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- [00:00]
Nick Robinson
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- [00:06]
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- [01:11]
James (Newscast Host)
So two 15 year old boys who were spared prison after raping two girls in Hampshire have now been sentenced to four years in youth detention after the Court of Appeal in London ruled that their original sentence was unduly lenient.
- [01:26]
Alex (Newscast Host)
This is a case which has just prompted an enormous amount of reaction and response. And in fact, we're going to talk about exactly that on today's episode of Newscast Newscast from the BBC.
- [01:46]
James (Newscast Host)
Hello, it's James in the studio and
- [01:48]
Alex (Newscast Host)
it's Alex in the studio. And just to warn you, as we discuss this ruling today by the Court of Appeal, we are going to talk about some upsetting details. So in so if you'd like to avoid listening to that, completely understandably, then you can skip ahead to the second half of this episode when we've spoken to Nick Robinson, who is the presenter of Political Thinking Podcast, and he has been talking to Morgan McSweeney, who is Keir Starmer's former chief of staff.
- [02:12]
James (Newscast Host)
But before we do that, newscasters, let's just have a reminder about this case that we're talking about, Alex, because we're going to speak to Daniel Sanford in a minute, who's been covering the case, but before that at the Court of Appeal in London. These boys have been sent to youth detention now, but they'd originally been given community youth rehabilitation orders for these rapes of two teenage girls in Hampshire in 2024 and 2025. And the case caused just such a huge reaction in the country and also in political circles.
- [02:49]
Alex (Newscast Host)
Yeah, I mean, this so this was back in May, just to give you a bit of timeline when the non custodial sentences were handed down to the teenage boys in this case. And there was just an enormous reaction and the sentences happened. And then a couple of days later, I think there was just this sense as people really got to grips of what had happened in this case, of the political reaction and traction growing. And then Laura, Laura Ginsburg, our newscast colleague, of course, she, on her Sunday morning program, Sunday with Laura Ginsburg, she actually spoke to one of the girls who had been raped and her family. And it's just worth saying at this point that because of the ages of the people involved, they remain anonymous. But the girl very bravely talked about what that experience had done to her.
- [03:39]
Victim (Anonymous)
It took me six months to say something and essentially the reason I said it was because I was losing it, I was spiraling, I needed help, but I didn't know how to get it. So I spoke up. I wanted justice, I wanted to prove my point. But it feels like nothing was proven.
- [03:55]
Alex (Newscast Host)
And on the back of that there was a sort of extraordinary interview with Darren Jones, who is Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister. And you could just see his emotion. You know, it was one of those cases just clearly struck a chord with so many people. And on the back of that, the Attorney General referred what had been non custodial sentences for the teenage boys for review. And then the Court of Appeal has been looking at this and that is where we are today.
- [04:23]
James (Newscast Host)
And I spoke to Daniel Sanford, UK correspondent who was at the Court of Appeal and came into the newscast studio to tell me what had happened there today.
- [04:33]
Daniel Sanford (UK Correspondent)
Well, actually, really, really interesting start to proceedings after lunch because there are obviously three teenage boys involved here whose future was being decided. And two of them had their sentences increased. They were sitting in a court in Southampton on a video link and the first thing that the Lady Chief justice did was she turned to address them and gave a very, very simplified version of her ruling in really, really simple language because one of the boys really has a very low IQ in the bottom 1%. And she explained to them that what they'd done was, in her words, very bad and that they were going to change their punishments and that they were going to put them into detention. It was really interesting to hear her describing to these boys that had been considered by the wider public as monsters and rapists in this really, really almost childlike language what was going to happen to them. Then once she'd spoken to them, she went into the main, more formal legal judgment in front of all the lawyers and the media who had come to attend. And in very simple terms, she took the view, along with the other appeal court judges sitting with her, that what the original trial court judge had done was wrong and that in fact this was one of those last resort cases, as they're called in legal circles, and that these boys should be sentenced to detention and that it would be four years in detention. Though once you've considered they'll be released early and take into account the fact that they've already done the equivalent of 231 days on a curfew, it'll be a few more months that they spend in detention.
- [06:14]
James (Newscast Host)
So I'd like to get into a bit more detail about what the lady Chief justice said about the court's reasoning. I'm sure newscastles will be interested in that. But just to explain, Daniel, you're talking about three boys here. We were talking about two boys and they were, I think, 14 at the time. They're 15 now. Just explain the role, if you would, of the third boy in this case.
