Dan Snow's History Hit - Inside Downing Street with Gavin Barwell

Episode Date: December 14, 2021

British politician Gavin Barwell served as Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Theresa May from June 2017 to July 2019, one of the most turbulent periods in recent British political history.As the Prime Minister’s senior political adviser, Barwell was at May's side as she navigated tumultuous Brexit negotiations, met Donald Trump, learnt about the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, met Jeremy Corbyn and Keir Starmer to broker a cross-party Brexit agreement - and ultimately made the decision to stand down as Prime Minister.Joining Dan on the podcast, Gavin poignantly reveals a historical first-hand account of how government operates during times of crises, resignations and general elections. Taking us beyond the corridors of power, they discuss the prominence of political advisors, the shifting of power and the decision-making that goes on behind closed doors at 10 Downing Street.Gavin is the author of Chief of Staff: Notes from Downing Street

Hi everyone, welcome, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. We've got a little bit more recent history here. I like to mix it up, as you know. On the podcast we go deep history. We do the Stone Age here. We go all the way back. We cover a lot of ground. And I talk to a lot of historians.

I talk to a lot of archaeologists. I talk to veterans of great historical moments of more recent history. And sometimes I talk to practitioners. I talk to people who wield power. The politicians, the civil servants, the ambassadors and diplomats. And today I've got one right here on the podcast. Gavin Barwell. He's a politician. He's the former Downing Street Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister Theresa May. He was a member of Parliament until 2017. And then he helped Theresa May run her administration until she had to leave office

in order to get the old Brexit deal over the line. This is not just going to be a political podcast, not all about gossip, who said what, when about Brexit, because I'm at the end of my tether, I can't cope with all that stuff. This, if you've heard me listen to politicians before, hopefully it's a bit more general. It's a bit more about power, about the people, about what it does to you, wielding power. It's a bit more about us as history fans trying to understand about the human element in these great historical stories that we're so familiar with. We happen to be talking about Gavin Bower at the beginning of the 21st century, dealing with the crisis of Brexit and other problems. But I think it's fun to think about some of the things he says in the context of some of the other great moments of

history that we hear so much about in this podcast. So I hope you'll forgive me talking about some very recent history indeed. If you want to do a deep dive, if you want to go back to some of that, you know, a bit more, if medieval is your thing, the ancient world, got it all, got it all. Tang China, got it all. Go to History Hit TV. All the podcasts are there, all without the ads. It's the only place you can get all the podcasts, the whole back catalogue, thousands or so of them now. Crikey. It's also a place where you can watch history documentaries.

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But in the meantime, let's hear more from the man who's walked the corridors of power, Gavin Barwell. Enjoy. Gavin, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Absolute pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. This is all, I like getting the doers on here, Gavin, because we have the historians on here who spend their days, their careers, looking into what people like you did and what you were thinking.

And now I can actually just ask you directly. I can cut out the middle person. So there's a great quote at the end of the book, which I'm sure you know, by Teddy Roosevelt called The Man in the Arena, which is about the difference between the doers and the commentators. Yeah, well uh thanks

making me feel so rubbish about that but that's that's a very special quote isn't it but can i ask you first of all because this is not a current affairs podcast this is a history podcast so i'm really fascinated by and every politician and official that comes on here i always ask them from the outside you guys are running around in your official vehicles they have all the trappings of power the corridors corridors of power. Do you feel powerful? Do you feel like masters and mistresses of your own destiny when you're sitting in those rooms and those corridors of power?

So I think you feel powerful in the world. And certainly if you go to another country, people treat you in that way. That was one of the surprises that I had about being chief of staff, that you actually get treated like you're the second most important person after the Prime Minister, ahead of other government ministers. But do you feel masters of your own destiny? I can't say for those two years that I felt that either I or Theresa were masters of our own destiny, because the parliamentary arithmetic was such that, you know, we may have been in Downing Street, but you were effectively governing the country in coalition with Parliament. That, of course, is true.

