531. Starmer on the Brink: What Next?

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Rest Is Politics

Episode 531. Starmer on the Brink: What Next?
Date: May 12, 2026
Hosts: Alastair Campbell & Rory Stewart

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Episode Overview

In this emergency episode, Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart grapple with the unfolding crisis surrounding Keir Starmer’s leadership of the UK Labour Party. With a backdrop of catastrophic local election results, open Cabinet dissent, and swelling public disapproval, Campbell and Stewart dissect the root causes and consequences of Labour's turmoil, draw historical comparisons, and debate the wisest path forward for both Starmer and the party. They further examine the meteoric rise of Reform UK and what it signals for British politics, with candid reflections on media frenzy, leadership dynamics, and the existential threat facing mainstream parties.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: A Genuine Crisis

• Instability and Emergency
  • The episode opens with direct acknowledgment of political emergency:
    • Campbell: “This is without a doubt a crisis for Keir Starmer as Prime Minister and for the government and I think for the Labour Party. My big fear is that it has the potential to become genuinely existential…” (02:31)
• Trigger: Historic Local Election Defeat
  • Labour lost over 1,200 seats; the worst showing ever, especially disastrous in Wales, interpreted as a watershed moment demanding serious party introspection.

2. Should Starmer Step Down?

• Campbell’s Argument for Caution
  • Changing leaders risks further destabilization:
    • “Meltdown is not a strategy...It’s entirely possible to think as you do...that this government has been a disappointment...but also think that he shouldn’t head off into the sunset tomorrow...” (03:50)
  • Uncertainty about any successor being able to regain stability or win against Farage or the surging Reform UK.
• Stewart’s Analogy with Theresa May & Boris Johnson
  • “What it reminds me a little bit of is...when [May] did very badly in the 2017 election...she announced she would step down...and then we had this huge race which ultimately ended up...Boris Johnson won.” (05:56)
  • Optimistic scenario: new blood could revive the party, but risks triggering immediate elections or even worse instability.
• Media Perceptions & the Lack of a ‘Honeymoon’
  • Campbell notes that unlike Boris Johnson, Starmer hasn’t had a “fair ride” from media. Any successor would likely face immediate skepticism and demands for a general election:
    • “…the line will be immediately run: you don’t have a mandate.” (07:41)
• Cabinet Dissent and ‘Headless Chickenry’
  • Internal discussions reportedly “undisciplined” with speculative leaks to media and lack of strategic planning for succession.

3. Lessons from Labour’s History and the Current Crisis

• Comparisons to Corbyn and Previous Exits
  • Campbell: The drama now is unique as Labour is in government, facing pressing challenges, with turbulence that threatens to plunge the party into existential jeopardy. (10:04)
• Australian-Style ‘Leadership Spill’
  • A ‘spill’ involves ousting the leader, which could lead to even greater chaos:
    • “A spill is when you take out the leader...” (12:30)
• Stewart’s Challenge: The Titanic Analogy
  • “It slightly sounds as though the Titanic’s going down and you’re saying, yeah, but I’m not sure whether the life raft is going to work. Sure, the life raft may not work, but the Titanic’s going down.” (24:05)
• Campbell’s Defense:
  • Advocates for cautious transition:
    • “What we did was...we carried on governing the country...and we...go with the flow. To expect Keir Starmer to do that today...I think he’s pretty tough.” (25:07)

4. Dissection of Leaks and Cabinet Turmoil

• Discipline Breakdown
  • Multiple Cabinet ministers reportedly briefing journalists; speculation about ambition from Yvette Cooper et al.
• Unexpected Consequences & Identity Politics
  • Possibility that open contest could produce calls for a woman leader, not just the expected frontrunners.

5. Data Dive: Electoral Collapse in Wales & Scotland

• Rory’s Detailed Graph Analysis (31:29)
  • Labour’s collapse in Wales vs. relative steadiness in Scotland; Reform’s dramatic rise especially in Wales (from 1% to nearly 30%).
  • “We’ve gone from...Labour and Tories in Wales together had 67% of the vote, to a situation where now...barely 20%...Explosion of Reform...” (31:29)
• Underlying Factors
  • Tactical voting in Wales, fatigue with Labour’s 100+ years of dominance, and Plaid Cymru’s repositioning as attractive protest vehicle.

6. Reform UK & Populist Narratives

• Farage’s Analysis
  • Labour perceived as “London centric, run by human rights lawyers...taxed to death...welfare spending’s out of control, mass migration...antisocial behavior.” (40:38)
• Campbell’s Response
  • Agrees much of Farage’s critique resonates with voters; real danger is that Reform/Populists not pressed for credible solutions.

7. Leadership Viability & Alternatives

• Starmer’s Net Approval Crisis
  • Stewart: “The guy’s net popularity rating is hovering around minus 50...That means 25% of people approve, 75% disapprove.” (24:05)
  • Notably, even their own supporters are abandoning him—unlike Trump, who keeps strong party loyalty.
• Potential Successors
  • Andy Burnham (not currently in Parliament), Wes Streeting, Angela Rayner.
  • Labour’s nomination rules make an open field difficult: “They didn’t need 81 nominations. This system was brought in to make it less straightforward to…spill out the leader.” (48:55)
• Policy Choices for Next Leader
  • Deliverology: focus on delivering better services.
  • Big Vision: e.g., European realignment.
  • Pro-Business, Supply-Side: tax/energy reforms.
  • Campbell: “You probably have to focus on one or two…but it does have to be someone who can inject hope and optimism.” (45:40)

8. Broader Warnings: Party System Collapse?

• Five-Party Era?
  • Stewart: “Conservative Party and Labour Party as we know them may actually be over…period of five party politics…” (53:21)
• Charisma vs. Policy
  • “These elections are increasingly about charisma, message, social media and nonsense.” (54:13)
• Media Management Failures
  • Campbell critical of how Labour have handled media, making Starmer’s position worse.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Meltdown is not a strategy.” – Alastair Campbell (03:50)
• “The Titanic’s going down and you’re saying, yeah, but I’m not sure whether the life raft is going to work. Sure, the life raft may not work, but the Titanic’s going down.” – Rory Stewart (24:05)
• “If West Streeting becomes leader, the Labour Party is finished. … If West Streeting doesn’t become leader, the Labour Party's finished.” – Alastair Campbell (52:50)
• On the leadership debate:
  • “Anyone will do… and the public are going to think, after a while—they will start thinking, is Starmer really as bad as that guy?” – Campbell (56:48)
• Polling the Listeners:
  • “Is it time for Starmer to go? Yes, 48%. No, 52%.” – Campbell, reflecting the deep split and uncertainty (22:00)
• “The Titanic sank because some idiot insisted on restarting the engines after it hit the iceberg.” (63:09) – Listener quote, cited by Campbell

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Important Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|---------| | 01:30 | Emergency context: Starmer’s leadership crisis and emotional reactions | | 03:50 | Campbell’s case for stability and caution | | 05:56 | Stewart draws Theresa May/Boris Johnson analogy | | 10:04 | Campbell on existential risk for Labour and historic perspective | | 14:57 | Strategic options for Starmer—face down or quietly prepare transition | | 17:01 | Cabinet leaks and breakdown of discipline | | 31:29 | Stewart’s data analysis: electoral stats from Wales and Scotland | | 40:38 | Farage’s diagnosis of the electorate’s mood: populism, anti-establishment sentiment | | 45:40 | Policy solutions for next Labour leader | | 52:50 | Fundamental party divisions, prospect of a party split | | 54:13 | Elections as about “charisma and nonsense,” not policy | | 56:48 | Media strategies, leadership crisis reflections | | 62:47 | Campbell cautions: “Frenzy can sometimes be endured. Genuine crisis often can’t.” |

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Conclusion

Summary of Positions:

• Campbell urges restraint: a rushed ousting of Starmer could backfire, further destabilizing Labour and possibly leaving it even weaker. He admits Starmer’s communication and leadership failings but warns that a chaotic transition without a clear plan could be catastrophic.
• Stewart presses for action: insists Labour’s brand and Starmer’s personal ratings are so damaged that the party must risk change—remaining with Starmer is “worse than the lifeboat not working.”
• Both agree: Leadership alone will not solve Labour’s crisis without vision, a credible policy agenda, and the ability to counter a surging, populist Reform UK.

