Tim Shipman (1:29)

Hi.

Chris Mason (1:30)

Thank you for coming in. Now, this is the episode of Newscast where we take stock of the week's events. And I think this week we need to cast our minds all the way back not to Monday, but to Sunday, when Morgan McSweeney, the Prime Minister's chief of staff, resigned following the scandal surrounding Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein. Now, Tim, you've written a pretty remarkable, quite long piece, has to be said, for the Spectator.

Professor Jane Green (1:54)

I thought it was short from academic standards.

Tim Shipman (1:56)

It was really brilliant.

Chris Mason (1:59)

It's very, very paid by the word, I'm sure. And what. What did you learn in your reporting for this piece about how Central Morgan McSweeney was to team Starmer and what was going on behind the scenes of his departure? Let's start with Morgan McSweeney.

Tim Shipman (2:14)

Yeah, well, look, I mean, he, Keir Starmer has Never had Morgan McSweeney not at his side while he's been the leader of the Labour Party. And they've been through highs and lows and they've, you know, evolved their project. But McSweeney is a very political character, and I think it's fair to say that Starmer isn't, particularly to the degree that they had an ism or a miss. I think it was McSweeney's creation rather than Starmer's, and it's going to be very interesting to see how he copes without him. And I think nothing sums up the sort of relationship as much as the way it ended. And what I say in my piece, which I discovered was that they had a conversation, I think, on the Saturday night, where McSweeney said to him, look, I can stay in Downing street as your chief of staff, or I could go back to campaign headquarters and start planning for the next general election. In fact, McSweeney had ceased previously to be chief of staff to Starman, gone off precisely to do that, or I can leave altogether. And that was an income conclusive conversation. They had another chat on the Sunday morning, and in the end, my understanding is, from Downing street side as well, is that he basically said, well, since I don't appear to have your confidence, we might as well call this quits. In essence, McSweeney kind of was the one who brought it all about, and Starmer, it seems, couldn't quite make the decision. And my piece is packed with people on the inside, every single one of whom is a Labour person, I should stress, all of whom are raising sort of pretty serious questions about how engaged the Prime Minister is. And it's not just the stuff about the sort of sordid business of dirty tricks of politics, which you can imagine someone like Starmer's not that keen on. He doesn't seem that interested in policy. He doesn't seem to understand that a prime minister needs to kind of drive things from the center, and that that whole sort of purpose and vision and energy seems to be lacking. And whether or not he survives. And it looks for the time being, like he's bored a lot of time. These questions about his personal sort of characteristics and abilities, I think are going to continue.

Chris Mason (4:04)

What did you make, Jane, of the McSweeney departure? What did that tell us or what we read into it?

Professor Jane Green (4:09)

I mean, one of the fascinating things for me, like you, you win an election with a enormous majority, and clearly you get a lot of credit for that, right? But myself and my wonderful colleague Marta, we wrote a piece and after the election, and we pointed to the major factors behind that massive result. And yes, of course, there was targeting, of course it was a ruthless electoral machine, but the factors that drove the majority weren't McSweeney's doing. I mean, they were, you know, huge disillusionment with the Tories, very efficient vote because of tactical voting because of voting against the Tories. Also, you know, a bit of a. There's a story in Scotland too about Labor's share there. But, you know, those were the major factors. And so there's McSweeney, which of course, you know, of course getting credit for that election result, but nevertheless not necessarily, you know, perhaps getting the right level of credit. And then, you know, looking forward, my understanding is, and I'm not remotely as informed about the politics, kind of the party politics as Tim is. So I'm, you know, I'm an academic, I'm a researcher, you know, but I do hear frequently that, you know, Morgan McSweeney's desire to focus on double counting reform voters because they're labor losses as well as reform gains and they matter a lot in labor constituencies that are now very marginal because of the loss of Labour's support was really mystifying to so many people on the left who thought that Labour was, you know, essentially courting reform voters too much. Now the proportion of Labours lost voters to reform is very small in comparison to the proportions going to undecided and the proportions to going to parties on the left. And so what we're going to see in a couple of weeks time or a week and a half's time in Gorton and Denton is possibly it's the by election a backlash against chasing reform voters and the first evidence possibly that votes lost to the left are doing more damage. And there has been, as far as I am aware, a very significant policy but also electoral debate within labor that has pointed to some of the things that McSweeney's been advocating for. And perhaps in Tim's piece, I think there was some caution around his reasoning and his justifications for that. But my understanding is the reading of that has been he's been courting reform voters, he's been taking huge gambles with voters lost to the left and that's ultimately what's going to do Labour the most harm.

