
Episode 5461: Keir Starmer Steps Down As Populism Rises In London ...
Loading summary
Keir Starmer
I will remain in post as Prime Minister until the contest is complete, and I will do everything I can to ensure an orderly handover of power. I will also give my successor my full and unequivocal support, knowing that they will inherit a Britain that is far stronger and fairer than the one I inherited two years ago, better prepared for the challenges ahead, and better able to ensure the Labour Party secures a second term in office.
News Anchor
That was Keir Starmer this morning in London as he announced his resignation as Britain's prime minister. Members of Starmer's own Labour Party had been calling for new leadership for months, with speculation over his resignation growing last week after the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, won a special election for Parliament. Burnham is reportedly eyeing the top job and what will be Britain's seventh prime Minister a decade. He's scheduled to be sworn into the House of Commons today and to speak with Starmer this week, even though there have been calls for this for months. What's the reaction to the resignation?
Political Commentator
Everybody could see this coming. Over the course of the last few days, I have spoken to one British official who said to me, we can't just think that by changing the person at the top, we can change the fundamental problems that Britain has. And now the joke is in the uk, we're trying to be Italy. And that was the country that was constantly changing leadership and Britain was meant to be known for stability. That certainly doesn't look to be the case. And whether Andy Burnham can make a better bet of the British economy than Keir Starmer did just by being more charismatic, I think most people would say that remains to be seen.
Reporter
Did see Keir Starmer this morning coming out here outside of 10 Downing street to announce he was stepping down as Prime Minister and as leader of the Labour Party. I will say he was quite emotional. You know, he was saying how everything he's done, he's done out of love for his country. He thanked his wife, his children. He said he would support whoever the next leader is, but that he doesn't feel he is the best person to lead Labour into the next election. Now, you guys mentioned it, but this all comes after that special election was held in Makerfield. The former mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, was running in that and had suggested that if he won, he would mount a formal leadership challenge. He did win. And so Starmer getting out ahead of that and stepping down. I will say, moments ago we did hear from Burnham that he would be running as the next leader of the Labour Party. And this morning we've been seeing prominent labor officials coming out to throw their support behind Burnham. So he could very well be the next Prime Minister. But we'll have to wait and see how that plays out. Starmer, for his part, you know, won in a landslide in 2024. But as you guys mentioned, there had been growing calls for him to step down in recent weeks and months. There was frustration that Labour was losing support to the Green Party, to the anti immigration Reform Party as well. Voters frustrated with the economy, with the rising cost of living. But also, you know, we can't ignore the Epstein scandal, and we've talked about it repeatedly, but Starmer was responsible for appointing Peter Mandelson as British Ambassador to the US at a time when it was known that Mandelson had closed ties to Epstein. And so there had been calls for him to step down back then as well. He survived that, but clearly the frustration kept mounting. And we'll see if we get more reaction from world leaders. We heard from the Australian Prime Minister this morning saying Starmer can be proud of what he's accomplished. We, of course, heard from President Trump over the weekend saying that Starmer would step down. So, unclear if Trump had been giving a given a heads up or if that was just speculation on his part. He said that Starmer had failed on things like immigration and energy. We know that there had been no love lost there between Trump and Starmer. Trump frustrated with Starmer for not getting involved in Iran. So we'll see if we get additional reaction from President Trump as the day goes on.
Nigel Farage
On May 7, in the Midlands, Yorkshire, all the north of England, reform scored absolutely stunning victories in areas that Labour had dominated for the best part of 100 years. The sheer scale of our victory against Labour made it inevitable that this Prime Minister could not survive. And because of that, Burnham steps forward and wins quite convincingly. The Makerfield by election. Ironically, with the same message that we had in the local elections. Ours was vote reform, get Starmer out. His was vote Burnham, get Starmer out. Unbelievably, we're about to have our sixth Prime Minister in seven years. I remember growing up thinking Italy was totally ungovernable as they went through a new Prime Minister every year. And yet that's where we are here. Why is it all happening? And why did we get that big number of votes in the north of England? Well, 10 years ago, on the 23rd of June 2016, we voted Brexit. Much of our political establishment has never accepted the result, and even those that reluctantly did, namely the Conservative Party. Refused to implement what voters demanded, namely lower levels of immigration and more freedom for our sole traders and small businesses. They were just two of the benefits we could have taken. Having got back self governance under Starmer, the Labour Party has moved much closer back to the European Union. And if Mr. Burnham wins, they'll go closer still. Which means Labour voters and the Labour Party are completely divided by on this issue. But the bigger point today is that of a mandate is that of legitimacy. I have no idea whether there'll be a contest or a coronation. But what I do know is the British public have simply had enough of political parties chopping and changing their leaders at will. We vote for somebody in a general election to be our Prime Minister. We expect them to to serve their term. And barring ill health or exceptional circumstances. What is going on here, frankly is reminiscent of a banana republic that has totally devalued the very process of general elections and democracy. I demand we at reform demand a general election. After all, when the Conservatives were chopping and changing prime ministers, Labour kept saying there should be a general election. On that point the Conservative Party say there's no need for a general election because they're part frankly of the uniparty. It's as if the whole thing is a game. Labour did not actually carry out their mandate of 24, did a whole number of things. A whole number of things. Whether it was the tax on family farms, the giving away of the Chagos Islands and much else that wasn't in the manifesto. If it is Mr. Burnham, he didn't even stand at the last general election. Britain is broken. Six prime ministers in seven years should convince you of that fact. We are ready for a general election and I suspect many of you too are ready for a general election. The thought we're going to go through weeks, maybe months of paralysis in a country whose debt is rising faster than any country in the world apart from Botswana, where the boats continue to come across the English Channel every day. The whole thing is not acceptable. Let's have a general election. Let's get a government with a clear democratic mandate.
