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- [00:00]
Alva Ray
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk.
- [00:06]
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- [00:37]
Alva Ray
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- [01:09]
Chris Mason
Hello, it's Chris here and we're going to have a conversation about politics in 2025 and indeed in 2026 with two fellow political editors in a sec. But first, you might have heard the other day, Vic set you a challenge to send me a question. And then I had the challenge of actually having to answer it. And Claire has been in touch. Good morning newscast says Claire. I hope you're all well. I've got a question for Chris. I want to ask if you could have dinner with three people, living or now dead, who would you choose? For your information, mine would be Winston Churchill, Queen Elizabeth II and Nelson Mandela. That'd be quite a bit of tea, wouldn't it? Those. Those three at the table alongside you, Claire, I've listened for nearly 10 years. In the days from when it was Brexitcast, the show has evolved magnificently. I love that idea of evolving magnificently. Hopefully, it will continue to evolve and magnificently. Please keep up the good work. Merry Christmas to you all, Claire Blackford. A merry Christmas to you, Claire. Right, I'm going to give a very authentic answer to this on hopefully what is my final working day of 2025 and say that my cast list for a dinner party would be my family, who I see far less of than I ought to because I'm spending all my time talking about politics. It's probably not the answer you wanted. You probably wanted me to pick some big figures from history and all the rest of it, but I'm gonna. I'm gonna go with that because that's my authentic view right now, as I hope to escape for a little bit of a rest for a couple of weeks. So there you go with that. Merry Christmas to you all as newscasters. And let's crack on with this edition.
- [02:43]
Tim Shipman
Newscast, newscast from the BBC.
- [02:45]
Alva Ray
Fat Boy Slim and me in the classroom doing our violin lessons. I was the tattletale in the classroom. Can I have an apology, please? I trust almost nobody. Then Daddy has to sometimes use strong language.
- [02:55]
Chris Mason
Next time in musk. I feel dulu with no salulu.
- [02:59]
Alva Ray
Take me down to Downing Street.
- [03:00]
Chris Mason
Let's go have a tour. Blimey. Hello, it's Chris in the newscast studio whilst Adam is away for a few days. So let's chew over the political year we've just had. And then the one to come. And what a cast list. In the newscast studio, we have got Elva Ray, who's the political editor of the New Statesman, and Tim Shipman, who's the political editor of the Spectator. Hello, both.
- [03:21]
Alva Ray
Hello.
- [03:22]
Tim Shipman
Welcome.
- [03:22]
Chris Mason
Where should we start? I mean, I know there's a certain genre to these things at this time of year, isn't there? I suppose. Moment. Should we do a moment of the year? A moment of the year. Just gone.
- [03:30]
Alva Ray
Alva.
- [03:31]
Tim Shipman
Ooh. I think probably the government nearly losing that welfare vote. That extraordinary moment when Steve and Tims had to just quietly read out that basically they were gutting all of their welfare reforms. It didn't look like much in Parliament, but it meant that the government came within a whisker of losing a big vote on an important policy. Only basically less than a year into government after winning a big landslide. It was quite extraordinary.
- [04:01]
Chris Mason
Yeah. This is the thing with a big majority government, you're not meant to have tight votes. And yet they did. And they were doing this sort of slow motion kind of shredding of their own policy.
- [04:09]
Alva Ray
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I totally agree. Look, I'm going to cheat and say I think there were three for the government. And I totally agree that that was possibly the most important. That's when the left of the Labour Party reasserted itself and started pushing number 10 around. The other two I significant from a government point of view were Rachel Reeves crying in the chamber, which was, on the one hand, a great sort of personal crisis. Slight example of the Prime Minister being oblivious of what was going on around him. But then the Market reaction that effectively said, if Rachel Reeves goes, we think almost everything else is going to be worse. And the economic environment has been shaped by the fact that Starmer and Reeves have just about convinced the markets that they're okay. And lots of other noises off in the Labour Party the markets don't trust, including Andy Bur, who made a fool of himself at party conference by saying, let's ignore the bond markets. And I think the third one, the other big issue of the year has been migration. And I think when the Home Secretary, Shubharna Mahmoud, stood up in the Commons and pushed all these sort of this crackdown on asylum, I think the reaction from her own party was disquiet. And then one of the Lib Dems effectively said, you're speaking intemperately, you're pushing all this. And she basically said, I think you're underestimating the damage this has caused and what the public thinks of. It was a very kind of visceral moment.