- [06:34]
Daniel Sanford (UK Correspondent)
Yeah. So at the time there were two 14 year old boys who involved in the actual sexual activity and there was a third 13 year old boy who had filmed some of it. And you effectively become part of the rape offence if you are filming it. So he was convicted as a secondary participant in the second rape. His sentence wasn't changed. It was decided that what the trial judge had considered in his case was correct and that he will serve this 18 month youth rehabilitation order. The two boys who'd actively participated in the rapes were the ones who had their sentences increased.
- [07:14]
James (Newscast Host)
So this is Sue Carr, the lady Chief justice, is that right?
- [07:18]
Nick Robinson
That's correct, yeah.
- [07:18]
James (Newscast Host)
Baroness Carr, Baroness Kerr. Baroness Carr, indeed. And what did she have to say about what the original sentencing judge had actually done? Because she's obviously reviewed it, as you say, she's looked into that in detail. What was her opinion or her legal opinion on what had happened in the first.
- [07:36]
Daniel Sanford (UK Correspondent)
So the guidelines for sentencing children are really clear that sending them into detention should be a last resort. And those were the words the original judge used and he was heavily criticised for it. But that's written solidly into the guidelines.
- [07:51]
James (Newscast Host)
Even for rape cases?
- [07:52]
Daniel Sanford (UK Correspondent)
Yeah, even for rape cases. And that the judges are told to avoid criminalizing children unnecessarily. And again, those words that he used direct quotes from the guidelines. So the question for the appeal Court judges, was this an exceptional case, a case where the detention should be one of last resort? And what the lady Chief justice and the other appeal court judges decided was where the judge had gone wrong was in considering the seriousness of this case, how serious in fact it was. They said it was so serious that if they'd been adult offenders, they'd have been given sentences of 10 years or more. And the seriousness was because of the prolonged nature of the offending, because these rapes took place over a period of time. The fact there were multiple rapes involved that, the fact that the two girls were raped on separate occasions, two months apart. So this wasn't some kind of one off thing that had just gone horribly wrong. And critically, that they felt that the judge just hadn't taken properly into account the effect on the two girls that had been raped. He'd taken that into account, but they felt it had been underplayed in his original sentencing. So that cumulative effect of these actual really serious aggravating factors about how the rapes took place, including the filming of the rapes and the fact that the girls, the effect it had on the girls who were raped had just had been underplayed, meant that, in her words, a sentence of detention was inevitable.
- [09:31]
James (Newscast Host)
Right. And as Alex was saying a minute ago, we're not giving the names of these boys because their identity is protected by law, because of their age, and we're obviously not giving the names of the victims because their identity is naturally and always protected by law. But you have spoken to the mother of one of the victims, Daniel, is that right? Anonymously, obviously.
- [09:51]
Daniel Sanford (UK Correspondent)
Yes, that's right. So the first girl was raped in the dark by a river under an underpass in November 2024. The second girl was raped in a park again after dark. Both of these took place in Fording Bridge. And the mother that I spoke to was the mother of the first girl who was raped. And I asked her whether she felt that the new sentence was enough. And she said, well, no mother was going to say they were happy with it. No other would say that it was enough. But she said that she felt she was in a much, much better position than she was this morning when the boys that had raped her daughter had had no custodial sentence at all. So she felt it was a considerable step forward. And I got the impression that they won't be sort of pushing further on this. Though she did say that she felt that because there were two offenses, she didn't really. Under two sets of rapes, she didn't really understand why the sentences weren't taking place consecutively, one after the other. The sentencing for the November rapes weren't then being followed by the sentencing for the January, because they all got combined into one sentence. So she still felt quite uncomfortable about the fact. She felt it should have been. If it was going to be four years, it should have been four years, then followed by another four years.
- [11:14]
James (Newscast Host)
Yeah, it's an interesting point, isn't it? And I mean, you can't begin to put yourself in the shoes of people who've been through this, but you have to be with people and you do this a lot in your job, Daniel. You talk to people who've suffered unimaginably or their relatives, or in this case their children have suffered unimaginably. How, how does that go? How. You know, just tell me a bit more, if you can, about. About the process of doing that interview and how it went.
- [11:47]
Daniel Sanford (UK Correspondent)
Yeah, I mean, everyone responds in different ways and I think you can't expect somebody who's the victim of a crime or their family to necessarily react in one way. But this particular family, you can see they're going to take the path of wanting to help people and who are going to be following behind them in the future. They're going to want you to make sure, first of all that these boys get an appropriate punishment and they feel like they've done as much as they can on that. But they're also thinking of setting up a foundation. They're fundraising to try and set up a foundation which will support women and girls who follow down the line. Because what they felt is that despite all the assistance of the kind of the police and the criminal justice system and then the kind of assistance again of the criminal justice system, when it came to trying to get the sentences amended, that they hadn't really had the support they needed. So they're very much going to get involved in that. I should say that their daughter is clearly very, very, very profoundly affected. You know, she's really, really struggled. She has just done her GCSEs. So amazingly, life goes on and she's, you know, waiting to for her GCSE results like other 16 year olds in the country. But I, I think her mother said to me that her daughter will be suffering from a life sentence, effectively, and that's why she felt it was so important that the boys should get more punishment than they were originally given.