Stephen K. Bannon
Monday 22nd June in the year of our Lord 2026, on the eve of the eve of the 10 year anniversary of Brexit. When I bring in Ben Harnwell. By the way, Raheem is over in London right now working with Nigel on this team. You heard our colleague Nigel Farage calling for a general election. Not this kind of shift. The deck chairs on the Titanic of the Marxist jihadist Labor Party. Ben Harnwell A lot of reasons here. Their economy's in the tank per capita GB GDP I think is less than Mississippi, the 50th state for GDP per capita in the nation outside of London. It's essentially a third world country inside of London. It's not much better in certain areas of it. Immigration. The reason Nigel won Brexit 10 years ago was not, was not about the laws in Brussels. That was part of it. Right. That was Boris Johnson's pitch as the official Brexit campaign. But Nigel, who lost the funding for the official, did the unofficial and drove people to want to get their country back and their sovereignty back. On this issue of immigration and migration and remigration, it's now reared its head. Where do we stand? Is. And we're going to talk about Italy in a moment. Is the United Kingdom a banana republic, sir?
Ben Harnwell
Yeah, pretty much. It's certainly on the way to being one. And that's what really happens when you have jealousy and bitterness at people's success as the prevailing philosophy of your government. And that's exactly what we've seen under the K. Starma government. Not so much because of Keir Starmer himself, but because of Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor who's been Chancellor of Dick Checker, what we call Treasury Minister, Treasury Secretary, what Americans would call that. They've been absolutely appalling. I, I want to so many things to bounce off what, what both the cold open Steve and what you also just said. I am one of these people who voted Brexit specifically because of the sovereignty issues. The idea that Britain, the history of Britain, the constitutional architecture dictated that we ourselves via Parliament determined our own destiny. And it was really, it was like a very ill fitting saddle for us, for the UK being in the European Union and having the laws of the European Union override British national that, that, that there's a lot of people that, that that concept was never acceptable to. The immigration issue, as you point out, I think is one that's not, not only is it not going away, it's the principal reason I think that Nigel Farage did so well in the local government elections across the country that he's just alluding to in May last month, including in this very constituency of Makerfield where Andy Burnham just got in with quite a substantial convincing majority. So many things to say. Let me just respond off what Nigel Farage said about calling for a general election. There's something that he didn't say there but it's implicit in what he said. And I think this is the trend of dynamics moving Forward. He pointed out that Kemi Badenuk, the leader of the Tory Party, has said that there is no need for a general election. And constitutionally, that's absolutely true. But that's not why she's making that argument. She's making that argument because if anybody is terrified of reform UK and Nigel Farage in the next general election, it's not so much Andy Burnham who's the presumed incoming Prime Minister, it's the Tory party, because that is the trend. That is the lesson that I have drawn from. In the space of a month, one result going in one way at the local government elections, and the month later at this national parliamentary election, a very different result in the same territory. It's that people are sick to death of performative politicians. They hated Keir Starmer, they hate the British Conservative Party. Nigel Farage is something refreshing and different and authentic. But when I say refreshing, different and authentic, I think a lot of people, especially in the industrial north, will also ascribe those attributes also to Andy Burnham. So the threat, I would suggest, for the British establishment isn't so much in the Labour Party. They've got a good, charismatic.
Jim Rickards
But, but, but.
Stephen K. Bannon
Slow down, slow down, slow down. The reason we started with this today is I want to connect some dots here. The problem with Burnham, and Burnham's an upbeat guy. He's, you know, charismatic. He'll be happy in his job, not tower like Sir Keir, right? He's got the kind of upbeat personality of Nigel Farage. But the problem is the same problem. The Bernie Sanders and the phony populists here, the Mandamis, they're not really populist nationalists because they're globalists. Burnham, the central beating heart of labor, is to continue to flood the zone with foreigners. I think you've. I think you've added 13 since the Tories came to party. And the Tories are terrible, don't get me wrong, but Labor's five times worse is. Is to flood the zone with foreigners. I think you've added a nation of 80 million people. You've added 13 million foreigners. This is why Nigel's issue is to unite the right. He's got the Tommy. He's got the Tommy Robinson. More what I would say, lad vote right. Which is actually, you know, and Nigel just came to do the remigration last summer. He was very. He was pretty adamant about not touching that until, I think, forced to. Your thoughts on that?
Ben Harnwell
Look, I know we've got a break coming up, but I. I would push back slightly on this. As I say, it's the same. It's the same territory that's forced to separate.
Stephen K. Bannon
When Ben. When Ben says, I know we've got a break coming up, that's a message to Steve. Let's talk about this and break so we can show a unified front on the way out. Hang on for a second, Ben. I'm gonna let you still get all the Runway you need. I know you and I, you and I don't agree with this. Hey, more importantly, Nigel Farage and I don't agree on this either. Nigel's pretty adamant. Anyway, we're packed this morning. A lot going on with dni Director of National Intelligence. Brother Pulte is over there. They're trying to dig him out. I think a lot of explosive information's about to come out. We got this. The quote unquote deal, which I think now we're bound and determined to give the Persians $6 billion of cash money on pallets. Maybe, maybe somebody can be talked out of that at the last second. We're gonna go through all of that. Dr. Fauci. Miranda Devine did an amazing piece in the New York Post on the crimes of Fauci and why they're not being prosecuted. But it speaks to a deeper issue. The ccp. Whether it's in data centers, which now the tech bros are all saying they're all anti CCP when it comes to their tech centers. Of course they're the guys funding them non stop. We're going to get into all of it. Plus Alan greenspan, dead at 100. David Malpass will be here to discuss. Short break.
Commercial Announcer
Buy gold and put some silver in your pocket.
Stephen K. Bannon
I know what you're thinking.
Commercial Announcer
Everything's expensive right now. How am I going to buy gold? Pull your head out of the sand. One thing you can control right now that doesn't cost you anything out of pocket is diversifying your retirement savings. Birch Gold Group will help you convert an old 401k from a previous employer or an IRA into a physical gold IRA.
