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- [00:00]
Chris Mason
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk.
- [00:06]
Helena Merriman
If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau. Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:42]
Alex Forsyth
Hello, it's Alex Forsyth and it's James.
- [00:44]
James Cook
Cook in for Adam. This week and today has really been one of those days where everything changes and changes quickly and at the drop of not just one hat, but several hats. And it's left quite a lot of people, Alex, rather lost for words. Paddy was talking on Saturday's newscast about the megapause.
- [01:01]
Alex Forsyth
Yeah.
- [01:02]
James Cook
An answer to a question. It was Barry Gardner, I think, on last week's newscast. The Labour MP on News Night.
- [01:06]
Alex Forsyth
He was.
- [01:07]
James Cook
Yeah, News Night. Yes, you're right. And now we've had another one.
- [01:11]
Alex Forsyth
Yeah. There has the kind of pregnant pause where someone's picking their words very carefully. And this time it was James Lyons. Now, keep up with me here. He used to be a director of communications at number 10, but he is no longer in that job. And he was talking about the resignation today of the most recent director of communications from number 10, a guy called Tim Allen, and he was asked what it was like working with the guy who resigned yesterday.
- [01:36]
James Cook
It's hard to keep up.
- [01:37]
Alex Forsyth
It is. Who was the Prime Minister's chief of staff? Morgan McSweeney. You were a year in that role. How hard was it to work with Morgan McSweeney?
- [01:50]
Anas Sarwar
I thoroughly enjoyed working with Morgan McSweeney.
- [01:56]
James Cook
Did she, though?
- [01:56]
Alex Forsyth
I mean, he went on to say very nice things about Morgan McSweeney, but it is a prime example of someone choosing their words pretty carefully.
- [02:04]
James Cook
Yeah, there's a big long pause.
- [02:05]
Alex Forsyth
I mean, there's a lot of characters here. There's a lot that's happened today. We are going to try and unpick the whole thing on this episode of Newscast, Newscast, Newscast from the BBC.
- [02:15]
James Cook
Fat Boy Slim and me in the classroom doing our violin lessons. I was the tattletail in the closet. Can I have an apology, please? I trust almost nobody that Daddy has to sometimes do strong language. Next time in Moscow I feel the.
- [02:27]
Helena Merriman
Lulu with no Salulu.
- [02:28]
Alex Forsyth
Take me down to Downing Street.
- [02:30]
Chris Mason
Let's go have A tour.
- [02:32]
Angela Rayner
Blimey.
- [02:32]
James Cook
It's James in the newscast studio and.
- [02:34]
Alex Forsyth
It'S Alex in the studio.
- [02:36]
James Cook
And we have been poised, yeah, Quite a lot of the day, we've been poised, waiting to hear what Sir Keir Starmer had to say or to hear about what Sir Keir Starmer had to say to his MPs.
- [02:48]
Alex Forsyth
Yeah.
- [02:48]
James Cook
What do they call this? The PLP? The Parliamentary Labour Party meeting at Westminster, Alex, is that right?
- [02:53]
Alex Forsyth
Yeah. And the reason. So we have known pretty much throughout the whole day that one of the potentially pivotal moments of the day was when Keir Starmore was going to appear before his, as you say, plp. The whole of the Parliamentary Labour Party, or at least as many MPs who choose to turn up. And obviously this happens from time to time. The Prime Minister, other Cabinet ministers go and talk to the Labour Party. But the reason it mattered today is, of course, the context. But where there's lots of questions about Keir Starmer's leadership in light of everything that's happened regarding Peter Mandelson and his ongoing relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. So we all devs would have been waiting for this moment to assess what Keir Starmer says and then the subsequent mood in the Parliamentary Labour Party, which right now at this junction is pretty crucial for the Prime Minister and his future.
- [03:35]
James Cook
And before we get to what Sakir said to those MPs tonight, I think it's worth us thinking about the context of where we were just a few hours ago, because there was a point earlier today when we had had over the weekend the resignation of the Prime Minister's chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney. We had had this morning the resignation of his director of communications at number 10, Tim Allen. And then we heard that the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, had called this emergency, impromptu surprise, call it what you like, news conference for 2.30 this afternoon. We're recording at about 5 to 8 on Monday evening. And at when we heard, initially suspected and then realized for sure that Mr. Sarwar was going to call for the Prime Minister to resign, it must be said, we thought, well, things are looking bad because presumably he's going to do that and others are going to follow because you wouldn't do that on your own.