Chris Cook (6:39)

The thing that intrigues me out of all of this is that there's been this persistent critique and you hear it all the time from folk within the Labour Party about a lack of sense of definition of what the Starmer Project.

Chris Mason (6:50)

Is all about, which is what Tim.

Chris Cook (6:52)

You'Ve written, and therefore how they go about selling it and does that lead to so many of the U turns, et cetera, et cetera the one thing that intrigues me off the back of this week, and particularly now with the absence of Morgan McSweenney, is the extent to which the Labour Party, having to borrow Ed Miliband's phrase, looked over the precipice of getting shut of him and concluding that they didn't want to in this instance. Not least. Because the thing I keep hearing is that sort of sense of, even if you're of the view that you want rid of him, the thought of going through a leadership campaign whilst in government, which is probably a kind of guaranteed negative in terms of the perception of the brand of labor as a governing force and all of the stuff that people would throw at them about it, be a recurrence of what happened under the Conservatives, coupled with. If you're an individual Labour mp, you might not get who you want out of the.

Tim Shipman (7:41)

Well, that's the thing, isn't it? You know, you're going to get someone and it. It might be better from your perspective.

Chris Cook (7:47)

But it might, but it might not. And there's a guaranteed negative of a campaign in the middle. Therefore, this is just the intriguing thing I ponder at this point. To what extent right now does the collective of labor mps think, ah, maybe this is a guy we can mold?

Tim Shipman (8:04)

Yeah.

Chris Cook (8:04)

Because the evidence suggests that might be possible.

Tim Shipman (8:07)

Well, they've seen McSweeney mold him completely and jokes. All these debates.

Professor Jane Green (8:10)

Yeah.

Tim Shipman (8:12)

Which part they're on.

Chris Mason (8:12)

Yeah.

Chris Cook (8:13)

So is he moldable? And if they conclude, rightly or wrongly, if they conclude that that might be. Yes, that's a further, if you like, barrier to entry to going through the whole process of replacing him.

Chris Mason (8:23)

Now, one person who is not of that view and is done with him is the leader of the Labour Party in Scotland, Sarwar. We come to Monday, Monday afternoon, and he becomes the most high profile figure in the Labour Party, Labour movement to call for the Prime Minister to go in this news conference in Glasgow. My take on that is that he just didn't think he had any real choice other than to do the absolute desperate thing. It's contested whether or not it was desperate. Certainly the Scottish National Party have described it as desper. I mean, it does look certainly extreme, a pretty extraordinary gamble. Why is he doing it? Because. And you'll be able to tell us about the polling, but I mean, it strikes me that he's doing it because he was staring at a loss, and not just a loss, but potentially coming third in the Scottish Parliamentary elections on May 7, when there are also elections for the Welsh Senate and also Some, but not all, English local councils and a few mayoralties as well. Anas Sarwar was looking at defeat and losing his job. And so I suppose there's a world in which even if he still doesn't win these elections, and you can tell us what the polling says in just 2 secs, Jane, but even if he doesn't win, can he squeeze up to second place, not be humiliated by coming third behind reform, Cling on to his job, potentially in his world, see the Prime Minister pay the price for that, but he can keep his job and as Sarwar and carry on. I mean, I'm not saying that that's a necessarily very attractive prospect, but maybe it's as. Maybe some people in the Labour Party in Scot think that's its only choice. What's your take on. On why an Asarwa moved?