Stephen K. Bannon
Let me repeat that.
Commercial Announcer
Birch Gold will help you now convert an old 401k from a previous employer or an IRA into a physical IRA in gold.
Stephen K. Bannon
You know something that's a hedgehog against inflation. Listen to this. Right now, Birchgold is going to give you a special America 2501 ounce silver
Commercial Announcer
round for every $10,000 you purchase by July 10th.
Stephen K. Bannon
Let me repeat this.
Commercial Announcer
With every $10,000 purchase you get a
Stephen K. Bannon
free 1 ounce silver round. America 250 commemoration. A special. Think about this.
Commercial Announcer
Ten years ago, an ounce of gold
Stephen K. Bannon
was about twelve hundred dollars. Today it's around $4,500. Where will it be in ten years from now?
Commercial Announcer
Text Bannon B A N N O N 989898 to take advantage of free America 250 silver with qualifying purchase before the 10th of July. Again, text my name, Bannon B A N N O n to number 989898. Today, take advantage of this offer with qualifying purchases.
Stephen K. Bannon
You get a silver round, a 1 oz silver round. Check it out. Qualifying purchase. You got to do it before July 10th. Do it today. War room, here's your host, Stephen K. Band. Okay, for full disclosure, I just told Ben during the break, Ben, say what you're going to say. I know you don't agree with me. That's the fun of this show. And Nigel definitely doesn't agree with me. Jim Rickert is also going to join us and Jim's got a slightly different take on I, I do on the negotiations. That's fine. That's what we provide the Warren Posse, different, a platform to hear different voices, different analysis. And that's why you guys are such a strong political power. On the eve of the 10th anniversary, this was about England getting its sovereignty back. That's why Nigel Farage, if he was never become prime minister, never do anything else in his life. He'll be known in British history as the man that single handedly worked for 20 years, labored in the vineyards. I would go to these things with Raheem, would hook me up and go to with Nigel. I think in 2012, 2013, 2014, there would be 50 people in a room, 25 people in a room. He was like Tea Party meetings and Nigel was preaching the gospel of, of immigration and getting there and getting your sovereignty back. That's still to me when you look through everything because you're not going to change. This is why it's Brexit was inextricably linked to Trump's victory in 2016. Who said that? Stephen K. Bannon. We had a whole team over it for months working on the Brexit situation with Breitbart London run by, wait for it, Raheem Kassam who reported to me and I said that day that hey, this shows you more than any that there's a tectonic plate shift in the way working class people think and this is going to lead to a Trump victory over Hillary Clinton. I think back in June after the primary reserve, I don't know, Trump was down 6, 8 points, got down as low as I think 10, 12 points when they had the situation with the Muslim couple after the Democratic Convention. And then Stephen K. Bannon was hired as CEO and Bob's your uncle.
Commercial Announcer
The.
Stephen K. Bannon
So walk me through it. What, what is the issues today? I think it ties directly the United States because we're not. We're not getting down and focusing on how these things are inextricably linked, particularly the deal in Persia with the invasion we have here. And we have an invasion in this country. We got 20 million and we're not doing mass deportation. So we have 20 million illegal alien invaders here from Biden's watch. But Vino says we've got another, you know, 50 or 60 or 70 or 80 million here on previous watches, plus we got 6 to 10 million minimum here, I think illegally, that are legal immigration. The British establishment refuses not just to address it, they want it to continue. This is why the Tory Party, the home of the awfully Awfullys, is absolutely in free fall. And the leader of the party doesn't want a general election today because they would be swept in to the dustbin of history. And it's quite ironic, in the 250th year of our Declaration of Independence, when we declared war, we declared war on the British Empire and the Crown, because that's what it was. Declaration of Independence was a war document that started, I would seven, eight year, you could actually say all the way to 1815, war against the British Empire. Ben this to me is pretty cataclysmic because the Labor Party came in with a massive victory to thwart everything the Tories had done. Yet the central issue of immigration, migration and the country being overrun by invaders is still the central ticking time bomb in the United Kingdom.
Jim Rickards
Sir.
Ben Harnwell
Well, let me give you my reading of this then, Steve, and the importance of the switcheroo that the governing party has just performed or is in the process of performing, and to ask, ask ourselves why they have done this, because Keir Starmer did get a very good result, and I think it was July 20, 24, two years ago at the last general election. And it's this because had they not have done this, the writing was on the war already three years yet distant from the next general election, that not only would the Labour Party going to lose, but that, and I would put money on this, Nigel Farage would have been the Prime Minister on the following day after the next general election. And that's why the Labour Party, anticipating that, seeing the momentum, have pulled the switcheroo. As it is, I would suspect that the day after the next general election, Nigel Farage is going to be the leader of the opposition. But here's the thing, and this is why politics is so interesting. Because, you know, why do we find politics interesting? It's not so much when political leaders do well or do what they're supposed to do. It's more the enjoyment of watching. I don't know, the, the own goals, the, the missed opportunities, the unforced errors. What I mean by that is that it, it is now Andy Burnham's to lose, okay? He's got a huge spread of goodwill for him in the country right now. And it comes back to the issue that you've just been talking about, immigration, which is not an issue that's going away. Let us see whether he is prepared to repeat the same disastrous mistakes as kids.