Tone:
Measured, anxious, occasionally tart but reflective, with real attempts to look beyond personalities to systemic party dilemmas. The hosts’ willingness to disagree, bring in party memories, and directly quote critics and listeners gives the episode a particularly open, searching tone.

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For Listeners Who Missed It

This episode delivers a critical, clear-eyed account of Labour’s existential moment. It balances the practicalities of political process with wider cultural and voter trends, and is invaluable for anyone wanting to understand not just the current plotlines but the deeper engines of turbulence facing British politics in 2026.

Transcript

[Alistair Campbell]

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[Alistair Campbell]

Visit fuseenergy.com for full terms and conditions. Welcome to the Rest is Politics with

[Rory Stewart]

me, Alistair Campbell and with me Rory Stewart. So this a traditional emergency podcast driven by the fact that politics in general is getting more and more unstable. So people are hearing more and more of these and the story today is Keir Starmer's leadership now seems to be under probably its most serious challenge that we've seen to date. Looks as though something like at MPS now, privately or in public, have come out asking for him to suggest when he's going to step down. There's a cabinet meeting happening as we speak and of course to remind people the immediate trigger for this was the local elections, which was on some measurements, I think the worst labor showing ever in local elections, lost well over 1,200 seats, particularly catastrophic in places like Wales, where Labour went off the edge of a cliff. But that's the sort of framing. But I want to begin, Alistair, by going to you and just giving me a sense of your feeling about it, how you feel and emotionally or in any way about what's going on.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, I think we sometimes argue about whether things are genuinely an emergency where we do these emergency podcasts, but this is without a doubt a crisis for Keir Starmer as Prime Minister and for the government and I think for the Labour Party. My big fear is that it has the potential to become genuinely existential, to go the way even of a party like the French Socialist, unless the leadership gets. And by leadership, I don't just mean Keir Starmer, I mean all of them. What has really driven me to despair in recent days has been the extent to which so many of these ministers and MPs behave like commentators, not politicians. And look, you've detected in recent weeks, Roy, you've been saying that it's obvious Keir Starmer's not up to it. He's got to go. Labour's got to find somebody who might beat Nigel Farage. And you've noticed, and so have our listeners and viewers. I've been much more hesitant because I think what the Tories found and why they are currently in something of an existential crisis, is that always assuming that the next one along is somehow going to be better than the last one doesn't necessarily work out, as you might imagine. And if you're looking at this from a strategic point of view, what was Reform's slogan in the local elections? Vote reform. Get Starmer out. And if I was Keir Starmer now sitting down with the Cabinet, I would be saying it is never very sensible to gift your opponent a massive strategic gain, which this would be. And whoever takes over, if that's what's happening in the coming weeks and months, do not underestimate the pressure immediately to hold a general election or what would be dire political circumstances. So it's why I've been saying that just sit tight and just hold on for a bit and see where this ends. And above all, understand that meltdown is. Is not a strategy. So it's entirely possible to think as you do and as I do and as many people do, that this government has been a disappointment, that Keir Starmer's made mistakes, that he lacks vision, charisma, political and personal skills, but also think that he shouldn't head off into the sunset tomorrow when, let's remember, he's meant to be setting out the next legislative program. It's perfectly possible to think that his speech yesterday was built up to such ridiculous heights of expectation that I'm not sure even a combination of Cicero and Martin Luther King would have met it. And to say he didn't meet it, and yet to think this is not the time. So my final point before going back to you, Roy, and I'll come on in a minute to say what I think he could and should say. We've had five Tory Prime Ministers since the Brexit referendum, which was Less than a decade ago, David Cameron was the last to serve a full term. Are we really saying now there should be a sixth to go and one who won a landslide victory less than two years ago? And I think my big worry for the country is this just suggests a politics that is unserious and if we're not careful, a country that frankly becomes impossible to govern. So that's kind of what I feel. That's kind of what I feel. I feel that this is a frenzy that is creating a crisis. It's a crisis in which the people who are driving it don't, it seems to me, have a plan. They don't have a plan for what follows. So we're basically in the. Something will turn up.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah. So of course, what it reminds me a little bit of is the movements against Theresa May and in particular when she did very badly in the 2017 election and that that eventually triggered a move towards Boris Johnson. She concluded in the end that she couldn't lead the party into the next election. She concluded that she couldn't really. I mean, it was worse for her. And maybe this is where the analogy breaks down. She couldn't get legislation through the House of Commons, she couldn't get her Brexit deal done. So she announced that she would step down and there would be, I think, a two month period or three month period where other people would come forward. And then we had this huge race which ultimately ended up five and then two of us going against Boris Johnson. Boris Johnson won. And the debate then was between people like me saying, look, he's going to be a terrible Prime Minister, and other people saying, yeah, but he's very popular and he's going to be able to win. And it felt in 2019, November, when he went into that election. So that's your story, that almost certainly the person that comes in will feel tempted to trigger an immediate election in the way that Boris Johnson did. And that's probably because they want to portray themselves as a new blood. And the longer they're in, the more they're worried they'll get dragged down. So he triggers the election and he does well. He does very, very well, given the Tories have been in for a long time, turns around the Tories chances and comes back in. So that, I guess, is the most optimistic scenario. And maybe in that story it's an Andy Burnham figure who isn't in Parliament, who's a mayor, like Boris Johnson was a mayor. Coming to that. Where does that comparison work and where doesn't it work for Where Labour is

[Alistair Campbell]