So the weird thing about the British Constitution, although not just British, as Joe Biden is exploring at the moment, it's all about the parliamentary arithmetic and the legislative branch of government. It's interesting what you just said there about being chief of staff. Just as the office of prime minister

sort of emerged organically from the mists of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, chief of staff is kind of a new thing, right? I mean, when you were a kid going into politics, were there Chiefs of Staff in the same way? No. I think the first person that formally had the title

was Jonathan Powell, who did the job for Tony Blair. So really only just over 20 years old. Now, there were definitely, I think, you can probably think of a few people that worked for previous prime ministers who may have had some of the roles, but certainly in terms of the formal title. It's a relatively recent import from the US. And what does that tell us? Why is it just because we copy the Americans and all things? Or is there something about government? Is there something about the modern world that the prime minister needs their own prime minister? needs their own prime minister.

So I think it's, we've had a fairly recent trend with the sort of army of political advisors that now surround our senior politicians. You went back really maybe to sort of Callaghan-Thach's time. That's when that began. But before that really was very rare for ministers to have political advisors. And as the numbers have grown, the need for someone who is the chief political counsel and managing the rest of the team, I guess,

has evolved over time. So you've been in the executive branch in Downing Street. You've been an MP. You've been a kind of party man. Now you're in the House of Lords. What's that taught you about the British Constitution? Where is power? What's changing?

And is it changing for better or for worse? So I think that famously, we don't have a written constitution. And therefore, where is power? What's changing? Is it changing for better or for worse? So I think that famously, we don't have a written constitution. And therefore, where is power? It's kind of where political authority is. So at the moment, we've got a prime minister who's won a big election. He's got a large majority. And therefore, power is very centralised in Downing Street. Seems to me, if you look at the recent reshuffle, in Downing Street. It seems to me, if you look at the recent reshuffle, you saw a Prime Minister who is very comfortable in his grip on his party, felt very able to make the changes that he wanted to make in his government. So you've got a very strong Prime Minister. And you think back through my political lifetime, I can think of other moments where that was true. Definitely periods

in the early parts of Tony Blair's premiership, definitely periods in Margaret Thatcher's premiership, where those individuals were in a hugely strong political position because they were proven election winners. I think at other times, power is much more diffuse. When I got appointed as chief of staff, it was immediately after the 2017 election. Theresa, if you remember, had called that election, hoping to turn a small majority into a big one, and it actually lost the majority altogether. And that didn't just weaken the government's position relative to Parliament, it also weakened her own authority within her own cabinet. I looked at Theresa May, I thought there was a fundamentally hard-working

public servant who probably had all sorts of ambitions to do things like i mean i'd love to be prime minister i'd love to do loads of things like plant more trees and that kind of stuff but affairs dear boy like events you're just not able is it very frustrating you're sitting in downing street you've got all this power and you've got armenian navy and all these people working and you're spending all day like negotiating with some idiot like boris johnson i mean isn't that just it does that's not why you get into politics, presumably. It must be infuriating. I think nearly every prime minister will tell you that the things that they were passionate about

on the day they walked into the building, they get to spend only a small minority of their time on those things. First of all, I think increasingly, prime ministers deal with foreign relations more than their foreign secretaries. So there's a whole plethora of NATO summits, Increasingly, prime ministers deal with foreign relations more than their foreign secretaries. So there's a whole plethora of NATO summits, G7s, G20s, UN General Assemblies, European councils when we were in the EU, Commonwealth summits.

There's a whole load of that that takes up a lot of the prime minister's time. Whereas the things that probably motivated them were about domestic policy. You know, they probably got elected to improve our health service or our school system or our economy or tackle crime more effectively or improve the environment. And then you are exactly, as you said, you are at the mercy of events. Now, in Theresa's case, I think it was clear on the day that she took over what the big challenge was going to be, which was negotiating a Brexit deal and getting it through Parliament. But if you take Blair's premiership,

he probably would never have envisaged Iraq and Afghanistan as issues that he would be dealing with on the day that he walked into number 10. So things happen around the world and that changes the direction of your premiership. It must be so annoying because you're the guy who actually reached

the top of the greasy pole. You know, like once you're up there and you're like, even I don't feel I can do what I want to do. And I i'm the guy who's won yeah so as much as you can you try and make time for those things you try and eke out space for the things that you proactively want to drive but there's always decisions coming at you that you have to take they're not things you've initiated but things happen either domestically in the country or globally that confront you and you've got to respond to so that's sort of i don't know whether miller never actually said that quite there's a

lot of dispute about whether he actually said it but the one the events dear boy events quote that is attributed to him i think is an apt description of what it's actually like what is the toll i started a podcast business and it gave me profound anxiety? You are running one of the world's biggest economies going through overlapping crises in the face of climate breakdown and resurgent superpower rivalry and various other things. Do you sleep?

