Terrific conversation between Ken Clarke & Peter Mandelson https://twitter.com/LordSpeaker/status/1387753849423806469?s=20

“The NHS was a dying shambles in the late 1980s” – Clarke

“My 1st party conference was when Harold Macmillan was explaining to an extremely hostile conference why he had applied to join the European Community” – Clarke

Worst mistake we made, Michael Heseltine & I agreed, was to accept we wouldn't join the single currency without a referendum – Clarke

We thought this daft promise would die, but then Tony Blair adopted the same policy – Clarke

Blair said to Clarke: What do you think I could do on the eve of an election? You've left us with no choice

“I think you’ll find the answer to that question if you dial M for Murdoch” – Mandelson

Mandelson agrees with Clarke that “PR people in No 10 who over-use focus groups ought to be cleaned out of politics”

Clarke says it was a “disastrous mistake” for “both our parties” to have their leaders not elected by parliamentarians

Lord Speaker Norman Fowler reads out Q from John Birt: What has to happen before we have a govt again of the centre-left or centre-right?

Clarke disses Johnson: “Show-business personalities & larger-than-life characters tend to emerge as leaders now rather than articulate, eloquent, persuasive political figures”

“We’ve gone in for too much of this right-wing populist stuff”