now, two places where I think it doesn't work. The first is that, as you say, Boris Johnson was popular with certain large sections of the party, some sections of the country, and hugely with the media. What we are seeing here, I think, is, and I'm not going to do the blame the media thing because it's pointless, but I think it's fair to say, and I think people, this has been a comment that a lot of people have been making is that Keir Starbull has never really had a fair ride. Now, I'm not going to pretend, and nor would he not, that he's kind of, you know, a combination I mentioned, you know, Cicero and Martin Luther King. He's not the best Prime Minister that we've ever had, he's not the best Labour leader that we've ever had. He's not the most political of people. He has not necessarily been clear about what he's trying to do with the country. But I think the. So the first thing to say is, I don't believe that a successor will come in and somehow have a honeymoon. I think the successor will come in and the line will be immediately run. You don't have a mandate. And so that you can see it already, I saw both Farage and Genrick over the weekend saying, we need a general election. Now, that's with the guy still sitting there as they were posting on a very, very large majority. And then the reason why I say that I think there's an element of headless chickenry going on with this is because there's nothing wrong with Andy Burnham thinking Labour's not doing very well. I could maybe do better. There's nothing wrong with West Streeting thinking the same. There's nothing wrong with Ed Miliband think thinking this isn't going well and we need to somehow make a change. But I think none of them, it seems to me, are thinking through the possibility that they don't end up in a way that, I mean, even I would have said Boris Johnson is probably going to be more popular than Theresa May. He was obviously a better campaigner.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, what struck me as we were walking in this morning is that Boris Johnson's great advantage is that he was going to be running against Jeremy Corbyn. And in fact, one of the arguments I was trying to make running for leadership is that even if you elected me or Jeremy Hunt, we should have been able to beat Jeremy Corbyn. In this case, the leader is going to be running not against Jeremy Corbyn, but against Nigel Farage. And I guess that's going to also affect the kind of person they try to select. Over to you.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah. Now, I was going on to make the point that whoever comes in, part of the thinking, assuming Keir Starmer goes, and look, it's very difficult for him now because I always felt that this leadership spill, as the Australians call it, or an election, was likely to happen as much by accident as by design, because I'm not sure that anybody does have a design. It could be that Catherine west, the former Foreign Office minister, Labor mp, there's an extraordinary picture that somebody reminders of today that when Keir Starmer was first elected, he posed a picture of himself on the back benches with two other newly elected MPs, West Treaty and Catherine West. So I think that is a picture that could become quite historic if this thing unfolds in the way that maybe Catherine west wants to do. But she wasn't, I don't think, doing this on behalf of somebody she might have been, but she was basically just saying, look, I'm not very happy with Keir Starmer. It's not going well enough. We've got to get somebody else. That then opens the door to people saying, yeah, well, I agree with that. And what was extraordinary to me yesterday was this endless stream of people just posting on social media saying, oh, you know, we lost so many great councillors, we've got to get rid of the leader. You've got to think these things through. It's entirely possible that this process will do further damage to the Labour Party. And that's why I make the point about existentialism. And your point about Jeremy Corbyn. Let me make another point about Jeremy Corbyn. The psychodrama that happened in the Labour Party around Jeremy Corbyn happened when we were in opposition. The Labour Party was in opposition. The Labour Party is now in government facing incredible economic, strategic, political, military, security challenges. And look, I could be completely wrong about this, but I think if I were, and it's very, very hard to do this because in the end we're talking about a proud guy who's sort of dragged himself up through life, become the dpp, becomes leader, labiaty becomes Prime Minister, and essentially has told by all and sundry you're not up to it. And he probably knows in his heart that even the ones who aren't saying that to his face around that cabinet table just now are probably thinking, okay, so I think there's the only way I can see right now, because this thing, it either has to result in a spill, as the Aussies call it, in which case we're then in straight into a leadership election.

[Rory Stewart]

Sorry, what's the spill? What's the spill?

[Alistair Campbell]

A spill is when you take out the leader.

[Rory Stewart]

Okay.

[Alistair Campbell]

By the way, there was a period when the Australians were doing it, like a bit like this kind of pace. You know, Prime Minister's not lasting very long at all. A leader's not lasting very long at all. But let's say there's this bill and then, you know, there's a leadership election, okay? And we can talk in a little bit about where that might lead.

[Rory Stewart]

Sometimes it works, I guess, is all I'm trying to put in. I mean, I guess Major coming in behind Thatcher, he managed to win the election. Boris Johnson coming in between, behind Theresa May, managed to win the election. So it's not always a disaster to change a leader.

[Alistair Campbell]

No, it is not. And you've been saying, and I get your point, I totally get it, you've been making the analogy between Keir Starmer and Joe Biden. If the party has decided he's not going to fight the next election, get a successor, get a person in place, and let's see how that goes. But here's where that analogy doesn't work. Whether Joe Biden announced he was stepping down or not, he was going to stay a full term, what we're talking about here is literally, if Shabana Mahmood goes in and says in front of the cabinet today, what reported that she said to his face. And if Ed Miliband does the same, that is a very big loss of authority. So he either has to face that down and they then have to say, okay, well, I can't serve in this cabinet. And we have a kind of Michael Heseltine moment where Michael Heseltine famously walked out the cabinet and said, I can no longer serve in this cabinet, or he faces them down, I think possibly by suggesting, look, I get it. You don't think I'm up to it. A lot of you don't think I'm up to it. I would merely remind you that we do have a majority. We do have a program. And the reason why we did so badly is in part because we're not delivering that program fast enough. And I accept all that. Equally, I accept you don't think I'm the guy to lead us into the next election. And I hear that. I hear that. But in the meantime, for heaven's sake, let's not all run around like a bunch of headless chickens today. Let's not run about headless chickens over the next few days. So that by the weekend, the story of this country at a time when we're facing so many challenges is yet another kind of political beauty contest which may lead to somebody better. It may, but. And so in a sense you lean into the idea that you're not necessarily going to be there for the 10 years that you were talking about at the weekend.

[Rory Stewart]

But you don't say it explicitly.

[Alistair Campbell]

You don't say it explicitly and you're asking the party just to calm down for now.

[Rory Stewart]

In that little speech you gave the one of the points is that it's not possible for people to leave the cabinet this morning and brief out that Starmer said he was going to step down. What he's basically saying is, I hear you, I understand your concern, but this is not the way to do it and let's push on. And that will be read by people in the room as though he's probably going to step down before the next election, but he's not going to do so immediately. What does that mean he could do in six months or 12 months time? But he hasn't said so. So there can't be headlines saying he's

[Alistair Campbell]

going, listen, whatever comes out of today, I suspect they're going to be very, very bad headlines. And it's, look, I think this is unlikely, but it's not impossible that those who've been, you know, saying the things in private that they've been saying and who want him to go sooner rather than later, it's not impossible that several of them might say that to his face. I wrote a piece in the newsletter of the weekend, partly inspired by our conversation with you saying it's obvious, you know, he's got to go and me saying, well, it obviously is not great, but that's not the same thing. You've got to think through where this ends. And I refer to lots of people who are saying to me, there's a friend of ours who said to me, your, your problem, Alistair, is your fatal flaw is your loyalty. And then the person to who you know and then others, members of my family saying, if this was the Tories, you'd be saying get rid of them now. And that may that both of those things may be true. So I am probably thinking this through from a longer term Labour Party perspective. I think if he did that, he'd still get headlines, he'd probably still get people coming out saying he's agreed, he's going to go, but then who's going to do the King's Speech debate this week. Are you seriously saying that? Because we had terrible results. And I accept they're terrible. And I accept that that's partly about me, that we go into a King's Speech with a legislative program with you constantly whatsapping journalists to say, you know, we've got him on the run or whatever. It just, it's just not grown up politics. And that's why I think the lead, what I call the leadership, should have sat down over the weekend and been a bit calmer about all this.

[Rory Stewart]

Can you help me with the briefing journalists? Because in the coverage we got this morning, there were stories saying Shabana Mahmoud and Yvette Cooper wanted him to step down. And Ed Miliband is playing a key kingmaker role. Presumably if you were sitting in number 10, you would strongly suspect that Shabana Mahmoud and Yvette Cooper are either briefing that out themselves or they're getting their spans to brief that story out. The journalists don't usually make that stuff up. And you might begin to believe discipline is slightly collapsing around the cabinet table.