Professor Jane Green (10:00)

So Labour in Scotland, Scottish Labour have always tried to have a distinct brand, and that's particularly important when Labour's in government in Westminster and when the Westminster London government is seen as failing. And, you know, let's be completely. You know, this is the most basic thing ever. It's the most obvious thing in the world, but the disillusionment is massive, isn't it? And so what we're seeing across the uk, but this is playing out in Scotland because of the S P in a different way, is a very significant, very rapid loss of support for labor that's happening everywhere, and that's also happening in Scotland, and we're also seeing the Conservatives start to lose some support. Now, that's unheard of in opposition. For the main party of opposition to be losing support now, what does that do in Scotland? Well, it makes the S and P, whilst less popular than it was, have a very commanding lead. And because its main rival was the Labor Party, and the fact that the Tories are still losing support everywhere and also in Scotland is giving reform an edge. And so you're in this kind of extraordinary situation where the SNP dominant in Scotland for, you know, frankly, almost as long as the evolution's been in place. Right.

Chris Mason (11:14)

Well, despite the first eight years, was labor lived there?

Professor Jane Green (11:17)

Yeah, yeah, of course.

Chris Mason (11:17)

But they very, very quickly managed to.

Professor Jane Green (11:19)

Get control, but dominant in a way that, you know, as an electoral force that has been on the ascendancy and has remained a hugely, hugely stable force, you know, partly because of the importance of independence in Scotland, but not only because of the importance of independence. Now, you know, the SNP lost support, obviously, when Nicholas Sturgeon resigned and all the difficulties around that last election in 2024, labor were just inching ahead. They weren't, you know, they weren't kind of recovering from their former glories in Scotland. They were just inching ahead and, and really taking advantage of the fact there that the. Had been unpopular as a Scottish government and now Labour don't have that ascendancy. So the snp, despite losing support too, is nevertheless have a commanding lead because Labour support has plummeted everywhere and the Conservative support has continued to decline and reform and now looking like in the polls, in second place, but they're just inched across above Labour and what we're really seeing is massive splintering. So you can then be in second, but on a very. A relatively low vote share, historically speaking, anyway.

Chris Mason (12:24)

I mean, I suppose what's striking about that is the SNP's continuing, apparently. I mean, people haven't voted yet. It's up to people to vote. You know, I'm not prejudging that, but their apparent ability to detach critique of their performance in government. Labour would say public services are not performing well in Scotland. The S and P would dispute that. They say the NHS in particular is getting better. But leaving that to one side, for those who accept or believe that public services are not doing well, the S and P seem to always manage to be one step away from that because they can say, sure, you can vote for us anyway, because we believe in a more radical constitutional change, a completely different solution. So you don't. You aren't. We have two ways of voting for us as a Hollywood government, but also, if you don't like that, you can vote for them in another way. And so perhaps that. Perhaps the constitutional question, even though it seems to have gone flat in the last few years, is still bubbling away. I mean, polling for independence is still near enough. 50% in Scotland saying they wanted.

Tim Shipman (13:20)

They're the biggest beneficiaries, aren't they, of a fracturing that Jane is talking about? Because we've effectively got seven parties that could end up with 20, 30, 40 seats at the next general election quite easily. It's much more about turning out your core vote than it used to be. Which is why you see the left of the Labour Party saying, come on, we need to focus on that. McSweeney's argument. And people on the right of the Labour Party would say, yes, but even 70% of our voters want to control migration in a big way. We need to tick that box and then focus. You know, this has been quite a left suffering government economically, but they haven't shouted about it. Maybe they'll start to shout about it. Maybe that's what Keir Starmel will suddenly produce. But the danger is that the last time the British public elected the soft left of the Labour Party to run the country was in 1974. They basically haven't done it since. So this is what has some of the Blairites and the Aldright worried. But they've clearly lost the argument and.

Chris Mason (14:13)

We have the intriguing prospect. And again, I'm not prejudging the vote, but the possibility on current polling there's not elections in Northern Ireland, but Sinn Fe, an Irish nationalist party, the biggest party in Northern Ireland, Scottish National Party, potentially continuing to run the Scottish government, maybe a Welsh nationalist party running the Welsh government and who might be the winners of the elections in England or the most successful party in England is a party that many people and they would some of them dispute this, but many people would view as an English nationalist party. Are we seeing the fragmentation of UK politics along competing nationalist lines? Chris we are.