Stephen K. Bannon
This is like the Democrat. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is like the Democratic Party. You're living in la la land. These parties are uniting. The fact they're globalists and they want, they want to, they want to destroy the central cultures. They can talk all the working class. They want, they want to destroy the central underlying culture. That does it. This is why Mandami and these guys are open borders guys look at Mandami every day. Amandami is a Marxist jihadist. The party that is the Labor Party. Labor right now. We couldn't even use the airfields that we helped finance in England because he needed. Starmer needed six hours so that it was his 50 Muslim. The 50 Muslim members of Parliament would, would not throw him out of office then that was his threat. The, the. You can put a guy like Burnham in front and he's going to be a much better salesman. He's got energy, he's got the gift of gab. He's got charisma, he connects with people. All the things Starmer and quite frankly, the last three or four stiffs they had in the Tory party didn't do. So he comes across much more populous. But the center beating heart of it is the same problem with the Democratic Party here. They can put Ossoff or Newsom or put any kind of, you know, more pleasant face on this thing. The bottom line is they want the destruction of America as it is and has been for the 250 years that it's been a constitutional republic. Am I off on that, sir?
Ben Harnwell
If nothing changes. Your conclusion is absolutely spot on. If nothing changes. If they can, if they, if they are going to continue, if they haven't correctly understood and done the calculation at this point, why Sakir Stalin was forced to resign.
Nigel Farage
Right.
Ben Harnwell
And they are what they have not been able to intuit the reasons of why they are is necessary for them to perform the switch route then exactly what you're saying is going to cause proceed logically from as effects from that cause. I don't know whether that's the case. I'm going to be watching this with the people of Makerfield themselves.
Jim Rickards
Hang on, hang on.
Ben Harnwell
Having just voted overwhelming.
Stephen K. Bannon
I just want to make sure, I want to make sure I understand this because now you're confusing me. Parliament as it exists, Commons as it exists, even a lot of lords, they put the people in there. He may give some happy talk, right, but they not simply think they're winning, they know they're winning even with Brexit. And the reason is you're right, you brought in 13 million, 13 million migrants in the last couple of years on a nation that had what, 70 million people at the time, 80 million people. They're gonna that, that ticket. This is what Los, Los Angeles, Los Angeles in New York and Chicago and Seattle and Portland are no different than what's happening in London. This is why we went to Texas, because London has fallen. That mentality, that mentality has to break. These constitutional republic has to break, although you're a constitutional monarchy, has to break the Christian West. The way they break the Christian west is doing this. This is one of the problems I've got with whatever this deal we're talking about. We're funding our enemies in this deal because what happens in Tehran is inextricably linked to what's happening north of Dallas, Texas with these huge mosques being built. One of the leading drivers of this are the Pakistanis who were using as intermediaries or the, or the Qataris who were using his intermediaries. They are not friends of this constitutional republic. And that's why in England Burnham is a much more accessible personality but the core driving focus. Why would they change their winning?
Commercial Announcer
Why would they.
Stephen K. Bannon
They got Nigel and even Nigel doesn't want to go there until last summer. You know, this is something. Nigel's not been a remigration guy. Unless you do remigration, it's over. It's just over. You're not going to do it. This is why the Tommy Robinson in, in, in the street lads that continue to build up momentum and power and that's one of the reasons they've got this guy low who I don't think is a good guy started this other party is putting pressure on. They understand the beating heart of the province, not simply to get political power in Commons, it's to get to the heart of the matter which Nigel did in Brexit. But the British elites did not let him take the. All the things Nigel talked about in Brexit when we won 10 years ago, they were never implemented. Not just the business part of it, but more importantly the migration part. Under Boris Johnson, these phony Tories got worse.
Jim Rickards
Sir.
Ben Harnwell
Okay, so you mentioned just now the actual issue here, which was Brexit. Okay. That is the litmus test to see whether your reading of this is correct or not. Because up until a month ago, Andy Burnham, as mayor of Greater Manchester, one of our great industrial cities up in the north of England, he, his official position was to go back into, to take the UK back into. Into the European Union.
David Malpass
Sure.
Ben Harnwell
If he walks away from that now and he's. His most recent statements have been to walk that back. That indicates perhaps he's. He, he will lead a different type of government from the House of Commons, because this is it. If he, if instead he pushes on that there'll be no nothing in the country more to deflate the balloon of the goodwill that is behind him right now and push all of that support very firmly back into the direction Nigel Farage and reform. It's the Brexit.
Stephen K. Bannon
Okay. His talk on that is just purely perfunctory. He's been all those guys, by definition, they have to get united back with their globalist partners.
Commercial Announcer
And you're.
Stephen K. Bannon
Hang on a second, Ben, I haven't finished beating up on you yet. Ben's gonna say we're do more England. Rickard's gonna join us. Malpass is going to join us. We're talking about Greenspan. What he meant for the country, what we're living through because of Greenspan. We're going to talk about the deal. We got so much going on, we are packed on a Monday morning. Birch Gold. Take your phone out, text Bannon B A N N O N 989-898. They have a special with a qualifying person purchase. You get a free 1 oz silver round. It's not a coin, it's a round, obviously. Talk to Philip Patrick and the team about why silver as a precious metals may be something to look into.
Commercial Announcer
At birchcold, everyone's focus on how the conflict in the Middle east is raising oil prices. But there's another grim reality to this contention. Oil isn't the only resource being constrained.
Stephen K. Bannon
About one third of global fertilizer trade
Commercial Announcer
happens through this region. And with spring planting season on top
Stephen K. Bannon
of us, American Farmers are sounding the
Commercial Announcer
alarm with some saying they can't afford to plant their fields. When one piece of the supply chain gets hit this hard, you know what comes next? Higher fruit prices, reduced availability, maybe even panic buying. That's why having an emergency food supply at home makes so much sense. And that's where our friends at my Patriot Supply come in. Right now@preparedwithbannon.com that is preparewithbannon.com we've set
Stephen K. Bannon
up an entire just site for the war Room posse.
Commercial Announcer
You go to preparewithbannon.com that's all one word. Preparewithbannon.com you get a three month emergency food supply. Don't include a free mega protein Upgrade, an incredible $200 bonus you don't want to miss. It's a simple way to protect your family from whatever comes next. Go to preparewithbannon.com that is preparewithbannon.com to
Stephen K. Bannon
get your emergency food supply today.