- [13:22]
James (Newscast Host)
Daniel, thanks very much.
- [13:23]
Daniel Sanford (UK Correspondent)
It's great to be here.
- [13:24]
James (Newscast Host)
Now, if you've been affected by any of the issues raised in this story, you can visit the BBC's Action Line website for advice. And that is BBC.co.uk actionline. Now, Morgan McSweeney. Many newscasters will be familiar with at least the spectre, if not the physical form of Morgan McSweeney. He was chief of Staff to the Prime Minister, wasn't he, Alex? And he resigned in February, largely, I think, because of his role or his perceived role in the appointment of Peter Mandelson to the, the, the job in Washington, the UK's ambassador to the US. So he has done a big interview.
- [14:09]
Alex (Newscast Host)
Yeah, I mean, it's just worth saying he's been such a key figure to Keir Starmer's timing government up to his resignation, but also before that, he was right alongside Keir Starmer in reshaping the Labor Party, in trying to get labor re elected, and then obviously successfully doing that. So he's been a really key figure in Westminster for some time, but he isn't someone you hear from very often. However, Nick Robinson for his Political Thinking podcast, has managed to sit him down and have a good chat and we can talk to Nick about it right now. Hello, Nick.
- [14:41]
Morgan McSweeney
Hi.
- [14:42]
Alex (Newscast Host)
So I'm fascinated by this because, like many people In Westminster, Morgan McSweeney became a name that we were all really, really familiar with. But really, until he gave that appearance at the Select Committee a few months ago, very few people had even heard his voice. And then suddenly, Nick, you get him sat down in front of a camera, in front of a microphone for his first ever interview. I mean, just what was it like having him in the room in that, in that position?
- [15:06]
Nick Robinson
Well, quite extraordinary, actually, Alex, because sometimes in these political thinking interviews, I'm interviewing people I've known for a long time. We've had conversations in private. I'm not one of those people who had Morgan McSweeney in my phone book. He didn't have my number either. We got to know each other when talking about whether to do this interview or not. And as you say, there was what he describes as a kind of mythos, Greek word that he uses around him. Now, a mythos is more than a myth. It means a whole series of myths around him as he sees it, of course, because he's seen as a kind of bogey figure to many. On the one hand, credited by his friends for having turned the Labour Party around as a campaigning organisation, having lost the election in 2019 under Jeremy Corbyn and that extraordinary landslide victory in 2024 by his enemies, though, he is accused of picking a man. And they do claim that he handpicked Keir Starmer for the job of Labour leader who didn't believe very much, or at least wasn't able to convince people that he believed it very much, of neutering the little he did believe, because he was just trying to persuade the voters, vote for us and we won't scare you by telling you what we might actually do. And then in government, running what was often described as a boys club of people who briefed against enemies within the Labour Party. So to suddenly meet and then hear from a guy who. It's a bit like wizard of Oz, isn't it, when they pull back the curtain. Softly spoken, slightly shy, restrained in what he said, unwilling to attack, you know, certainly not his old boss, Keir Starmer, but not even the woman he clashed with repeatedly, a woman called Sue Gray, who was Keir Starmer's first chief of staff. It just was fascinating to watch and listen and see what happened next.
- [16:56]
James (Newscast Host)
And before Nick, we get into the content of what he actually said. I suppose we should examine the idea of motive here. So if this is a guy who's barely ever wanted to speak to, it doesn't sound like he's very comfortable in that environment, necessarily. I mean, apart from your remarkable skills of persuasion, why is he doing it, do you think?
- [17:21]
Nick Robinson
Yeah. Why did Alex laugh, then?
- [17:25]
Alex (Newscast Host)
No comment here.