- [04:30]
Alex Forsyth
And remember, he, Anna Sawa, the leader of Scottish Labour, was clearly the most senior figure to publicly come out and call for the Prime Minister to leader of the UK Labour Party to go. And when he did that at that press conference, he did it in a pretty stark way, suggesting that there have been Lots of mistakes made in Downing Street. In fact, we can have a little listen to some of what we had to say.
- [04:53]
Anas Sarwar
This isn't easy and it's not without pain, as I have a genuine friendship with Keir Starmer. But my first priority and my first loyalty is to my country, Scotland. And I am not willing to sacrifice Scotland's nhs, our schools, our communities, our towns, cities, villages and islands to a third decade of an SNP government. That's why the distraction needs to end and the leadership in Downing street has to change.
- [05:27]
James Cook
And just before we get into what happened next, it's worth understanding the context to that and newscasters, many newscasters will be aware, Alex, of the context, which is that if you're an asarwar and you're going to the electorate in three months time and you're looking at polls that suggest your party is going to come third in those elections, and your dream of becoming First Minister, which a couple of years ago when Labour won the general election, looked like it was quite a realistic dream, a prospect of turning into reality, looks like it's turning to dust. And not just that, that you might come through third behind the Scottish National Party and Reform uk. Then you're thinking, I've got to do something pretty dramatic. And this is the dramatic thing he's done. But in the context of the Prime Minister, I think I, for one. And you tell me what you think, Alex. I thought, well, in the seconds after that, the minutes after that, surely other people are going to follow, because surely you don't do that if others are going to follow. And it became clear really quickly that that was not what was happening today, didn't it?
- [06:29]
Alex Forsyth
Yeah. This felt to me like actually quite a gamble for. From Anna Sawa at this point, because we know, and we have covered on newscast and we've been talking about for some time that there is deep unhappiness in the parliamentary Labor Party among mps about Keir Starmer. Not everybody, but within that party there clearly is deep unhappiness. And we had a kind of handful of mps coming out over the course of the last few days saying publicly that maybe it was time for Keir Starmer to go, but it was just a handful and we hadn't, you know, that you're not talking about kind of cabinet ministers or anything that done something similar. And then you have this from Anasawa and. And it did feel like a gamble because he was really sticking his head above the parapet here and effectively saying, I don't think that Keir Starmer is the man to lead us in number 10, particularly as I'm about to go to the hardcore bit of fighting these elections in Scotland. But very quickly, it felt like he had become quite isolated in that position, because as he was on his feet, giving that press conference, first off, we got this kind of readout or, you know, statement from number 10, effectively with Keir Starmer saying, hang on, I'm one of only a few labor leaders has ever actually won a general election. The public have given me a mandate, I'm sticking it out, I'm not going anywhere. I paraphrase, but you get the gist. And then very quickly after that, you had Cabinet minister after Cabinet minister going out on social media to tweet their support in one form or another for the Prime Minister and say, you know, I'm behind K. Starmer. This. He's got a job to do. Cool heads prevail effectively, sort of. This was very deliberate and undoubtedly orchestrated show of support from every single member of the Cabinet, starting off with the Deputy Prime Minister and the Justice Secretary, David Lammy, but then eventually, like journalists were sitting there, obviously seeing who had put out some sort of message of support, who hadn't, then all the way through the Cabinet, including people like Wes treating, who is known pretty widely as a potential challenger for Keir Starmer at some point in the future.
- [08:20]
James Cook
And we maybe come back in a minute to the implications for the Hollywood elections and indeed elections elsewhere in Britain, in Wales for the Senate and in England for the local elections. But we probably should get to, shouldn't we, the plp, the Parliamentary Labor Party. What has happened? Alex, you have some information, don't you, about what the Prime Minister said? Quotes, I think.
