This year’s special Christmas edition of The Rundown podcast comes in the form of a festive quiz, seeing how much our reporters can remember about another mad 12 months in Westminster

You can play along at home too, so let us know if you do better than our teams, and there will be a text version of the quiz available online at PoliticsHome.com if you’re looking for a fun way to spend your Boxing Day.

But there to play the quiz live in the studio alongside host Alain Tolhurst are three teams of intrepid hacks, starting with team one made up of Zoe Crowther and Matilda Martin from PoliticsHome, team two are two more PolHome reporters; Tom Scotson and Harriet Symonds, and team three are friend of the pod James Heale, deputy political editor of The Spectator, back for his 4th year on our Christmas podcast, alongside Zoë Grünewald, Westminster Editor at The Lead and political broadcaster.

Enjoy, and a very merry Christmas from The Rundown team!

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Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced by Nick Hilton and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot

As we head towards Christmas and look back at the political year, this week's episode features the author of the most explosive and controversial political book of 2025, Ungovernable, the diaries of the former Chief Whip Simon Hart.

Now known as Lord Hart of Tenby having been promoted to the House of Lords, he drew criticism from his own former colleagues after lifting the lid on his time inside the Whips office during the dying days of the Conservative government.

He spoke to host Alain Tolhurst about the anger he faced for breaking the omerta of the whipping system, what the Labour government can learn from his time in office, and insights from a new political life in the upper chamber and in opposition.

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Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced by Nick Hilton and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot

With more leadership speculation swirling around Keir Starmer and claims he is seen as a ‘caretaker Prime Minister’, this week the podcast takes a look at things from the other end of the telescope; asking how do you protect the person in charge if you’re working inside Number 10? What can you do to defend your principal and neutralise any threats they face?

Well to answer that three people who worked at the coalface in different Downing Street administrations and faced a litany of internal threats join host Alain Tolhurst. First up is Beatrice Timpson, who was deputy press secretary to two prime ministers, Liz Truss and then Rishi Sunak, and is now a director at Sanctuary Counsel.

Alongside her is Guto Harri, who was Downing Street Director of Communications in the final year of Boris Johnson’s premiership, and also Paul Harrison, press secretary to Johnson’s predecessor Theresa May for three years, and now an Executive Director at Lexington.

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Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced by Nick Hilton and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot

This week Britain’s newest party - Your Party - finally got going in earnest, after a difficult birth to say the least. Over the past few months since its unexpected launch there have been legal threats , accusations of misogyny, boycotts, expulsions, resignations, and at the heart of it all acrimony between its two leading figures; Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, and that’s all before they’d even held a conference to decide on a permanent name and leadership structure.

But last weekend several thousand members put all that aside, well mostly, to meet in Liverpool, and both The House magazine's deputy editor Sienna Rogers, and PolHome reporter Tom Scotson, were up there to cover it. They join host Alain Tolhurst to talk it all over, and discuss where the party goes now, alongside Andrew Fisher, director of policy for the Labour Party under Corbyn.

• Sienna’s article on the formation of Your Party is available here
• You can listen to The Radio 4 Profile of Zarah Sultana she appears on here
• To read Tom’s story about MP Ayoub Khan killing a dog click here
• His article on the Muslim vote for the Telegraph is here
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Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced by Nick Hilton and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot

After another momentous tax-raising fiscal event from Rachel Reeves, this week we’re running the rule over the 2025 Budget, with its further freezes to tax thresholds, the scrapping of the two-child limit on benefits, reforms to savings, pensions and ISAs, as well motoring and property taxes, and a host of cost-of-living measures too.

Oh and the fact the whole thing was leaked by the OBR half an hour before the Chancellor stood up in the Commons to deliver the thing...

To discuss all that and much more on this bumper episode we’re going to hear from the Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride, Treasury minister Lucy Rigby, economists James Smith from the Resolution Foundation and Carsten Jung from the IPPR think tanks, as well as Labour MP Yuan Yang, who sits on the Treasury select committee.