- [17:26]
Nick Robinson
I thought they were remarkable. No, look, I mean, obviously I asked myself that question. The truth is, he wants to puncture what he sees as this. And I'm going to use the Greek word again, Mythos. When he was before the Select Committee giving evidence about the selection of Peter Mandelson as the UK ambassador to Washington D.C. he used this word again and again. He feels he's been caricatured. He feels that there are a whole series of things that are said about him that he's blamed for that simply aren't fair. And he wants to change that now. Why does he want to change that now? Is the next question. I think he wants to hold open the possibility of returning to do some work for the Labour Party. When I said, would you like to work at the next election? He said, I don't want to work on any election. He's addicted to that process. And I think he probably chose this week rather than waiting a while, because he wanted to get his own critique of the failures of his regime and Keir Starmer's regime in before Andy Burnham did. So, in other words, say, look, I'm going to admit what we got wrong. I'm going to be open about what we got wrong. He's certainly not planning or frankly likely to have any sort of comeback in the short term. He's doing quite a lot of work in Ukraine at the moment, advising government there. Has some interesting things that he's learned about how government works sometimes rather better in a war torn region than it does here in the uk. But I think he wants to keep the door open to the possibility of making a return one day.
- [18:55]
Alex (Newscast Host)
And on the critique, on his own sort of assessment of what went wrong. And obviously it's pretty safe to say that something went wrong given that Keir Starmer's now imminently on his way out of Downing street and Morgan McSweeney had to resign. But he really put it down to one central theme, which was about not being prepared enough to govern, which has been a familiar criticism. But it was quite striking to hear Morgan McSweeney acknowledge it. In fact, we can hear him in his own words as to what he said about that.
- [19:22]
Morgan McSweeney
It was very hard to get people to focus on what we needed to do to win to begin with. And then once we started getting into 2022, 2023, it was about building the machine. But early in 2024, when we were preparing for the general election, when we were sitting down, I was sitting down with Pat McFadden, windowless rooms, hour after hour, planning for day one, I did start to realize that we hadn't done enough to prepare for government. And then we got exposed for that, I think early.
- [19:51]
Alex (Newscast Host)
I mean, Nick, I thought that really was quite the admission because as I say, people have sort of leveled that criticism against Keir Starmer's administration repeatedly. But Morgan McSweeney is just saying it in the clearest possible terms. They've been so focused on trying to transform the party, which Keir Starmer's already pointing to as part of his sort of legacy, that they just didn't give enough attention to the act of governing. And I mean, they've paid something of a price for that, I think.
- [20:17]
Nick Robinson
Huge price, isn't it? Because remember that Keir Starmer in many ways defined himself as being the opposite of Boris Johnson. I'm not the flashy guy. I'm not the guy who's good at the sound bites or the performance. I'm Mr. Stability. I'm Mr. Grown Up, I'm Mr. I've Run an organization. He ran, of course, the Crown Prosecution Service when he was Director of Public Prosecutions. And I'll get this right. So to have his key guy say, well, actually, we didn't really think it through and we didn't know what the world was going to be like. And he admits that he didn't know really what the world was going to be like economically, or the challenges in terms of security or dealing with a post Brexit world and with Donald Trump is, as you say, extraordinary. To hear him concede. And he goes further, Alex, in the interview, which is again the common criticism made certainly in Labour Party ranks, but often by just ordinary voters as well, why they were so damn gloomy having won that election. Do you remember that first news conference in which he's telling us how painful it's going to be? He admits they shouldn't have been gloomy. Why on earth was the first act that anybody remembers about this government was the abolition of the winter fuel allowance for pensioners? He admits that that was a mistake. I say to him, did anybody actually raise an objection to it in number 10 when it was proposed first of all by the Treasury? No, he said, and what that tells you really is this whole system failed. I mean, I know because I did a documentary years back about the 2010 David Cameron coalition government. The first proposal on the desk of Prime Minister David Cameron was to abolish the winter fuel allowance. The treasury had always hated it gave money, people who are relatively well off and people are very well off. Cameron picks up the piece of paper, hands it to the then Cabinet Secretary Gus o' Donnell, and said, gus, there's a reason I'm a politician and you're a civil servant. You must be bloody kidding. Bring something else back. I'm not doing it. Why didn't that happen under Keir Starmer and under Morgan McSweeney and Nick, what
- [22:16]
James (Newscast Host)
was your feeling about his diagnosis, in a wider sense of the problems of the country? Because he talked about the mood of the country, about voters being frustrated, people wanting change to come more quickly. And in his telling, one of Labour's problems was their apparent inability to deliver change quickly enough. But then he's also talking about how he's discovered, he says he's discovered. I mean, you can have a debate about whether he discovered these problems really when they came in the door, or whether they should have known about them already, but that there are deep seated underlying problems in the country. Remember, Keir Starmer kept talking about a decade of renewal of change. So I suppose the question is, you know, was there some sort of, if, if a lack of preparedness is the problem? Was there something else they could have done to deliver change more quickly? Because if so, he didn't give any sense of it in the interview, did he, as to what they could have done instead.