Chris Cook (14:50)

And were that to be the outcome, that'll be part of the analysis the day after. But the other part of the analysis, if you join the dots from every element of that picture that you've painted geographically is one where if that plays out, Labour are scratching their head in every conceivable geographic and rivals direction, whether it be in that situation losing to the S and P in Scotland, losing to Plyde in Wales and losing to reform and not just reform, but reform in many parts of of England. And then you look at the London picture which I think could be quite interesting in the context of May. There's a big proportion of Labour's membership in London. Overwhelming number of London mps are labor mps. I was talking to someone quite recently about this who was reflecting on the fear and yes there might have been a bit of expectation management going on etc etc of London labor after May, coming, coming back to Westminster if you like or going to their local parties and say oh it's been bad and then depending on where they are pointing to reform, the Conservatives, Greens, maybe in some parts the Liberal Democrats and in other words them all having different views as to why things are going wrong and therefore presenting different solutions about to how to make that right.

Professor Jane Green (16:00)

I'm most kind of allergic to prediction kind of a person because I think academics can look quite silly and how they get on their faces for doing however, however just putting that to one side for a minute like if you ask me, you know, what kind of a world are we in? It's Lots and lots of two party contests, you know, so reflecting all of those different opponents. So even though it feels very fractured, it is very fractured. Even though it feels somewhat crazy and chaotic and almost random, it's not right. What's really, really clear is that public opinion, electoral choice is very structured still, but it's structured on two sides and those sides don't necessarily represent the Labour or the Conservative. They represent left or Liberal parties or right Conservative parties. And then throw in nationalism as well if you want a bit of additional complication. And so if you want to, you know, if you're a voter on the left and you want to vote against reform or vote against the Tories, it's your, you know, it's kind of pick your poison time, isn't it, to try to do that? And then I think the POs. So, you know, I really think we're very likely to see lots of two party contests, so. But different variations of them. Just like we saw in Caerphilly in the by election where we saw it was applied versus reform race, which, you know, if you'd have told us we were talking about ply and reform a few years ago, we would have said.

Chris Cook (17:23)

Really, you know, still my standout reflection from going to Caerphilly. I'll just briefly say this where I was going around speaking to all of the candidates a few days before and we'd spoken to the applied candidate and then the reform candidate. I said to Raph, the producer I was working with, who are we talking to next? Oh, labor and the concern. And it's just one of those moments of clarity around, around the nature of our politics.

Chris Mason (17:46)

I'm aware that we've only got to Monday, so what. Let's skip really quickly through the next couple of days of the week. Just quickly. We then after the Anasarwar, there's a.

Chris Cook (17:56)

Distinction between Monday lunchtime and Monday tea time.

Chris Mason (17:59)

If you're Keir Starmer.

Chris Cook (18:00)

Yeah.

Chris Mason (18:01)

To wit. And we get a lot of statements on social media from the cabinet supporting the Prime Minister and from his potential rivals, Angela Rayner. Wes Streeting also coming out, obviously surviving. Yeah, another day.

Chris Cook (18:16)

Yeah. And I just took away in a sentence because it's been one of those weeks that he'd also lost his director of communication.

Professor Jane Green (18:20)

Yeah.

Chris Cook (18:21)

The process of that morning prior to the Anasoa announcement, I mean at lunchtime on Monday, the jeopardy was absolutely real. And the whole thing could have come, could have come, could have come crashing down. And there's no, no, there is no serious dispute that that is the reality.

Tim Shipman (18:37)

There'S a lot of nonsense being taught now that, you know, the press has made all this up. No, I mean, they were in Downing Street. They didn't know if Anasawa was put up to it by West Streeting and whether a bunch of other people were going to follow. And let's be frank, there were Cabinet ministers phoning each other over the weekend saying, what should we do about this? This is a total mess. Do we get more?

Chris Cook (18:53)

And they were all silent at the time.

Tim Shipman (18:54)

They were totally silent.