What's it like in there? So one of the things I have always been very lucky with in my life is I'm one of these people that when I was able to get my head down on a pillow, I went to sleep straight away. That's why you've got such a baby face you look you look good man you look good you look like about 20 year old i didn't look as good when i left in 2019 um i mean i probably averaged about three and a half hours sleep a night over the two years i would be getting into work just before six and leaving late in the evening and then i mean when you were home you know it was

just a constant stream of phone one of the things I found quite sweet about it actually was that the system, both the other senior politicians, but also the senior civil servants, are very respectful of the prime minister's private time. So they won't, very few people will just ring the PM up to ask them a question when the prime minister isn't in. But Gavin. They are not so respectful of the chief of staff's private time.

So there's this queue would form at my desk during the day of people wanting, you know, what does the prime minister think about this? I'm thinking of doing this. What do you think the prime minister will think? And the weekends, it was just a constant. My wife would say, you know, I was at home at the weekends, but I was not actually present because I was just on my phone the whole time

building this series of queries and questions and need for decisions. I always feel bad talking about this, Dan, because you paint a picture of you getting so little sleep and the pressure you're under, and it must have been a nightmare. But it is actually the most amazing job for the reason that you started on, which is that you've gone into politics because you want to make a difference in your local community, in the country. And here you are, never having expected to be there right at the centre of

government with the opportunity to do that so although it was an incredibly tough period and it had an effect on my health and my wider quality of life it is also and i think it's a really important point to make the most amazing job that i will ever do i can imagine and i've read enough memoirs and talked to people that you must miss it as well yeah Yeah, a bit. Not as much as I thought I would. I think that because I'm not a complete fan of the current government, I don't find myself pining that I was still there. So there are definitely days.

There are days when something interesting happens in the world. And I think, well, I'd love to be in the briefing room and actually know what's really gone on there rather than what you and I have been told about in the news. So there are definitely days when you miss it.. I don't find myself pining for it. This is Dan Snow's History, talking to Theresa May's Chief of Staff, Gavin Barwell. More coming up.

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even though I despise Boris Johnson for the heat of a thousand suns. But I think what I'm interested in is, could you talk to me about, as somebody who's been inside the building, and maybe you're part of this process yourself, but we have seen an erosion in democracy. You know, those sentences I never thought I'd say, both here in the UK,

we've got a powerful populist nationalist challenge in France, obviously Poland, Hungary, has effectively lost their democracies in many ways. America seems like it's a couple of votes away from a catastrophe in that respect. Have you got thoughts about that? Or is that alarmist? Or is something weird going on? The way the executive is treating the legislature here in the UK at the moment, the norms that are being broken.

Is there something going on? the norms that are being broken? Is there something going on? Without being complacent, I would be less concerned about here than I would be about some of the other countries that you have listed off there. And the one that would most particularly concern me is what's going on in the US at the moment. I saw some fascinating and very scary polling the other day, which found that 36% of Americans think that Joe Biden didn't win the election. And 51% think there is a good chance in the next five years that an election will be overturned by politicians from the actual result. I think we're all a bit complacent about what happened after the last presidential election,

because actually it wasn't ultimately successful. But it was a profound challenge to the result of a democratic election in the country that is the leader of the free world. And you're right to name some other countries. Now, I don't, you know, you gave your view on the current prime minister. As I said, I'm not an alloy of fan of him. I wouldn't be quite as critical as you do, because I see good and bad in him. I've known him for a long time, and I've seen some of the good qualities

that he has and some of the things where I take a very different view. I wouldn't be complacent here, but I don't think the problems we have here are as profound as they are in some of the good qualities that he has and some of the things where I take a very different view. I wouldn't be complacent here, but I don't think the problems we have here are as profound as they are in some ways. What is going on, you ask me? Yeah, because there's some strange similarities, right? Like this kind of post-truth thing, like Boris Johnson just saying there's no border in the Irish Sea

and there just is one. That's very weird. Isn't that weird? Or is that the politics we grew up with? Maybe. No, I think that is a change. I think that, first of all, underlying all of this, we've seen a sort of rise in populism on both the left and the right.