- [23:12]
Nick Robinson
No, in truth, he doesn't do that. And that's one reason Andy Burnham is about to become our next Prime Minister, because he has given his own supporters, at least Labour MPs, even those who didn't support him, some sense of hope and optimism and belief that something is possible. Now, there is a common theme between what Morkham McSweeney talks to me about on this political thinking interview and what Burnham is talking about, which is the weakness of the centre of government. McSweeney says. Quotes it was actually quite weak and that left us exposed, I think, and this is a hunch, James, rather than something I can give you evidence for. But I think they made the mistake that politicians often do, which is they believe their own rhetoric about their opponents. They get into a mindset that says these Tories, if they're Labour supporters. And it works the other way around, of course, when it's the Conservatives or in Scotland, where, you know, these people in the snp, et cetera, et cetera, they're hopeless, they're evil, they're bad, they're whatever. If we get in, it'll all be fine. Actually, the reality is, and the really clever politicians understand this, often you look at your opponents and, yeah, they're not people like me, they're not people who share my views or values, but they're basically decent people who want to do a good job. And if they've not managed to turn this thing around, maybe there's an underlying reason for that that I need to get my brain round. And I think Starmer believed that the Tories were uniquely bad. He'd looked at this thing that some people regard as comic and he regard as an outrage, the Boris Johnson era. Then Liz Truss Sunak I think he had more respect for, but he just thought, these people are a shower. And that was a lost opportunity to say, why couldn't these guys make this work? What can we learn from them?
- [24:56]
Alex (Newscast Host)
And I think what was interesting was that when you put to him specifically some of the early things that happened that Morgan McSweeney acknowledged did damage public opinion of the Labor Party. So things like the Winter Fuel decision, but also things like the freebies row, you know, all the kind of suits and the glasses and the gifts that Keir Starmer was receiving. Morgan McSweeney acknowledged the damage they did, but also defended to some extent their approach. So he was making the argument about that, well, look, yeah, maybe we should have paid for it through campaign funds, but actually, if you're out on A campaign trail. You're going to need a new suit and maybe a few pairs of glasses in case you lose one. You, you know, I just sort of wonder if there was like a true acknowledgement just where the public mood was at that point when it came to that kind of thing. Given that Keir Starmer had spent so much time trying to differentiate himself from what had come before.
- [25:52]
Nick Robinson
I didn't think, and you've obviously seen or read this key bit, Alex, that he really did recognise the scale of, of anger there was that a man who'd said, look, I'm going to uphold public standards, a man who said I'm about service to the public was accused when he took free suits and he took free glasses of being interested in self service. Now look, you know, I'm going to make myself unpopular with some people listening to newscast and saying, I actually buy that. I suspect he just thought, look, I'm running around off and got to wear two suits a day, I've got to change glasses. You know, I mean, this is kind of a tool of the job. But their failure to get it and to get it at speed and say, okay, there's another way of looking at this, which is, this is unique privilege and I'm taking money that wouldn't be available. And money in large quantities, if you're paying hundreds of pounds, maybe more than £1,000 for a suit would offend and outrage people. And a theme that came up again and again was how slow they were to recognise and to respond to problems. This was a sort of plodding Downing street. And Keir Starmer obviously gets the blame for being a bit slow on his feet. But in the end, Morgan McSweeney has to take some blame. I didn't think he probably took as much blame as some of his critics would want watching this interview.
- [27:14]
James (Newscast Host)
And another area in which I don't think, I think it's fair to say he didn't really accept the critique you were putting to him was on the idea, the allegations which had been made not from the outside but by senior Labour figures, senior Labour women, that there was a boys club inside number 10 and that he was in large part running the boys club and that that might have influenced the disastrous decision made to hire Lord Mandelson, Peter Mandelson, as the UK's ambassador to the US. So let's have a listen to that little bit.
- [27:46]
Morgan McSweeney
So the women I worked with. Well, so both in the. This was an attack that was made on us both in opposition and government and in opposition The Labour Party had. Half of our directors were women. The senior spads in number 10, about. In my time as chief of staff, about half were women. And it's not just numbers. It's real people who made big differences Both in number 10 and the labour Party. And actually, just to pause you a
- [28:18]
Nick Robinson
second, when you say an attack, I mean, this doesn't come from your opponents or your critics or the newspapers or some TV commentator. It's coming from senior women in the Labour Party.
- [28:28]
Morgan McSweeney
But it was a critique about the Labour Party headquarters and about Labour Party and about spads in number 10. And I have no doubt in my mind that the women in senior jobs in Labour Party had faced challenges and misogyny to do their jobs all of the time. But at the same time, this sense that they weren't. That they weren't there, that they weren't counted, actually does them a massive disservice.