- [05:30]
Tim Shipman
I have to say to the honourable Gentleman, I wish I had the privilege of walking around this country and not seeing the division that the issue of migration and asylum system is creating across this country. Unlike him, unfortunately, I am the one that is regularly called a and told to go back home. It is I who knows through my personal experience and that of my constituents, just how divisive the issue of asylum has become in our country.
- [05:57]
Alva Ray
I think it was one. If you look at the polls, 70% of Labour voters support what she's doing. 57% of Lib Dem voters are pushing, half of Green voters. And all the leaderships of the sort of left faction of Labour, of the Greens, of Lib Dems, very uneasy about all this, but their voters actually want it. And I think that was a sort of indelible moment where the Home Secretary showed she was firmly where the public is.
- [06:22]
Chris Mason
How surprised should we be, or are you about where we find ourselves at the end of this year? I guess it's to tease away a bit of what you were talking about there around welfare and other things, that the government, despite this colossal majority, despite the fact that we're only 18 months in, Keir Starmer is under threat. You know, it's an open question as to whether he's Prime Minister in 12 months time. I wonder how surprised you are now versus where we were 12 months ago about the political predicament the government's in.
- [06:51]
Alva Ray
Alva.
- [06:52]
Tim Shipman
Oh, I guess I am surprised, but I shouldn't really be, you know, because I started a new job in the past couple of months at the New Statesman. So I've ended up reading a lot of what previous people in the Job have done, and People and Tim's stuff at the Spectator and your predecessor, Katie Balls and the Spectator, what you do for covers, what you do for columns, and reading some of the stuff in both magazines about Rishi Sunak and the conservatives from 2023, 2024. It's all exactly the same. You know, all these things about. About parliamentary parties becoming really unhappy, seeing that they're doing terribly in the polls, thinking seriously about changing prime minister. You know, I was reading one about Rishi Sunak this morning, but it all could apply to Keir Summer. I think maybe there's something in our politics. It's not being driven, despite what maybe some listeners think. It's not being driven by us. You know, it's not being driven by the journalists. It is the MPs. It's like their frustration with their polling position, their frustration with the leadership, but it just keeps happening. So in a way, it shouldn't maybe be a surprise that it's happened to Keir Starmer, and yet it is, because they won this huge, big landslide majority and they ran on this platform of we will be different, we won't be chaotic like the Conservatives. A big part of their promise was stability, and now it's looking like they actually aren't able to deliver on that.
- [08:19]
Chris Mason
Tim?
- [08:19]
Alva Ray
I think some of it's specific to the people, but a lot of it is systemic to what's been going on in British politics probably for two decades. On the specifics. I think a lot of people on the left thought that the Tories were wicked and useless and that just coming in and being Labour was going to be enough. And I think there were probably some people around Keir Starmer who thought that as well, and that hasn't proved to be the case. I think the example that Alva gives with Rishi Sunak is spot on. I would put Theresa May, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer all in the same basket of people who think that having a sort of mission for public service, turning up to work, being sensible and moderate and just trying to govern calmly is going to be enough. And in the current environment, I don't think it is. And I think what's been going on basically, since the financial crash in 2007, 8, is the British public has been looking for big solutions to seismic problems. They voted for Brexit because they hoped that would do it. That didn't do the trick. They voted for Boris Johnson in 2019, hoping that would do the trick. It didn't. They've given Labour a landslide. And I think a lot of the public has already given up on this Labour government run by Starmer, which is why Labour MPs are beginning to think about an alternative. But you can keep changing the leader all you want, as the Conservatives discovered, unless you have something that's got a bit more sort of understanding of where the public is, what's going on, and has some bold big solutions and is prepared to go for it, then I think any government is going to struggle in that context. And MPs who got elected for the Conservatives in 2019, they weren't experienced just the same as a lot of people who popped out for a cup of sugar last year and suddenly found themselves as Labor MPs. They're not used to whipping party discipline. They get a lot of social media grief. And when the going gets tough, they're not sort of. They're not hardwired for party unity, they're hardwired for covering their own behinds and looking good to their local constituents, little realizing that what actually kind of gets them re elected is a functioning government that does things successfully. If they think they've got a personal vote, there's a lot of people who've lost their seats over the last three decades that I could send them to have a word with, because personal votes don't count for a great deal in this. And, you know, no one has yet come up with the big, bold solution. And that is why people are looking at reform and Nigel Farage and thinking, we've tried all the others, we might as well try this now, that could implode on itself at some point. But if not, if reform were to prosper again next year and in the years ahead, it's because the big questions that, you know, the lack of wage rises, you know, government apparently unable to get to grips with, migration, all of these kind of issues, an economy that is basically just sort of rumbling along rather than soaring ahead. Without any of that, any government is going to suffer. Any leader is going to suffer. But I think May Sunak and Starmer in particular were very unanchored in politics and in winning arguments and in telling a story to the country. You know, Boris Johnson, David Cameron, Tony Blair, they were all better at it than those three. And I think there's a lot of similarities there. And that's why if you open a copy of my magazine from two or three years ago, it reads very similar to what writing this week, right yeah.