- [08:43]
Alex Forsyth
Well, it's only. These meetings are a strange phenomenon of Westminster, when they are obviously meant to be an opportunity for the Cabinet or the leader of a party or whatever it might be, to address the kind of rank and file, their membership, the people who are working for them in Parliament, all of the MPs, and they happen all the time. And what happens in these meetings that journalists huddle outside the doors in the corridors of Westminster to try and get a sense of what's being said or the mood or the feeling. And one of our brilliant BBC colleagues, Harry Farley, has been huddled outside said door.
- [09:12]
James Cook
It's been literally like ear to the door. And can you hear through. Are they big oak doors? Can you hear through them? What's being said?
- [09:20]
Alex Forsyth
Depends where the room is. So, yeah, so through the Brexit days, there were loads of these kind of meetings taking place across Parliament. And sometimes they, you know, senior figures addressing MPs. In other cases, it was like, you know, secret chats between various. And there would be time after time, journalists will kind of have their ear literally to the door. The people inside that room know exactly what is happening. This is not actually a sort of highly potential meeting that journalists are trying to, you know, wrongly get access to. These things are done in the full knowledge that journalists will be hovering outside and all the rest of it. But this one, by all accounts of my colleagues, our colleagues who were there, they said that when the Prime Minister went in, he got a sort of rapturous round of applause and a standing ovation. And it was standing room only, and people were trying to get in the room at the last minute and told there was no space. And so it was obviously a packed event, which shows you just how important this moment was for Keir Starmer. And then we got a sense of what Kim Kia Starmer actually said to them. And this was again, from sort of official sources, not just ear on the door thing, but it sounds like he was there kind of really trying to rally the troops, but also show that he wasn't going anywhere. So he was talking about, I've won every fight I've ever been in. He went on to say, you know, I fought to change the Labor Party to allow us to win an election. People told me I couldn't do it. We won a landslide majority. Every fight I've been in, I've won. And then the line that really, really stuck out to me is when he talked about this, having fought so hard for the chance to change our country, in his words, I'm not prepared to walk away from my mandate and my responsibility to my country or to plunge us into chaos as others have done. So in his own words, that's basically Keir Starmer saying, I'm not going anywhere.
- [10:59]
James Cook
What's striking about these quotes from the Prime Minister is how robust they are.
- [11:05]
Wes Streeting
All this.
- [11:06]
James Cook
He repeated the line, I fought. It's all fighting, fight, fight, fight. And every fight I've been in, I have won. I mean, we're only reading the quotes. We didn't see him in the in, but face to face doing this. But you sort of get the impression from the way the quotes read that if you had been close to him, you might have stepped back.
- [11:24]
Alex Forsyth
Yeah. Well, it's interesting because one of our brilliant BBC political correspondents, Harry Farley, lingering outside the room, has sent some information in from the mps who were in the room at the time and one of them saying he was almost a completely different person. I've never seen him as passionate. Another one Harry was reporting was talking about if you could bottle that version of Keir Starmer, then it would do us really good for the party in the longer term. Because of course, one of the criticisms from some people in the Labour Party towards Keir Starmer is that his communication or the way he comes across or his ability to convey the message of the Lab Party, that has been one of the issues in he. How he's performed in his, you know, what is it now, 20 months or so since he's been in office. You know, he's. He's faced quite a lot of flack for not having. Being able to really get that across to people publicly, the kind of person that he is.
- [12:15]
James Cook
Well, this isn't publicly though.
- [12:17]
Alex Forsyth
This. The problem seems like this is behind closed doors to labor mps, when he's very clearly had his back against the wall as a consequence of the last few days and everything that's happened, he has come out and deliver to them, judging by the comments that are coming through. And other people in the room might have a different view, a sense of what they are wanting to hear from him. So you do wonder whether or not there might be something in the offing where he makes the attempt to do that in a more public facing way. Although it is also worth saying right now, at this junction, of course, what always matters the most is public opinion at the ballot box. Absolutely. But right now, the audience that Keir Starmer does need to win over are the mps in Parliament because they are the ones who have the power, if they choose to, to decide his immediate future.
