00:00This is massive anticipation because the cabinet meeting is the one thing that is everybody knows when it is everyone
00:06processes up it's a very kind of performative piece of theatre and if you're actually in the room quite often
00:11and I suspect obviously don't know this have been the case today it's a bit of a damp squib so
00:16you get all of this kind of I'm going to be briefing this and I'm going to be saying this
00:20and actually quite often ministers telling their own teams or I'm going to do this and I'm going to do
00:24that and then they all sit there together having slagged off the prime minister like almost
00:29up until the door of the meeting room sometimes quite literally having been sending messages and then they sit there
00:35in the room together and there's like just a massive awkwardness where they're shuffling and looking at their shoes or
00:41trying to talk about all sorts of you know non things and no one's really catching each other's eye and
00:46then somebody in our day it was quite often Michael Gove who would suddenly make an impassioned defence of the
00:53prime minister and he'd be looking at him thinking pretty sure that quote just before this meeting came from you.
01:00Here you are standing up telling everybody it's really not okay and then there's like a virtue signalling thing that
01:05goes around the table and all these people who you know full well are trying to topple the prime minister
01:10and then saying the thing is I just think colleagues really should calm down and remember who we are and
01:15what we're here for and you get this massive pomposity with the undercurrent of like we all know that you're
01:21all you're all at it.
01:22Yeah a lot of regretful nods.
01:24A lot of clapping actually and not like ironic like slow claps but actual kind of happy clapping.
01:31I mean it also needs to be said I've been very much at the kind of junior end of the
01:36spectrum as a staffer here and obviously more senior but coming in and working in that building when you're not
01:44in the room for those kind of really intimate should we stay should we go what's our plan.
01:49You know it was brief that the prime minister was getting in takeaways last night and a few key advisors
01:54were there and they were working out what to do and you know as far as I can see it
01:57about 8pm last night they started hitting the phones to get people to come out and defend them.
02:01I was thinking have you guys been on an away day or something where have you been but if you're
02:06elsewhere in the building you know it can be a lovely sunny day like it is today and Tuesday 12th
02:12of May and then you go inside and it's like all the sunlight and vitamin D and oxygen has just
02:18left you and you've you've walked into the kind of underworld of the vampires and it's.
02:23The sense of dread that is kind of dripping through the walls and the sense of inertia like you it
02:30sounds really difficult but many many staffers just sit and refresh Twitter and and are getting more information from watching
02:39the news like anybody else than they are from inside the building because the kind of information tree just breaks
02:44down.
02:45And that the doors close and that bunker mentality people talk about really does happen.
02:51I honestly think it's like a bunker within a bunker.
02:53I think that the people in the people outside of the inner circle in number 10 are obviously the least
02:57often quite often the least well informed in the whole of Whitehall.
03:00Yeah.
03:01Because nobody nobody remembers to tell I'm a Peter Hill the principal private secretary for Theresa May was really good
03:07at remembering that actually.
03:08Yeah he was.
03:09Everything had happened in the in the inner circle and then was happening outside in the media and there's this
03:14gap in the middle where all the people who worked in the building might actually quite appreciate it if their
03:18bosses stood up and said actually this is what's happening today or this is where we are or this is
03:21where we're worried.
03:22It's a it's very easy to forget all of that when you're in the office.
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