- [11:36]
Chris Mason
It'S fascinating, isn't it? And I guess Alva, picking up on Tim's analysis, into. Into that space this year has stepped Reform and Nigel Farage and. And they have become the prism through which, well, a lot of the political conversation has been happening and where every other political party has had to react to what they're doing.
- [11:53]
Tim Shipman
Yeah, I mean, we had this moment, I think that was this year rather than last year, that Keir Starmer just came out and said, reform is our main, main opponent. Now, some people were questioning whether that was the right strategy by sort of putting them on that pedestal, main target, sort of pushing the Conservatives to the sidelines. But I guess it just. It reflected the reality. And yet we've seen Labour sometimes struggling to work out exactly where it positions itself against reform. Obviously, anytime you put that to Labour, people, they tell you confidently that, no, they've been really clear where the dividing line is. But in practice, sometimes people in the party think that Reform has sort of said something racist or announced a racist policy. There's a little bit of a panic in Labour HQ or in number 10 for a few days where they kind of work out exactly whether they want to call it out. People in the Cabinet get quite frustrated by that. Keir Starmer did his big speech at conference, sort of indicating that they will call out reform more stridently. And yet then, on particular policy issues, some of the Shabana Mahmoud stuff, parts of the party still feel like, actually, that's quite similar to reform. So it's all been a bit messy. There are just endless conversations within the Labour government about how they should tackle it. And at the same time, Labour is hemorrhaging votes to its left as well.
- [13:20]
Chris Mason
Yeah, this is the thing, isn't it? In which direction do they point themselves?
- [13:24]
Alva Ray
I mean, all governments have to point in both directions. That's the problem, I think, you know, if there's a big theme of 2025, it's what I would call the triumph of the funky Fring. So you've got Farage to the right, being very successful. He's been an insurgent, you know, all his career. He's now trying to look like a government in waiting. And then, you know, the big development of the last quarter of the year was the election of Zach Polanski as the leader of the Green Party. You know, if you compare the Greens with the sort of Jeremy Corbyn outfit, you know, Polanski won, you know, a sort of Leonard Brezhnev style kind of victory, you know, in terms of. While Corbyn and, And, you know, the rest of that party were, oh, we'll have a joint leadership. It's all, you know, and then fall.
- [14:06]
Chris Mason
Out with each other.