- [13:02]
James Cook
So to plunge us into chaos, as others have done, I mean, you could easily listen to that and think, who plunged the Labour Party into chaos today? The senior figure in the Labour Party who called for the Prime Minister to resign. If you're in a sarwar and no one's followed you and you now need to fight an election campaign and you've cut off the Prime Minister and you've cut off number 10, the Secretary of State for Scotland, Douglas Alexander, who is supposed to be running the campaign for Holyrood alongside an msp, Labour msp, Jackie Bailey, and obviously with an asarwar, he has come out in support of the Prime Minister. It is very difficult to see how, if Sir Keir is still in post on May 7, when the people go to the polls, how Labour can run any sort of coordinated, harmonious campaign that won't be continually dogged by questions to all Labour parliamentarians in Scotland or, well, whose side are you on? Are you on Keir Starmer's side because the Scottish Labour leader says that he's not doing a good enough job and he's causing a nightmare for you and he's basically going to lose us the election? Or are you on the side of the Prime Minister who says, oh, we don't need any more of this chaos brackets, maybe from an asarwar. I mean, it's difficult to see how that works.
- [14:24]
Alex Forsyth
Well, and what he's done, of course, is he has laid bare the division that exists even by doing what he did at the very top of the Labour Party with these senior figures, Anasawa and Keir Starmer. And when Annasawa was being asked lots of questions by journalists in the wake of him saying what he said, one of the moments that caught my eye was when somebody said, have you spoken to Keir Starmer about this? And Anasawa said, yes, I told him what I was going to do. And then he just went, safe to say we disagreed, you know, which is totally revealing because it suggests that perhaps you might not, you know, unexpectedly, it might be completely statement of the obvious, but quite clearly that it was a very firm difference of opinion about something he was about to do.
- [15:05]
James Cook
There was something in the way he said that.
- [15:06]
Alex Forsyth
Yeah.
- [15:07]
James Cook
And the look on his face that gave me the very distinct impression that the Prime Minister had. Had. Had raised his voice at Mr. Sarwar.
- [15:17]
Alex Forsyth
I think what was totally like today, it was one of those days where, and I think we are sort of a little bit in that territory and have been for a few days now, where it is easy and sometimes tempting to get a bit breathless about everything that's going on or, you know, because the atmosphere is always heightened at times like this, when there are lots of questions about the direction of a party, not least a party that's currently in government, of course. But I think today really was one of those days where the mood shifted really, really quickly from one point to another throughout the day, depending on the actions and the reactions of the people involved. And what was interesting for me was when. And we hadn't heard a lot this morning from senior members of the cabinet or the government. Now, that might just be a kind of diary thing or a logistical thing, I don't know, but given the kind of context in the background, we just hadn't heard a lot through the morning. And then we had Anna Sawa standing up and saying what he did. And then very quickly, the Cabinet kind of coming round, and then you had this sort of seemingly quite feisty Keir Starmer at the parliamentary Labour Party meeting with all of the MPs and the cheers and all the rest of it. And it seems to me that as we have this conversation right now, one of the potential consequences of what Anna Sawa did was to actually rally quite a lot of the Cabinet and some of the parliamentary Labour Party behind Keir Starmer, which has led to a sort of mood shift again. Now, how long that lasts, we don't know. But, you know, you've had people like Lucy Powell, who was. She's the deputy leader of the Labour Party, elected to that position by party members, and she today has been out quite robustly in defence of Keir Starmer. In fact, I think we can hear a little bit of her.
- [16:51]
Lucy Powell
The Prime Minister has my full support as the deputy leader of the Labour Party, and I know he has the vast majority of colleagues full support as well, because we've got a country to run and we've got change that we're trying to deliver and we've got elections that we're trying to win. And the last thing we need right now is all this speculation looking inwards on ourselves. Yes, we've got to do better. Yes, we've got to take the fight to reform. Yes, we've got to show people whose side we're on. But we're all focused on that as one Labour team with Keir as our leader. And I think that's been made really clear today.
- [17:24]
James Cook
And she's not the only one. We heard from the Education Secretary, Bridget Philipson, speaking to Chris earlier, and she too was reiterating her support.