[Alistair Campbell]

You would. And look, I think that this is what happens when a frenzy becomes a crisis. In a frenzy, the best thing that people can do is just to say, right, okay, this is a frenzy. People are really pissed off. People are really very, very excitable. Let's just see whether we can't calm things down. Now I completely understand why Cabinet ministers, if they genuinely reach the view that Keir Starmer can't go on, then they have a role to play. And I did say in the piece I wrote in the newsletter, the best way to do this is you should always say these things to people's face. You shouldn't just go around briefing the prayers, trying to find a stalking horse. Now, I don't. Look, the only answer is I don't know. I did know that there was a delegation of cabinet ministers went to see Keir Starmer yesterday. And I know that Yvette was one of them. I know Shabana was one of them. I think John Healy was another one. I think David Lammy was another one. And I think they were going to kind of as much to sound his view and sound his opinion as much as give them. And it seems to me it doesn't surprise anybody because Shabana Mahmoud is pretty tough character. I would imagine that she has said that to Keir Starmer's face and then somebody has briefed that out. Now, for example, the Ed Miliband point. Ed Miliband went to see Keir Starmer a few weeks ago, two or three weeks ago, and said, look, I think you really need to set out a timetable. And again did it to his face, which is, I think the best way to go about this. Ed Miliband insists that he did not brief that out. Now, I don't know who did. So it might be that that was somebody who actually thought he was doing Keir Starmer a favor by saying Ed Miliband's trying to get rid of him. Smoke Ed Miliband out. I don't know. My point is that this is what happens when you get into this, this madness. I'll give you another one. Yvette Cooper, one of her special advisors is Damian McBride. Damien McBride during the Gordon Brown era, was a special advisor to Gordon Brown. And Coyle got a reputation. He wrote an entire book about it. Got a reputation for being quite good at the political dirty tricks. So I had a member of the Cabinet yesterday who is, I think in the. Something has to go, but I'm not quite sure what. And so until we know, let's just kind of saying what I'm saying. Really? Who said, you know, I detect Damon McBride's hand in this. I don't know, I don't know. My point is that when you get into this frenzy mode.

[Rory Stewart]

Sorry, just also interrupt for a second. I'm also a bit surprised about some of these names who are leaking to the press. I mean, again, obviously I'm very rooted in my inexperience, but when Theresa May was in trouble, the consistent things that came out of the Cabinet meetings, always briefed in the newspaper, was that Liz Truss had spoken out courageously and Gavin Williamson had spoken out courageously in the Cabinet meetings. Right. In other words, broadly speaking, in Theresa May's Cabinet it was Liz Truss and Gavin Williamson leaking and the rest of us were not going to the press. You weren't seeing any other of the kind of leading figures appearing in the press. It's a bit odd if the Foreign Secretary, the Home Secretary, the Deputy Prime Minister, I mean, this is getting to a. It's a sort of slightly different feeling. It's not just people like Liz and Gavin who everyone sort of slightly raised their eyebrows and thought, come on, these are ridiculous self promoting figures. It's becoming a sort of much broader story of people like I would have thought, I don't understand. But I thought the point about Yvette Cooper and people was they were meant to be relatively solid, straightforward, not trying to be Prime Ministers themselves. Or have I got that all wrong?

[Alistair Campbell]

I think you might have that wrong.

[Rory Stewart]

Okay. I love that all the Labour MPs listening are going to giggle and none of the audience are going to understand what you're talking about. But what you seem to be implying is that Yvette Cooper may have more ambition than I think she might.

[Alistair Campbell]

She might. I mean, you know, she's been the Home Secretary, she's been the Foreign Secretary, and she might. I don't know. One of the things that will happen. Here's the other thing, unexpected consequences. People are talking about Andy Burnham. Don't rule out the idea that if there's a kind of open contest, a movement starts that says, basically, we have to have a woman. That's happened before. And it's. So. I just think this is. This is the thing that's. It's now got a momentum. There's no doubt. So, for example, there's. There's a. I think it's the Telegraph. Somebody just sent me six Capital minutes expected to tell Keir Starmer to quit. Now, that is in a paper like the Telegraph is in their interest for that to be the case. But as you say, I'm not sure they just entirely make it up and enlist them as Shabana Mahmoud, John Healy, Ed Miliband, Lizard, Nandev, Yvette Cooper and Wes Streeting, saying that Sakir should set out a timetable for his resignation. Maybe we should do a quick instant poll of our listeners. How many have heard of Miata Van Bule, Minister for Devolution, Faith and Communities? She has become the first minister to resign. Because if you're calling publicly for the Prime Minister to resign, you have to resign yourself. You can't support his government. This is how, in the end, Boris Johnson came down. Interesting. Rory, we've just done an instant poll of the people who are listening. Is it time for starmer to go? Yes, 48%. No, 52%. I saw a couple of things yesterday that really interested me, or it might have been this morning. Ian Dale, Tory supporting commentator, bright guy, broadcaster. And he's been very, very, very critical of Keir Starmer. And he was basically saying he thought the way that this was being done against Keir Starmer at the moment was just outrageous. And I think there will be quite a strand of that in the public. And the second was David Badil, who we interviewed on Leading a while back, and David Badill, who wrote the book Jews Don't Count. He got very angry during the Corbyn period over anti Semitism, and he admitted on this interview that he voted labor in the local elections. And he said he thinks that what's happening now is just a sign of a country that's losing the plot. He says it's like a football, football managers. Now you get a new football manager and if you don't win five of the first six games, you know they're calling for the hen and it's not just going, we hate them, we hate them. And he was saying, you know, he says he probably kills someone, but doesn't want his pity, but he feels sorry for him. So I think there's two is back to my main point. You can think the guy is not as good as you wanted him to be, but it doesn't mean that just by dint of him going to quote an old song, things are going to get better, they might get worse.

[Rory Stewart]

I think you're absolutely right. There is misery if you try to get rid of him and there's a risk that you produce somebody who's no better. But if, like me, you believe it's a certainty that Keir Sama can't win the next election. A certainty. I mean, the guy's net popularity rating is hovering around minus 50. That means like 25% of people approve of him, 75% disapprove. You really have no alternative other than to take that risk. I mean, if you're on a. It slightly sounds as though the Titanic's going down and you're saying, yeah, but I'm not sure whether the life raft is going to work. Sure, the life raft may not work, but the Titanic's going down. So I'm concluding, listening to you, that at best, all you can be saying is it's a question of timing and method. You can't possibly be saying that this guy can lead you into the next election. So is what you're saying, please don't do it now before the King's Speech, and if so, when is the ideal time to do it?

[Alistair Campbell]

I think there is a question of time and also logistics, as it were. You see, I think the spectacle that we're now seeing, and if you're sitting there thinking, well, I could be the next Prime Minister, you're probably not worrying too much about that, but they should be worrying about that. So I think would be far better if they could. And maybe it's impossible in the modern media age, I don't know, because we had a similar thing going on with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, but I think we managed it in a different way. Now, there are still some people who say to me, well, you Managed it very, very badly. Because you should never have conspired with the idea of getting Gordon in after Tony. And that's a view that people hold. But what we did was we basically, the thing went on. We carried on governing the country. Tony Blair carried on being Prime Minister, Gordon Brown carried on being Chancellor. But we reached a point where we kind of. It was just sort of. It was. It wasn't that the writing was in the wall, it was just that it was obvious that that is what most people thought was the right thing to do. Go with the flow. Now, to expect Keir Starmer to do that today, after the sort of last couple of days that he's had, I think he's pretty tough. I think far better that those. You know, we used to talk in the Tory Party about the men in gray suits used to go and say, you know, here's a. Here's a glass of Scotch, leader, let's just have a little drink. And by the way, by the time the Scotch is empty, you resign. I think that an approach that said, listen, there's a consensus developing Keir Khan, lead us into the next election, but we mustn't either humiliate him or overlook the success that. The role that he played in the success of getting Labour back into power, or destabilize the country or destabilize the markets or give the sense that we're a complete shambles.

