Labour collapse in Caerphilly: the byelection that points to the future of UK politics

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Politics Weekly UK

Episode: Labour collapse in Caerphilly: the byelection that points to the future of UK politics
Date: October 22, 2025
Host: The Guardian (John Harris)
Guests: Pippa Crerar (political editor), Kieran Stacey (policy editor)

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Overview

This episode delves into the seismic shifts underway in UK politics, focusing sharply on the potentially historic by-election in Caerphilly, South Wales—a previously rock-solid Labour heartland. John Harris and Kieran Stacey explore signs of Labour’s collapse in Wales, the surge of Reform UK and Plaid Cymru, and what this foreshadows for the broader national political landscape. Later, the episode examines growing turmoil within the government’s grooming gangs inquiry, marked by survivor resignations and escalating political controversy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Caerphilly By-Election: A Tipping Point?

[01:13–04:01]

• Backdrop: Labour has long dominated Caerphilly and much of Wales (“The party hasn’t lost a Senate election since Welsh Devolution started in 1999... held the Westminster seat for 100 years.” – John Harris, 02:29).
• Current Landscape: Labour facing collapse—with polls showing Reform UK and Plaid Cymru surging (Reform UK 42%, Plaid 38%, Labour just 12%—Kieran Stacey, 05:07).
• Local Frustrations: Driving the shift are issues like deteriorating public services, difficulty accessing GPs, rising taxes with fewer benefits, and the sense Labour governs at every level but delivers little.
  • “You pay more and get less.” – Richard Gerner (Caerphilly Observer), 06:13
• Anecdotal Evidence: On the ground, Plaid is positioned as the tactical vote for those wanting to block Reform UK, capitalizing on Labour’s apparent softness.

2. Deeper Political Realignment

[06:27–12:25]

• Short-Term and Structural Problems: Labour’s woes are seen as both immediate (social media-fueled fragmentation, culture war issues) and deep-rooted (erosion of mining, unions, and churches that forged Labour loyalty).
  • “Everything that made those places Labour heartlands isn’t there anymore.” – John Harris, 07:33
• Brexit’s Legacy: Brexit sentiment remains potent—Wales voted Leave, and recent governmental debates about Brexit’s impact potentially alienate Labour’s base.
  • “Are they going to turn around and say can you please stop blaming us for the mess you’ve got us into?” – John Harris, 08:23

3. The Binary Contest: Immigration, Division, and Reform

[12:25–19:01]

• Main Campaign Issues: Immigration and asylum dominate, turbocharged by Reform UK’s campaign against the Welsh Nation of Sanctuary scheme.
  • “There’s lots of terms being bandied about, like, ‘oh, you’re racist because you support this party,’ or ‘extreme left Marxist…’ It doesn’t seem to be any sort of middle ground anymore.” – Richard Gerner, 13:21
• Personal Consequences: Local immigrant business owners, like Adam from Kurdistan, report experiencing newfound fear and xenophobia since Reform UK’s surge and Farage’s TV comments.
  • “I feel like when I first come [to the UK]. ...Very recently in the last few weeks, since Nigel Farage came on TV, say about refugees. Everything changed.” – Adam, vape shop owner, 14:40
• Atmosphere: Parallels with the angry, polarized climate of the 2016 Brexit referendum—“A binary contest with immigration and asylum right in the foreground… like the Brexit referendum in 2016.” – Kieran Stacey, 16:21

4. Broader Implications for Labour and UK Politics

[19:01–19:08]

• Leadership Anxieties: Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are closely monitoring turnout, especially among previously non-voting groups, as Reform UK energizes the disengaged. Labour is now urgently canvassing non-voters.
  • “Number 10 have suddenly panicked... there may well be a big turnout from non-voters at the next election.” – John Harris, 10:29
• Potential Overreactions: Westminster is primed to overinterpret the by-election—if Reform wins, right-wing voices will push for Labour to stay centrist; if Plaid wins, the left will argue Labour’s losing progressive voters.
  • “In politics, often it’s just like the headline winner that you remember, you don’t necessarily remember just how close it was.” – John Harris, 11:56

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The Grooming Gangs Inquiry: Mounting Crisis

[21:09–33:28]

1. Survivor Resignations & Political Fallout

[21:09–24:34]

• Resignations: Four survivor panel members quit, citing feelings of being sidelined and concerns that the inquiry’s scope is being deliberately widened to avoid uncomfortable issues (notably Labour council failures and perpetrators’ ethnicity).
  • “Being dismissed and contradicted by a minister... takes you right back to that feeling of not being believed all over again.” – Fiona, survivor (as relayed at PMQs), 23:48
• Government Denials: Ministers, including Jess Phillips and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmoud, firmly deny accusations of scope dilution.
  • “The inquiry will remain laser focused on grooming gangs, as Baroness Casey recommended.” – (Paraphrased government position)