- [17:33]
Wes Streeting
Were it not for the leadership of Keir Starmer, we would not have won that election. We would not be lifting over half a million children out of poverty. That is what Labour governments are elected to deliver.
- [17:43]
Angela Rayner
But what about the spectacle that people are seeing right now, which looks chaotic because, frankly, it is chaotic.
- [17:51]
Wes Streeting
Look, I wish it weren't happening, of course, but you'd expect me to say that. I have enormous respect for Anas Sarwa. I've known him a long time. But I think on this it's just profoundly the wrong call and it's the wrong judgment. Keir Starmer is a man of profound integrity, determination and public service.
- [18:07]
Angela Rayner
Will Keir Thomas still be Prime Minister at the end of the week?
- [18:10]
Alex Forsyth
Yes.
- [18:10]
Angela Rayner
End of the month?
- [18:11]
Alex Forsyth
Yep.
- [18:12]
Angela Rayner
End of the year?
- [18:13]
Alex Forsyth
Yes.
- [18:14]
Angela Rayner
You're certain?
- [18:15]
Alex Forsyth
Yes.
- [18:17]
James Cook
The longer those questions go on the more you have to keep saying yes.
- [18:21]
Alex Forsyth
Although Chris has said something like the end of the century, I did actually.
- [18:23]
James Cook
Wonder, I thought, I wonder how long you could push this. Two years, three, four century. I know. Anyway, I want to ask you a couple of things, Alex, about other people, interesting people, people who they say might one day or might be considering challenging the Prime Minister. They deny it, of course. Angela Rayner, former Deputy Prime Minister, posted a video, was it on TikTok? TikTok. Of her getting her hair cut.
- [18:48]
Alex Forsyth
Yeah.
- [18:48]
James Cook
She didn't post it. Our hairdresser posted it. Yeah, I'm being told, yeah.
- [18:55]
Alex Forsyth
Which was widely sort of seen as, you know, through what was, I think undoubtedly a difficult weekend for Keir Starmer when he felt quite beleague and there were questions about his judgment and his future and, you know, Pat McFadden, long standing ally of the Prime Minister was sent out to do all of the interviews saying about. In support of him. You then the kind of juxtaposition of having a seemingly carefree Angela Rayner was commented on and picked up without a shadow of a doubt.
- [19:21]
James Cook
I wondered if that was the John Major at the dentist moment. Remember that? When Margaret Thatcher was under massive pressure. And it's not quite as much, I mean, one imagines that Angela Rayner enjoys having our hair cut more than going to the dentist.
- [19:34]
Alex Forsyth
I think most people would.
- [19:35]
James Cook
I mean, I don't know. I know, indeed. But like. But I wondered, when I saw that, I thought, oh, is this a. But it wasn't.
- [19:42]
Alex Forsyth
Well, I think I also just give it with a caveat that people will inevitably read into everything right now because even though I hate the word and it is overused, it has been quite febrile.
- [19:52]
James Cook
You said, you said earlier, sometimes it's.
- [19:56]
Alex Forsyth
Got an appropriate use and I do.
- [19:57]
James Cook
Feel like the use of the word.
- [19:58]
Alex Forsyth
You know, to describe the mood of the last few days, it's probably fairly accurate. But interestingly on Angela Rayner, because of course, as you say, even though she would deny it, you know, she has long been considered a potential challenger for Keir Starmer at some point down the line. But even she. When we had this sort of stream of Cabinet ministers coming out publicly to state their support for Keir Starmer, she joined in and did a sort of series of messages on X saying about how she was backing the Prime Minister right now as well.
- [20:24]
James Cook
And where's streeting the Health Secretary?