[Rory Stewart]

And is there any way time when it's ever going to feel like the right time? I mean, I guess the problem is if, you know you've got to get rid of him, you've got to get a new Prime Minister in place to lead you into the next election. Almost any time you try to do it, there will be some reason why this isn't quite the right time, why this is going to look like omnishambles. And Starmer, who clearly still seems to think he's going to be Prime Minister for the next 10 years, is going to play that card every time, isn't he?

[Alistair Campbell]

Possibly, Possibly. But I think, look, there is such a thing as political gravity. And if he reaches a point of thinking this is where Boris Johnson died, in a way, is that Boris Johnson? He knew that all these ministers were going to throw in the towel on him and he thought he could fight it for a bit, but then gravity took over. But I think, in a way, I guess what I'm saying is that Keirstan would sort of, you know, see which way the wind is blowing, lean into that, but then try to work out what is the best way to save his own reputation, as best he can, to at least have a sense of there's a program that he's trying to take through and have time to take it on. But indicate what the words would be. That's a matter for wordsmiths. But indicate that at some point there has to be some kind of process that leads to a change. And I think that the public would kind of get that. Can I say, by the way, Roy, I do think that what we've seen in the last 48 hours is the consequence, and this is where I will be critical of Keir Starmer, is the consequence of strategic errors over time. So, for example, what he said on Europe yesterday and Nigel Farrar's role in Brexit, to my mind, he should have been saying for a very long time he didn't say enough yesterday about some of the bigger political and constitutional issues that you and I have talked a lot about. And also, one of the things you've heard again and again and again from MPs is that he doesn't really backbenchers in particular, is he doesn't really take them seriously, he doesn't listen to their views, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's part of politics. And so you reap the consequences of that. No doubt about that. I'm sure there are people yesterday who were calling for him to go, who probably part of their motivation was, well, you know, the guy's never spoken to me. I don't really know anything about him. He just keeps sending us in to vote for things. Then, you know, a few weeks later, we have to change them. I get all that. I get all that, but I think that this is where leadership comes to the fore. Not just his leadership, but all of them. You know, I hope there are people in that Cabinet room now, as we're having doing this live. I hope there's some of them at least, are trying to see round a few corners and get to the bigger picture. I mean, just look what's happened since the local elections. Of course, it was a terrible result for Labour in England, in Scotland and in Wales, seismic, terrible. But the other thing that's happened is there has been next to no scrutiny at all of these reform councillors who are having to resign for racism. And the guy who said that, let's fill the potholes by melting down Nigerians, and Richard Tice couldn't even bring himself to condemn it. And we still don't know about Nigel Farage's millions and all the rest of it. So once you're feeding a frenzy, as opposed to trying to step back and work out strategically how you get through this mess, you're playing your enemy's game.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, let's take one of our breaks and then we'll come back and maybe look, step back for a little bit and look at the kind of bigger structural conclusions that we've taken out of the local elections and what kind of leadership Labour needs or Britain needs.

[Alistair Campbell]

This episode is brought to you by Lloyds Business and Commercial Banking. We hear a lot of talk in politics about stability, as Gordon Brown used to call it, but I think that word means different things to different people. To me, it does mean New Labour for me.

[Rory Stewart]

I might be tempted to say Theresa May, but it doesn't matter. Whether you're a business, small business owner or a government, stability is never about avoiding change. It's about being prepared for change and embracing it with confidence. The latest change, of course, that affects a lot of people listening is making Tax Digital, which is reshaping how income tax is reported.

[Alistair Campbell]

Lloyds is there to support making Tax Digital for Income tax with a free HMRC recognized accounting tool built into your online banking, giving you an easier way to manage your income expenses and stay compliant without all the stress.

[Rory Stewart]

Change is perpetual, but Lloyds has helped navigate change for over 250 years. So when the rules shift, you can bank on Lloyds to help keep your business on the front foot. Search Lloyds business accounts to find out more. Welcome back to the Restless Politics Emergency podcast. So just to step back for a second, I've been trying to look at the data and for a slightly geeky moment, here is a sort of weird chart that I drew up here, which you can see for people who are watching as opposed to listening. And what you'll see is lots of different colors. And I'm covering the Senate and I'm covering the Scottish Parliament and I'm covering 2011-2016-2021-2026. And the story is absolutely astonishing. So broadly speaking, in the Scottish Parliament, Labour's on about 31% in 2011, and then in 2016, 21, 2026, it stays hovering around 20%. It's not a big change in Scotland. The Tories, on the other hand, 2016, 2021 are sort of neck and neck with Labor. The ways these incidentally, for the super geeks, the way these percentages are calculated depends on whether you're looking at the constituency or regional percentages, but stay at about 20% and then drop sort of halved down to 11% in the last election and again in Scotland. I'm just sticking on Scotland for a moment. Reform essentially went from 1% in 2011, not applicable in 2021, to 15.8% in 2026. So it's the story in which, forget about the S and P who stayed steady and then dropped a bit in the last election. Labour speaking has stayed constant for the last 10 years. The Tories have dropped off, have halved and reform has jumped out of nowhere. Now, let's just jump to Wales. In Wales, Labour was at 42% in 2011, 34.7% in 2016, 36% in 2021, and has dropped now to 11%. They've lost 2/3 of their vote in just five years. The Tories again, 25%, 21%, 26%, dropped down to 10% in 2026. In other words, we've gone from a situation where, when I was in politics, politics 2011, Labour and Tories in Wales together had 67% of the vote, to a situation where now in Wales they have barely 20% of the vote between the two. And there's been an explosion of reform, much bigger than in Scotland, up to 29.3%. And Plyde, of course, going from 20% to 35.4%. So just two things I wanted you to help me on. Why do you think the labor collapse has been much more dramatic in Wales than in Scotland? And why has the reform explosion gone up, nearly doubled the amount in Wales than it is in Scotland? What's the difference between Wales and Scotland for Labour and Reform?

[Alistair Campbell]

So there's John Swinney, first Minister of Scotland. The SNP win the election. Clearly, when you take out the did not vote because they had round about 50% turnout, one in eight people voted for the SNP.

[Rory Stewart]

Wow.

[Alistair Campbell]

And I think reform were coming from a lower base. But I think the other thing, the other thing, if I was Keir Starmer sitting in the Cabinet right now, and by the way, he's told him he's not resigning, so heaven knows where that's going to lead. He said there hasn't been a leadership contest triggered and he's going to carry on. Social media should be all. So let's see where that. Where that leads. I think the slight difference in Wales is that if you go back to the general relation, there was a lot of tactical voting because the driving motivation when you say, what does the country want? None of us can speak for the country, but the general vibe was we want to get rid of the Tories. Okay. And so people worked out what's the best way to do that. That's why labor got their landslide. They didn't get their landslide because of their just, you know, because of Keir Starmer's charisma or because the program of change. They got their landslide largely because of the Tories. Okay. I think what's happened in Wales is that there's been a lot of tactical voting going in all sorts of different directions. They didn't. They wanted labor out as a country. Labor's been in power for so long, literally the longest period of single party, 100 years.

[Rory Stewart]

They've dominated over 100 years.

[Alistair Campbell]

I mean, it's incredible. That's why it was so. So historic, so implied. The Welsh National Party had become, in a way, less nationalist in its rhetoric and policy maybe than the SNP in Scotland. And so they became a vehicle for that protest without people feeling it was necessarily going to lead to independence for Wales. So then what happened is, I think the country worked out. Labor are not going to win. It's going to be between plied and reform. I think quite a lot of people will have voted, will have switched from Labour and the other parties that didn't come in the top two to saying, I'm going to vote for the Welsh National Party. Now. I also think that Wales maybe has more of the. Don't forget that Wales was more Brexity than Scotland. Don't forget as well. Wales does have. If you visit Wales, there's all sorts of communities that feel very much like those communities in England that constantly say they've been left behind. So I think it was that. And back to the point about leadership and charisma, the Welsh, the Plaid leader is a very classic. He's a very charismatic, good communicator.