- [14:06]
Alva Ray
Fall out with each other. And Polanski is very effective. He's a populist. He knows what he thinks. He says it with gusto. And people who are looking for solutions, they don't. They don't think the mainstream, you know, we're all kind of victims of this to a degree. They think centrist politics has failed. They think the mainstream media is not telling them what, what they want to hear. They think mainstream politicians are just, you know, incrementalists who aren't going to sort out the problems and they're looking for fringe solutions. They, you know, that I think something like 50% of young women are now voting Green and some of the Green Party's policies are, you know, I mean, truly wacky and barely consistent with, with what, you know, they profess to support. But it's, it's got this vibe, the same as Farage. There's an excitement there. People, you know, you sense if people go out to vote Green in May, they'll do it because they want to. And the same as people going out to vote reform. And, you know, this is a problem that labor has now got in spades. And, you know, it's not as complicated as all that. People basically want State to do well and to spend more money post pandemic. That's much more popular than it was pre pandemic. But they also, surprise, surprise, want migration control. And I think Labour MPs get a bit confused about this sometimes. They see this in old left right terms and think, oh, migration control, that's very right wing. But as I said earlier, that's not what the voters think. You know, even 50% of Green voters want Shabana Mahmoud's reforms to go through. It's the, the Overton Window, as we pompously describe it, has shifted so far on that.
- [15:45]
Chris Mason
And then I suppose that then challenges the sort of notion of wacky, doesn't it? You know, how wacky is it if people think it's worth. Worth a whirl, because nothing else has worked.
- [15:53]
Tim Shipman
An interesting thing on what you were saying about this, you know, this collapse in support for mainstream politics. And in a way, the way reform and the Greens are very different politically, but in a way are a little bit similar. Farage and Polanski both making these big gains. Someone in the Greens said to me that they're also fishing in the same pool of voters, which I thought was really interesting. You wouldn't really think that. You think of people on the left being sort of, you know, pulled from Labour to the Greens and then maybe former Tories or very different types of Labour people being peeled off to reform. But actually it's, it's maybe people who aren't that political. You know, everyone votes. People aren't thinking about themselves on an ideological spectrum who are just feeling fed up with mainstream politics and looking at the alternatives. And Zach Polanski and Nigel Farage are both offering that. And actually people in both parties also talk about the way they kind of have a similar approach. People in a forum say, hey, that Zach Polanski is, is sort of borrowing from our strategic playbook. Not in terms of the politics, but.
- [16:54]
Chris Mason
Actually sort of brash and primary colors and snazzy social videos, all that stuff.
- [16:58]
Tim Shipman
Yeah. And also in kind of trying to signal that you are gaining momentum by building your membership. You know, the Greens now like to say that they're the third biggest party in the uk, which isn't, isn't true. By polling. Like their polling position, their basically fourth. It depends on the poll, but rarely third. But actually in terms of membership, they, they've, they've really, really massively grown and they are the third biggest party. And actually, because we don't officially know Labour's membership figures, that they could be poised to overtake Labour.
- [17:32]
Chris Mason
It's funny, isn't it, latching onto these particular metrics which, you know, I mean, Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party had a gazillion, a gazillion members and it didn't actually add up to much when it came to elections. But, but you can use it as a badge of momentum.
- [17:43]
Tim Shipman
And Nigel Farage has, has done that all year. It's been of him gaining momentum and that has been accompanied by a massive surge in the polls. The story of 2025 has just been the rise and rise of Nigel Farage, basically. And there have been these moments or these blips where he has a fallout with a colleague. There's a bit of controversy over something someone said, like Sarah Poachin. And even this month on sort of stories from his school days, allegations of quite serious racism that, you know, that he has wobbled, but it hasn't really affected his, his polling position. And then he's, you know, he himself and other people around him say, yeah, and that Zach Polanski is sort of borrowing from our playbook and is working for Zach Polanski as well. A similar thing where the more exposure he gets, the more he kind of gets asked about some of the policies that Tim was mentioning and facing a little bit more heat for it. But they've both had very good years. And unfortunately, Jeremy Corbyn and Zara Sultana, who we haven't yet mentioned, have been trying to occupy that space on the left as well. But they've been really arched on by Zach Polanski.
- [18:48]
Chris Mason
And how striking that here we are, what, 10, 15 minutes into our conversation, and we have not yet mentioned, historically, the biggest and most influential party in British politics. The word Conservative has not passed any of our lips.
- [19:01]
Alva Ray
I nearly did it just for show in 15 minutes.
- [19:05]
Chris Mason
And Kemi Badenok, I mean, the Conservatives, dire opinion polls, she seems to have had a better last couple of months, didn't she, at the tail end of the. The year, the conference speech that seemed to go down well amongst many Conservatives and a punchy approach to Prime Minister's questions. But. But as I say, it's a story of our political times that, that it seems only relevant at this point in this podcast to refer to the official opposition.