2. Process and Communication Issues

[24:34–27:59]

• Inquiry Frustrations: Survivors object to being sent questionnaires that suggest broadening the inquiry, fearing key issues will be watered down.
• Political Reality: Government wants to avoid an inquiry focusing entirely on ethnicity, aware it’s a toxic debate Reform would exploit; survivors, however, feel let down.
  • “If you’re going to go out there and say allegations are false, you better be pretty sure of your facts, especially on something as sensitive as this.” – John Harris, 26:00
• Bureaucracy vs. Humanity: The slow, bureaucratic nature of public inquiries can inadvertently retraumatize survivors.

3. Leadership and the Inquiry’s Future

[27:59–31:57]

• Chair Appointment Delays: No chair yet found for the inquiry; Louise Casey has been brought in as “troubleshooter,” signaling severity of the crisis.
  • “Louise Casey gets brought in whenever Keir Starmer feels like he’s in trouble and the politics have all got quite complicated.” – John Harris, 28:31
• Political Game: The inquiry will become a political football for opposition politicians, especially Reform and the right of the Conservatives.
  • “You can certainly imagine whenever this inquiry gets going, Robert Jenrick and Nigel Farage absolutely making statements about it almost every single day…” – John Harris, 29:53

4. PMQs and Political Knockabout

[31:57–33:00]

• Heated Exchanges: Kemi Badenoch uses survivor resignations to attack the government in Parliament, amid accusations of over-politicizing a sensitive topic.
• Labour’s Response: Starmer remains calm and legalistic, but Government faces accusations of “briefing against” victims.
  • “That was the moment at which people in the chamber thought maybe she’s pushed the argument a little too far. I can’t quite justify that one.” – John Harris, 31:07

5. Labour Party Deputy Leadership Race

[32:00–33:28]

• Impending Contest Result: As the episode closes, speculation turns to the Labour deputy leadership contest between Lucy Powell and Bridget Phillipson. Likely winner, Lucy Powell, will not have a major government role and remains on the periphery of real Cabinet power.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“You pay more and get less.”
— Richard Gerner, Caerphilly Observer co-founder ([06:13])

“Everything that made those places Labour heartlands isn’t there anymore.”
— John Harris ([07:33])

“There doesn’t seem to be any sort of middle ground anymore.”
— Richard Gerner ([13:21])

“I feel like when I first come. ...Very recently, in the last few weeks, since Nigel Farage came on TV, say about refugees. Everything changed.”
— Adam, Kurdistani shop owner ([14:40])

“We had that blip with Trump, but now we’re back to kind of professional politicians… I wonder whether we’re going to feel a little bit similar after the next election. …Was this period of Labour government just a blip?”
— John Harris ([17:11])

“Number 10 have suddenly panicked... there may well be a big turnout from non-voters at the next election.”
— John Harris ([10:29])

“Being dismissed and contradicted by a minister... takes you right back to that feeling of not being believed all over again.”
— Fiona, survivor (via Kemi Badenoch at PMQs, [23:48])

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Timestamps for Key Sections

• Caerphilly By-Election & Local Disaffection: [01:13–06:27]
• Labour’s Structural Decline: [06:27–08:23]
• Brexit, Reform UK, and Culture Wars: [08:23–12:25]
• Immigration and Rising Polarisation: [12:25–19:08]
• Grooming Gangs Inquiry Crisis: [21:09–31:57]
• Labour Deputy Leadership Race: [32:00–33:28]

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Conclusion

This episode underscores how local disillusionment and national fragmentation threaten Labour’s historic dominance in its Welsh heartlands, with Reform UK and Plaid Cymru gaining rapidly. The Caerphilly by-election is painted as a microcosm of huge, culture-war inflected shifts across the UK—echoing Brexit, powered by social media, and marked by human consequences on the ground. Meanwhile, the grooming gangs inquiry highlights the complex collision of political management and survivor expectation, inflaming already febrile tensions. As political divisions intensify, this moment feels less an aberration than the shape of things to come.

Transcript

[John Harris]

This is the guardian.

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[Kieran Stacey]

Another week, another headache for the Labour Party. A by election in Wales where, as I've seen close up, its vote might be collapsing.

[John Harris]

People are feeling frustrated and when people.

[Kieran Stacey]

Look and they've got a Labour Council, a Labour Senate and the Labour UK.

[John Harris]

Government, people will point at that and think, well, if that isn't fixing things.