Commercial Announcer
That's preparewithbannon.com do it today. Go check it out.
Political Commentator
War Room.
Stephen K. Bannon
Here's your host, Stephen K. Banner. Ben, there's been some. The folks in the FT are giving their warnings. Why do you say that's important about Burnham?
Ben Harnwell
Well, you know, I think Denver might be popping up something on the screen as we talk about the Guardian. And this is the fear that the British media have been putting out about Andy Burnham before he won the by election that an incoming Burnham prime ministership would not be good for the UK because of the jittery nervousness that the bond markets are having. This is the narrative right in response to that possibility. The point I'm saying this, Steve, is that, you know that the British establishment is fearful of an outsider. No. You know that a political establishment in any country is fearful about an outsider that they don't think they're going to be able to control when they start playing the jittery bond market card. And I'm just putting that out there. I don't know if I would necessarily, I wouldn't put Andy Burnham in the same category of this succession of Daleks that the, the UK has produced. I don't, you know, I have absolutely no idea whether he's going to pivot now and betray his base and the people and then that will force obviously the momentum towards reform. We'll wait and see. But when I see the UK media playing that card, you know, we can't have Andy Burnham because the bond markets don't like it. It's going to be a rerun of Liz Truss, you know that they are confronting something that they don't.
Stephen K. Bannon
Well, that may also be, may also be the sense that he, he got a little wobbly on Brexit a month ago because he knew this day was coming. And now, of course, the bond markets there when you reunite. Okay, I'm going to let you go to your corner and get your cut man working on you. Stick around. We're gonna. You stick around, sir. We're getting more into this and, and our favorite Maloney took, took a beating from Trump over the weekend. We'll get to all that Italian why it's important to the United States. Jim Rickards, got you in Malpass. First off, give me your thoughts. 100, 100 years old, Greenspan passed away this morning. Alan Greenspan in the as the most powerful central banker, I think maybe in history, at least in the 20th and the latter part of the 20th and early 21st century. Your thoughts are.
Jim Rickards
Yeah, I think it's a fair description of Greenspan. I always kind of liked him, met him once or twice, highly intelligent, kind of knew what he was doing. But he was amazingly candid about what I would call the irrelevance of the Fed. Now he's the maestro, greatest central banker probably right. The world hangs on every word that comes out of the Fed. But Greenspan said decades ago that we at the Fed, we really don't know what money is anymore. They have M1, M2, M0, you know, M3, etc. They got four definitions inside the Fed, not to mention, you know, today.
Stephen K. Bannon
But didn't, but, but didn't. I got Harnwell and Rick is two of my favorite people. And I got to go Adam on the morning, but he's the author. I did Generation Zero and the Central Beating Heart, a Generation Zero film I made that's still relevant today. If you watched it, made it what, 15 years ago, 16 years ago, about the 08, the Greenspan put. He basically helped turn Wall street into casino because the traders realized that they could. The traders realized he would bail them out with rate cuts.
Commercial Announcer
Right.
Stephen K. Bannon
And expansion of money supply, sir.
Jim Rickards
Yeah, Well, I negotiated the bailout of Long Term Capital Management in 1998. We were hours away from shutting every market in the world. And Greenspan didn't cut interest rates because he could see the bailout coming. As soon as the bailout got done, $4 billion, all cash, no due diligence. We were up for, we're for five days practically with no sleep to get it done. But as soon as that was done, he cut interest rates and then the actually the panic continued. It wasn't over. We with the new $4 billion we started losing. We lost another $500 million in the first couple of days. That was after Wall street took over the balance sheet and Greenspan had emergency meeting and cut them again. And at that point the fire was out and it was just took a year to unwind. My point is, yeah, Greenspan put was real but that's carried over into the Bernanke put, the Yellen put, the Powell put. We'll see how Kevin Warshaw feels about it. But yeah, but every one of my thesis is that every crisis gets bigger, the Fed bails them out. I mean just look at Silicon Valley bank. That was 2023. It wasn't, wasn't that long ago. But there will come a time when the crisis is bigger than the Fed and I think we're getting close to that point. So it's sort of a dead end. Might have been better just to let things fall apart at some point.
Stephen K. Bannon
The highly leveraged bet on AI Hang on for one second, Jim, I'm coming
Jim Rickards
right back to you.
Stephen K. Bannon
Talk about this deal and what it all means. Malpass, you've had to live through this. Your thoughts on Alan Greenspan, sir?
David Malpass
Hi, Steve. Well I was there in 87 when the transition came from Volcker. So one thing that strikes me is just how much has come at the Fed and a lot of it is just plain growth. The Fed extended itself into regulatory policy. Now it has a huge balance sheet. It changed over the years the way it sets interest rates. So one lesson I think from where we are today is that there was a huge amount of judgment that Greenspan put into setting the interest rates. He also had really good timing. For example, the Maestro, that book you just mentioned came out just before the crash of the dot com so they were calling him the Maestro. And then the whole NASDAQ bubble really crashed deeply just after that. So good timing. He left before the 08 financial crisis. He left in 07, but maybe allowed some of the groundwork to set up. So my bottom line on this is he's renowned and should be for good judgment through five terms, long terms of but didn't leave us with a foundation for the Fed of sound money.
Stephen K. Bannon
How did we get we're in the 250th anniversary of our constitutional republic. The way the framers, you know, the revolutionary generation and the framers came in right afterwards. How did we get into a situation Malpass that's not foreseen in the Constitution or even Their concept, in fact, it was a anti concept of how a central bank in a Supreme Court because remember, people sit there and we do it. We're outside the Supreme Court, we're waiting for these, we're waiting for these rulings of the Supreme Court with this kind of judicial supremacy.
Commercial Announcer
We've given the same thing with the,
Stephen K. Bannon
with the central bank now it's not quite as bad, although, you know, we cover it non stop, talk about it nonstop. As in Greenspan.