- [20:27]
Alex Forsyth
Yeah. So he, he did this. He actually gave an interview to Sky News, Beth Rigby from Sky and he did the same, you know, he gave his support for, for the Prime Minister, saying that it wasn't the time for the Prime Minister to go right now, etc. Etc. But he actually went a bit further because he also wrote a piece for the Guardian newspaper in which he was addressing head on his relationship with Peter Mandelson. So a little bit of kind of context to this because while all of this has been going on, obviously the central question that has led to this point where Keir Starmer's judgment been openly questioned by many in his own party was the decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as the U.S. ambassador. Now over the course of the weekend there have been lots of people saying, well if it does come to it, and Wes Streeting wants to challenge Keir Starmer for leadership brackets, we're Streeting would deny that right now, but close brackets. But he might have a problem because he's particularly close to Peter Madison as well. So what we're Streeting has done is I suspect quite a strategic move in openly addressing that and saying it was a sort of moral failure of everybody, including himself, not to question the appointment of Peter Mandelson, but also I think wanting to distance himself a little bit from what has been reported as a very close relationship between the two. Even going as far as to publish WhatsApp messages between himself and Peter Mandelson trying to show that they didn't have a very cozy or close relationship. But one of the things he's also said is that he was a bit frustrated at the briefings against him from number 10. Now you will remember the last time that we're streaking talked about this, it all erupted into a huge great row. So we'll see where that goes.
- [22:12]
James Cook
It's interesting. His, his, his actions today certainly have been interesting and where they go next will be worth keeping an eye on, won't they? There's one other figure today who we wondered about when we heard that Anas Sarwar was going to give his news conference because if the polls are bad for Labour in Scotland, they are bad for Labour in Wales as well. Both Plaid Cymru and Reform UK challenging Labour's dominance, long time dominance since devolution in 1999 in Wales. And the question was, well, if an as Sarwar is going to come out, what is the Welsh First Minister Elenid Morgan going to do? And we did wonder if she too was going to come out and criticize or call for the Prime Minister to go, well then she didn't.
- [23:03]
Alex Forsyth
I think social media set a hair running as it sometimes does in these situations she might follow Anna Sawa and do something similar. But then our colleagues in BBC Wells got in touch with the team around her and they said that she's not in that space. I think the quote was, yeah, it's.
- [23:17]
James Cook
Not really necessarily a full throated public loud defense of the Prime Minister.
- [23:24]
Alex Forsyth
Well, you will know this, you will know this better than I, James, but you know, I think the, the leaders of labor in Wales and Scotland have been walking quite a careful line and I think they might say that they are having to walk quite a careful line in the run up to what are crucial elections for the Labour Party in those two nations because they are conscious that according to the polls, the UK labor government is not particularly popular and at the same time they're trying to campaign on a Labor platform in Scotland or Wales. So L ed Morgan, if you listen to her words quite carefully over the course of the last few months, really, you know, she has been trying to suggest that the Labour Party in Wales isn't one and the same in every capacity as the UK Labour government to sort of put a little bit of distance. So yeah, it was a sort of cautious distancing today.
- [24:10]
James Cook
And we have had, for years in Scotland we've had this debate about what detractors of Scottish Labour call the branch office. So people who criticize the Scottish Labour Party over the years, particularly the snp, say, oh, Scottish Labour is just a branch office of UK Labour. It does what it's told. It's run from London, it's run from the centre. It won't stick up for Scotland like we, the SNP quotes will stick up for Scotland. Obviously Scottish Labour strongly and angrily in some cases reject that characterisation. But now we're seeing that the branch office argument playing out to really extremes with this idea that, you know, there's no suggestion or no one can now say that an. As Sarwar's Labour Party is a branch office of the UK Labour Party, one might argue to a fault because the ties have been. And yet even in Today's news conference, Mr. Sawars still feels the need to defend the UK government or for whatever reason he thinks he should defend the UK government. He says that part of the problem here has been presentation rather than necessarily policy making and policy decisions, although he does think that in some respects policies, particularly around welfare, have been extremely unhelpful. But in terms of policy presentation, his argument is, look, when Labour came to power nearly two years ago in the UK general election and Scottish Labour went from one to 37 MPs everything was on track, everything was going well. He would say, and ask Sarwart, I've not done anything wrong. I've been running the party pretty well. And indeed, he has, in fairness, been making an impact on certain issues, particularly around a hospital scandal in Glasgow with voters and making interventions in the Scottish Parliament that some people regard as being pretty effective. He says, look, I'm not the problem, the Prime Minister is the problem, or the Prime Minister's team is the problem, or the UK government generally is the problem. And as you say, that is where you get to this idea that it's a really difficult tightrope to walk to defend the overall Labour project and the change that Labour promised and, and that Labour would deliver the change they promised, not just at Westminster, but also in the devolved parliaments. And yet, at the same time, you know, try to keep your distance a.