[Kieran Stacey]

Then maybe someone else will. Is that why politics all over the UK is now going? Meanwhile, four survivors have quit the government's grooming gangs inquiry, forcing Keir Starmer to deny that the process is already falling into chaos. I want survivors to be at the heart of this. I want an inquiry that can get to the truth. These are the hard yards, I accept that. But I want to press on and get this right. A lot to talk about as ever. I'm John Harris and you're listening to Politics Weekly UK for the Guardian. Later on we'll be looking at the problems facing the grooming gang's inquiry as a fourth survivor quits. And the Prime Minister brings in his most trusted troubleshooter, Louise Casey, to try and shore everything up. But first, I've just come back from Caerphilly in South Wales where there is a crucial, possibly historic by election taking place on Thursday for the Welsh Senate. The Welsh Parliament, it happens to be where my dad was born and my grandfather was a coal miner a very, very long time ago. And up to now, to use old fashioned language, you'd think of it as a solid Labour heartland. The party hasn't lost a Senate election since Welsh Devolution started in 1999. It's held onto the Westminster seat in Caerphilly for the last 100 years. At the last Senate election in 2021, Labour got 46% of the vote in Caerphilly. Plaid Cymru got 28% and Reform UK got 2%. But we're expecting Thursday to tell a completely different story, that Labour's vote in Wales is collapsing and those other two parties are on the march. It's worth pointing out that the proportion of people in the constituency who were born overseas is just under 3% based on 2021 census. But immigration and Asylum have played a big role in the campaign because of Reform uk. The feeling on the ground there really reminded me of what the UK was like back at the time of the Brexit referendum in 2016. There was a sense of somewhere gripped by a completely binary choice, which maps on the so called culture wars. And what I saw really made me all the more certain that the next general election is going to be like 2016 all over again, only more so. I think we're going to see a country divided and polarized at a time when social media has taken all of that to a new level. To talk about what's happening there, I'm now joined by my fellow Politics Weekly host, Kieran Stacey, who's also the Guardian's policy editor. Hello, Kieran.

[John Harris]

Hi, John.

[Kieran Stacey]

Right, now that monologue is out the way.

[John Harris]

I was enjoying it. You can go. Go longer.

[Kieran Stacey]

I was fascinated by what I saw in Caerphilly, I have to say, but I want to talk about the wider meaning of it. Welsh politics is in the midst, it seems to me, of a transformation with strong echoes of what's also happening in England. Labour seems to be losing support to both its left and right. It's fascinating to watch. Have you been following this contest at all?

[John Harris]

Yeah. I mean, not as closely as you have. I haven't been on the ground, but I can't remember the last time Westminster got particularly excited by a by election in a Welsh Senate seat. Yeah, but, you know, the reason, obviously, that we're watching this is to see whether that reform surge that we're seeing in the polls is translating to actual votes on the ground. And it looks like it is. And also what happens to the left, or even to the center and the left, if reform really are the only game in town. And, you know, I'd be interested to hear what you think about this, John, but I wouldn't Be surprised if there's a real kind of congregating effect that happens around Plyde Cymru in the last few days of this contest. Because if, as you say, it's a binary contest, then people who don't like Reform have to find somewhere else to go.

[Kieran Stacey]

Yeah. Honestly, this is only anecdotal, but it did feel to me like Plyde Cymru had momentum. I think the last kind of credible poll that was done, reform were on 42% and plied were on 38, which shows you how close it is. But plied are really, really selling themselves as the tactical option for people who really don't want to be represented by someone from Reform uk. But obviously, the point is the Labour vote has to be soft enough to allow Plyde to do that. I mean, in the same poll I just mentioned, I think the Labour party was on 12%.

[John Harris]

Yeah, yeah.

[Kieran Stacey]

Which in South Wales is astonishing. While I was there, I visited a local startup newspaper. Fascinating, inspiring thing to see. The Caerphilly observer, where the co founder, Richard Gerner, gave me his view about why people are turning away from Labor. Let's have a quick listen to him.

[Richard Gerner]

I think people are frustrated with a variety of things. So trying to get a doctor's appointment, you've got that, you know, the cost of living crisis, where people keep seeing council tax going up but services go down.

[Kieran Stacey]

Oh, yeah, you pay more and get less.

[Richard Gerner]

Yeah, exactly. So all of that frustration, I think, has coalesced into a feeling that something needs to change. And then you've got reform, for example, coming out. And I think they do offer a break from the norm.

[Kieran Stacey]

Right, so there, Kieran, he's talking about people's immediate frustrations and the sense that both in Cardiff and in Westminster, Labour really isn't delivering. But this is a much longer story than that. If it's true that the Labour Party is collapsing in Wales, it seems to me to be another case of the way that the decline or demise of parties very often happens. At first it's slow and then suddenly, very often unexpectedly, it's quick.