And what's caused that? I'm not probably the best person to answer, but I would suggest that there are at least two factors behind it. One is a sense in the aftermath of the global financial crisis that liberal democracy was not delivering for everybody and an increasing sort of frustration with the status quo. I also think sort of social media has had a worsening effect on our politics. And as you say, sometimes I found in the debates on Brexit, people thought

this was a peculiarly British phenomenon. I don't think it is. I think you've listed off some examples from other countries around the world. I think there is a global phenomenon. And more generally, you're seeing a sort of realignment. When I got into politics, the divide was basically about economics. Now, essentially, the arguments were primarily about how much should we be taxed, how much should the government spend, how much should the government regulate. Whereas now it feels to me like the dividing lines in politics are often about culture and identity. And those are harder gaps to compromise on than on economics, where if you and I have a slightly different view about the size of the state, we can probably both live with something in the middle, right? Whereas these culture cultural identity questions, they're not so easy to find compromises. You know, it is, of course, you're right,

social media, it's the post-2008, it's these things. What are you seeing that makes you think these are some solutions? We're all getting pretty good at diagnosing the problem now. And are there things that you've been in it again, as a man that's been in it, in the arena? What can we do to re-fortify our commitment to democracy, to refine that sort of confidence in liberal democracy? So I think, first of all, politicians at the centre need to have answers to the questions about how do you get liberal democracy to deliver for the broad mass of people in terms of improved living standards. So that is about equity. Those are policy answers. I think in terms of social media, there's a debate going on right now about anonymity, that you obviously got to have some protection for whistleblowers.

But I think my experience as an elected MP is that what people will say to you from an anonymous social media account is so different from what anyone would ever say to you face to face if they met you, that that needs addressing. addressing i also think and this is something politicians need to do so i got into politics in a slightly nerdy way down right i got into politics through debating hey listen you're among friends here man don't worry about that and people often think to be a good debater is about being good at public speaking and i would actually argue that one of the core skills in being a good debater is being a good listener he's listening to what the other person is saying and working out okay where are the strong bits of their argument that i need to kind of dodge and where are the vulnerabilities that i can pick apart a little bit and i think

what we're missing in our politics at the moment is too many people live their lives in an echo chamber where they just listen to people who've got the same views as them and are from similar backgrounds then you're never going to learn anything from them now what i enjoyed about being an mp sometimes was hearing people speak who maybe i didn't have the same views as them but they had different life experiences to me and brought different perspectives to things and you could learn things from that and adapt your own views a bit in response to what you heard and that feels to me like what is missing a bit from our political debate. You're talking to a guy here who debated Boris Johnson once and I have to say I didn't see much listening on the other side of the stage there was there was a lot of broadcasting there

wasn't a lot of listening I tell you what you mention policy to re-engage people to convince people that liberal democracy is the best vehicle for delivering the greatest happiness to the greatest number. What about constitutional change? Again, you're among nerds here, so just let's get into it. Are there things that we can do to shore up, you know, the huge debates in the States at the moment about things like the filibuster, for example. But are there things in Britain we can do around the House of Lords, which you remember, around the voting systems, around ministerial codes or whatever it is. Are there things that you think

need to happen that involve actual statute law? So I think there are improvements we can make. I wouldn't overstate how much of a difference they would make on their own. I think some of the economic things

are more important. But to give you an example, I've always been in favour of reform of the House of Lords and I haven't changed my view just because I now happen to be in it. I think it's difficult to justify having a second House of Parliament that is wholly appointed. People ought to elect at least the vast majority of its members.

On the voting system, probably I'm just betraying my centrism now. I always think the difficulty here is that there is no perfect answer. There is no such thing as a perfect voting system, and it kind of depends what you want from it the strength of first past the post is it gives us a government that has got a majority that can do things and that we can then hold to account about whether it's delivered what it's promised on well it hasn't done brilliantly there's first post post creaking a bit at the moment isn't it in a multi-party system but yeah that's that's but you can balance it out if you have an elected second chamber or a majority elected second chamber, you could use a PR system for that. But the weakness of first past the post is it gives a very strong voice to the big parties and it doesn't capture the full breadth of public opinion.