- [28:54]
Alex (Newscast Host)
I sort of wonder if it just comes back to this idea, which it was the message of this whole interview and it was such an interesting watch, was I felt like a little bit like he was. He perhaps wasn't, as he was almost talking a bit like a politician, you know, like he. It was almost like he was almost still like he was in government. Like. There was a lot of defense of Keir Starmer. There was a lot of defense of the Downing street operation. He did acknowledge there were mistakes, a lack of optimism at the start as well as some of those early decisions. But, you know, it was like maybe not to the scale. He didn't acknowledge it. To the scale that's led them to the point that they find themselves now, which is Morgan McSweenney out of Downing street and K D on his way out.
- [29:33]
James (Newscast Host)
Politics is catching. Behaving like a politician is catching.
- [29:36]
Alex (Newscast Host)
Well, maybe.
- [29:37]
Nick Robinson
Well, it's certainly a mindset, isn't it? And I think, look, let's be fair to. The guy's never, literally never done an interview. I think you said rarely. He has never done. I should just say, to be fair, he's also done an interview for the Financial Times as well. At the same time as well. Not literally at the same time, obviously, but I think it was on the same day. No, I think Alex is exactly right about that. And I tell you why I think it was. And again, I'm guessing I'm going to be open about this. I don't know the man well, although I've got to know him in the last couple of weeks as we, you know, landed this interview. I think he's someone who plans what to say. And there were things he came to say we weren't prepared enough, we made a mistake with Winterfuel. And there were other things I put to him where it was clear he not quite worked out what to say yet.
- [30:28]
James (Newscast Host)
Well, that Boys Club was one, wasn't it?
- [30:30]
Nick Robinson
I think so. I think, I think there's a genuine upset that he thinks, you know, without doing the joke about some of my best friends are. But he thinks some of my closest colleagues are women. So what are you talking about? And, but he wasn't willing to acknowledge that these people who were saying it, as I suggested my question, weren't anybody. I mean, it was Louise Haig. Now, Louise Haig left the Cabinet, you can argue, because she made a mistake as Transport Secretary in terms of what she'd done in her past. She is now the key right hand woman to Andy Burnham. So the way he behaved to her has had direct consequence. It's the Deputy leader of the Labour Party, Lucy Powell, who says it. So they believed there was a boy club, they believed they were being excluded, they believed they were being derided by briefings, not necessarily always by him, but by, by people who work for him. And as you say, Alex, I don't think he's yet recognized all that. But let's be fair to him. Again, he actually does say in the interview, I've not processed all this yet. I am still thinking about it and for someone who has kind of worked probably non stop obsessively for what, about six years? And, and you do have to remember, and I, you know, hold no flame for him, he's not a mace of mine. But you do have to remember most people thought it was impossible to do what he and Keir Starmer did to turn that 2019 defeat around to getting into government with a huge majority was regarded as impossible. So maybe there is just a little bit of. Hold on guys, look what I did. Give me. Cut me some slack.
- [32:10]
Alex (Newscast Host)
And when I say he sort of spoke like a politician, I think what I mean by that is that he was kind of careful and cautious. But it's also worth remembering that he's talking about Keir Starmer, who is still the Prime Minister. He's not doing this interview months saw years after Keir Starmer's left office, a guy that he was very, very close to and worked so closely alongside. You know, Keir Starmer is still officially in office right now. There was one bit when he came in with an anecdote when he was talking about what Must have been quite extraordinary as Morgan McSweeney, Chief of Staff, sat in the room with those early conversations, particularly between Kier Starmer and Donald Trump, and he talked about one of those first phone calls in which. But I'll tell you what, let's just hear it.
- [32:49]
Morgan McSweeney
He's much funnier than I expected him to be. So the first call that Keir had with the President, he got into a conversation about windmills and he started saying, look, Britain's beautiful country, but you have too many windmills. Fine. He was making his point. He's made that publicly enough times. Then he started to say, the windmills are killing your birds. The birds are falling by the windmills. Foxes are eating those birds. And at this point, the officials that were in the room were barely able to contain themselves because it was extremely funny. But this was the first call between the Prime Minister and the President and everyone wanted to be professional but were struggling to hold it together. And he went on to say that as the foxes ate so many birds and became lazy, they became fat. And as they became so fat, people no longer knew what kind of a creature they were, because they were too. They were these fat foxes walking around Scotland eating dead birds. And this was the first call between the President and the Prime Minister and thought, this is just going to be so very, very different.
- [33:50]
Nick Robinson
Did Keir Stober allow himself to laugh?
- [33:52]
Morgan McSweeney
No, he just held it together. I don't know how. He just absolutely contained himself. No one else in the room did.