[John Harris]

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it, John? Because we down here in Westminster have been talking a lot about the demise of the Conservative Party and whether that really, you know, still has any reason to exist as a party over the next few years. But if what we're seeing in South Wales, you know, is repeated nationally, you see pretty much the demise of both major parties. And you got to think kind of, if absolute Labour heartlands like that are going. And I think this is still an open question. Is this one of those blips that we see in midterms where people just get really fed up with everybody and so look elsewhere? Or is this something structural about the Labour Party? They've just lost all the voters that you know, they've relied on for years and years and years.

[Kieran Stacey]

I think there's two stories simultaneously at work. I think there's a short term story about political fragmentation and social media in particular what it does to politics because I mean this always happens. But I was struck by it very strongly when I was there that the whole local conversation happens online. Right. Everyone's understanding about the sort of discourse of the by election in the case of older people anyway, that's all done via Facebook where obviously immigration then and asylum become these very, very sort of high pitched shrill, sometimes toxic. Then there's a longer term story about the Labour Party in Wales. And let's not forget everything that made those places Labour heartlands isn't there anymore. It's easily missed. We take it for granted. But in the absence of coal mines and trade unions and the non conformist church and so on, it's no real surprise that sooner or later the Labour Party was going to have a kind of crisis.

[John Harris]

Yeah, and let's remember of course that Leave actually won in Wales back in 2016. So some of those elements were already in place, you know, exactly the kind of voter that refor been targeting. And we think of them targeting the red Wall or northern industrial seats but you know, Caerphilly fits that pattern as well. I don't know if anybody brought this up with you when you were there but one of the interesting things to me will be now that ministers have started talking about Brexit in terms of maybe it was a mistake, maybe it's done more economic damage than we admit. How are your voters in Caerphilly, your Leave voting but also Labour voting members going to hear that? Are they going to say yeah you're probably right because look at the mess we're in. Or are they going to turn around and say can you please stop blaming us for the mess that you've got us into. This is why we don't like you in the first place. You know, it's actually quite an interesting test case of that argument.

[Kieran Stacey]

It wasn't something anybody talked about but you're right, I mean self evidently that's a risk or a risky territory that the Labour government is now entering next year at the Senate elections. In some polls reform is on top at the Moment in other polls, I think they're sort of just about neck and neck with Plaid Cymrus. But A, the spectacle of Labour losing control of Wales and B, the spectacle of reform doing as well as it looks like it might do. That's a hell of a shock then, not just to the Labour Party in Wales, but to Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves and everyone else. Isn't it a Wales that isn't run by the Labour Party?

[John Harris]

Yeah, but you know, we used to say the same thing about Scotland, didn't we? We used to say Scotland will be ruled by Labour forever. But I remember, you know, almost every single constituency returning a Labour mp. These things do change and may maybe we're about to see a slight shifting in Scotland away from the snp, but actually I think given the tangles that the Labour Westminster government is getting itself into, then maybe not. And these things can last for years and years and years. Once places like that are lost, they can sometimes be lost for quite a long time. It's not all going to be like the Red Wall coming back straight away at the next election.

[Kieran Stacey]

How anxiously do you think Starmer and Reeves are watching the Cafilly Bay election?

[John Harris]

It goes without saying they don't care that much about one Senate seat. It's not about the Senate seat. I think they're watching to see to what extent reforms, success in polls is actually reflected at the ballot box and whether people kind of slightly get nervous. One thing I think they'll be watching really carefully is turnout among people who haven't traditionally voted. It's one thing that I know number 10 is very concerned about at the moment. There's a big outreach effort going on right now with Labour Party activists trying to go and knock on doors. Doors where people have previously said, oh, I don't normally vote because of course normally if you're an activist, you don't waste your time knocking on doors where people don't vote because they don't vote. But number 10 have suddenly panicked and thought, my goodness, there may well be a big turnout from non voters at the next election in favor, presumably of Farage or you know, potentially in some areas of Greens and other more fringe parties. But I think they'll be watching that number very, very carefully to see what happens there. I think we should also say that there will almost certainly be an over interpretation of the result in Westminster and I don't mean they shouldn't take it seriously. I just think whoever wins that will suddenly become the dominant narrative. So if reform win, that will empower those on the Labour right who have been saying for a long time, we need to stick with our quote, unquote, hero voters. We need to focus on the cost of living. We shouldn't go too far down the green agenda. We shouldn't go basically too far to the left because we risk alienating our more traditional small C Conservative voters. If Plyde win, that will really empower those on the soft left who've been arguing for a while. We're bleeding more votes to the left than we are to the right. In a way, it kind of doesn't matter because it won't be that many votes in it. It's obviously that it's both things happening at the same time. But it's funny, in politics, often it's just like the headline winner that you remember. You don't necessarily remember just how close it was and you know, how it could have been swung by a few hundred votes one way or the other.