- [19:29]
Alva Ray
That's right. I mean, look, I think she has had a, you know, basically since Peter Mandelson resigned, which was the first sort of blood she drew, really, she's performed much better, and that has meant that it's bought her time. And people aren't talking about Robert Jenrick as the leader of Conservative Party quite as much as they used to. But what has actually moved here now, there's some evidence that the Conservative polling numbers gone up one or two points. And actually, in this current political marketplace, where small changes can mean big changes in seat movements, that could be more significant. But, you know, the Tory Party is struggling to keep its membership numbers above 100,000. And I'm told, you know, when people's credit cards run out or whatever, you usually chase them up, and then if they ignore you, you knock them off the roll. Told the process of knocking them off the roll is now very, very slow indeed in Tory headquarters because they've been overtaken by the Greens. They were always. They were behind Labour anyway, and reformers gone zooming into the distance. And the significance of this, I think, is what. It's not just about showing momentum. And, you know, you've got the sort of vibe of the moment. It's about ground troops. When you come to elections, if you've got lots of enthusiastic people knocking on doors, you can get your vote out. And a lot of what politics is about these days is getting your people out. It's not necessarily changing other people's minds as often as used to be the case when you had these two sort of coalition behemoths fighting each other in Labour and the Conservatives. It's about getting your people to turn up and do what they say they're going to do. It's. And then when you get victories in council elections, you win council by elections, you've then got more people to do that. Your councillors are the real ground troops and it all sort of builds on itself and you build a machine. The interesting thing is when I interviewed Farage for the Christmas edition of the Spectator. Tiny plug there, if you don't mind, Chris.
- [21:22]
Chris Mason
And it's a good read, that interview. He signing football shirts.
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Alva Ray
Yes. Yeah. 350 quid a pop.
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Chris Mason
Yeah, that's quite a. That is. I mean, that's quite a revenue stream.
- [21:31]
Alva Ray
Quarter of a million off these. Off these shirts, which is pretty amazing. But he talked about, oh, they just won a council by election against the Lib Dems and that was a big deal. Now, we'd not mention them either, but every poll shows them barely moving. Ed Davey, not that popular even with his own mps. You think there's all this excitement going on policy.
- [21:51]
Chris Mason
Why are we not getting some of this frustration?
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Alva Ray
Why are we not grabbing, grabbing all these votes that the Greens are grabbing, but every MRP shows them basically holding 70 or 80 seats.
- [22:00]
Chris Mason
These mega polls, these mega polls. It.
- [22:02]
Alva Ray
It looks like the Lib Dems will be part of the conversation at the next election. And on the ground, they are winning a lot, virtually every Southern council by election. They're trousering from the Tories and reform, which is performing really well as well, regards beating the Lib Dems as the sort of gold standard on the ground. And the interesting thing, that's it. Next year is going to be Camp Polanski and the Greens turn this great momentum, this huge membership surge into a machine that is as effective as the Lib Dems at kind of hoovering up those votes and actually winning some seats. And the guy who runs the Lib Dems chap called Dave McCobb, who was their ground manager in 2019 and fully in charge last time round. I would say he's. He's up there with the best sort of strategists I've come across in British politics. And certainly since Chris Reynold was doing the lip deb stuff back in the 80s and 90s, they've got. They've got a proper good one there, you know. So again, they A bit like the Tories seem kind of irrelevant to the conversation because they're not imposing themselves, they're not announcing interesting things, but they're quietly getting on with the business of winning council seats. And the big story next year is going to be what does it all look like after May?
- [23:09]
Chris Mason
Yeah, let's. We'll look ahead to next year in a second Alvaron on the Lib Dems. You hear, don't you, the frustration from some Lib Demps around, how can we manage to do spectacularly well at a general election and 70 odd MPs and the biggest third party in a very long time, et cetera, et cetera, and yet they feel squeezed out. You know, they had a public campaign about the BBC's attention, or lack of it, as they saw it in their, in their direction. Do we pay them insufficient attention?