So I think you could combine House of Lords reform with something which tried to address some of the concerns about first past the post. But look, the problems that we're seeing in politics globally, we're seeing them in countries that have PR systems and don't have a house of lords. So we shouldn't convince ourselves that those changes on their own, even though there might be a case for some of those constitutional reforms, we shouldn't convince ourselves that they're going to solve the thing on their own, because I don't think they will. And then speaking of global, I mean, obviously, I believe Brexit was catastrophe in the biggest possible philosophical sense, which is, I believe, was a catastrophe in the biggest possible philosophical sense, which is I believe ultimately the biggest problems we face need to be solved internationally,

transnationally. And whilst using imperfect things like the UN and the EU to do that is more effective than trying to tackle too much carbon in our atmosphere as Britain or London or England or Dan Snow. Migration, crime, tax evasion, climate breakdown, China? These are things we've got to work closer with people, haven't we? So let me first of all just reassure you a bit. I think even the people that campaign for Brexit would agree with your first statement. So they would agree that these problems have to be tackled globally. They would just say it should be through independent nation states cooperating together through the UN. Now, I didn't agree with that. I campaigned for Remain primarily for the

reason that you said. I think if you look at the threats that we face in the world today, whether that's Russia or China, European countries face the same threats. They have the same views about how to tackle them, and they're more able to do it if they work together to do it. I think back, one of the big things that happened when I was Theresa's chief of staff was the attempted murder of the Skripals in Salisbury with a Russian chemical weapon. And we definitely got a stronger response from European countries because we were part of the EU. And Theresa could go and talk to those 27 other heads of government as a group, present the evidence we had about what happened. It would be much harder to do that now, given the strain in relations

and given that we're outside of the club now. So who has benefited most from Brexit? I think Putin will be feeling pretty pleased about it. That was always my sort of biggest concern about it, that wider strategic picture. And more and more of the problems we face are of this global nature, the climate crisis being, of course,

the most important example. What's the best help that we can give you? So I'm here going, God damn government, it'd be useless. I'm sitting on my phone, I'm on Twitter being rude to people. I'd never be rude to people if I met them in real life. What is the kind of rights and responsibilities of the people? When you're in Downing Street, like, look, I'm trying my best here. You could give me a hand. What can we do?

So I think right at the moment, just a little bit of solidarity with your MP, whether you agree with them or not, is a good thing. I mean, what happened to the horrific murder of David Amess? I was very touched to see Joe Cox's husband, you know, encourage people just to contact their MP and express some solidarity and respect for what they're doing as public service. It's not an easy job being an MP.

And you might have an MP you think is great, who you agree with, and you might have one that you think, I really don't have a lot in common with this person. But the vast majority of them are trying to do the best job that they can, do what they think is right for the country. So that's a good starting point. Then I would also say to people, what we've been through in British politics over the last three or four years has got a lot more people interested in politics. That's a good thing. And people need to get involved. A lot of people say to me that actually the choice that they got offered at the last election between Boris Johnson

and Jeremy Corbyn didn't feel like a great choice to them. Well, you know, people need to get involved and back people who are closer to their views and encourage them to get along. You know, that's ultimately the reason Theresa didn't succeed, is that whether you agree with her or not, she was trying to sell a compromise on Brexit. And not only did the MPs not want to compromise, too many of the British public didn't want to compromise either. Well, I've got you.

I'll let you go now, but let's just quickly get into the weeds slightly. It must be difficult for you guys. She hammered out a workable compromise that was then trashed by a faction led by Boris Johnson, who used it to get rid of her, and then did exactly the thing that they'd most criticise her for. Is that not brutal? That's politics, I think she would say. I mean, she got trashed by a pincer movement of that group of people, exactly as you said, but also a group

of people who were so opposed to Brexit that they wanted a second referendum to try and overturn it and she got caught in the middle there's a great quote in the book from mark ritter the dutch prime minister where he sort of says this thing that we've created is a compromise and that's a good thing but it's also pretty ugly yeah everyone hates compromises it's a good thing, but it's also pretty ugly. Yeah, everyone hates compromises. It's a messy, complicated, ugly thing because it is a compromise. And selling that is not easy when, you know, some people were saying, well, let's just break free completely. And other people were saying, no, let's just stop Brexit altogether and overturn it.