[Kieran Stacey]

I think that's why this contest has those English echoes, right? Because for plied. Without wanting to sound like I'm being overly simplistic and condescending or whatever, in England you read Zach Polanski, right? That's dynamic there. But in both countries, it's reform, which is menacing Labour on its right flank. It's doing that by emphasizing immigration and asylum. One of reform's big pictures to voters in Caerphilly has been about Wales's Nation of Sanctuary scheme, which has cost 55 million pounds since 2019. Not a huge amount of public money. It's really a scheme that assists people when they're integrating, which Reform UK has presented as being something for asylum seekers. They haven't mentioned the fact that about 85% of the money in that scheme has been spent on people from Ukraine who have the right to be here. And again, I was really, really struck talking to people like Richard from the Caerphilly observer about how much that kind of campaigning has changed the atmosphere, the everyday atmosphere of the town. This is what he told me.

[Richard Gerner]

It certainly became divisive. There is a lot of, I would say, mistrust between people. So, for example, somebody coming out saying they support one particular party will say that the other opposing political parties are making them out to be something that they're not, and vice versa. So there's lots of terms being bandied about, like, oh, you're racist because you support this party, or you're an extreme left Marxist because you support another party. And it doesn't seem to be any sort of middle ground anymore.

[Kieran Stacey]

I also had a very sobering, moving conversation with a man called Adam, who I met quite randomly. He came to the UK from Kurdistan 25 years ago. He runs a vape shop in the town centre directly opposite Reform UK's temporary pop up shop. And he has very, very strong emotional feelings about how the town has changed in the last few weeks. I've been there 25 years now. I feel like when I first come. And did you feel like that before the by election? No. Let's check. What just very recently, very recently in the last few weeks, Sinnis Najul Farage came on tv, say about refugees. Everything changed, everything.

[Richard Gerner]

Every foreigner seems same way, feel same way.

[Kieran Stacey]

That's quite something to hear, isn't it, Kieran? It reminds us really that politics isn't just about numbers, it has human consequences.

[John Harris]

Yeah. And I think that especially, you know, here in Westminster where we've been talking over the last couple of days about comments from the Conservative, Conservative MP Katie Lamb, who's been talking about deporting people who've settled legally in the uk.

[Kieran Stacey]

This is what's called remigration now. Yeah.

[John Harris]

I mean, remigration was a word really that only ever used to apply to the BNP and the absolute far, far right. But essentially she was making comments that certainly seem to echo those policies where she's talking about deporting people for cultural reasons, as she described it. Now we've had a debate here in, in our office about how much focus to put on those comments. Should we be necessarily paying a lot of attention to the soundings off from one Tory back bencher, or is this a moment where British politics has really started to shift? And I think, you know, it's really useful listening to that vape shop owner that you talk to because you just remember that even if it's just one person saying things from the back benches, that doesn't necessarily translate into any kind of policy. It does just help set the culture in which we live and it has real world effects on people outside of Westminster.

[Kieran Stacey]

Yeah, yeah. We talk about cut through, you see, but again, partly via social media, that stuff really cuts through. And so you end up having a conversation with somebody who says they feel scared. That's what he said to me. Yeah, he said he's been at the end of racist abuse recently and there's an awful unfairness that he feels. He says, you know, if he reads online people saying, well, you shouldn't be in our town, there are very few empty shops in the center of Caerphilly, contrary to Stereotypes.

[John Harris]

That is interesting.

[Kieran Stacey]

And he says that the reason there are very few empty shops, it's people from overseas have come to the town, started small businesses and made a go of it. Right. And he counted down 10 shops down the street that were all owned by people from overseas. It was a really, really striking conversation. Here's the thing that really hit me in political terms, right? You have what's turned out to be a binary contest with immigration and asylum right in the foreground. And that atmosphere of division that I mentioned, that is often toxic. And it did really feel like a local version of the Brexit referendum in 2016. I thought I've smelt and tasted this before. Somehow the politics here feels familiar to me. And it's the politics of nine years ago. And then you think about the Senate elections in Wales next year and the general election we're going to get in 2028 or 2029. That's probably what it's going to be like in a lot of places.