- [23:38]
Tim Shipman
It's a tricky one, isn't it? I mean, this has been the story of the Lib Dems since 2019. Really. I mean they, they were quite confident the whole way through that Parliament that they would be quite significant in denying the Conservatives a majority at the next election. And they were completely right. They had a really, really good general election last year. They have. I don't think it's their highest ever number of MPs, but it could be they're, you know, on really, really high number and yet people don't really talk about them. I think some of it is on economics. They're in a tricky position, you know, because labor is in a tricky position. The fiscal position is difficult for everyone. And I think that the Lib Dems aren't quite sure which way they want to tack. You know, if you're facing spending cuts and welfare reforms on the one hand, or tax increases when the tax burden is already historically high on the other.
- [24:32]
Chris Mason
And you're representing some of the richest.
- [24:34]
Alva Ray
Places, this is the thing. They're damaged by their own success because most of the seats they're winning are against the Conservatives. A lot of the people voting Liberal Democrat now are fundamentally sort of fiscally conservative. And you know, if you go and start winning lots of seats in Surrey, don't be surprised if the stockbrokers have a view. If you suddenly start extolling mass taxation of the rich.
- [24:52]
Tim Shipman
And they, and they are basically fiscally conservative, but just quietly. But it means that they don't. They're not going to make big hay of opposing Rich Reeves on things. They have on some issues like the farmers inheritance tax, they've opposed it, but I think some of it is it's on economics, they don't punch as much. But also, you know, they. They did have a big conference where Ed Davy was pretty punchy on reform. He actually leaned into an almost kind of fake news moment, or he kind of tried to, where he sort of. He was saying that. That Nigel Farage would sort of loosen gun controls in the uk.
- [25:30]
Chris Mason
Oh, yes, there was that big. Yes, the row of a couple of hours wasn't there in Bournemouth, about that line from his conference speech.
- [25:36]
Tim Shipman
And it looked like for a moment he was confecting a row where we would all say, oh, is this a legitimate thing to say? Because this isn't reform policy.
- [25:43]
Chris Mason
And he drenched a quote from Nigel Farage from 2014, from a Guardian interview or something, I think from memory.
- [25:48]
Tim Shipman
But actually, that could have been really smart politics, drawing attention to comments that Nigel Farage made. And on an issue sort of, that draws quite a stark parallel with Donald Trump and gun laws in America, which are very unpopular here. Donald Trump is a hugely unpopular figure in the UK and Labour aren't really able to go into that because of their diplomatic relationship with him. So there was a moment that the Lib Dems nearly seized and then, for whatever reason, the news just sort of moved on. I don't really. I mean, there was a moment at the conference where all the news organizations were thinking about this Nigel, Ed Davey kind of squaring up to Nigel Farage, and it actually barely got any coverage. There were other stories.
- [26:34]
Chris Mason
You mentioned it again just now and I was there. I remember the route.
- [26:37]
Tim Shipman
Yeah. But it only really lasted for two minutes, so it's just difficult. Ed Davy isn't a particularly showy politician, despite all of the stunts. Is it just the way politics moves to the extremes? Definitely. The Lib Dem analysis is that they have a big BBC problem, which you discussed with Ed Daving. They're blaming you guys. I've heard that critique, but it's a tricky one. But then, as Tim says, if they make gains in May and actually they find themselves holding the balance of parents after, you know, the next generation, well.
- [27:16]
Chris Mason
That'S a possibility, isn't it, given that they are competitive in places where Labour aren't, and vice versa. So let's look ahead, then, to 2026, and in particular the elections coming up in May in Scotland and Wales, to the devolved governments or parliaments there and then in plenty of English local authorities, and then in this sort of smorgasbord of competitiveness in British politics, we can get into Plaid Cymru and The Scottish National Party, who will be big players in those two respective elections. And it was a poll earlier this week. Wasn't the pudding plied at top of the polls in Wales with labour on 10%. 10% for labour in Wales. And gets us into. Because this then wraps into this conversation about the Prime Minister's future, doesn't it, that if Labour lose in Wales, which at the moment the evidence suggests they're.
- [28:03]
Alva Ray
Going to racing certainty.
- [28:04]
Chris Mason
Yeah. Psychologically, that is wounding.