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Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced by Nick Hilton and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot

As Reform UK continue to top the polls, this week we’re looking at why so many voters are turning away from the two main parties and looking in Nigel Farage’s direction, and what they need to do to convert the curious into an election-winning majority.

So PoliticsHome has teamed up once again with the polling and strategy gurus at Thinks Insight, who have conducted focus groups with a host of Labour and Conservative voters thinking of backing Reform next time round, asking why they are ditching their previous party.

So to help host Alain Tolhurst assess the results of this work and look at how and why the political landscape of the UK is changing, he is joined by Allie Jennings, director at Thinks, along with leading academic Paula Surridge, Professor of Political Sociology at Bristol University, and PolHome editor Adam Payne.

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Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced by Nick Hilton and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot

As the Budget finally looms into view, this week the panel takes a look at one of the potential tax reforms suggested to Chancellors year-in, year-out, that could transform the Treasury coffers, but is one that this government, and every previous one stretching back decades, has refused to touch - council tax.

While economists and tax experts all agree it is an unfair, outdated and regressive levy, nobody has the political will to change it, so to look at why that is, and what it could be replaced with, host Alain Tolhurst is joined by Labour MP Jonathan Brash, chair of the APPG on council tax, along with Dan Neidle, founder of Tax Policy Associates, and two members of the Treasury select committee - Conservative former minister Harriett Baldwin, and Labour’s Catherine West.

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Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced by Nick Hilton and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot

There is a crisis in higher education, as financial woes threaten the UK’s world-renowned university sector, with dozens of institutions in serious financial difficulties with fears of cuts, closures and collapse.

Joining host Alain Tolhurst to discuss what is causing such strain on universities, how it can be solved, and what may happen if it doesn’t, are the former universities minister, Conservative peer Lord Jo Johnson, as well as Vivienne Stern, chief executive of Universities UK, Jess Lister, director at the strategy consultancy Public First, as well as Sarah Stevens, director of strategy at The Russell Group of leading universities, and Matilda Martin, reporter at PolHome.

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Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced by Nick Hilton and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot

With the Autumn Budget looming, this week The Rundown takes a look at one of the key players in shaping the government’s fiscal policy, but one that we know little about. 

The forecast on the future health of the British economy delivered to Rachel Reeves by the Office for Budget Responsibility will have more impact on shaping what the Chancellor announces next month than almost anything else, but who are the unelected panjandrums who sit on the independent body known as the OBR, how reliable are their economic estimations, and why do they hold so much sway over the Treasury?

Joining host Alain Tolhurst to discuss whether the OBR really runs Britain, and if it needs reform, or perhaps abolition all together as some have suggested, is the Conservative former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, and Ben Zaranko, associate director at the think tank the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and Jeevun Sandher, a Labour MP and former member of the Treasury Select Committee.

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Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced by Nick Hilton and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot

As the storms roll in and all memories of summer recede, for the health service this only means one thing; the start of the annual winter pressures faced by the NHS.

After record waits in A&E last year, sharp increases in corridor care and waiting lists spiralling further beyond long-missed targets, this week host Alain Tolhurst looks at what the government is doing to prevent another crisis this winter.

Joining him are Helen Morgan, Liberal Democrat MP and her party’s spokesman on health and social care, along with Rosie Beacon, research manager and head of health at  the Re:State think tank, and Siva Anandaciva, director of policy at the King’s Fund, a health sector charity.

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• And to submit your nomination for this year's Women in Westminster: The 100 list, click here

Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced by Nick Hilton and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot

After the collapse of the Chinese spying case, host Alain Tolhurst looks at the state of the Anglo-Sino relationship, how it has evolved over the years, where UK-China relations are now under this current government, and what should be done to improve them.

On the panel are Tony Vaughan, Labour MP for Folkestone and Hythe, and chair of the all-party parliamentary group on China, along with Mark Field, former minister for Asia and author of The End of an Era: The Decline and Fall of the Tory Party, with Dr Kerry Brown, Professor of Chinese Studies and director of the Lau China Institute at Kings College London, and Luke de Pulford, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China.

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• And to submit your nomination for this year's Women in Westminster: The 100 list, click here

Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced by Nick Hilton and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot