century, something they have in common.
You can see the question I plumped for to open proceedings below
🍫 Pre match snacks
Part of what this notebook is about is to give you a behind the scenes look at what it takes running one of the UK’s top business podcasts and other projects I am working on.
I went into see both candidates in their respective green rooms, Rishi Sunak was on his traditional Twix and Sprite and I was impressed to see Liz Truss devouring a fish and chip tea, clearly calmer than my nerves, I managed a couple of gulps of Huel and that was about it :)
More on debate prep below, but first …
🚀 BGF Scale Up Week
Both of the candidates talked about the importance of backing British scale ups. I wanted to let you know about a great event I’ll be attending on exactly that topic. BGF Scale Up week is between 19th - 22nd September. Including appearances from some of the Jimmy’s Jobs alumni like Nigel Toon of Graphcore, Tessa Clarke of Olio and big city names like Nigel Wilson of Legal & General.
There is a huge amount going during the week and lots of it will be free to attend. You can register here.
BGF and Jimmy’s Jobs are working in partnership, if you would be interested in partnering with us, you can check out the opportunities here.
🎧 Favourite Podcasts
The only question I gave the candidates beforehand in the green room was that I was going to ask them their favourite podcast and possibly their favourite British company. I find with questions like that, you are better off giving some warning as you’ll get a better answer.
Rishi Sunak was ‘faster please’ by James Pethokoukis, and it also comes as a Substack which you can subscribe too here.
Liz Truss said it was the excellent ‘women with balls’, which is run by Katy Balls of the Spectator. I’d specifically recommend the one with Victoria Atkins, who I personally think is a bit of an underrated star in the Conservative Party at present.
✊ Protestors / lobbying from the camps
I have been asked a few times if CCHQ or the campaigns had any ground rules for questions, short answer is no. CCHQ just said make sure you keep the ferocity at the same level for both, and the campaigns both sent a briefing note on the afternoon on latest policies of them and the opponent.
As a side note, I do think a huge amount of credit has to go to CCHQ and the whole team, for putting on a dozen hustings in record time. There will always be things like protesters who get in when you are organising events for over 20,000 people in the space of two weeks. And I am grateful in particular to Caroline Peston and Tom Skinner who put me forward to do it, once they get this process done, they’ll have three weeks to turn around party conference with a new leader and possibly a new Chair in charge, although I think Ben Elliot and Andrew Stephenson are both excellent.
On a side note of a side note, I was quite surprised that protection teams didn’t intervene with the protestors, just as I was with Theresa May’s infamous 2017 conference speech (you know the one where everything went wrong, she lost her voice, the backdrop fell apart and she was joined by a protestor giving her a P45)
Good luck to any protestor getting as close to the next US President and coming out alive …
🍦 My pre match warm up.
We got down to Eastbourne and had a walk along the beach in the afternoon, as Liz Truss said on stage, ‘glad to hear you have been having a nice time, Jimmy’.
Truth be told, I always like to go and explore a place before doing a speaking gig / performance, there’s always some insight to be gathered. I was struck by the amount of colourful shops along the beachfront, selling all wide varieties of goods, not just traditional seaside bucket and spade merch, but plenty of entrepreneurial flair like safari photography and Sussex grown chilli sauce.
It is nice to be beside the seaside … I decided against kicking off my comedy career like Michael Mcintyre in Wales. This video always brings a smile to my face …
✍️ Chief Writing Officer
As a jobs podcast, we always enjoy hearing about new job titles, and so I was struck by this new title from Hamish McKenzie, one of the founders of Substack who rather than becoming Chief Creative Officer has decided to take the title Chief Writing Officer.
It is an enjoyable post, contrasting working at Facebook vs. The Guardian:
End of the Notebook …
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