- [33:58]
James (Newscast Host)
Yeah, he's talked to me about the. I've talked to President Trump about this,
- [34:04]
Alex (Newscast Host)
about the windmills, not the fat foxes,
- [34:05]
James (Newscast Host)
windmills, as he calls them, which are obviously not windmills, they're wind turbines, apart from anything else. But he hasn't talked to me about the fox, but he has complained to me about the wind turbines off the coast of Aberdeenshire, where one of his golf courses is. Anyway, Nick, what did you make of that bit?
- [34:20]
Nick Robinson
Well, I thought, why? It was fascinating. And one of the things we try to do on these long conversational interviews on political thinking, not news interrogations. I always say to people who are listening or watching, but long conversations is, pull the curtain back a bit. What's it actually like for these people doing these sorts of jobs? And there is Keir Starmer, a big, brand new Prime Minister, thinking, how do I deal with this guy with Donald Trump? And he knows that his party and large parts of the public want a kind of Love actually moment, a Hugh Grant moment, if you remember the film in which Hugh Grant plays the Prime Minister who actually stands up at a news conference for Britain and attacks the United States. And of course, anybody in that job would say, don't be ridiculous, I've got to get on with the guy. You know, there are things I need. I don't need to become his enemy. I need to try to smooth feathers. How do you deal with it? What you're not prepared for is a man who can just say anything. I mean, how do you prepare for that? And it turns out that on this call that it wasn't just Morgan McSweeney who was in the room but listening. They'd have another handset along with. I don't know the names of the other people, but I would imagine it would be Jonathan Bell, who was National Security Advisor, and one other, perhaps the Cabinet secretary or Foreign affairs advisor. There were apparently dozens of people around the building listening in, because that's what they do in leaders calls, because each different specialty in terms of policy wants to say, what's the President saying about this? How do we react to that? What do we prepare for this and that? Just like, whoa, you're on your own now.
- [35:57]
James (Newscast Host)
What do you do?
- [35:58]
Nick Robinson
Do you laugh? Do you say what you're talking about? Do you say, actually the fact that foxes are perfectly normal size?
- [36:04]
Alex (Newscast Host)
Big fan of fat foxes over here, Prime Minister. Mr. President.
- [36:07]
Nick Robinson
In my old job, you know, when I was political editor, I traveled with, what, three prime ministers very regularly, particularly Tony Blair, who travelled the world a lot. And there were great moments in news conferences I used to always love them. In which Alastair Campbell, he's, you know, famously his director of communications, would sit and watch Tony Blair when a leader said something a bit quirky like that in a news conference. And I'd catch his eye and what he was basically saying is, you're on your own now, mate.
- [36:36]
Alex (Newscast Host)
This is what he wanted to do. Come on over to you. Yeah, so, I mean, the final thought of your conversation with Morgan Sweeney almost started back at the beginning, Nick, when he was. His kind of overall theme was that we didn't prepare enough. I guess then that poses a question for Andy Burnham, who I have no doubt is going to be listening to this episode of Political Thinking, but, you know, he's got an even shorter time to prepare for government. Now, of course, some might say he's had his eye on the top job job for some time, Mr. Burnham. But if you compare to Keir Starmer, who had those official years as Leader of the Opposition, Andy Burnham's come straight from Mayor of Greater Manchester to win the Makerfield by election to now a matter of weeks, when he is widely expected to be walking into number 10. I wonder if there is anything that might be taken from what Morgan McSweeney had to say around that central issue of preparedness, what you think it might be?
- [37:27]
Nick Robinson
Well, the difficulty, as you say, Alex, is he can't prepare. He can't suddenly invent time that he hasn't got. And you're right, a leader of the Opposition, by nature of having that job, gets, for example, security briefings regularly will be briefed about what the Russians are up to, the Chinese, the American. That's what people do. They get what are called access talks before an election in which they meet senior civil servants who say, well, look, Leader of the Opposition, if you're intending to do X or Y, we can tell you this and that now, those talks have now begun with Burnham and the Cabinet Secretary and sort of Burnham's people, but they begun a matter of days before he moves into Downing Street. So he can't suddenly find time that he hasn't got. I think it's true, as you suggest, that he's had his eye on this for a very long time, that maybe since the moment he became Mayor of Greater Manchester, he's been thinking about it, which is about nine years, if my memory serves me correctly. I think it is also true that in government, he had a couple of jobs that gave him some insight into this. Being Chief Secretary to the treasury, which he was, means that you're responsible for negotiations with all the spending departments. So you have to get your head round not just the budget, but also policy in lots of areas. And, of course, being mayor of a big region, Greater Manchester, which I have to keep reminding people, you're not just Mayor of the City of Manchester, but of a bigger region, you have meetings about transport, you have meetings about health, you have meetings about welfare and about skills. So you have some insight. But the truth is, nothing prepares you for that moment. You walk in the door of number 10, the cabinet secretary says, step this way. They then prepare you by saying, this is the terrorist threat, this is the external threat to the nation. They look at those papers. I've talked to prime ministers and former prime ministers about that moment, and it is a gulp moment, it's a lump in the back of the throat moment. It's that moment says, good God, I'm in charge.