Those are very simple, powerful, emotive messages. And you've got one person saying, well, hang on, like 52% voted this way and 48% that way. Two of the four nations voted Leave, two voted Remain. We kind of need to find something that everyone can live with, even if it's not perfect. That's a much more complicated thing to try and sell to people. No, I get that.

But the fact that the let's just get out of here gang ended up taking the worst possible part of your deal, like the bit of your deal that they hated the most, and then just making that the centrepiece of the new deal is extraordinary. Well, it was even more than that. What they did on Northern Ireland, which is what I presume you're referring to, they went back to, Theresa had fought for months and months and months to get rid of this idea of a Northern Ireland only arrangement. And the whole of Parliament, the whole House of Commons voted unanimously that nobody could ever accept that. And then

they went back to that. But then, you know, if you listen to Tim Shipman, who's the political editor in Sunday Times and sort of Doyen of political journalists, made the point that sometimes politics is just the art of the possible. And Boris Johnson realised that actually, that's the way I can get it done. Yeah, like Charles de Gaulle. I mean, come on, you know, you get into office and absolutely, the great Machiavelli quote, the promise given was a necessity of the past. The promise broken is a necessity of the present. But I mean, still, it hurts, man.

It hurts. And I feel some solidarity there. Yeah, so it's less personal. The thing that I find really frustrating, Dan, is what the consequences have been for Northern Ireland. I think too many people in British politics don't really think about Northern Ireland. They don't have any understanding of how fragile the peace process is there.

The very delicate compromises it's built on. And what's been done has disturbed that balance, essentially. You've now got essentially the unionist community saying they want the whole thing torn up. And there's a real threat to the Good Friday Agreement and to the institutions that it created. And that's what makes me really angry, rather than the personal side of it. It's almost like it was bludgeoned through by someone who doesn't ever read anything and has no idea of the details of anything. What I say in the book is my frustration. Boris Johnson, when he was Mayor of London,

could not have been more helpful to me when I was the MP for Croydon. And I thought he was a good Mayor of London, and I'm grateful for the help he gave and i admired the work he did there but my frustration when he was foreign secretary is exactly that i could not get him to focus on the detail of what all this meant for northern ireland and he would just say oh this is just the eu trying to keep us in their orbit and it's all made up it's not real you know we see now it is real yeah reality that's the the thing that boris has spent much of his career sort of um trying to avoid i think right gavin barwell thank you very much for coming on what's your book called the book is called chief of staff rather unimaginatively

notes from downing street hey listen does what's on the tin good luck with it and i mean the nice thing is i guess about the house was for you is that you get to keep your hand kind of in right you're yeah a little bit although i to be honest i spend most of my time now on some of the other things that i'm doing but what i wanted to do with the book was try to explain to people who don't spend all their lives fascinating over politics what actually goes on behind that famous black door and how government works during what was a really turbulent period i mean how did you you have is it three kids three boys yeah how did you see them during that period i mean so it was tough i think if you were asking that question to my wife she would say i didn't see a lot of them for two years one of the things i say at the start of the book is that politicians like to describe what they do as

public service and that's true it is but it's also a selfish thing right you choose to do it and you're choosing to put your career, at least for a period of your life, as the most important thing. So you kind of have to recognise that and repay the debt down the line. Episode one of The West Wing, Leo McGarry, White House Chief of Staff, tells his wife,

she goes, nothing's more important than our marriage. She goes, this is. Yeah. Yes. I have watched The West Wing with my wife. Okay. I don't want to traumatise. I don't want to get into that.

Let's see you soon. Thank you very much indeed for coming on. Pleasure. Thanks for the opportunity to talk about it. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Thank you for making it to the end of this episode of Dan Snow's History Hour. I really appreciate listening to this podcast. I love doing these podcasts.

It's a highlight of my career. It's the best thing I've ever done. And your support, your listening is obviously crucial for that project. If you did feel like doing me a favour, if you go to wherever you get your podcasts and give it a review, give it a rating, obviously a good one, ideally, then that would be fantastic and feel free to share it. We obviously depend on listeners, depend on more and more people finding out about it, depend on good reviews to keep the listeners coming in.

Really appreciate it. Thank you.