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A Very British Election

Veteran Washington political reporter Susan Glasser presents a portrait of the UK Election and the impact of the Manchester attack on the campaigns.

When London was attacked in the final days of the British general election campaign, it was the second attack to take place during the campaign.

Susan Glasser, the chief international columnist for Politico, has followed politics in Washington DC for over 20 years – in late May she travelled to the UK to bring an American perspective to the election and to present a documentary about it. The assumption was it would focus on the scale of Theresa May’s anticipated landslide for her Conservative Party.

But on 22 May, as she was packing her bags to fly to London, news began to break of an attack in the UK that would change all of that. By the time the overnight flight had landed, the campaign had been suspended.

A Very British Election is Susan Glasser’s account of the four days after the Manchester bombing when politics stopped in Britain – how the campaign re-started with the polls tightening – and what this might mean for politics everywhere.

(Photo: People pass a mock ballot box erected to encourage people to vote, Bristol, 2012. Credit: Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

Available now

27 minutes

Last on

Mon 12 Jun 2017 06:06GMT

Broadcasts

  • Tue 6 Jun 2017 12:32GMT
  • Tue 6 Jun 2017 21:06GMT
  • Wed 7 Jun 2017 01:32GMT
  • Sat 10 Jun 2017 04:06GMT
  • Mon 12 Jun 2017 05:06GMT
  • Mon 12 Jun 2017 06:06GMT