As well as being a brilliant comedian, Matt Forde hosts one of the best political interview podcasts out there. His charm, humour and friendly interview style never fails to bring out the best in his political guests – frequently revealing a charismatic human side to politicians that rarely comes across in more traditional news broadcasts. With the exception of the surreal number of episodes he released in the lead up to the 2024 general election, I’ve endeavoured to listen to every episode of his show, The Political Party podcast.

Back in July, Forde conducted a riveting live episode with the political heavy weight Michael Gove. The live shows (typically hosted in the Duchess Theatre, London) are always among my favourite episodes. The combination of Forde’s jovial hosting style and the captive audience seems a sure fire means to draw out the best anecdotes from politicians and his interview with Gove was no exception.

One story in particular stood out to me given my PhD research looking a UK parliamentary defections. I’ve transcribed this portion of their conversation below:

You do wonder, because Douglas Carswell had surprised Westminster, and I think the people of Clacton, by changing party, you know, you suddenly think who might be next? Because the assurances he had given, as indeed any defector would right up until the moment of defection were um “Well I’m not going to do it”. So there is that automatic suspicion.

In the end, there weren’t that many. And there were a couple of people I did have to talk to who took it in good part, and there were a couple who were offended. But one of the people who we had identified as a primary suspect, was a guy who actually did subsequently defect, a chap called Mark Reckless who was the MP for Rochester. And, you know, he was a very close friend of Douglas’, ultra-eurosceptic, you know if Douglas had a sort of blood brother, mmm, not blood brother, but if he had a sort of ideological soul mate of any kind as well a personal friend it was Mark Reckless, it was pretty obvious.

So I took Mark out to Lunch, in order to ask him about it. And you know, it’s very difficult because you can’t take Kim Philby out to lunch – “Kim you know, I notice that copy of the communist manifesto on your desk and that fetching bust of Lenin, are you thinking about defecting in anyway? Any reason we might be suspicious? You know that ringtone, you know the red armour choir”. [Audience laughter].

And Mark was perfectly polite but he said I’m not going to defect. And then I said “absolutely fine” and I went to pay the bill. And he said “No, no no no, I’ll pay my half,” and at that point I knew that he was going to defect because curiously even as he was doing something which you could argue was dishonourable, he wasn’t so dishonourable to have me pay for his steak and chip.