[Rory Stewart]

But reform in Wales now up to nearly 30% of the vote. I mean, this is. You know, if you were seeing this, if the, you know, if you were reporting back, I think you were in Germany at the moment. If you started reporting back on some election in some lander where the AfD was on nearly 30 of the vote, that would be a big national trigger. I mean, this is.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, Rory, it's funny. Funny you should say that. I'm right in the north, looking out over the Baltic Sea. If I. If we took it. We took the car down south a bit, would be inter Saxon Anhalt.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah.

[Alistair Campbell]

Where the two. Where the AFD are currently hovering around 40%. And there was an opinion poll at the weekend here in Germany. Where for the first time, the AFD were ahead of the CDU and the CSU union. And you're right, that does feel quite a big deal. Just while I'm in Germany, Roy, you're showing me your graphs, which have obviously required a lot more work than mine. There's one here. So, Merz Berlie Peitzwerta Zinken auf Macronivo. Merz's popularity rating is sinking to the Macron level. Now, here's a book pretending this is great news for Keir Starver. This has got the popularity ratings of the E3 leaders. Friedrich Merz has 22% of people saying that they're satisfied with his leadership. Macron 23, Keir Starmer 24. Now what has his.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, there we are. You see no reason to step down at all. Only a net popularity of minus 50. The guy's fine. What's he complaining about?

[Alistair Campbell]

So, no, the point I was going to make, and this is another point we made to these MPs, is government is bloody hard at the moment. It's always hard. But I do think it's harder than ever at the moment. And it's harder if you're in the face of very effective populist campaigners, which is what Nigel Farage is.

[Rory Stewart]

So I was looking at this. I think you're completely right. It is terrible. But I wonder how many listeners can guess how Trump compares to those figures. So, broadly speaking, as you say, those people are about 20 approve and about 70 disapproves. So they're mostly on negative 50. Can we do a little poll and we'll come back to it in three, four minutes of people trying to guess? Maybe this technology doesn't work, but I'd love to get without cheating and looking up on Google, what do you think Trump's net popularity rating is compared to Starbucks?

[Alistair Campbell]

And just to point the fact you trust all of our listeners and viewers not to look it up,

[Rory Stewart]

not to cheat, I'd be interested. Listen, before we come back, to the question on Trump and how he compares. Nigel Farage came out and wrote an op ed in the Times trying to frame what he thinks is happening in British politics. He says that he thinks voters believe that labor is London centric, run by human rights lawyers, that it's trying to betray the Brexit vote, that people feel they're being taxed to death, that welfare spending's out of control, that there's mass migration is destabilizing communities, and there's a lot of antisocial behavior. So that's his kind of big analysis of where he thinks voters are. And I guess to some extent, you know, he's. Sorry, not to some extent. To a great extent he's feeling vindicated. You know, he thought he was going to do very well and he did very, very well. So he's obviously got some sort of sense of what people think. Before we get into whether voters are right and what the solution is, does that broadly track with your sense, Liam Byrne's sense of what quite a lot of the Reform voters are feeling?

[Alistair Campbell]

I think a lot of them think that the country's not in great shape and the two main parties have taken turns. We had the Tories for a long time, we've now had labor for a couple of years. And I do think it's grossly unfair that Labour takes so much heat for what is a terrible legacy. But put that to one side for now. So they think given both the main parties a first shot at it and it hasn't worked, let's try something completely different. And I do think the thing about antisocial behavior is important. I think that a lot of the points that they make are perfectly valid in terms of what people feel. The question then, though, in a grown up, sensible political debate is okay, and what's the alternative? And that's where I think that we've allowed a combination of the main parties and the media have allowed Farage and Reform to become effectively opposition campaigners without any responsibility to be serious about what they would do in government. And that has to change. So that's why. And okay, he makes the point that Labour want to, quote, undo the Brexit vote. I wish it was so. I actually think that what Keir Starmer said yesterday in that speech, Europe was going to be one of the big things. And he talked about us back at the heart of Europe. But then they were all briefing that that doesn't mean changing the red lines on the single market or the customs union. So what does it mean? So it reminds me a little bit of the, of the Gaza situation. You have a, you have a situation where Pat McFadden goes along at the weekend to a rally for all the political parties to express their support for the Jews, for the Jewish community after the attacks of In. In Gold is green. Pat McFadden gets booed. Richard Tice, the leader of Reform, literally comes from a studio where he's refused to condemn the guy who said Nigerians should be melted down to fill the potholes. And he gets cheered by the audience. So what that says Back to my point, when you're in government, you're the guys, you're the people who are going to take the heat, and it's not pleasant. And I've got to tell you, if Nigel Farage did become prime minister, he'd be facing a lot of this very, very quickly from a lot of people.

[Rory Stewart]

Okay, pause for a second. Just because I asked the audience. So there's been a lot of different guesses, some of them accurate, some of them not. But whereas Starmer macronamet's basically about just over 20% of people approve, as you've pointed out, Trump, about 37% of people approve. And whereas with them, 70% disapprove, in Trump's case, it's about 60%. So if they're on about minus 50, he's on about minus 25, which bad for him. But one of the big differences is that 85% of. And this may be a way back into the Stama question, 85% of Republican voters still approve of Trump, whereas in the case of Labour voters, only about 40% of labor voters approve of Starmer, 42% do not. So one of the big problems that Starmer's facing is he's not just losing the country, he seems to be losing the Labour Party. And the reason, I guess my segue is this. We've talked about Farage, we talked about net popularity. If we agree that Starmer isn't going to go into the next election, and the question is not anymore, if, but when. And you've made a strong argument for why it shouldn't be today, but let's say it's going to be going forward in six months time. The big question, I assume, is who's going to be able to come up with policies that meet the kind of complaints that Farage is putting forward and do those policies exist? And this is why I was also interested in the newspapers over the weekend, because broadly speaking, there seem to be three answers to that question. What are the policies that a government needs? And this will be a question for Andy Burnham or Wes Streating or Angela Rayner, any of them. One answer put forward by this guy Josh, who was from Labour together, was effectively deliverology, right? The way we're going to get it going to beat Farage is we're going to fix the potholes, we're going to get the poo out of the rivers, we're going to drive down the cost of living, and we're going to deliver good public services to number one. So running things better. Number Two was big vision, so Britain back single market customs union, referendum on Europe. So big exciting ideas. And number three was, I guess, pro business supply side reform. So if you read the Times op ed, it will be reduce taxes, reduce energy bills, cut employment red tape, reduce welfare, increase defense spending. Does that track with your sense of the three, roughly speaking, the three possible lines that you could take into an election, either we're better at getting things done or we've got a big idea around something like Europe or thirdly, we're going for a much more kind of pro business growth agenda.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, I think you have to do all three in terms of a strategy. You probably have to focus on one or two. But I think the other thing that we're missing in this in relation to why Nigel Farage and Zach Polanski have, have been, you know, getting the sort of attention that they have is that they're both about, they both are about a kind of vibe. And I thought it was interesting yesterday, one of the things that people say about Akir Sam is he can't do the sort of hopeful, optimistic vibe. So yesterday talked a lot about hope and optimism, but didn't necessarily convey and communicate it. So I think it does have to be assuming it's not going to be Keir Starmer. It's got to be somebody who can inject that sense of hope and optimism. And then the policy, the policy has to match that. I guess what we're seeing with Trump and by the way, Trump. Although can I just make a couple of points on Trump. The first is he's got the lowest ratings of any president for a long, long time. And the second is the big difference is there, there is no alternative apart from the Democrats. So whereas what you've got, if you're labor and Tory, you've now got alternatives. You've got people saying, well, I was labor and Reform, I was Labour, but now I'm Green, I was labor, but now Anam Lib Dem. So I think that is a big, big difference. I don't think Trump's ratings are any more to shout out about than Macron versus Thammer. It underlines my point. It's bloody hard to be in government right now. But I think in terms of the reason why I would go longer, this may be impossible, but I would go longer. I would combine the points that you are making. I would combine the points that you are making about Joe Biden if the party decides he can't go. And the point that I made earlier about Mark Carney that, you know Sometimes it's better to go late rather than early. Because the other thing, that of all the names that are currently in the frame, the only one really who can, I think, credibly say change is probably Andy Burnham.