- [26:34]
Alex Forsyth
Little bit and then get all of.
- [26:35]
James Cook
That across to voters and get all of that across. It's hard, isn't it?
- [26:39]
Alex Forsyth
Yeah, really hard. And it's complicated. And I think, you know, look, I would say it has been a day of very fast moving and changing moods. I suspect that Kiers Starmer and probably and his team probably feel a little bit more confident as they sort of sit in Downing street this evening than perhaps they did going into today. But there are still some sort of practical questions outstanding. You know, there are some sort of gaps in the Downing street operation, not least that Keir Starmer still is going to have to fill. So he's lost his director of communications, he's chief of staff, he still needs to find a sort of permanent replacement for. And, you know, I think it's going to be one of those things where I would not be at all confident to predict how the next few days play out in. In any way.
- [27:26]
James Cook
Yeah. And actually, newscasters talking of questions have been asking questions. We have one from Martin Fuller, who's got in touch via WhatsApp. Thank you very much, Martin. Martin says hi. Does the panel. We had a panel. It's only you and me. Do we believe it likely a British Prime Minister will ever serve a full term again? Or is deposing the leader of the government something this country now does as a matter of course? That is an interesting question, isn't it? Because we have chopped and changed a lot in recent years.
- [27:56]
Alex Forsyth
It's such an interesting question for so many reasons. I mean, it's always been the sort of widely held assumption in Westminster that the Conservatives can be a bit more ruthless at ditching their leaders is certainly then the Labour Party. And of course, you know, right now Keir Starmer is Prime Minister and he's in the job and that's where he is. But I think that there is an interesting question about whether what happened in the last years of the Conservatives in government where we had those successive changes in leader and therefore Prime Minister really, really quickly, you know, has the Labour Party now looked at that? And there will be some in that party that thinks, think, my goodness, that's a terrible idea. We don't want to be like that. We need to kind of, you know, stick it out. But there might be others that think if it's not working, change it. And what I'm totally fascinated by to this point is what do people make of that? You know, is the country crying out for this or not? Is it good for the country or not? You know, they are the kind of key questions that have to factor into this.
- [28:54]
James Cook
Well, and then there's another question about the electorate. And newscasters will all have their own, you know, people will have their own opinions about this. But to, to what extent are we now impatient electorate, to what extent when a politician, as Sir Keir Starmer, did promises change, do we want to see the results of that change very quickly? And has that been affected by the shortening of our attention spans in first of all a 24 hour news era, and then secondly, in a social media era, has that fundamentally made politics harder for those who say, as Sir Keir Starmer did, this country needs a decade of renewal. Because then you're like, well, okay, a decade of renewal. Well, I mean, all right, but like, can't, can I have lower bills and lower taxes and better public services sooner than a decade, please?
- [29:45]
Alex Forsyth
And what's totally interesting and really hard to know about this current situation is coming back to that point, people might be impatient for change. People might be frustrated at being promised something that they then feel isn't being delivered, which is, is something you just hear time and time again. As you know, when you go around and speak to people, that's one of their biggest frustrations with the political system at the moment. Does that mean that people are crying out for a sort of ditching of the Prime Minister and a new prime minister? Now, what I think will be really interesting to get a sense of is when labor mps, after what had been a very intense week in Westminster last week, went back to their constituencies over the weekend and started to try and assess what they were hearing from their voters on the doorsteps and whether or not that changed their approach in any way when it came to the future of the Prime Minister.
- [30:31]
James Cook
I'll tell you who is sticking up for the Prime Minister is a newscaster who's also a member of Parliament, John Slinger, who's the MP for Rugby Rugby, Labour MP for Rugby has. Has got in touch. Got in touch after the weekend episodes. Thank you very much. Saying hi, Laura and team. You said it was increasingly hard to find a Labour MP who thinks Keir Starmer will still be PM in a few months, let alone lead us into the next general election. Hi.