[John Harris]

Listening to you say that, it reminds me a little bit of being in Washington from 2018 to 2022. So I was there for the end of the first Trump term and then the be of the Biden term, people were saying, well, normality has been restored. We had that blip with Trump, but now we're back to kind of professional politicians making sensible decisions, holding themselves up to scrutiny. You know, the grown ups are back in charge, essentially. I wonder whether we're going to feel a little bit similar after the next election. Will we end up feeling that this period of laboring government, relatively stable, albeit not popular, was just a blip sandwiched between two periods of chaos, the kind of Brexit Johnson truss years, and then whatever comes afterwards. Are we gonna look back on these few years and just think, wow, that was not really representative of where our politics was at the time. It just so happened that all the stars aligned for, you know, a party of the center left to come in and run things in a relatively managerial way for just that few years. And that'll feel like a kind of world away from where we are after the next election.

[Kieran Stacey]

Yeah. So momentarily, perhaps, it turned out that Keir Starmer and his government thought they might defy where politics was going. But politics inevitably may have been moving along this track to being very polarised and overheated, but also moving towards everyday life, being politicized in a way that I'm really not used to. Right. That's what it's like in Caerphilly. Everybody says that again, On Facebook in particular, reform voters argue heatedly and often abusively with people who are voting for Plaid Cymru. Cause there's that clearer divide. Right. And you see those posters in People's Gardens, you think superficially, you think, oh, isn't this great? Everyone's politically engaged, getting really excited about the by election. The truth of it is that it makes a lot of people feel really uneasy and anxious.

[John Harris]

Yeah. And that anxiety only breeds that feeling of alienation in the first place. So it just kind of becomes a spiral.

[Kieran Stacey]

Right. We'll see what happens in the wee hours of Friday morning when the result from Caerphilly is announced. Let's pause here for a minute. After this, we'll be talking about the Grooming Gang's inquiry and why victims are resigning from the inquiries panel.

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[Kieran Stacey]

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[John Harris]

Foreign.

[Kieran Stacey]

Welcome back. We'll now turn our attention partly to this week's PM qs where Keir Starmer faced questions about a brewing crisis around the Grooming Gang's inquiry. This week, four abuse survivors have resigned from their roles on the Victims and Survivors Liaison panel, accusing the Home Office and ministers and Jess Phillips, in particular, of sidelining them and making attempts to widen the inquiry for political reasons. Kieran, can you just explain what the survivors in question have been saying?

[John Harris]

We've now had several days of drip, drip, drip where survivors have been leaving this panel. And then we also had Annie Hudson, former head of child services at Lambeth Council, ruling herself out as one of the only two known candidates for chair. So I think it's fair to say that planning for getting this thing off the ground is not going very well. The survivors, I think, are particularly upset because. Because they have been sent questionnaires about what the terms of reference should be for the inquiry. And these questionnaires say things like, should it be just about grooming gangs, or should it be more broadly about child sexual abuse, or should it be even broader than that? And what they are worried about is that the government's basically trying to widen the scope of the inquiry so much that they then don't have to talk about, A the failures of Labour councils in certain areas where this happened, and B the ethnicity of those who carried out the attacks. I think from what we can tell from their public statements, a lot of the victims do want to concentrate on the fact that many of these gangs were run and led by Pakistani men and want that to be a big part of it. The government is promising that it will make that a big part of the inquiry, but they're just worried because basically they've been sent questionnaires that they think might be moving slightly away from that. So it's all become a bit toxic.

[Kieran Stacey]

While the government is now issuing these pointed denials about exactly that stuff. Jess Phillips, the relevant Minister, published a letter on Monday to MPs saying the allegations of intentional delay, lack of interest or widening the inquiry scope and dilution are false. The inquiry will remain laser focused on grooming gangs, as Baroness Casey recommended. Shabana Mahmoud, the Home Secretary, had a piece in the Times this week saying exactly the same thing. But that wasn't good enough for Cami Badenock. Cami Badenoch attacked the government on this at Prime Minister's questions on Wednesday. Four victims on the rape gang survivors panel have resigned, and they've resigned because they've lost all confidence in the government's inquiry. So I'm giving my first question to one of them, to Fiona.

[Jerry App Advertiser]

She said, being dismissed and contradicted by.

[Kieran Stacey]

A minister when you're telling the truth takes you right back to that feeling of not being believed all over again.

[Jerry App Advertiser]

Fiona's question is simple. What's the point in speaking up if.

[John Harris]

We'Re just going to be called liars.

[Kieran Stacey]

So the survivor Kelly Badenoch was talking about there. Fiona has also called for the resignation of Jess Phillips, the Safeguarding Minister, accusing her of contradicting and dismissing the victims after everything they've been through. Fiona says that victims were not being believed all over again. Now, you mentioned earlier, or seem to hint that certainly as far as some people are concerned, there have been errors here in the setup of the inquiry and the fact that already it's proved to be in such a chaotic state. Do you think that's right? Have identifiable things gone wrong?