Chris Mason (18:55)

Was he put up to it by way Streeting?

Tim Shipman (18:58)

Not to my knowledge.

Chris Mason (18:59)

Not to mine either.

Tim Shipman (19:01)

I was told pretty early on that this was for the reasons you said earlier, James, that, you know, he was in a total bind himself and he felt he had to do it. But, you know, they're close allies and it doesn't take much for Downing street to get in a panic. They ran a very good war room, they propped him up. Fair play to them.

Chris Mason (19:17)

But then events roll on, as you say, the Labour Whip is suspended for Matthew Doyle, Keir Starmer's former director of communications for his past association with Sean Morton. Now he's a former Labour councillor in Murray in the north of Scotland who admitted indecent child Image Offences in 2017. On Wednesday, Kemi Bednoch honed in on that question to Sir Keir of what he knew about the situation when Matthew Doyle was appointed to that role. Chris?

Chris Cook (19:46)

Yeah, and so what you ended up with was a situation where if we allow ourselves a two week rather than a one week trajectory of British politics, you have the Prime Minister appointing a long established Labour figure to a job in his gift information then coming to light, that raises questions as to whether that was a good idea. And then the Prime Minister blaming a combination of the process and the individual for giving them the job in the first place and then a process begins to take the job off them. And that applies pretty much. The cases are very different, to be clear, but that applies equally to Lord Mandelson and to Lord Dyle.

Tim Shipman (20:22)

And this is what did for Boris Johnson was constantly having the same process of something happens. In Johnson's case it was, we don't tell the truth about it, we send everybody out with a dodgy version and then we have to keep changing it. And with Starmer it's well, we did this, we thought it was fine. Now we're claiming it wasn't, it wasn't really our fault, Gov, but actually there's plenty of evidence, if you look at the chronology of the Doyle appointment, that they should have known.

Chris Cook (20:45)

And even if they didn't at the time, Matthew Doyle making the argument that at the time he believed the guy in question believed Morton, who was. Who was charged at that point rather than.

Chris Mason (20:55)

But hadn't convicted.

Chris Cook (20:57)

If you fast forward to when the Sunday Times had its revelations case, courtesy of Gabriel Pogrand immediately after Christmas, at that point they could have decided to either say the peerage is null and void or say he won't be in possession of the Labour Whip when he becomes a peer. Neither of those things happened until just now.

Chris Mason (21:15)

And just out of fairness, have you been able to get in touch with Lord Dawson?

Chris Cook (21:20)

Yeah, I have been in touch with him. He's not commented publicly at any of the stages this, this week since Prime Minister's questions. He did put out a statement earlier in the week in which he acknowledged an error of judgment and called the crimes vile and emphasized that at the point at which he was campaigning for Morton, Morton was protesting to him his innocence and he was charged at that point rather than convicted.

Chris Mason (21:42)

Thank you. Now, after the Prime Minister's questions, Sir Keer had to face the Women's Parliamentary Labour Party. What was your reporting telling you about how the mood there?

Chris Cook (21:53)

Yeah, quite a few of us sort of picked up a sense of this, which was that. So this was Keir Starmer going in front of female Labour MPs and peers and getting a fair old amount of stuff exactly along the lines of firstly on the micro, if you like the boys club stuff. And then I think some of the. More that the bigger macro stuff of the. It sounds a very clunky way of describing these things, but you see what I mean in that, in that context. But then also this sense of, to use a horrible Westminster phrase, the cut through of the last few weeks, people have noticed surprise, surprise, because it's been so. It's extraordinary, hasn't it? The revelations around Epstein and Andrew Manbaut and Windsor and Peter Mandelson, et cetera, et cetera. And the sense, particularly because of the Lord Mandelson and Lord Doyle story of, to quote Emma Lewle, Labour backbencher, the sense that she'd been shouted at in the street, that she was from the. I think the phrase was the Pedo Protectors Party.

Professor Jane Green (22:52)

Wow.

Chris Mason (22:52)

He said people were screaming at her in the street, I think was the quote that you heard from her about calling her a member of the pedo Protectors.