- [28:09]
Alva Ray
Yes. No, I mean, I mean, look, this, I. I think this is the biggest set of local elections in my adult lifetime. Bluntly, I think the. The outcome of the 2029 general election will be signposted and in part decided by the balance of power. After, after May, it looks like the SNP are going to romp back in Scotland.
- [28:27]
Chris Mason
Third decade of unbroken devolved power.
- [28:30]
Alva Ray
Exactly. In a system that was designed to prevent that from ever taking place. Let us know. Forget in, in Wales, it looks like ply or reform will win. With labor almost nowhere and the tour is possibly completely nowhere for the first time. And in a lot of the council elections, you're going to see the Green surge, you're going to see reform surge. And despite all of her, you know, improvements in her personal performance, will there be enough for Kemi Badenoc to cling on? Now, a lot of Conservatives I speak to like to think that they will be firm enough. If it looks like Keir Starmer is.
- [29:08]
Chris Mason
Having a legal crisis, Westminster Party's panics.
- [29:10]
Alva Ray
To not do it.
- [29:11]
Chris Mason
Right.
- [29:11]
Alva Ray
But as someone who has covered, I think, nine Conservative leadership elections and covered five Prime Ministers in eight years, it seems that seems to be the triumph of hope over experience in terms of the Conservative Party. But we could have one, two leadership contests. The other thing I would just put on the agenda is what was the biggest moment of this year? We've already discussed that. One of them we didn't. But might after May looked like the biggest moment of this year was the Caerphilly by election where it, you know, Nigel Farage turned up. He was expecting to win the morning of the vote. They were expecting to win long into the day. They were expecting to win and apply won. And there was a lot of tactical voting to stop reform taking that seat. Now, if that tactical voting is widespread in the council elections and in Wales and it looks like reform sort of been capped and frustrated by people going stop Farage, then that will also have a big sort of implication for what happens in 2029. And we don't know the answer to that yet. But that's one of the things I would look out for.
- [30:15]
Chris Mason
I had a bit of a moment when I was in Caerphilly covering the by election and we were going around talking to all of the candidates from the. From the main parties and I realized that we'd done our interview with Plyde and we'd done our interview with Reform, and I said, oh, who's next? Oh, Labour and the Conservatives. It's just that sort of those moments of thinking. All right, yeah, that's a sort of indicator of how, of how politics has changed. Alva, as we begin to round up and we're looking ahead to next year, I suppose the big question is, does the Prime Minister survive the year? What's your hunch?
- [30:46]
Tim Shipman
No.
- [30:46]
Chris Mason
You don't think he does?
- [30:47]
Tim Shipman
No.
- [30:48]
Chris Mason
Does he get to May?
- [30:50]
Tim Shipman
I think that May is seen as the hard stop. It's the deadline that it can't go much beyond May. I mean, your colleague Henry Zepman is reporting today that Labour is planning to schedule the King's Speech for right after May. That'll be a big reset moment. Then. It would be inconvenient to hold a.
- [31:07]
Chris Mason
Leader which sounds defensive in and of itself, doesn't it?
- [31:10]
Alva Ray
Six months out.
- [31:11]
Tim Shipman
Months out, yeah. So, I mean, I mean, let's see. But certainly senior sensible people think that a leadership contest is inevitable. Whether they think that that is mad or not, they think one is coming whether you like it or not. And that, as you say, these elections in May will just be too difficult for Keir Starmer to survive. Not just Labour losing in Wales, but potentially coming third in Wales. You know, one person said to me that no one would deserve to stay as a Labour Prime Minister after leading Labour to defeat or to coming third in Wales. Like, it's quite stark. But also some people want a leadership contest sooner. You know, they say that this government is one crisis away from collapse. And I don't know if I subscribe to that school of thought, but there are a lot of people who think that and there are so many issues that we haven't mentioned, but that they're all brewing. You know, the jury trials, the farm, the farmers in Harrison's Tax, that that's coming in in April, which means there's this really difficult cutoff point. All these horrible warnings about farmers taking their own lives in the run up. You know, that that's going to be really, really difficult for the, the parliamentary party. They need to do special needs education reforms. You know, the immigration reforms that Tim mentioned are unpopular with parts of the Labour Party. And then there are loads of things that I'm not even thinking of. There's so many possible points of crisis and, you know, things like the Peter Mandelson Epstein relationship came sort of from nowhere and the government found itself spiraling. I'm not sure if Keir Starmer would survive another moment like that, that without just someone going over the top, you need 80 labour MPS to nominate one. One person. Some people think that's a high hurdle. Other people think, well, you know, that's less than. Than voted against the welfare report.