Commercial Announcer
Greenspan.
Stephen K. Bannon
It was an obsession. I mean it was like, it was like the British Chancellor, the Exchequer leaving with the red box right there. It was a Wall street and particularly CNBC and the other nascent television business channels were obsessed with this. How do we get into a situation where a central banker and the Chief justice of the Supreme Court became more powerful than the legislative branch, both houses of Congress and even the executive branch? The presidency, sir.
David Malpass
That's a great question. You know, the president carries or his staff carries the football which has the nuclear codes in and Greenspan carried his briefcase which carri the data that ran the world because he was looking at freight car loadings, you know, how, how much the real economy was growing and then using his judgment on how to set interest rates. So how did we get there? I think in the Constitution, for one, the whole world had always been on a hard money standard, either gold or silver or shells on the, on the beach. And that they didn't really think in terms of their being a central bank of the United States. One other thing from those days, they didn't have any concept that they were creating a government that could borrow trillions of dollars or now we're at $40 trillion. So they were hopeful of borrowing 1 million, $1 million. And so they didn't put in a size of government limit. So that allowed all of this growth of government. We still have no boundaries on size of government or size of the Federal Reserve. So I think that's one of the legacies of Greenspan is he made it popular and he popularized it to the point where it's grown way beyond its ability to do its mission. So we have to look at these task forces that they're setting out on now and think about whether those can accomplish really sweeping changes that are needed in economics to make this work better. You know, I've laid out those changes that we need to have a sound money foundation for monetary policy. That was the way it was in the Constitution and we've lost that over the years. And now we have the dollar.
Stephen K. Bannon
What do you Mean, what do you walk people through? How is that hardwired into the Constitution?
David Malpass
In the Constitution, they said it was Congress that sets the weight, the value of, of weights and measures. That's a, that's a provision, Article 1, Section 8. And so that literally meant that Congress would regulate what a piece of eight was. That was a part of a Spanish silver coin. And that would give you a foundation for value for farmers and for people doing trade. And England, of course, you know, during the war, just choked off the US by not the colonies, by not allowing them to have enough real money. So those problems are still with us today. The gold standard extended all the way to 1971 and then has never really been replaced with a concept. How do you run trillions, hundreds of trillions of dollars of transactions without having some kind of framework for whether you want it to be stable? China does it differently. They actually have an official policy of a strong and stable yuan and that has allowed them to expand their use of their currency radically, which I think is dangerous to us.
Stephen K. Bannon
Yes, this is the end of the dollar empire as they lead the BRICS nations. But one of the reasons they can do that is they have no social safety net, right? In China, it's devil catch the hindmost. So they, they have huge military spending, but they don't have any social spending.
David Malpass
David Malpass that, that's true, but I really want to say it depends also on what your government says it wants. So in their case, they, for four leaders have said explicitly that they want the yuan to be stable so that people will use it. And that was, you know, embedded really in the Constitution, that concept. So as we look now, Greenspan started out as a sound money guy. He used to write books about the importance of sound money. But then as Fed chairman, he allowed different models to be used. So that's where we stand today. And I think it's a productive moment in history right now to say what do we want a central bank to do with relationship to the money?
Stephen K. Bannon
That's what everybody cares about around the world. Since the, since the Fed's supposed to be quote, unquote, independent. How did the people, how does the MAGA movement, how does the President even get into the ear of Kevin Warsh to say we need these fundamental changes? This has to come through Senate Banking Committee. I mean, are there places on the Hill that could do this? Or is this something you just got to get wash, have a cup of coffee and say, hey, here's what we're thinking.
David Malpass
Congress hasn't been very effective with commissions. You know, Greenspan did1 in 1982 that raised the retirement age and taxes on Social Security. And so it was a success, called a success at that moment. But since then, not many have worked. So we've got the Fed totally tangled up with fiscal policy. So I'm not sure Congress is a very good arbiter of this. The Constitution is clear that there's supposed to be there's supposed to be stability in this. And so I think the Fed needs to read the words price stability and realize that that means money has to be stable. You can't get price stability without stability of the value of money. So if they do that, that's all they have to do. That would be a giant change in the academic economics and would lead in the right direction.
Stephen K. Bannon
DAVID where do people go? You're writing for the Wall Street Journal all the time on the editorial page, op ed page. Where do people go?
David Malpass
Sir, thanks at David R. Malpass on Zoom.
Stephen K. Bannon
Fantastic. Appreciate you, sir. Malpass putting up great content over at the Wall Street Journal, some of the best stuff on their op ed page. Of course, the other stuff they put up we don't agree with a lot. End of the Dollar Empire that conversation right there. This reason and six years ago we started putting out free installments. Birchgold.combannon End of the Dollar Empire explains it all to you from the beginning of this republic up to the current time. Talk to Philip Patrick in the team about what it all means for your financial stability. Short Commercial break
Commercial Announcer
Do you owe back taxes or you haven't filed your taxes in years? Now is the time to resolve your tax matters. With the national conversation around abolishing the income tax, the IRS is fighting back and proving it's here to stay by becoming more aggressive than ever before. They're sending out more collection notices, filing more tax liens and collecting billions more in recent years. If you owe, the IRS can garnish your wages, levy your bank accounts, seize your retirement and even your home if you owe or haven't filed. It's not a question of if the IRS will act, it's a question of when it will act. Right now, Tax Network USA is offering a completely free IRS research and discovery call to show you exactly where you stand and what they can stop before it's too late. Their powerful programs and strategies can save you thousands or even eliminate your debt entirely if you qualify. Don't make a costly mistake. Representing yourself or calling the IRS on your own waives your rights and cost you more money. They are not and let me repeat, the IRS is not on your side. Get protected the right way with Tax Network USA and start the process of settling your tax matters once and for all today. Call 1-800-958-1000. That's 1-800-958-10000. Or visit tnusa.com Bannon for your free discovery. Call with Tax Network USA. Let me repeat, 800-958-1000. Tell them Bannon sent you. Don't let the IRS be the first to act. Take advantage of first mover advantage.