[Rory Stewart]

Presumably somebody like Al Khanz who isn't in the Cabinet might also be able to go with a change thing, for sure.

[Alistair Campbell]

And it may be that that's the other reason why you need a bit of time. Are there other people who could emerge?

[Rory Stewart]

Can I comment on that? Because that's another thing I don't quite understand. Basically, all the reporting you get say it's Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting or Andy Burnham. And there's a competition of journalists to come up with the neatest ways of expressing this trilemma. But that isn't how the Tory leadership elections work. So when I was going up in 2019, I think there were 14 candidates. And even as we came towards the end, it was actually. All these people have been interviewed on the podcast. It was me, Sajid Javid, Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove and actually, sorry, somebody who we haven't interviews, Boris Johnson. So what's the difference between. Is there something different between where the Labour Party is or how the Labour Party system works? That one's assuming. And before that, five. There were people like Matt Hancock, Dominic Raab, Nadim Sahawi, Kip Malthouse throwing their names in. Yeah.

[Alistair Campbell]

The answer is they didn't need 81 nominations. This system was brought in to make it less straightforward to challenge and to spill out of the leader. It may be that somebody needs to emerge with a new Persona, with a new set of ideas. To me, the ideas bit is the thing that I think is just not strong enough at the moment, both in the government and in any of the people that are. Of course, I said recently, I said to you last week, that it's harder if you're in the government to put out a new set of ideas that is different to what the government is doing. Clearly. And look, I think Andy Burnham's got a lot of strengths, but you just don't know. I've seen this so many times. You've seen it with the Tory Party and the people that they elect as their leader. The reason why you need a really rigorous process to sort of sort them out is because it's bloody hard and you've got to be shown to have been tested and your metal to be tested. But I think doing that while you're in government doesn't help the government, put it that way.

[Rory Stewart]

This is where I thought the Democrats made a mistake in the States. I thought that rather than being crowned, and I can see, of course we'll see both sides, but I thought that rather than being crowned, it would have been good for Kamala Harris to go through a genuine competition against Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Wichner and the rest of them. Because it seems to me that unless you go through that primary process, unless you have a chance to compete and show yourself, it's very difficult to know how you're going to do in that election campaign. And actually I sort of felt the Tories in some ways would have done even better if they'd allowed even four candidates to go in front of the general public, as opposed to just the final two. So people can get a sense of how they cope on national television, how they cope in big speeches, how they lay out their visions. I'm a bit worried with your point about the needing 81 nominations, that you end up with slightly stiff establishment figures and you don't really provide a chance for the Zoran Mamdanis to come in, which may be what you need in this age. I mean, if this system basically means that you're forced to choose between Wes Treating and Angela Rayner, maybe that isn't really the ideal. Because the other point about your system is Andy Burn is not even allowed to run, is he? If he's not an MP at the moment, yeah, correct.

[Alistair Campbell]

Great. But the only people who can change the system, the rules, are the leadership and the National Executive. Just one point, Rory, before we go to the close. Ed Conway of Sky. You produced your graph. Let me just show you, show you this graph that Ed Ken Conway just put out.

[Rory Stewart]

That's a fun soaring upwards. I can't see what it is, but I can see it soaring upwards. Is it oil price?

[Alistair Campbell]

No, no, it's the UK. 10 year bond yields shooting up to 5% amid speculation about the fate of the Prime Minister. Here's the chart of the past three trading days. And this is the issue that we had last time when the markets were getting spooked by the idea of him moving. Rachel Reeves and Paul Johnson, ex Institute of Physical Studies, now running some Oxbridge college. That's where everybody ends up, where you all end up one day, don't worry. But he, and, and he, he was basically, he, he. I saw something, he said that this is what people underestimate about, you know, the, this, this that makes us all poorer.

[Rory Stewart]

Just on that one. I mean it's actually, I've discovered that that has happened quite a lot during leadership transitions, it's not completely unheard of. And often, if we go back over the last 60, 70 years of British political history, that often happens when the markets get scared about change.

[Alistair Campbell]

And absolutely it can go back. But I think the other thing that this is, what a leadership election will expose to deep public view is that there are fundamental divisions about what the Labour Party is and what it stands for. I saw Clive Lewis have a lot of time for Clive Lewis, but he was basically saying, if West Streeting becomes leader, the Labour Party is finished. You have other people saying, if West Streeting doesn't become leader, the Labour Party's finished. You have people who will say that

[Rory Stewart]

this is people like me saying the Labour Party may be finished anyway. I mean, that's the other possibility that what we're failing to read in these polls is that the Conservative Party and the Labour Party as we know them may actually be over. That we may be entering a period of five party politics, that we may be saying, I mean, I know you're saying you don't think Nigel Farage will be Prime Minister, but I of course fear that that may be a bit of wishful thinking. It's a bit like me saying, I don't think Trump's going to be President. I think that Kamala Harris is going to win. It may be that structurally, one of the problems is there isn't a policy solution to Farage. I mean, if we think about those things that Farage was talking about in the op ed, a lot of them are not really policy, they're perception. So it will be people being very, very wound up around crime, despite the fact that crime may not actually be rising because of social media, that they're sort of in a. Well, for example, let's take the first statement that the Labour Party is run by London centric human rights lawyers. Well, there's one, isn't there? I mean, it's a ridiculous description of the Labour Party, the Labour cabinet, the Labour MPs, they're not London centric human rights lawyers. The fact that the public's got that in their head is a lie. So we're going into an election where maybe Farage, Trump, Boris Johnson, these people are not really winning on policy at all. And if you think that the route in is to get some very clever economists around the table and come up with some fantastic tweak on the way in which you do energy policy or taxation reform, you're maybe missing the fact that these elections are increasingly about charisma message, social media and nonsense.

[Alistair Campbell]

Which is a very depressing thought. But I think it's true. I think it's true right now. And that's why I think you have to do you. In a way, you have to do both. You know, another thing I've been very, very critical of, and we saw again yesterday when, I mean, Kirstan did his speech and I thought, okay, you know, there's quite a lot to chew over. I wish it had been longer. I wish there's been a bit of this and a bit of that, in my view. And then he goes straight into the bloody Q and A with the same journalists who spend all day saying how crappy is. And it's like, you know, have it. Have a much more aggressive. I don't mean by aggressive sort of going around beating them up. Yesterday was the 16th anniversary of my fight with Adam Bolton. Somebody reminded me on social media. I don't mean that. I mean.

[Rory Stewart]

And 16 years later, you still haven't made it up, really, have you?