Chris Cook (22:58)

Now, she hadn't anticipated that particular description. Seeing, seeing the light of day beyond the room, but it was quite a big room and so these things tend to, tend to leak into the ears of, of reporters. But that, that sense of that perception of how, at least for some, that labor is perceived and that is, I mean, from there.

Tim Shipman (23:16)

And this is where it comes back on Starmer, isn't it? And this is where Cami Badenok did quite well at pmq. She said, you know, on the grooming gangs, on Mandelson and on Doyle. You only cared Prime Minister when your own job was at threat. And, you know, there'd been these scandals and they play out in the way that they always play out and pressure is brought until the Prime Minister changes his position on which he did on all three of those things. And, you know, if you asked him, he's an honorable man, he would say this sort of thing troubles him greatly. But in terms of his political action on it, that is a perfectly reasonable political point that the leader of the opposition made.

Professor Jane Green (23:47)

I've been using the word disillusionment for some time since July 2024, but it's not disillusionment anymore, is it? It's fury. And this isn't just about this. I mean, you know, you've also heard labor being accused of being the pro genocide party because of Gaza. And you've also got the Greens, you know, very, very consistently campaigning and appealing to people who are just appalled by, you know, Keir Starmer not moving away from Israel's actions in Gaza.

Chris Mason (24:13)

So we deny that there is genocide.

Professor Jane Green (24:15)

In Gaza, of course, of course.

Chris Mason (24:16)

But that one from the Israeli government.

Professor Jane Green (24:17)

And also, you know, the Labour Party would deny that they're the pro pedophile party. But it doesn't, doesn't stop people's, you know, this bubbling up of ang, which isn't just about Gaza and it's not just about Epstein. It's, you know, fundamentally driven by a very, very difficult, pressing, everyday, difficult financial situation, which is kind of the, you know, my opinion is still the driving force of a lot of discontent. But, you know, I think disillusionment is just frankly too weak a word now.

Chris Mason (24:47)

And with the Prime Minister's position looking, I think, fair to say, precarious, I mean, still precarious, isn't it? Even if it might be better now than it was when an as Sarwar popped up.

Podcast Narrator (24:56)

Up.

Chris Mason (24:57)

We have had some interesting moves from some Labour figures this week, haven't we? We've had Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, in an interview with the Garden, calling the last few weeks unforgivable, saying I want to get the words right because it's really Important it does look to people outside that we're more interested in ourselves and less interested in preventing chaos. We've talked about Angela Rayner briefly. We've seen Wes Streeting doing various things that were interesting. Publishing his WhatsApp conversations with Peter Mandelson in which he was talking about the necessity for a growth strategy for Labour. I just think it's interesting when you see people moving. Am I reading too much into these things?

Tim Shipman (25:37)

No, I don't think so. I think everyone's maneuvering. But I think this goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning. There is a huge tension about what Labour should do. If Labour's going to have a growth strategy, it probably needs to have a different net zero strategy. That is a tension that they haven't resolved. If they're going to swing to the left, what are they going to do about some of these other issues that the public cares about? And you may have a situation where you ended up either with a more left wing Keir Starmer or a more left wing somebody else. But that doesn't really resolve the tensions within the party. And all parties spend, you know, when things aren't going well, spend a lot of time gazing at their own navels and it's a pretty unpalatable look for the rest of the public.

Chris Cook (26:15)

So the thing that's going to intrigue me over the next week or so, more than that, and we've seen it, I think, in the last couple of days, is cabinet ministers out in public in front of the cameras, frankly, just being willing to freelance a bit more than you would normally expect. Now, some of that is as they would see it, just being candid about the mess of the last couple of weeks, but it's gone beyond that and it's not just been worth streeting either. So I think that's intriguing. And then just the beginnings and it is early and there's a danger of over reading into this of is Keir Starmer in particular. It goes back to my molding part at the beginning. Is he. I don't think he has said anything in the last few days that is radically different from stuff he said before. I was at the event on behalf of the broadcast pool that he did the in in Welling Garden City the other day. But the things he is choosing to emphasize just seem to be tilting a bit more towards the soft left, I think. Now does he maintain that? Let's see, is it a strategy again? Let's see. Who knows? But I just think there's the beginnings of that. And there might be a logic for him doing that. A, because it might be where he's a bit more comfortable and B, because that's probably where the center of gravity of the parliamentary Labour Party is. And if he fancies keeping his job. Job, that might be a rational thing for him to do.