Stephen K. Bannon
You move War room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Ban. Tonight at Tonight in the evening show, we are going to discuss Obama's library. Not the architecture, design and all that may touch on that, but there's a big problem there with access to certain papers that should have public access to. And the big question is, why don't we like other presidential libraries? Not that Obama and his crew would be hiding anything. Far, far be from that. Jim Rickards, your thoughts right there. On Greenspan and fiat currency, the purchase price of the dollar is dropped. We've had this great analysis about devaluation since Biden came into office with massive spending, 50%, but I think it's decreased 90% plus since we went off the gold standard. Your thoughts are?
Jim Rickards
Yeah, I agree with what David Malpass said. I'll just drop two quick footnotes, Steve. From 1836 to 1913, the United States did not have a central bank, period. Didn't have one. It was one of the greatest periods of innovation, technology, expansion, rising living standards, indoor plumbing, et cetera in the history of the world. And we had no central banks. If anyone says you need a central bank, history says otherwise. Number two, you asked where did the Fed come from? How do we get that not in the Constitution? That's right. The short answer is it was the panic of 1907. Now that was a typical bank run type of thing, but it was much worse. That was solved by Pierpont Morgan. What he did, he got all the top bankers in a room. He locked him in his library, actually said, you're not leaving until you come up with a deal. But he sent Benjamin Strong out to look at the books of all the major banks and they did triage. They said certain banks are actually fine. There's a panic going on, but these banks are fine. Other banks were solvent but illiquid, meaning the balance sheet was okay, but they were running out of cash. And there was a third category who were insolvent. They were just gardeners and what Morgan said was okay, the healthy banks will lend to the illiquid banks because they just need cash. The insolvent ones are going to fail, end of story. And that's what they did. And it worked. The problem was in the immediate aftermath of that, the Morgan interest, the Rockefeller interest and other basically the people running the country said Pierpont's not going to live forever. And what happens when this happens again? We need a lender of last resort and that's what the Fed was designed to do. But lender of last resort is not a bad idea and that's how the Fed was set up. But it has, let's say any bureaucracy has morphed into something unrecognizable. Humphrey Hawkins act of I think it was 1977, maybe 79 said the Fed had to deal with unemployment in addition to price stability. Those two are not correlated. It's two, two tests are inconsistent. They've had a bank regulation bank holding company. They turn Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs into banks. So now the Fed is a very powerful regulatory institution.
Stephen K. Bannon
Hang on, hang on, hang on. Slow, slow down, slow down. They turn Goldman Sachs and JP Moore, they turn them into Morgan Stanley, they turn investment banks into bank. Only comes a stroke of Pennsylvania to save them from collapse. In the 2008 crisis, the biggest scam, this audience took it in the shorts. The partners at Goldman Sachs and at Morgan Stanley, the elites, the elites on Wall street were bailed out by the Fed with a one line from Hank Paulson says I'm now a bank holding company. I can borrow at the Fed window for essentially zero, lend it to my high net worth clients for I don't know, 300 basis, you know, 3 or 4%. And I keep the spread that saved those banks from the, the natural bankruptcy they should have gone through given what they did to drive the financial crisis.
Jim Rickards
Correct.
Stephen K. Bannon
This is the problem with the Fed arbitrarily. Chris Leonard, his book, which I always recommend, the Lords of Easy Money during the Financial Crisis because the minutes of the Fed are kept in high security for 10 years. You can't see them. Once it was released he went back through the minutes and it's outrageous what the Fed did. The Fed essentially bailed out the elites of this country, the elite financial institutions, the law firms, everybody associated with the financial collapse on the shoulders of the working class of this nation.
Jim Rickards
Sir. That's, that's exactly right. And I was general counsel of a bank holding company. We did applications. I had, we, we were owned by a Japanese bank. The firm I worked for at the time, we had applications. If the Fed didn't like what you were trying to do or you thought they were going too fast or whatever they were supposed to do these things in 45 days. They took two years, two years. On one of my applications they converted Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs in two days. It was a couple of phone calls. So they can do what they want when they feel like it. And you're right now they're, they've got their finger in every pie, so to speak. They're pretty much incompetent. By the way, the Fed staff is the worst forecasting record I can think of. The so called dots are a jog. I think warsh will get rid of them. I mean wash is a, is a.
Stephen K. Bannon
Ok, ok, so you made, you made this should be, be one of the predicates for the future of MAGA going forward and more nationalism. You just made the statement from 1836 when Andrew Jackson, right, took down the bank of the United States in 1913 had the greatest run. Now it coincided with the Industrial Revolution coming to the United States with the greatest run of a prosperity of any folks in the world and American citizens in this country with not just no central bank, I mean political parties that were absolutely dead set on any investment bank even in the Panic of 1873 after the Civil War it came up
Commercial Announcer
again and they beat it down.
Stephen K. Bannon
Why don't we go, why do we even need a Fed? Why are we not taking apart? First off, if we audited it it would be over in a second because you'd see all the scams they were running. But why do we allow the Fed, and not just that, the New York
Commercial Announcer
Fed, which is the biggest trading desk
Stephen K. Bannon
in the world and basically controls markets.
Ben Harnwell
Sir.