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah, we kind of have. We can be in the same room. We can be in the same room fairly well. I've made it up. I don't know if he's made it up. I'm fine with it. But. So I. But I. I think that there's. There's something about the way that the government deals with the media that makes his problems worse, not better. And so. And again, the media landscape's not going to change, it's going to get worse. Social media is not going to change, it's going to get worse. So you definitely need all those things that you're saying. But the other point about Farage, you're absolutely right. He's got a vibe, he's got a. He's got a style. Some people like it. Let's not get overblown about what they did last week. Somebody's pointed, well, we should dig it out. Somebody's posted this map yesterday where reformer are actually in control of councils. It's a very, very, very small patch of turquoise. Okay.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah.

[Alistair Campbell]

So I think we've got to be a bit careful. And also, I could be wrong. And you're right, it probably is partly wishful thinking. As things stand today amid this chaos, amid this mess, amid the Tory Party doing as badly as it did as well. If I were to bat a gun to my head, who's going to win the next general election, on the current trajectory, I might point to Nigel Farage equally. I can see lots of ways that he can be brought down. It's just the things you need to do that are not being done. Now, these people trying to kick Keir Starmer out, they will say, well, let's get a better leader. And that might be the right approach. It might well be. But don't just say anyone will do. Because at the moment, these MPs busily going around from studio to studio, WhatsApp group to WhatsApp group, their basic line is anyone will do. And the publican are going to think, after a while they will start thinking, is Gestalt really as bad as that guy? You know, I think we just got to be very, very careful about this. Talking of one of the contenders, Rory, Vicky Spratt, who's done this brilliant series on Gen Z, she and I have done an interview with Angela Rader about Gen Z. It's. I think it's going out sometime this week. We should also, by the way, Roy, I posted yesterday our current leading interview. Do you remember, I was a bit reluctant for your friend Will MacAskill, the philosopher. But actually, amid this chaos yesterday, it was very nice to hear a soothing, calm Scottish accent. He was basically saying, it's not impossible that AI will end the world. But he was saying in such a calm, soothing manner the Angela Rayner. And she, by the way, is already up. So people can see that as well as see wilmacaskill, as well as see you and I talking now. So come on, Rory, cut to the chase. Do you think Keir Starmer will be Prime Minister by the end of the day?

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah, I think he'll definitely be Prime Minister by the end of the day. I think he's gonna, he's gonna, he's gonna Joe Biden it. I just, I just think that I, I just think the, the problem is we're so clearly now into the. When is he going to go? Not if he's gonna go. And my fear is that the problem for the Labour Party is you've got a Prime minister who, for reasons of, you know, sometimes reasons of ego, sometimes good reasons, doesn't want to step down. Many loyalists who hate labor and fighting and just wish people would shut up. A lot of anxiety about who the next candidate can be. But I still don't leave. My fundamental thing is, yes, getting into the lifeboat is risky, but staying on the Titanic is worse still.

[Alistair Campbell]

The Titanic went down with no possible way back up. Okay, there is. The Titanic was on its way to New York. Okay, labor in this context is on its way to a general election, the date of which is sometime on. By the way, Roy, let's close with this, you were asking, how does this stuff happen that you find out what's being said. Well, how you. I've just had a WhatsApp message from somebody which says, this tells you all you need to know. The Prime Minister told a meeting at the Cabinet, as I said yesterday, I take responsibility for these election results. I take responsibility for delivering the change we promised. The past 48 hours have been destabilising, that is real economic costs for our country and our families. The Labour Party has a process for challenging the leader that has not been triggered. The country expects us to get on with governing. That is what I'm doing and what we must do as a cabinet. By the time that meeting ends, I see suspect I will have similar messages telling me who said what about it afterwards and whether anybody had the. Had the guts to say to his face, well, I'm sorry, mate, but I'm not taking.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, Alistair, thank you for that. That was really, really interesting. I think we'll close there. Thank you everybody who joined in. There's been some amazing stuff in the commentary and we're really grateful for it. You know, somebody saying, I wish I stopped claiming labor won a landslide. In what world is 33.7% of the popular voted Landslide?

[Alistair Campbell]

That's a good. That's a very good point. That's a very, very good point. And now let me jump in there. Let me jump in there, because I made the point about one in eight in the snp. I regularly make the point to Labour people. One in five people who could have voted, voted Labor. When I talk about landslide, that is just tech. It's a technical term. Okay, so they got a big majority. Caller, listener, viewer, Very good.

[Rory Stewart]

Then there's somebody else saying, I pay 50% tax. That was a point that maybe we can develop on another occasion. But, but Starmer Farage is running on people saying they're paying too much tax and they're fed up with the welfare bill going up. But recent statistics suggest that 51% of people in Britain receive more in welfare benefits than they pay in tax. And that will be the overwhelming majority of Farage's voters. So again, I'm talking about sort of nonsense and portrayal that Farage is telling voters who are receiving much more in welfare benefits than they're paying in tax that the problem is that welfare bill is too high and, and. And that their taxes are too high. Okay, and then let's. We got a lovely guy saying, I look like a Victorian ghost. I think that's probably true. I do have a Bit of a migraine, which is why I was pleased that this was the show on which you have more to say than me.

[Alistair Campbell]

Why are you wearing your coat indoors? Is it cold? I don't know.

[Rory Stewart]

I've got to sort out the heating. Derek Patton for PM Pair of Muppets. Demagoguery, not democracy. And finally, Keir has been a disastrous communicator and he's no Captain Oates. Sadly, Starmer is gorbachev and it's 1991. Anyway, enough. There's so much more to return to. But as to thank you for a very, very well informed Siri thing. And we take from you that you want the party to slow down, put itself together, and if they're replacing Starmer, not to do it. In a destructive mania of horror.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah. And frenzy can sometimes be endured. Genuine crisis often can't. Rory. I've got to finish with this quote from Andrew Furlong. The Titanic sank because some idiot insisted on restarting the engines after it hit the iceberg. I don't know how that relates to what we're doing, but

[Rory Stewart]

very good. Lovely.

[Alistair Campbell]

Thank you, Andrew.

[Rory Stewart]

We'll go on that. Thank you, Andrew. See you all soon. Bye Bye, guys.

[Gordon Carrera]

Why did we really go to war with Iraq?

[David McCloskey]

And did Saddam Hussein really have weapons of mass destruction?

[Gordon Carrera]

I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist.

[David McCloskey]

And I'm David McCloskey, author and former CIA analyst. We are are the hosts of the Rest Is Classified. And in our latest series, we are telling the true story of one of history's biggest intelligence failures. Iraq WMD.

[Gordon Carrera]

In 2003, the US and UK told the world that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. But they were wrong.

[David McCloskey]

This wasn't a simple lie. It was something far more complicated, far more interesting and far more dangerous.

[Gordon Carrera]

Spies who believed their sources, politicians who wanted the public to believe in the threat, and a dictator who couldn't prove he'd already destroyed the weapons.

[David McCloskey]

In this series, we go deep inside The CIA and MI6, go into the rooms where decisions were made and look at the sources who fabricated the intelligence that took us to war.

[Gordon Carrera]

The Iraq war reshaped the Middle east and permanently weakened public trans trust in governments and intelligence agencies. And its consequences are still playing out today.

[David McCloskey]

Plus, in a Declassified Club exclusive, we are joined by three people who were at the heart of the decision to go to war. Former head of MI6, Richard Dearlove, Tony Blair's former communications director, Alistair Campbell, and former acting head of the CIA, Michael Morell.

[Gordon Carrera]

So get the full story by listening to the rest is classified and subscribing to the Declassified Club. Wherever you get your podcasts.