Common cause and conventions

We make our first appearance of 2019 and it's our longest edition ever. I leave it you to decide if this is a good thing.... Lesley spent the last week in London and we begin by looking at her appearance on the BBC's Politics Live. I'm giving no secrets away by revealing in advance that she didn't enjoy it. However, in stark contrast to this, Lesley spent Friday speaking and chairing sessions at "Think Anew, Act Anew", an emergency Convention on the need for a second EU referendum. The Convention was designed to draw on new voices from within and outside Parliament, with a focus on fresh thinking, and featured high profile speakers such as Caroline Lucas, Joanna Cherry, James O’Brien, and Fintan O'Toole. The big question is, should the SNP get drawn into this type of cross-party cooperation and possibly lose focus on the prize of Scottish independence? John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, broke with Parliamentary convention earlier this week by allowing an amendment of a government business motion which lead to a defeat for the executive. He was brutally attacked for this "unconstitutional" behaviour in the Tory press. I try and give a wee bit of context. In addition to all this there's chats about Andy Murray, Winston Churchill, Gary Lineker and Gary Mackay-Steven.