We start 2023 with two of the most loved British institutions under urgent assault

9 January 2023, 11:06 | Updated: 9 January 2023, 11:22

By Andrew Marr

@AndrewMarr9

Tonight with Andrew Marr clatters back for a New Year with a great list of upcoming guests – some of the most prominent and interesting politicians and creative people in the country – and an extraordinary agenda to address.

And we start 2023 with two of the most loved British institutions under urgent assault.

The National Health Service is for many people fundamental to what it means to be British. And it's crumbling, losing public support, and coming apart at the seams, even before the strikes.

Already, people are dying who might have lived. I don’t often quote Johnny Vegas, but he told Channel 4 recently: “If we don’t fight for the NHS, we lose ourselves as a country.” That’s how many of us think.

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The fight for the NHS is about money, and where it comes from. But it’s also about learning to do things differently and that is going to be a big focus of my show this year. I won’t just be complaining and pointing at individual tragedies, but I’ll be asking the people who really understand the health service: how do we do this better?

The second Institution under attack is, obviously, the monarchy. After eight months of trying to avoid the Harry and Meghan soap opera, even I have to admit that it is beginning to seriously eat away at the reign of Charles III.

What Harry has said about the “evil” British media and the complicity of his nearest family in it, not only makes the reconciliation he says he wants almost impossible; it also poses huge questions for tabloid editors, Prince William and the King himself to answer.

Past experience suggests none of them will, except by anonymous briefing, which is pretty cowardly. They really ought to; and we will keep asking the questions because what started as a relatively routine sibling struggle, with a little Californian mindfulness thrown in, has become a genuine national crisis.

And after all that there is – oh yes, I nearly forgot – politics. Will there be an election this year? (No, I don’t think so.) Will Boris Johnson attempt yet another comeback? (It would be very ill-advised, but probably.) Meanwhile, in Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, we have two serious-minded, steely, and intelligent people wrestling with a complicated world of trouble.

We will be watching very carefully as the Tory right, and the right to the right of the Tory right mobilises against Sunak. And we will be asking, pretty relentlessly, how Labour expects to get the economic growth it needs to find its increasingly ambitious plans, particularly since it wants to stay outside the single market.

Then there is inflation, wave after wave of strikes, the climate emergency… But I’m not going to offer you a menu consisting solely of indigestible unpleasantness, with pessimism sauce on the side. We will be bringing stories of courage and success, a little rude laughter and of course, those glorious moments of unpredicted mayhem which only happen in live broadcasting.

As my second year with LBC begins I am bubbling with energy, ambition and only a pinch of grated nervousness. Join me please if you can, Mondays to Thursdays, at 6pm.