- [33:07]
Chris Mason
The only counter thought I have rattling around in my head is seeing parliamentary Labour parties of the past. I think for the likes of the last 10 years, whether it be pre2015, when there was a lot of chat of Milliband, we think he's a loser, but. And then nothing happened. And then during the Corbyn years as well, and Labour just being psychologically less ruthless than the Conservatives at deposing leaders they themselves have concluded are a dud. And so I just wonder, do we underprice a scenario where lots of the things we've talked about next year do happen, but Labour somehow don't get round to or decide collectively, or just collectively decide to not decide and so nothing actually happens?
- [33:47]
Alva Ray
Look, I agree with everything Alva said. Almost everybody I speak to thinks there's going to be a leadership challenge. Oh. And similarly, if there is one, I think he does badly enough in it that he has to go either soon, immediately or in a couple of months thereafter, because that's normally what happens in these things. I think there's a million things that could cause him to fall. But on the other side, there is inertia and unease in the Labour Party about doing this, and it is more complicated and difficult than in the Conservative Party. In the Conservative Party, a whole bunch of people can write anonymously and their letters can gradually accumulate until the moment is reached. And we know from Graham Brady, who used to collect them, that they go like this, even at the point where it looks like they've reached, they get pulled out.
- [34:32]
Chris Mason
And you also get every variation. I kind of missed this. There's a nostalgia for the, well, I've written a letter, but I've not sent it. Yes, I've written a letter, I've sent it, but I've asked for it back.
- [34:40]
Alva Ray
Yeah.
- [34:40]
Chris Mason
So in a letter, it's in my pocket. I've not yet at all.
- [34:42]
Alva Ray
In a sense, labor mps are writing those letters in their heads. It's not the process they have, have some of them have them in their breast pockets. Some of them are even waving in the face of the whips. But as Alva Sundays, you need 80 people on the record backing a named candidate. It's very difficult to maneuver properly. And I know there are lots of people maneuvering and I speak to some of the people who think it needs to be done and that there are possibly better leaders out there. But I just, I mean, I, you know, I go back even further than New Chris. I remember, you know, the efforts to get rid of Gordon Brown, to get rid of Tony Blair, and they all basically failed, apart from, you know, the Brown Knights finally sort of persuading Blair to go in a year's time. But, you know, and that was a.
- [35:24]
Chris Mason
Campaign of a best part of a decade.
- [35:26]
Alva Ray
A decade. Jeff Hoon and, and Pat Hewitt woke up one morning and decided to bring down Gordon Brown. And for most of the day it looked like they'd succeeded. And we waited till about half past seven in the evening and David Miliband finally came out and supported him and that was all over, despite James Pinell resigning. And this was after, like, local elections as well, you know, exactly the same scenario.
- [35:45]
Tim Shipman
And, and you know what? Hilariously, even some of the people who were involved in that don't think that the PLP will get itself together. So even the people who were involved in one successful coup don't actually believe that the Labor MPS will get it together to actually go for it.
- [36:02]
Alva Ray
Every single indication says he should go and he will go. And yet I still think it's to grab some numbers at random. 52, 48, that he's still there at the end of the year.
- [36:13]
Chris Mason
Well, there we are. That's a nice spot on which to round things up. Merry Christmas to both of you. That's been. That has been a fun discussion.
- [36:22]
Alva Ray
Well, it's been a fun year, hasn't it? And I think next year is going to be fun as well. And people who thought this was going to be a boring government got it wrong.
- [36:29]
Chris Mason
Politics forever. Interesting. Thank you both Tim and Alva. And thank you to you newscasters for listening. And there'll be another one dropping into your feedback very soon. See you soon.
- [36:40]
Tim Shipman
Newscast, Newscast from the BBC.
- [36:42]
Alva Ray
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 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 by.
- [37:29]
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