What If: George was PM during Covid?

About this episode

George Osborne and Ed Balls explore hypothetical scenarios in politics, including leadership during Covid and the implications of Brexit.

In another special ‘What If’ edition of EMQs George Osborne and Ed Balls consider the would be worlds and outcomes, if just one historical event went another way. In a more theoretical ‘What If’ they consider what would happen if MPs couldn’t abstain and had to vote aye or nay on every bill. Ed believes this could lead to a breakdown in our system, while George thinks it could reprimand a mistake made by the recent Tory governments.  An anonymous question from someone in government poses a radical change to our recent history: What if Trump became a unifying anti-gun and violence figure after the attempted assassination in 2024? This would have had massive implications for our current world, but would it be believable? George is sceptical, while Ed wonders if Trump would have gone on to a greater landslide victory or if the MAGA movement would have turned on him. Finally, a pair of EU related ‘What Ifs’. Had the Brexit results been flipped, who leads the country into 2020 and the pandemic? George? David Cameron? Or is it still Boris Johnson? Also, what if the Maastricht or Lisbon treaties had been put to the country as referendums? Would Brexit still have happened…

People in this episode

Hosts: George Osborne, Ed Balls

Topics covered

• political hypotheticals
• Brexit implications
• Covid leadership
• historical events
• political analysis
• Trump's influence

Keywords

• George Osborne
• Ed Balls
• Brexit
• Covid
• Trump
• political hypotheticals
• historical events

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Tory, EU

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