- [30:55]
Alex Forsyth
Who doesn't say that.
- [30:56]
James Cook
He says. I'm one who thinks that. I think we as a party should be rallying behind the pm, speculating about the leadership harms the country, which is far more important than the party interest. And we actually spoke to John Slinger after that and he said there's actually a lot of support for Keir Starmer was his argument. And he thinks that Anas was very much playing to his own audience in Scotland. These recent events, he thinks are distracting and detracting. Now, that's only one, but that is.
- [31:26]
Alex Forsyth
I mean, it's a valid point because I was talking to somebody else very, very senior within the Labour Party just before the weekend, actually, and they were rightly making the point that the plp, the parliamentary Labour Party, is not a homogeneous blob where everybody thinks exactly the same thing. And I think it can be easy for journalists. You know, you speak to some mps and you might get a sense of that's the sort of move. But there are lots of different groupings, lots of different factions and lots of different people within that big parliamentary Labour Party that exists who will feel very differently about what should happen in the next kind of days, weeks, months and, and beyond. And while there absolutely has been real frustration and anger and upset about the way that they think things have been going from the center, there will be others who think that, you know, cool heads need to prevail. It just sort of depends in the next couple of days which which one is takes precedent or which one, you know.
- [32:20]
James Cook
Yeah. And I'll tell you one thing, these elections have been thrown into turmoil, especially in Scotland, particularly. The Hollywood election has really been, you know, we thought we maybe knew roughly the shape of this election and the campaigns and what they would look, look like. And, and I think now we don't really know how the Hollywood election's going to play out. How are people in the party going to respond to an asarwar? How are the public going to respond to what he's done. And I'll tell you how the SNP are going to respond, which is talking about instability. They're going to say Westminster's the problem, that's the instability. You know, the SNP were very keen, as you know, Alex, to talk about independence as much as possible during this election campaign, because support for independence and support for the Scottish National Party have detached in the polls in recent years. And, you know, support for Scottish independence still running pretty high, like nearly 50%. And support for the SNP, while still high enough to have them in the lead in Scotland according to the polls, has fallen somewhat. And so John Swinney, the First Minister and SNP leader, is very keen to yoke those two things back together. And I think these events will only strengthen his determination to talk a lot about the constitution in this campaign. So we've been in a bit of a. Bit of a dip in the roller coaster of constitutional debates, but maybe, maybe it will come back to the four in the coming weeks.
- [33:45]
Alex Forsyth
Yeah. And we know, of course, on the horizon, looking here, that there are some really crucial moments coming up. So of course there are, yes, of course, that big set of elections on May 7, Scotland, Wales and local elections in England. There's also a parliamentary by. A parliamentary by election in a couple of weeks ahead of that, which is pretty important. And we are still waiting for lots of the messages and information around the appointment of Peter Mandelson to be published. So I feel like this has got a way to run.
- [34:08]
James Cook
It does. We've had the verdict of the Scottish Labour leader. We've had the verdict, for now at least, of the Cabinet. And next we'll very much get the verdict of voters in lots of different places.
- [34:18]
Alex Forsyth
Plenty more to come, I suspect, and of course we will follow it all.
- [34:21]
James Cook
And we'll be in all week for Adam.
- [34:22]
Alex Forsyth
Yes, you and I here all week. So catch up with us then, if you can. But for now, goodbye.
- [34:27]
James Cook
Bye Bye.
- [34:27]
Alex Forsyth
Newscast, Newscast from the BBC.
- [34:30]
Chris Mason
Thank you so much for making it to the end of Newscast. You clearly copyright Chris Mason Ooze Stamina. Can I gently encourage you to to subscribe to us on BBC Sounds? Don't forget, you can email us anytime. It's newscastbc.co.uk and if you would like to join our Discord community to talk about everything newscast related, there is a link in the description of this podcast. And don't be scared, it's super easy to click on it and then get set up. Or you can WhatsApp us on 033012394. And I promise you, we read and listen to every single message. Thanks for listening to this podcast.
- [35:10]
James Cook
Bye.
- [35:17]
Helena Merriman
If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.