[John Harris]

Clearly things have gone wrong because they've lost a load of the victims who were supposed to form part of the victims panel feeding into this inquiry. It's obviously not going as well as they hoped. Having said that, from what I know of public inquiries and consultations, it's fairly standard for officials to go and ask people involved, what should the scope of this be? Where should we be putting our attention? And so obviously this is an incredibly sensitive topic and it's unsurprising, I think, that people have got quite upset this early in the process. Let's also not forget that Downing street keeps reminding us of this as well, that a previous inquiry by Alexis J into child sexual exploitation went through three chairs before it actually ended up making any kind of report. So these inquiries are often very difficult to manage and quite politically controversial. I think I just shine a light on one thing there that you mentioned, John, and this was the thing that Kemi Badenoch was picking up on in PMQS on Wednesday. And it's Jess Phillips's language because she used it in that letter you mentioned. She also used it in the Chamber where she said the allegations of, as you mentioned, various things, including widening and diluting the scope of the inquiry, are false. Well, it depends what she means by that. But I can see why some of those survivors have taken against what Jess Phillips said there, because they've got proof that the officials have been talking about widening the scope of this inquiry.

[Kieran Stacey]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Harris]

They've gone public with it and Jess Phillips has said those allegations are false. Now, I don't know, maybe Jess Phillips would turn around and say, no, it's just false to say that we are widening the scope of the inquiry. Yes, we may have asked people whether we should, but we're not going to go that way. And then that's why I said it was false. But if you're going to go out there and say allegations are false, you better be pretty sure of your facts, especially on something as sensitive as this. And that's why I think maybe she just overstepped on that one.

[Kieran Stacey]

Even if you're being generous, that looks like an ill advised choice of words. I wonder as well. But there's a sense here, which is a familiar sense actually, of raw humanity and human suffering and people's everyday lives colliding really with how bureaucracy works and the inevitable sort of clinical, administrative, clunky way that an official inquiry is bound to sort of proceed, particularly in its early stages.

[John Harris]

Right, yeah.

[Kieran Stacey]

That's always a risk that you run unless you're very, very careful. And the government has somewhat sort of fallen into that trap, I suppose.

[John Harris]

I think that that is exactly right. And I, I guess that's the point I was getting at earlier. The only thing I would say is that I think there is also an incentive here for the government to try and take some of the heat out of the most directly controversial bits of this inquiry. So we have Shabana Mahmood, we have Jess Phillips insisting that they're going to focus on the ethnicity of the alleged perpetrators or the perpetrators in many of these cases, and insisting focus on failures in labor run councils. But you can see why they don't just want to talk about that. They don't want this to basically descend into an argument which frankly Reform will love, all about whether brown men are sexual predators and whether there is a problem in the Pakistani community with grooming gangs. They don't want to have that debate. It's a pretty toxic debate, the terms of which the government really are never going to win on. So you can see why they might be trying to widen out the scope and talk about other things in here. You can also see why that might be infuriating for the victims themselves.

[Kieran Stacey]

Now, there is also some attention being paid to the fact that the government has yet to appoint a chair of the inquiry, with echoes, as you say, of the inquiry that ended up being run by Alexis J. Keir. Starmer said at PMQS that although some people say they want a judge to chair the inquiry, that wouldn't work because he envisages ongoing criminal investigations running alongside the inquiry's proceedings, and therefore a judge having that role would be inappropriate. Do you get a sense of who might be in the running or how the government's going to resolve that question?

[John Harris]

Almost anybody you pick, by definition, will be controversial for one reason or another. Very interesting today to me that the Prime Minister announced that his, I think you called her his troubleshooter in chief, Louise Casey will be involved. Now, it was Louise Casey who did a quick inquiry into this in the first place where she recommended that there should be a fuller national inquiry. Louise Casey gets brought in whenever Keir Starmer feels like he's in trouble and the politics have all got quite complicated. She is currently being talked of as potentially getting a senior role in number 10. So I don't know how many jobs.

[Kieran Stacey]

She wants to take on an indication that he expects to be in trouble all the time.

[John Harris]

Well, yeah, yes, exactly.

[Kieran Stacey]

Yeah.

[John Harris]

Maybe she's exactly the woman for the job, but yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if they'd asked Louise Casey to actually chair it. I also wouldn't be surprised if she's turned them down. But she does now seem to have accepted some kind of role playing backup and she's very well respected. So I don't know, maybe that will allay some of the concerns that the victims have about this process.

[Kieran Stacey]

Two last quick points on this. Once it starts. I mean, you've sort of alluded to this anyway, this inquiry will obviously be under intense scrutiny and also, whether the government likes it or not, it will be a profoundly political inquiry in the sense that there will be people, politicians trying to make political capital out of the inquiry and its proceedings and any perceived faults all the time. That's true, as.

[John Harris]

Yeah. And I think you saw that from Kemi Badenock on Wednesday in PMQs. Although I did think it was a slightly, maybe curiously muted performance from her. Didn't get that full gust of moral outrage that I thought I'd see from her. But you can certainly imagine whenever this inquiry gets going, Robert Jenrick and Nigel Farage. Absolutely. Making statements about it almost every single day and seeking to use both the process and eventually the findings to further their arguments argument, essentially, which has now become that immigration has made the UK less culturally cohesive and less safe. I mean, that is fundamentally where we are now. That is mainstream, I think, conservative and reform argument. And this will play into that.

[Kieran Stacey]

Yeah. And whenever you get that sort of polarized, divided political atmosphere, this issue is among the things that people talk about. You mentioned Badenock a moment ago. I don't know. I watch PMQS and I found it a bit harder, hard to witness her really going out of her way to politicize this, given the gravity and sensitivity of the issue. I thought there was something a bit unseemly maybe about the fact that she obviously wanted to use the tools of political knockabout. And Starmer actually, in response, was Very, very careful, wasn't he? He was very restrained and calm and loyally in all his responses.

[John Harris]

Yeah. I mean, in his typical fashion, when it got onto the question of whether this should be a judge led inquiry, you know, he was absolutely on home territory when talking about legal process. You know, that's, that's what he's most comfortable talking about. Say it's absolutely fine for the leader of the opposition to talk about what the scope of an important national inquiry should be and whether the government is staying true to the promises it has made victims in the run up to that. I think that is absolutely a valid argument to make and I wasn't surprised to see her make it. I think where Labour MPs got very upset is when she accused the government of briefing against the victims. Now, I can only imagine what she meant by that was what we were talking about earlier, Jess Phillips saying that these allegations were false. But I think that was the moment at which people in the chamber thought maybe she's pushed the argument a little too far. I can't quite justify that one.

[Kieran Stacey]

I think I'm right in saying that by the time Pippa is back on Monday with another episode of Politics Weekly uk, we're gonna know who the deputy leader of the Labour Party is.

[John Harris]

Yeah, yeah. The exciting political contest that we're really all watching at the end of this week, forget Caerphilly, it is Lucy Powell vs. Bridget Philipson that we're all desperately waiting to find out the answer to. I thought it was a very funny moment in PMQS where Kemi Badenoch started talking about Lucy Powell as the potential next deputy leader of the party and then corrected herself and said, the next deputy leader of the Labour Party. We all know who's going to win. Now, I still suspect, despite the briefing from Bridget Phillipson's team, that Lucy Powell is going to win that contest. Labour HQ seem to be trying to take any drama out of it. They're not going to kind of do any big televised moment. They're just going to have reading out of some results on an online stream or something from Labour HQ on Saturday. But, you know, that will be interesting and important to a lot of people here in the parliamentary Labour Party.

[Kieran Stacey]

And if Lucy Powell wins, it's another sort of curb your enthusiasm moment for Keir Starmer, isn't it? The person he fired a matter of weeks ago, then walks back in the room and is his. And is his deputy.

[John Harris]

Yeah, walks back in the room. But interesting to know which rooms she'll walk into because she won't be there at Cabinet.

[Kieran Stacey]

Ah yes, yes, yes.

[John Harris]

She probably will be there at Political Cabinet, but that is very much a secondary thing to what happens around the actual Cabinet table. She won't have a government role and presumably by running like this against the government's preferred candidate, Bridget Phillipson, she has made sure she will never have a government role under Keir Starmer. So she will say that she's got a voice the room, but I slightly doubt how effective that will be. We'll see.

[Kieran Stacey]

She'll be in a small and darkened room somewhere like me and you, Kieran. Anyway, thank you for joining us.

[John Harris]

Thank you John.

[Kieran Stacey]

That's all from me. If you enjoyed today's episode, please make sure you subscribe to Politics Week the uk wherever you're listening and please leave us a review, preferably a nice one. Also keep sending those emails in to politicsweeklyukuardian.com you might also be interested in joining Pippa Career John Craise and Marina Hyde on the 2nd of December live at the Barbican in London and online as they pick apart the chaos from Westminster and beyond in a Guardian Live event A Year in Westminster. Book tickets at the Guardian Live. Pippa will be back on Monday with Eleni Correa who'll be filling in for Kieran. This episode was produced by Natalie Hatana, the music is by Axel Coutier and the Executive Producer is Alexandra Toppin.

[John Harris]

This is the Guardian.

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[John Harris]

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