Jim Rickards
That's right. And how do we build the transcontinental railroad? How did Edison wire the country for electricity? How did Bell invent the telephone? How do we do all that without the Fed? Well we did it because we're Americans and by the way, Krugman likes it, Paul Krugman likes to point to the panics and you mentioned some of them and There were panics, 1873, 1893, et cetera, when there was no Fed, say well that's why we need a Fed. Like I'm sorry, we've had a lot of panics with the Fed. 1987, Dow Jones crashed 22% in one day. That would be like 10,000 points by, or 15,000 points by today's standards. You know, 2001.com crash. Nasdaq crashed 80% 2008 Bear Steiner said we know Lehman, we know what happened. So the answer is there's no correlation. Panics happen, they're going to keep happening. It's human nature. But the Fed has nothing to do with it. So that's not a reason not to get rid of the Fed knows we should get rid of the Fed in my view.
Stephen K. Bannon
Well, I think actually they exacerbate. I would make the case that the casino mentality and nothing could be looked at the more the casino mentality than the Space SpaceX public offering. I think the average purchaser I think was official as of this morning with the bell run. The average, average person at purchaser of SpaceX was underwater.
Commercial Announcer
Right.
Stephen K. Bannon
This thing was a scam put together by, by Goldman Sachs. Like I said, if when I was at Goldman Sachs, if you had had anything to do with that prospectus and came up to the partners back then it was joint and several liability on underwritings and they were an equity house. You would, they wouldn't let you go to your desk and clean it out. You would have just been walked out of the building. What in the hell are you doing? And who is this guy? Elon Musk. No, we're not doing this. We may do a deal, but we're not going to do it at this valuation and we're not going to do it under these terms anyway. Rickards, hang on. We got to talk about deals. We're going to get to that. Sam Fatis also going to join us. Things we have to do with the Chinese Communist Party number one is hold Fauci accountable for the for the bioweapon. Brandon Von's got a great piece. Sam Fat is here, former CA to
Commercial Announcer
break it all down for us. The second hour of the war room is upon us. Why wait till you're down to your last pill stuck traveling or dealing with a packed pharmacy when you can already have your medications on hand? Seriously, you know what you normally take, you already know what your family could need. That makes no sense.
Stephen K. Bannon
Smart families don't operate like that. That's why I love all family pharmacy.
Commercial Announcer
They're built a better, simpler system. To get your prescription medications, you go
Stephen K. Bannon
online, fill out a quick medical form,
Commercial Announcer
licensed doctors review your request, prescribe if appropriate, and your medications are stripped directly to your door. No waiting rooms, no pharmacy lines, no insurance. Nonsense. People are traveling more schedules are getting crazier. And have your medications already on hand just makes your life easier. Because being prepared isn't paranoia.
Stephen K. Bannon
It's common sense. Go visit my friends@allfamilypharmacy.com that's one word.
Commercial Announcer
Allfamilypharmacy.com Bannon and use code Bannon10 to save 10% on your next order. Again, that's allfamilypharmacy.com Bannonand use code Bannon10.
Episode 5461: Keir Starmer Steps Down As Populism Rises In London
Air Date: June 22, 2026
This episode centers on the dramatic resignation of Keir Starmer as UK Prime Minister amid rising populist pressure and shifting political currents in Britain. The panel analyzes the implosion of Labour leadership, the surge of the Reform Party, Andy Burnham’s ascension, and the broader theme of establishment failure on issues like immigration and national sovereignty. The discussion links Britain’s turmoil to shifts in U.S. and world politics, with additional segments on the legacy of former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan and the evolution of central banking.
"Britain is broken. Six prime ministers in seven years should convince you of that fact. We are ready for a general election." (Nigel Farage, 06:55)
"The British establishment refuses not just to address it, they want it to continue. ... The leader of the party doesn't want a general election today because they would be swept into the dustbin of history." (Stephen K. Bannon, 19:16)
"...when I see the UK media playing the card, you know, we can't have Andy Burnham because the bond markets don't like it. It's going to be a rerun of Liz Truss, you know that they are confronting something that they don't." (Ben Harnwell, 31:12)
"Greenspan put was real but that's carried over into the Bernanke put, the Yellen put..." (Jim Rickards, 33:40)
"Why don't we go, why do we even need a Fed? Why are we not taking apart? First off, if we audited it it would be over in a second because you'd see all the scams they were running." (Stephen K. Bannon, 51:33)
Keir Starmer on stepping down:
"I will remain in post as Prime Minister until the contest is complete... I will also give my successor my full and unequivocal support, knowing that they will inherit a Britain that is far stronger and fairer than the one I inherited two years ago..." (Keir Starmer, 00:00)
Nigel Farage on political chaos:
"Six prime ministers in seven years should convince you... Britain is broken." (Nigel Farage, 06:55)
Bannon’s Brexit–Trump Parallels:
"This is why it's Brexit was inextricably linked to Trump's victory in 2016... there's a tectonic plate shift in the way working class people think..." (Stephen K. Bannon, 17:10)
On immigration as the core issue:
"The British establishment refuses not just to address it, they want it to continue." (Stephen K. Bannon, 19:16)
Ben Harnwell on establishment panic:
"...when I see the UK media playing the card, you know, we can't have Andy Burnham because the bond markets don't like it. It's going to be a rerun of Liz Truss..." (Ben Harnwell, 31:12)
Rickards on history without a Fed:
"From 1836 to 1913, the United States did not have a central bank, period... greatest periods of innovation... and we had no central banks." (Jim Rickards, 46:51)
Bannon on central banks and elites:
"The Fed essentially bailed out the elites of this country, the elite financial institutions, the law firms, everybody associated with the financial collapse on the shoulders of the working class." (Stephen K. Bannon, 50:13)
This episode captures a moment of significant upheaval in UK politics with deep analysis and spirited debate. The War Room team sees Starmer’s fall and Burnham’s rise not as renewal but as further establishment maneuvering—unless there’s a radical return to nationalism and sovereignty. The parallels drawn to U.S. politics and finance, especially regarding central banking and elite capture, reinforce the hosts’ thesis that populist movements on both sides of the Atlantic are confronting the failures of the global order. The show’s tone is urgent, combative, and skeptical of both traditional party leadership and technocratic elites.