Chris Mason (27:24)

You mentioned someone else. You know, maybe the potential of someone else leading the Labour Party and leading the country. What is your assessment, Jane, of what would be the effect of changing a leader for a political party? I mean, I suppose it depends who the leader is, but, you know, is there something general that can be said about the effect of that in polling terms?

Professor Jane Green (27:45)

So what you need to, you know, I think the first point to make is that it's not a simple equation where you say popular person makes party popular. Right? Obviously. And there's so much more here. So what do you need? You obviously need somebody who's likable and interesting, but also competent and also have. Has a very clear vision. And you also, you know, so those are. That is what a leader brings. It's not just a sort of, oh, I like that guy, therefore it's going to kind of rub off on the party. Right? It's actually, I kind of don't like the party, therefore I don't like the person running it. So there's not necessarily going to be a very significant change. And the massive risks are division is very bad. I mean, Tim, you alluded to this. You know, it's unpalatable. It's very bad, electorally speaking. So you have a period of time where you're having an in fight and a bun fight, and you look like you're talking about yourself, that does a whole load of damage. And so can you then bring in somebody who has enough of the clarity of vision and the competence to actually lead in a direction that people start to look at afresh again and say, oh, okay, that's maybe, you know, what I thought you might be like, maybe back in July 2024, or not as bad. And that's a huge unknown. And so I don't look at polls that say leader this or leader that, you know, could potentially. Or person X, person Y could be more popular. Because until you see, you know, somebody govern and somebody actually command respect within their party and put some of this division to bed and actually deliver, we have no idea.

Chris Mason (29:14)

Right. We're nearly out of time. But we cannot go. We've spoken a bit about your long read.

Tim Shipman (29:19)

My very long read.

Chris Mason (29:20)

We cannot go without looking at one of the strangest as you call it, one of the most bizarre shortlists of all time for the post of US Ambassador Peter Mandelson. George Osborne, and I quote you, the rugged TV survivalist Bear Grylls, since it was believed he would appeal to Trump, also a star of reality tv.

Tim Shipman (29:39)

Yeah, I mean, occasionally you chance across these completely bat discoveries and you think this cannot possibly be true. And then actually having written a great deal about turmoil in British politics over the last decade, it's so bonkers that it simply has to be true. And it is. And even more weird, of course, is that George Osborne was originally Keir Starmer's selection to be. It was McSweeney that talked him into Mandelson, ultimately. Yeah. Bear Grylls. I'm not sure how far he got down the track. This may just have been a clever sort of move by someone to put him on the list. This may have been Morgan's way of definitely getting Mandelson. But yeah, it would have been interesting.

Chris Cook (30:19)

I. I was gonna. I don't think I have anything more to add other than just smiling. I just think it's just what a glorious. Just what a glorious data.

Chris Mason (30:26)

Well, that is what could have been. And that is a good note on which to end. Chris, thank you very much. Jay, nice to see you.

Professor Jane Green (30:31)

Lovely to see you, Tim, thank you.

Chris Mason (30:33)

Very much for coming in.

Tim Shipman (30:33)

Pleasure.

Chris Mason (30:34)

That's all from this episode of Newscast. Bye bye. Newscast News.

Chris Cook (30:38)

Newscast from the BBC.

Podcast Host/Producer (30:39)

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.

Chris Mason (31:19)

Bye.

Podcast Narrator (31:26)

If you can't keep up with all the Epstein news, you're not alone. This week the files have nearly, but not quite brought down a British Prime Minister. There have been allegations that Epstein was a spy and surprising countries have been drawn into the scandal. From Norway to Poland to Israel to France.

Chris Mason (31:45)

It's a lot.

Podcast Narrator (31:46)

So we're recapping all the main developments and making sense of them. Listen to the global story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcast.