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Thanks for listening to the Rest Is Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to therestispolitics.com that's therestispolitics.com this episode is brought to.
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Welcome to the Rest Is Politics with.
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Me, Alistair Campbell, and with me Rory Stewart.
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A
And we're going to we're doing this as a lie, but this will also go out as this week's main episode because, to be absolutely frank, things are moving pretty quick, quickly within the Keir Starmer world. Many of you will have seen the monologue I did last night on the resignation of Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer's chief of staff and longtime senior aide. We've heard this morning that my former deputy a long, long time ago, Tim Allen, who went in a few months ago to try to improve communications as communications director. He's also gone this morning. Keir Starmer is going to be Talking to the PLP this evening as Parliamentary Labour Party, all the MPs and PE and I suspect they will probably take some persuading that this show can be got back on the road. I think it can, but I can see why an awful lot of people are very, very, very jumpy. And we've had Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, out this morning saying that Keir Starmer should go.
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B
So we're recording on a morning where if you walk into the news agents, most of the headlines in the papers are all repeating the same line, which is variations on 48 hours to save his premiership. Can Keir Starmer hang on? Is this the final death blow? Dead man walking Days numbered. The Daily Mail, for example. How long can Starmer hang on The Express? Are Starmer's days numbered? And they all echo the same stuff. Can we start maybe with that framing what's going on there? Do you take that seriously? Is this Westminster bubble speak with journalists just endlessly quoting anonymous sources and trying to manufacture a crisis? I mean, how would you react if all those papers arrived on your desk?
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A
Well, it's definitely that, but it is also very, very serious. And sometimes it does take a sort of tipping point. And the Mandelson Epstein relationship and the appointment and all the debate about who vetted and who didn't vet and who recommended and who didn't has sort of come at a point where Keir Starmer was already quite weak because of all sorts of mishaps that have happened. This by coming up and the Ferrari where the Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Manchester should be allowed to stand. And you have, you see, and you've got a lot of very, very angry Labour MPs who just feel the government has not been operating the way that it. That it should. And of course, just on the media point, as I said in my. My monologue, they can only do one volume and it has to be louder and louder and louder. And of course, you've had several years where part of the game, and I hate the. The way it is by so many of our journalists seen as a game. Part of the game of political media is try and create a. Turn a sort of problem into a scandal, a scandal into a crisis, and then get a scalp. That's the sort of game. The question is whether that's the right thing for the country and for the. And for the Labour government. And it was interesting. I mentioned Kemi Badenoch. I mean, I thought her. I heard her interview on the radio this morning and she was very, very strong. And I do think she, as a performer, as a politician, has got a lot stronger in recent weeks. But I think where she was weak is on this idea that, you know, are we going to become like Italy, where you just keep changing your Prime Minister every time anything goes really wrong, or if there's a scandal? And I think the question on this is, I guess in the end it is down to the MPs and the cabinet to decide what they think is the best way forward. And right now, again, sorry to repeat what I said last night, but it sort of. It all did come from the heart. I'm not convinced right now. I've got my complaints about Keir Starmer. I've Had a lot of complaints about Morgan McSweeney and about the government as a whole. But I think if Labour was suddenly to sort of lurch now into a leadership contest without any clear sign of where that would end, I think it could make things even worse. So where I think we are is the Keir Starmer who is not Tony Blair, is not Barack Obama, he's not Bill Clinton, but in a very, very difficult set of circumstances, he's. He's kind of. He's got some of the skills that you need to be the Prime Minister. He lacks others, no doubt about that. But I just worry that right now, even though, as you say, the media debate is this furori, the debate within the party and the PLP is this sort of. This level of intensity, I think there are people within the country are just going to think this is just. This is weird, and then ask the question, are we actually becoming ungovernable? But you. I mean, what do you think? Do you think he's kind of. Are you with the sort of headlines that he's basically had it?
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B
Well, let's maybe circle back to that by just touching briefly on the substance which we're gonna have to get into more deeply. So the Mandelson appointment is very, very damaging because it's not just a lapse of judgment. It's appointing as your ambassador to Washington somebody who was tied in financially and in intelligence terms to an international criminal network, number one. Number two, Starmer's record as Prime Minister has been very disappointing. We've talked about his net popularity rating, which is catastrophically low. The complete absence for proper growth narrative, these incredible tactical mistakes on things like Winter Fuel, where he does something in U turns and comes back and he's. And then got the whole question of a very unhappy Labour Party in Parliament. The question is, with that backdrop, firstly, is this just like, I don't know, a banderilla in the bull in the Spanish ring, that it's not necessarily on its own the thing that brings him down? Because of course, on its own, as you've pointed out, there's an incredible irony. If Starmer was brought down by. By Epstein when Trump was a good friend of Epstein's and had private parties from. At Mar a Lago, and all of a sudden Starmer, as far as one knows, never met Epstein. So that would be very odd. But the only reason one could understand it is in the context of all the other mishaps and this just being the final thing. So I don't know. And I think because it's quite difficult getting rid of a Labour leader. I mean, you said it's about the MPs and the cabinet. Of course it is. But we also saw with Jeremy Corbyn that that wasn't enough to get rid of him, even when the majority of MPs turned against him. If the leader wants to just dig their heels in and stay, they can. It comes down to the very odd question of psychology. I mean, in the end, Liz Truss chose to resign. Boris Johnson, Theresa May, they chose to go. Now, in Johnson's case, it had become catastrophic because the whole Cabinet basically was 56 ministers had resigned. But in the end, the Prime Minister has to choose to go.
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A
And I think on that, I think that people do sort of talk his. His thick skin and his resilience and what have you. I think he has had a, you know, a few dark nights of the soul in recent days. And we know that he had those in in the past when Labour lost the. In Opposition, lost the by election in Hartlepool. And he, you know, we all know he seriously thought about whether he could do this, whether he was ever going to be able to lead the Labour Party into government. And of course he did that with this landslide and I think was disappointed. So many of the MPs, and don't forget, a lot of these people, as you know, they. They don't know that much about politics. They've never really been through all the tough times that you have to go through in politics. They're new MPs who came in this wave. A landslide. God, we've got a landslide. We can now do so much. And I think one of the things that. That they have found difficult, I don't think they felt terribly respected by number 10. I think that the. And perhaps this, this might be a point to talk about the, the specific issue that sort of created this frenzy last night about Morgan McSweeney. Keir Starmer clearly owes him a lot. In terms of Keir Starmer, he's been a lawyer, he's been the Director of Public Prosecutions. He decides to become an MP relatively late in life and he hires this guy, Morgan McSweeney. He gets to know Morgan McSweeney, who I guess he sees as having political skills on the organizational and the campaign side, that maybe he feels he doesn't have.
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B
My understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, is that McSweeney did four things for Starmer. He's credited with helping him win the leadership in the first place. He's credited with having Purged the left from the party. He's credited with having designed the election strategy and finally with having run number 10. Is that right?
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A
Well, credited is a very interesting word. I think one of the points I was going to make is that, do you remember we said at the time when the book about the labor campaign was published called get in, and. And I said at the time, I think this is a really damaging book for Keir Starmer because it gives this. It gives the impression that he's. He's what we used to call in. Well, I remember we used to sometimes refer to. To candidates as legal necessities. And it's like, you know, it's almost like he's been put in there. But actually it's these guys over here, in particular, Morgan, who are running the show. That is terrible for a leader. And so when you say credited, who's giving the credit? Even today, I notice on the radio and the television, I notice allies of Morgan McSweeney say this was a terrible decision.
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B
Can you interpret that for me? Most of us don't understand what the hell that means. When media says allies of Morgan McSweeney says that's a terrible position. What sort of person. I'm not asking to name names, but what kind of person has a journalist talked to and has Morgan encouraged him to say it? And what's going on when that story happens?
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A
Well, it's not impossible that it's Morgan McSweeney.
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B
Gotcha.
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A
It's not impossible. That is people who work for Morgan McSweeney who will feel very, very sad and unhappy and, you know, hacked off, that he's this person who they feel has been so central, as if you like being pushed out as a sacrificial lamb. But there's another one every time you listen to the news at the moment, it says the BBC, itv, Sky News. We understand that Peter Mandelson does not think he has committed a crime. And that is the same thing.
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B
That's code for Mandelson himself, probably.
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A
Yeah.
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Saying it off the record. Yeah.
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A
Correct, correct. Or certainly somebody that the media knows is close enough to be able to be. To be authoritative. And so Patrick Maguire, one of the authors of that book, has a big piece in the Times today which essentially is saying, posing the question that, oh, well, we're not sure that Keir Starmer can actually cross the road without Morgan McSweeney. It's almost like that. Now, that is a construct that has been developed over time. And look, I think Morgan Mussolini does have an awful lot of talent, an awful lot of skill. I don't think it's a secret. I didn't think it was necessarily that those skills lend themselves to being the chief of staff of the G7 economy.
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B
So you would say that you'd meet with Piers Salma and Hampstead Heath and you talk to him and presumably you would talk about Morgan McSweeney. You haven't on this podcast openly come out and called for McSweeney to step down, I presume, because you've got, you know, you have discreet conversations with Starmer which you don't want to share. But if you were making those arguments, what would you have been saying?
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A
Well, no, but also I have discreet conversations with Tim Allen, with Jonathan Powell, with Morgan McSweeney. And I think, as I said last night, I think that, I hope that our listeners and viewers understand that sometimes you are, we are one is. It's the same for you if you're talking to people in different governments that we're talking about and you actually know things that I might ask you and you just, you have to finesse it. I would have said, and I have said this in the past, I think maybe not in these terms on the podcast, but if your strategy is not working, then that ultimately is down to you, the leader. You have to have absolute clarity about what you're trying to do. But if the person who is credited is identified as the main strategist and the strategy's not working, that is a real problem.
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B
Alistair, to be really blunt, if I were to read your diaries in 10 years time, you've basically been sitting there for months saying Morgan McSweeney should go. This is not good.
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A
I have been saying for months that I think there is a fundamental problem inside that operation. It's not just about Morgan Muswini, it's about, I think the big thing is about, and we've said this so many times, do we really know what the, what Tony Blay used to call the big picture is? What is the compelling narrative that Keir Starmer is telling the country about who he is, what he's trying to do and how that's going to benefit the country? We get snatches of it. I thought one of the strongest points that again, Kemi Badenot made this morning is, you know, we've had resets and missions that were missions then they're not. So that's a problem. And that's a problem for the operation as well. You have to have somebody in there who is driving that. So I would have certainly said that I'd have said. I'd also have said, I think that when I was doing the job that I did, I had a lot of attention, but partly that's because my job was to talk to the media all the time. I may have done it. I think I did do it pretty well, but I may have overplayed my hand a few times, but I was never there wanting people to think that I was running the whole show. In fact, that was, I knew, was a terrible negative for Tony Blair. And by the way, let me just. I sent you a photograph this morning when I was listening to all this stuff about, oh, well, Keir Starmer's bound to flounder without Morgan Matsuini, he can't tie shoelaces without him, et cetera. And I sent you the front cover of Private Eye from the. The week that I resigned in 2000, whatever it was. And it was a collection of photographs. And the one that I thought was most relevant to this was a picture of David Frost, legendary BBC interviewer, interviewing Tony Blair. And David Frost says, how will you manage without him? And you've got a smiling Tony Blair with a completely blank speech bubble, as if he won't be able to say anything.
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B
And that, of course, turned out not to be true.
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A
Totally untrue. The Sun. I can remember somebody reminded me this morning, the sun headline was, Blair Loses His Brain. So the point is, and this is a point I was trying to make last night, is ultimately, we have so much focus in this kind of soap opera political world on advisors. And sometimes, like Cummings, they generated that for themselves. Peter, when he was an advisor, was a little bit like this. They want it to be about them and ultimately it is about the politicians. The politicians have to show that they have it. And so I think when Keir Starmer goes in to see the Parliamentary Labour Party tonight, what they're going to want is not, you know, oh, I balls up on this and I wish I'd done that. And Tim Allen's gone, but I'll replace him with this. They want to know that he's got it within him to understand the scale of the crisis facing him and to get out of it and ultimately to direct a better government. And I was talking to one of the cabinet ministers last night who is, I would, still very, very supportive of. Kiir doesn't want him to go. And who said if Keir plays this right, it could be liberating for him, but it has to be based on the fact that every time the public see him from now on they think they're seeing him, his values, his approach to politics. And he's not just somebody who's being pushed out there to read a script. So that's the kind of thing you'd get a flavor of that.
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B
I think the reason I'm a bit gloomy if I'm going to play my role of being a bit of a critic of Labor. If he hasn't done it yet, I can't see that he's going to be able to do it, because I've been bewildered like you have by this endless changes. It was about growth and then it wasn't about growth, was probably one of the most dramatic ones. But all these sort of different missions and objectives. And what's completely bewildering about that is it's as though he had decided before the election this is what he believed, this is what he wanted to do. And then a few months after the election, he was like, okay, no, no, now I've really thought about it. I was wrong there. Actually. This is what I believe in the. This is what I want to do. Now, I can imagine that happening once. Maybe if you're a very inexperienced prime Minister, you might think, listen, I've been doing this job for five, six months, and I was naive. And actually, this is the big issue. But the fact is he's done that a third time, a fourth time, and that's really weird. I mean, being prime minister has got to be the most difficult job in the world. But if I think about my own life as a prisons minister, I can recognise that. When I came in, I thought the problem was drugs. And then six months on, I thought, actually, look, this thing is about violence. It's gotta be about safer prisons. And the system could somehow handle that. If I was very clear, we want prisons that are safe for prisoners, prison office families, and that's what we're gonna do for the next year. Everyone can get behind it. If you change it again, people are gonna begin thinking, what are you at? And the advantage of, I'll finish my pompous lecture. But I guess the advantage of Margaret Thatcher, for example, was that every junior minister knew what Thatcher thought about the world. And it wasn't very difficult for them to answer the question or any civil servant to answer the question, what would Mrs. Thatcher be doing in this situation? And I can't see how Starmer's going to get there, because presumably you've been talking to him on a Hampstead Heath. Tim Allen's been sitting with him. Morgan McSweeney's been sitting with him, Mandelson's been sitting with him, and goodness knows who else have been going and trying to help him do this again and again and again and again. And many of you actually have spent years outside government learning how to do this with political leaders all over the world. I mean, you're very practiced now. It's probably half a dozen of you who are very, very practiced. Blair probably does it with them, too. Very practiced at how you sit down with a political leader and say, okay, who are you? What do you want? What's it going to deliver for the country? And if you haven't managed to do it yet, I cannot believe that he's going to be able to find that for the PLP in the future.
- [19:48]
A
The concept and the issue that you are speaking to, which is something that I do talk to other leaders around the world about, is the importance of this thing that I call the reputational currency bank. How much currency do you have in your reputational bank? So if you think about somebody like Peter Mandelson. So there's Peter, very tricky character. We've had all sorts of ups and downs, but pretty effective in lots of different ways. When we were coming through opposition into government, he sort of agitates to get a senior job. He gets into the cabinet. He, you know, we have his first resignation, okay, and off he goes into the wilderness for a little bit. But he's got enough currency in the reputational bank. Tony brings him back. He then goes off and he does something stupid again and he resigns again. And he goes off and licks his wounds and rebuilds, and he's still got a bit currency in the bank. And he goes off to be a commissioner in Europe. And then Gordon Brown, no friend of his, no fan of his, who sort of. The number of times I've had Gordon Brown in my ear telling me about if I was. He knew what. He didn't like Peter because he called him Mendelssohn rather than Mandelson. And he, you know, but even for Gordon, he's got enough currency in the bank. What you've seen what's happened over this Epstein stuff is all the currency is gone. Okay, now with Kier, what you're saying is that he had the reputation of being a good dpp. He had the reputation of coming to politics fairly late and seeming to know how to do politics. He was a pretty effective spokesman in really difficult times for labor on Brexit. Not always get into the position I'd like him to, but, you know, remember, remember when we interviewed Mike Michel Barnier, he said, as soon as I met Keir Starmer, I thought, this guy could be Prime Minister. So he's got reputation building. He then wins an election. He wins an election and you don't get more reputational currency in British politics or any politics. Look at the Japanese Prime Minister today. Her reputational currency has gone soaring because she's just won a landslide. Kia won a landslide. And what you're saying is that since then, I would argue there's been lots of good things he said, lots of good things he's done. There is progress that's being made. I think the country is on many levels better than it was. But there have been. You mentioned some of them, but, you know, winter fuel, the farmers, some of the scandals that, you know, benefit two, child benefit, the U turns, the sort of playing around in Europe. So I think that where I would say he's at is that the reserves are running low to refill that currency. Reputational bank. He has got to give the PLP starting today, the sense he knows how to get a grip. And we shall see. We shall see. And then I add in the second question, which I alluded to last night, that for a political party, and of course this, it may just be that we're going through one of these weird periods of history where both the main political parties that we've all taken for granted, royal lives, are sort of really an existential peril. But he's got the by election coming up, which is obviously going to be very, very difficult, made more difficult by what's gone in recent days. We've got the local elections, the Scottish elections, the Welsh elections, which are going to look. May 7th going to look. They look really, really difficult. So he's got all these things coming up. We've got the economy not quite motoring. And I think that goes to the heart of what you said. I've got to say, one thing I would do if I were him, I would come out straight away and actually say, we did talk about growth. We should have stuck with that. Here's the growth strategy. Here it is. And make it a huge thing for the country. And also the other thing, this is for the Labour Party, because a lot of these MPs, who, as I say, don't really know what tough times are like in terms of, you know, just what politics is like. I think that they need to know that if the. If labor is going to win again, it's got to face up to the tough things that need to. Need to be done. Otherwise we just morph into a sort of soft left mush that isn't going to make the changes. It's going to make people feel better about being a losing Labour Party again.
- [24:07]
B
Just to try to work out what happens now. So let's say people feel, and definitely some of my friends who are still in Parliament feel that they don't want a leadership election. They think that both Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner, who are the main contenders, would be too divisive. Some of them are now a bit regretting that Andy Burnham didn't come in as an option. But the options they've got, they feel, would be a little bit too divisive. One too left wing aren't too right wing. They're worried that Aannsha Rainer, because of the problems that she had with her tax and mortgage payments, it's not an ideal time for her at a moment of scandal. And it's not an ideal time for Wes Threeting, who's seen as very much being part of the sort of Morgan MacSweeney Mandelson universe. So I suppose the best case scenario for them might be Starmer remains in place, but then he really gives space to Secretaries of State doing radical and impressive things. So I'm more on the right of this argument. So I would like to see Wes treating really unleashed to do brave, difficult reforms to the nhs. I'd like to see Peter Kyle as Bigson Secretary, completely rethinking how to get growth, get rid of regulation, get rid of red tape, get entrepreneurship going, get businesses growing, make Britain really grow. I'd like to see the Chancellor be braver and tougher on getting public spending under control. I think if you got even those three things going, maybe I might like to see someone like Al Khan's in a more senior position bringing a bit of charisma and shape and energy to the labor projects. And maybe you might think at some point of bringing back a voice like Angela Rayner to push on with planning and housing and you do it under sama, but you do do it not. Maybe this is too romantic, not in the way that McSweeney did, which was very central. Controlling we control the narrative. We're a campaigning machine. We can barely be bothered to speak to a lot of these ministers half the time, but actually go for a first amongst equals model and really get behind these people.
- [26:12]
A
We can argue about some of the specifics that you talk about, but as a general approach, I totally agree with that. And that probably doesn't mean at some point if he does get through this period that he does have to think about, you know, a pretty, a reshuffle that is more significant than the last one where it was huge fuss and in the end only one person and one person left and she became deputy of the Labor Party, Lucy Powell. And I, and I think this point about, you know, some of the stuff I talked about last night, that this sense of all the way that politics is talked about in the media, the way that the short termism in our politics, the sort of, the kind of levels of dissonance in our public debate, the, the way that social media and the media, more general religious is all about rage, what have you. I think he's got to, whoever's prime minister in a modern age has got to take that on. Takaichi. I'm afraid this is one of the lessons from how Trump came back. You've got to fight all the time for what you actually believe in. Instead of thinking you can play a bit way, well, let's go this way on that policy, this way on that. A bit of left, a bit of right, you know, let's keep the reformed people happy. But let's, you know, let's, let's also lean over here. It doesn't work like that anymore. You've got to be absolutely clear about your core. And I think that's what the MPs want to see. They will say, right, look, you've been elected. Thanks to you and the changes you made in opposition. A lot of us are now MPs, we want to see it. And that's without that, you just limp on from. I said last night, you know, the worst thing, the thing that really depresses me is that when somebody says to me, oh, it's just looking like the last lot now. It's hard to argue against that when you go from one bad thing to the next.
- [28:00]
B
Well, let's take a very short live break and then I think as we come back, let's look at the bigger questions around Epstein, Madison and also Epstein in the us.
- [28:17]
A
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C
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- [29:55]
B
Let's come back into Epstein. I've been thinking a lot about him. I've been reading books about him, watching documentaries about him. And there is the horrifying side, which has been done so powerfully in Judy Brown's book and, and in the documentaries which are available, which people can watch, which is persistent rape of underage girls. I think 36, at least, women came out against them for rape. People seeing these planes arriving on his island, women aged 15 who've been raped, trying to escape by swimming across the Caribbean. Other women describing being in hospital, vomiting for two weeks over that horror. And then there's the schizophrenic other side, which touches on it, but is a window into a much bigger world, and which is a world that I think we need to keep focused on, which is the world of influence, power, connections, networks, which goes a long way beyond sex trafficking. And the reason that I want to say that is not to minimize his horrible, devastating crimes, but to understand that if we just see him as an individual example of evil, we're missing a much bigger thing that's coming out of the story, which is the way that political corruption works. So one thing I noticed thinking about it and reading about it is firstly, how many of the people we've interviewed on Leading are people who saw him regularly. So Bill Clinton, 26 trips on Epstein's private plane. Hillary Clinton saw him. I'm just going through people we've interviewed on leading George Mitchell, accused by Virginia Jeffrey of rape. We've had. I'm just trying to go through all the different people. Reid Hoffman has featured a great deal in this. We didn't interview Larry Summers, but I was pushing you to interview Larry Summers. He was very much caught up in this whole thing and I could keep going. I'm being a bit daft because I can't quite remember them all having said it all up. But the point that I'm trying to make is that we weren't setting out to interview a group of people adjacent to Jeffrey Epstein. Clearly what we were doing is working our way through a lot of these prominent academics, tech Bros. Political figures, and Epstein knew them all. And he did something which is a little bit different to the way that networking works in Britain. Networking in Britain I guess if you're lobbying or you're someone who enjoys knowing people, a lot of it might be about politics and finance, but this is about politics, it's about finance, but it's also about universities and it's about philanthropy. And the university and philanthropy bit is also very important because the key laundered his reputation by being this kind of great intellectual who would host people like Stephen Hawkinson. He was a senior fellow at Harvard and he set up his own center at Harvard. And also he's giving money to all these philanthropic things. And his connection with Bill Gates seems to be that he's claiming to advise Gates on his philanthropic giving. And that's true for the head of one of the hedges.
- [33:13]
A
Bill Gates is another one. He's another one we interviewed, isn't he? It's probably worth saying, Rory, if I can go into sort of moderate BBC mode for a couple of seconds, that just because your name is in the files doesn't mean that you're necessarily guilty of a crime. But you know, you mentioned the extent of the tentacles. I'll just give you a tiny example of this. So as you know, I'm about later today to start recording our next miniseries which is going to be about the Arctic. And I discovered in my research that the guy who put the idea of going of Trump going after Greenland was a guy called Ronald Lauder, who is the sole heir to the Estee Lauder fortune. And he's in the Epstein files. And I just thought it's like everywhere you look of these sort of big powerful people, they're just in there somewhere.
- [34:10]
B
Here's one more that interested me so there's a man called Joe Staley who ended up as the CEO of Barclays. But it's a very interesting example of the way that somebody like Epstein operates, which is that he's not just networking, he's also mentoring people and trying to position them. So he develops these sort of mentees who he's guiding. In this particular case, he first comes across him when this man is the head of JP Morgan private wealth, and he introduces him to what Joe Staitley later says is three of the five richest men in the world. Epstein does that introduction for him. Then he makes sure that Joe Staley can meet Peter Mandelson at Davos. Now, Peter Mandelson denies this, but it appears that Josaley is introduced by Epstein to Mandelson at Davos. They shake hands. This is January 2010, when Mandelston's still the business secretary. Subsequent to that, that allows Staley to take a stake in the Royal bank of Scotland, which is then owned by the British government. 1.4 billion. Now, that's a decision that's made by the British government. To what extent does Mandelson have influence over that? Biden? Fast forward. He then hires a man called Osborne, not George Osborne, but a lobbyist called Ian Osborne, to try to get his friend Joe Sadie made CEO of Barclays, which again, is partly controlled by the British government because the government had nationalized these things. He fails the first time round. He then positions Staley in a big hedge fund, and then he gets him in to be the head of Barclays second time round in 2015. At the same time, it appears from disclosures that Staley, who's now been disbarred from any financial conduct. He can't be in banking anymore, sleeps with a woman in Epstein's apartment in New York, the one he visited despite being married with two kids. But the reason I'm telling the story is that that is a story that, yes, touches on Mandelson, yes, touches on the British government. But it's a story of more than 10, 12 years of Mandelson having this person who he's trying to put. So he actually set up something called Project Jez to get this guy in.
- [36:27]
A
God, I didn't know that. I mean, how much of the files have you actually read? I mean, I've sort of dipped in and out, and after a while, you start to feel kind of repelled and sickened by the whole thing. And it's. But the more you look. So I saw a thing last night which I just. This goes to the. The issue of the doj, the Department of Justice and how they're handling this. Because a lot of the really bad stuff is stuff that is said to Epstein by people whose names are redacted. I saw one last night where the name is redacted of somebody saying to Epstein, looking forward to meeting you. I think it was in Italy. And then sort of talking about how he was going to get these young girls together, basically having children we're talking about. And he joking about, you know, they're not very small, one of them looks a bit weird, but I think you're going to like them and all this sort of stuff. And the piece I mentioned that Amiga Gentleman wrote, I really do recommend people put it in the newsletter. It's just that. It's not just that they're sleazy and up to sort of terrible things. It's the sort of. It's the joking about it and it's the incessance of it that I just think. I'd like to think I don't know any people like that, but as you say, we've interviewed some of them.
- [37:42]
B
Can I come into that on that? So I was talking to Shoshana about this yesterday and she was talking about her complete horror of the sort of exchanges that people have. But a lot of it, I'm afraid, is stuff that men are doing a lot without admitting it to themselves or to certainly to their partners. I think that sometimes I'm reading this stuff and what you're seeing is awkward, geeky professors who are flattered to have become friends with this apparently good looking, wealthy, powerful man. And they're showing off by making offensive comments about women, just as they could in another mode, make racist comments, make anti Semitic comments, make homophobic comments without overdoing this. I also think there's a tendency for everybody to imagine this is a sort of strange, isolated incident. I'm more worried that half of men are saying this stuff and it's just they don't happen to be recorded on emails, but if you overhear them in a bar, they're making inappropriate comments all the time. I'm not accusing them of raping minors, but I was thinking about it. I was watching the Wire, I'm watching Sopranos. Basically the entire narrative is men sitting in bars making homophobic, racist, sexist comments all the time.
- [39:12]
A
I guess what that speaks to, though, is how this is why sometimes these big moments really matter and how they're then taken forward. But if you take the MeToo movement, there has been, not least because of the way that Trump projects himself and the MAGA movement projects itself and the sort of anti woke. Right. There's been a backlash against that. I hope that this actually will maybe regenerate some of that energy around the MeToo movement. Look at George Floyd. I mean if you think about the sort of the huge advances of when we, we talk about apartheid, we talk about, we. We talk about sexism, racism, all the sort of isms that good people I think have tried to deal with, I think a lot of them are back out. The genie's back out of the bottle. You know, one of the things that really shocked me you mentioned academics was named Chomsky, who's meant to be this sort of, you know, left wing intellectual hero.
- [40:10]
B
Yeah, great hero of the progressive left.
- [40:12]
A
Yeah, correct. Consoling Epstein and saying, you know, that, oh well, you know, the way they've weaponized all this stuff about violence, abuse of women, like it sort of doesn't exist or it doesn't matter.
- [40:24]
B
And there too again this sort of weird fudging conflicts of interest that we don't understand. So Chomsky is given, I think $230,000 at least. That's what was reported in the papers yesterday by Epstein. And Epstein also is funding Chomsky's children.
- [40:39]
A
The thing to remember though, I was thinking about this last night, you mentioned racism and homophobia. I can't remember when it was and whether you would have been a kind of watch a television watcher at the time, but you know, till death is due part. Alf Garnett, the BBC program Cherie Blair's dad was one of the the stars in it alongside Warren Mitchell. And that was a program not that long ago, historically, where racism and homophobia was openly part of what it was to make people laugh. So that says to me this stuff can change, but only if people decide they're going to make it change. And I think the only good thing that might come out of all this is that actually people do start to think, yeah, let's get back on the woke stuff. Let's get back on a bit of the me too stuff.
- [41:27]
B
It's also important to understand that, yes, what it shows is that a lot of this is hypocritical. So Ben Rhodes, who does that American podcast, wonderful podcast Pod Save America with your friend Tommy Vita, wrote a very good substatic article pointing out that actually some of these figures literally were making speeches condemning violence against women and sounding very, very right on and progressive. And then they were getting on planes with Epstein straight after their speeches. So there's a huge element of hypocrisy, and that's something we're seeing all the time. And we saw it in Davos, where Larry Fink, who runs Davos, now turns up a few years ago in a tie decorated with sustainable development goal colours, committing his fund to tackling climate change and the environment, and now seems to be happily introducing Trump on stage and backing off from that. Now, I'm not particularly saying he's a uniquely bad person. Actually, he's representative of the entire American corporate cross. There's 75% less reference to climate change and the environment in American corporate reports this year compared to last year.
- [42:35]
A
By the way, the CEO at Davos has been suspended over some of this stuff, so.
- [42:40]
B
Right. But I suppose what I was going to get onto is that the right will want to say, well, that just shows the whole thing was nonsense anyway, and everybody who was making any remotely progressive comments was a hypocrite and therefore we should abandon it all and rip off the mask. But of course, I think you and I would agree that actually, in a funny way, hypocrisy can be helpful. It can actually lead to better behavior that I felt this when I was doing human rights in places like Indonesia, that, yes, of course a lot of talking about human rights was bullshit, but having the norms being able to speak about it actually led to real social change. Stopping people from making racist comments and sexist comments actually creates society that is ultimately a bit more tolerant. Then that's not what the right believes. The right believes that if you make people say politically correct things, it inevitably creates a backlash and makes things worse. I actually feel society's been improving.
- [43:29]
A
Interesting. Interesting. I mean, look, the reason why I think a lot of people like me feel so absolutely shattered by this and it's amazing talking to. I was talking to Neil Kinnick last night and talking to people in the cabin. I was talking to different people of different generations. And I think what on the political level, you talked there about the right and the left, what this does. Because you now have a kind of very well known progressive politician like Peter Mandelson, who's projected himself as a project progressive all his career, right at the heart of this stuff, that it just fuels that cynicism and fuels the populism and it. Honestly, what I find absolutely nauseating is to have some of these people whose attitudes we know about, what they think about corruption, what they think about women, what they think about race, able to project themselves, oh, God, I'm not as bad as that, and it's. So that's what I find so difficult to deal with on this.
- [44:29]
B
You've talked about not sleeping well. And I want to be even more brutal because I have just been looking again at the Derek Draper scandal. And one of the striking things there is. So this is back in 1998, and this is a guy called Derek Draper who knew Mandelson very well, I think actually been one of Mandelson's aides who is boasting to clients that he can get inside information from the British government before it's published. So I'm very excited, said Draper. I'm now quoting from the research, very excited. Why? Gordon Brown put the cap on total spending at 2.75%, not 2.5% like everyone expected. And we said so, we said so last week. He's given the correct number to his client, which as Salomon Smith Barney, the US investment banking giant. And then he explains the 1/4 percentage point difference may seem tiny, but in the hands of security traders and arbitrageurs, such information is gold dust. And then Draper says, if you can act on this, you can make a fortune. The reason I'm troubled by that is I just am beginning to wonder how long Mandelson's been at this. Where's Draper getting this information from? How was he able to get a week in advance confidential government information out of Gordon Brown's inner circle and pass it on to investment banks?
- [45:47]
A
I mean, Derek's dead now, so can't ask him. And I think if I remember at the time, it was a long time ago now, but if I remember at the time, that was like our first or one of the first really difficult scandals to deal with. And back to my reputational currency point. I think partly because we were still in that honeymoon period, we were able to navigate it reasonably quickly. I think Derek got, I can't remember what, what actually happened to him, but there was some sort of punishment. I, I think that, no, listen, I, I, what you said to me there makes, makes me think that on a lot of this stuff, we just maybe weren't tough enough about dealing with stuff that we should have thought. You can't say things like that. I mean, we would have all said that, by the way. I'd have to look at my diaries to see what I said and thought at the time. But I, you know, because the other thing, I can't stand that, that reveals, and I hate speaking it of the dead, but what that reveals is this related to what we've said about Peter, it's just showing off the realize that there are only 17 people of matter and I know them all. I mean that. And in a way, this is a point Gordon Brown made the other day. He said there are 61 lobbyists in the House of Lords. Yeah, well, he's right. That is wrong. That's wrong. But you know, who put them there? Yeah, yeah.
- [47:07]
B
And I think the other thing, this is maybe me being pushing it too far, but we tend to think about Mandelson's appointment simply as an oversight, that Starmer and McSweeney hadn't done their due diligence or something had gone wrong in the civil Service vetting procedures or the intelligence agencies weren't doing their job. But it's also true in some way that Mandelson was given the job precisely because he was considered to be so well networked. Because he. In some ways, I mean, obviously he's not Epstein, but he also was a man who had an incredible Rolodex, knew all the heads of the banks, could contact anyone you wanted, and mentored people and helped them. And, you know, the Labour politicians believe he helped McSweeney a great deal in planning the election strategy and working out which MPs got into which seats and how to deal with this.
- [48:05]
A
And by the way. And I think that's overstated as well, by the way.
- [48:08]
B
But anyway, okay, but anyway, whether it's a reward or whether it is actually that the system, all these systems partly rely on people who project themselves in that way. I mean, the connection. So this isn't just beating up Labour. I mean, remember David Cameron in the heart of this greensoul scandal? Remember Boris Johnson with Lebedev? I mean, what is Lebedev? Lebedev is a mini version of the same thing. He's flying out as a foreign secretary and there are girls and there's Lake Como and an island and Russian KGB and people getting in the House of Lords. Or remember that moment, which I thought was very revealing, which is when Mandelson revealed a private conversation that had happened on a yacht with a Russian oligarch called Deripaska and George Osborne and Nat Rothschild. And that should have been a warning. Yes, about George Osborne, but also about Peter Mandelson. And what on earth are they doing on a yacht with a Russian oligarch? And what is this whole world that's been built up? And that's, I'm afraid, why some of the MAGA conspiracy theorists are onto something. We've created a world that is very, very dependent on People with informal networks peddling influence. I remember George Osborne was also putting himself forward to be the ambassador in Washington.
- [49:27]
A
Yeah, but remember, it's worth realizing, though, that you say the MAGA people are onto something, but MAGA at the top is now completely run by these people, completely run by the we now. I mean, Trump's cabinet is the wealthiest cabinet in world history. These are all massively wealthy people, many of whom are in this Epstein circle, many of whom are doing these, you know, essentially mixing public and private stuff, which is what Peter's being accused of in a way, by having access to information which he's giving to other people. Look, it's a mess and it is a tragedy. On the one hand, it's maybe a good point about British democracy and British politics that this is at least being. There is some sense of accountability going on here, but it's incredible that those in the States who have benefited far more had much greater access than what is barely in there. I must read out something while we've been talking. I had an email. This actually was on my list of things to raise, but I just overlooked it both last night and today. But this email is from somebody called Baroness Smith of Gilmour, who is the widow of John Smith, who was the leader of the Labour Party before Tony Blair. And she said she'd listened to my heartfelt monologue last night. She says, you're not alone with your anger, anxiety and depression. But I do want to point out, in the interest of myself, the girls and John's memory, that he alone excluded Peter from his time as leader. And that is true, although Jeremy Corbyn, of course, did as well.
- [51:03]
B
And John, presumably she would say that John spotted there was something a bit dodgy. I think that's one of the odd things, which is how do these guys get carried back in repeatedly when presumably John Smith is thinking, this isn't really what I want. I mean, whatever skills this guy's got, however much he. I mean, I don't really need this around. And it's very odd that Starmer. It's partly Starmer's fault for setting up his whole administration on the basis that he was going to be much cleaner than the Tories and he was going to bring integrity back to government. But if that's your shtick, this seems like a bizarre to bring in Mandelson, given all that everyone knew about him and had always known about him.
- [51:48]
A
No, I can remember John Smith, who. I mean, I was a journalist when John was leader, but he did have very, very strong views. About Peter, what Elizabeth makes the point. She's saying that basically John didn't need a kind of cardinal behind the scenes to sort of wield the power. He knew what he wanted and he knew how to. To get it. Sort of now, very different era. But. But to be fair, that is true. He did not want Peter Mandelson as a close advisor. I think the other point, Roy, which maybe, maybe just my final thought take to take us back to. Back to the beginning. The other Rory, my son has just sent me a note, says that the last time a British Prime Minister won a majority at a general election and went into the next general election still serving as Prime Minister was in 2001. Tony Blair.
- [52:45]
B
Well said. 25 years it hasn't happened. Which means that it's likely that summer went well. Let me just finish by saying that I was trying to work out why I felt uncomfortable talking about George Osborne. And the answer is, of course, he's a friend of mine, right? He's somebody who I see socially. I have been on holiday at the same time as him. I admire what he does at the British Museum. And I just spent a lot of last week in the British Museum. I think he's funny, he's clever. And at the same time, I'm uncomfortably trying to think what's going on with him being on boats with oligarchs. What's going on with the friendship with Peter Mandelson. What is all this networking stuff? And I suppose the only reason I'm reflecting on it and reflecting on the fact that I also know a lot of these people that appear in the Epstein Files. I'm friends with Reid Hoffman. I know Eric Schmidt reasonably well. I. A lot of the finance people, tech people, and particularly university people, I know Larry Summers. And one of the problems, I think, is that when you know people and you're friends with them, there are natural instincts to try to avoid talking openly about this. I'm already anxious, you know, George is going to listen to the podcast and think, what the hell is Rory doing kicking me on the podcast? Which isn't really my intention. I'm just trying. So let me try to put myself in the center of it. I'm aware that instead of pointing the spotlight at others, I should be pointing spotlight at myself. A lot of my life has benefited from contacts and connections in many, many ways.
- [54:25]
A
This podcast does.
- [54:26]
B
This podcast does, right. If I hadn't met you in Stephen Kinnock's garden, I would not be doing a podcast. I probably would never have become a member of Parliament. If I hadn't known somebody in the Conservative Party who pushed me forward when David Cameron was again me, I probably wouldn't have become a minister. If I hadn't known Cameron's Chief of Staff, I probably wouldn't become certain kinds of ministers if I hadn't been somebody who'd been in Afghanistan and knew generals and certainly when I was running charities and Harvard centers, I was endlessly trying to see wealthy people in order to persuade them to support these charities and bail them out and taking personal favors and in, in the case of the podcast now taking a job, I mean, I don't want to keep beating myself up, right? But we live in a very, very networked, compromised world. So my solution, very, very clear rules to make it absolutely clear, legally clear, what the punishments are for taking gifts, jobs, emoluments, contracting, contracts, lobbying after leaving government. I think that there are many, many good people in Parliament. I'm absolutely certain that Jeremy Corbyn is not tempted to play any of these kinds of games. I'm not sort of trying to hold him up as the same Ed Miliband, for example, was good on his expenses scandal. I'm sure that my friend David Gauke behaves well, but I think for the vast majority of people, when somebody is dangling the chance to get a hugely well paid job in an American tech company or take a donation for a charity from an American billionaire or whatever it happens to be, you need rules and those rules need to be put in place now because we're going to have this repeated again and again and the only reason we know about it in this case is because 3 million emails were released. But I can absolutely guarantee that there are probably a thousand other people in the world who, if you release 3 million of their emails, could bring down another 20, 000 people.
- [56:30]
A
Well, Roy, if it's any consolation to your, your troubling yourself over your worries about your relationship with George Osborne. What you described wasn't nearly as bad as austerity or, or I thought you.
- [56:43]
B
Were about to say in a self reflective way, your relationship with Peter Mandelson going back over 30 years.
- [56:48]
A
Well, 40. More than that. More than 40 there. No, that's the other reason why this is so. I think, I think I've written about politics and friendship for my column for the New World. I think it's, I think it's hard to know what a real friendship is and what a real friendship isn't and when it, if, if a relationship actually is a friendship, when does the professional become the Personal? When does the political become the personal? Should they mix? Do they mix? I mentioned Neil Kinnick. Neil Kinnick is a genuine close friend. Tony Blair is a genuine close friend. David Miliband is a genuine close friend. I've got lots of them. But. And I just think sometimes we have to be honest with ourselves. This is what you're saying, really, that in politics, in every relationship, there's always an element of transactionalism. There's always, you know, what can I get out of him? What can I get out of her? What is she trying to get out of me? What are they trying to get out of each other? And that's, I think, what turns a lot of people off. The whole damn thing. Anyway, they were. Well, listen, good to talk jury. I felt I needed to get it off my chest last night and I'm glad that I did. But it's been maybe more measured and considered. Today we are going to be recording a normal question time, and I think we should definitely talk about Sanai Takaichi, the Japanese Prime Minister, which there's also been a very interesting election in Portugal. And I'm very, very, very keen, Roy, to talk about the Winter Olympics, because over the weekend, with Burnley losing yet again, the Winter Olympics gave me at least a little bit of Joy, particularly seeing J.D. vance getting booed.
- [58:16]
B
Look forward to that very much, and thank you all very much for listening. We've covered a lot of ground. We've covered Starmer's future and his leadership. We've covered Morgan McSweeney's style of management. We've covered Mandelson, Epstein. We've covered Epstein. We've covered the bigger issue of the way in which influence works in politics. I think it's not just money, influence, relationships, networks. We've tried to reflect a little bit on ourselves. Probably not enough. I could probably do more of thinking about this, which you've done in your columns, but thank you all so much and look forward to talking tomorrow.
- [58:51]
A
See you soon. Hi there, everybody.
- [59:00]
D
It's Dominic Sambrook here from the Rest.
- [59:02]
E
Is History and Gordon Carrera from the Rest Is Classified.
- [59:05]
D
Now, over the last month or so, the regime in the Islamic Republic of Iran has been pushed to the edge, having seen the largest protest for a generation ripping across the country. Tens of thousands of people have been killed by the Ayatollah's forces since the uprising began. And a lot of people outside Iran are asking, is this the beginning of the next Iranian revolution?
- [59:27]
E
And Goal Hanger is covering every element of this. On the Rest Is Classified David and I have looked at the role of intelligence agencies in this conflict. With the Internet blackouts and so much unknown, we've been looking at whether spies are best placed to judge whether the regime is truly at risk of falling.
- [59:43]
D
Now on the Rest Is History, we have been looking at the origins of the Iranian regime at the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which saw the fall of the last shah and his replacement by the rule of the ayatollahs. Now, given that the last shah's son is being touted abroad as the man who might, just might, save Iran, you can't understand what is happening now without understanding what happened back then at the end of the 1970s.
- [60:10]
E
But it's not just our own two podcasts that are covering Iran. If you want to know whether Donald Trump's military buildup in the region means it's likely he's going to wade in and force regime change, here Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart cover the latest developments in the Rest Is Politics.
- [60:26]
D
And our dear friends at the Rest Is Money have been looking at the economic collapse, the corruption and the impact of the sanctions of that have been eating away its social cohesion in Iran over recent years and have pushed so many people onto the streets and on Empire.
- [60:42]
E
They've been looking at the similarities and differences between 1979 and today. How is it that a country that less than 50 years ago forced the Shah out of power is now seeing crowds chanting Long live the Shah?
- [60:55]
D
So whatever happens next to the people of Iran and to all those brave souls who've turned it on the streets to protest, stay tuned to Goal Hanger for all the context and the answers and the analysis that you need, find the rest is history. The rest is classified Empire. The rest is politics and the rest is money. Wherever you get your podcasts.