- [39:31]
Alex (Newscast Host)
You can listen to the whole of Nick Robinson's conversation with Morgan McSweeney on the Political Thinking podcast on BBC sounds highly recommend you do.
- [39:38]
James (Newscast Host)
Yeah, you should. It's very good. Really interesting.
- [39:40]
Alex (Newscast Host)
Really interesting. And Nick, you're also gonna be at the Crossed Wires Festival in Sheffield this weekend.
- [39:45]
Morgan McSweeney
That's right.
- [39:46]
Nick Robinson
Big podcast festival Sheffield this Saturday. I'm interviewing Louise Haig, who my guess would be, and it is a guess, she hasn't told me, I can assure you that she will be in the beefed up number 10. They'll have a stronger number 10 operation. Trying to make sure that it's the politicians there rather than the officials in the treasury who are really driving what happens. She'll be on the stage. I'll be doing an interview with her, which you can then hear later on BBC Sounds.
- [40:10]
James (Newscast Host)
And Chris will be there with the newscast team as well, of course. So that is definitely worth listening out for. Nick, thank you very much indeed. Great to talk to you.
- [40:18]
Nick Robinson
Been a pleasure.
- [40:19]
Alex (Newscast Host)
So, James, we've had some more supporter reporters.
- [40:21]
James (Newscast Host)
Yes.
- [40:22]
Alex (Newscast Host)
Yeah. And also some supporter reporters from the teams that sadly have been knocked out of the World cup already because they still count. We still care.
- [40:30]
James (Newscast Host)
We still want them. We still want. If you have a link to. Or preferably live in, although we're getting to the stage where it's actually more funny if you have a really tenuous and silly link to the place. But anyway, if you have a link to any of the countries in the World cup or if you live there and you're a newscaster, get in touch. Now we have one. Lydia has emailed in from Norway to say hello. Newscast. I heard from a recent episode that you slightly relaxed the rules for supporter reportable. Exactly. With regards to whether you actually have to be in the country. With that in mind, I would like to apply to be supporter reporter for both Senegal. Oh, do you know what happened to Senegal?
- [41:05]
Alex (Newscast Host)
I feel like I should, judging by that.
- [41:06]
James (Newscast Host)
It was an unbelievably dramatic game. They were winning 2 nil with 5 minutes to go against Belgium and then after a lot of drama, they lost 3, 2. Anyway, just to explain, because I didn't explain Lydia's link to Senegal. She was born there and she had a fantastic childhood there. Okay, so Lydia says. So maybe not Senegal and Norway, where I've lived for the past 13 years. Potentially England too, if you let me grab three countries. So Senegal, Norway and England are the ones that Lydia's trying to claim. I'm a British national and spent my teens and a few years on either side.
- [41:37]
Alex (Newscast Host)
I like the keeping the options open there from Lydia.
- [41:39]
James (Newscast Host)
Well, wise, I think.
- [41:41]
Alex (Newscast Host)
Yeah, very wise. And on the tangential point. Chris from Leeds. He's quite pleased about that because he says, hi, gang. You were wanting listeners with the connection to a World cup Country. In 1976, I went abroad for the first time to Tunisia. In the hotel there was the Tunisian football team as well as a drag act. No connection. I hope this makes it through on both. Both levels.
- [42:01]
James (Newscast Host)
That's a good one.
- [42:01]
Alex (Newscast Host)
That's a good one.
- [42:02]
James (Newscast Host)
It's good. But I think Lydia should take Norway. I think that would be the sensible thing to do.
- [42:06]
Alex (Newscast Host)
There you go.
- [42:08]
James (Newscast Host)
Right, good. Thank you very much. Keep them coming. We're supported reporters.
- [42:12]
Alex (Newscast Host)
We'll see you next time.
- [42:13]
James (Newscast Host)
Bye bye.
- [42:15]
Alex (Newscast Host)
Newscast Newscast from the BBC.
- [42:18]
Chris Mason (Newscast Outro)
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 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 033-01-239480 and I promise you we read and listen to every single message. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Bye.
- [42:58]
Morgan McSweeney
Foreign.
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Alex (Newscast Host)
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Nick Robinson
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