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- [00:00]
Manveen Rana
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- [00:31]
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- [01:02]
Patrick Maguire
Foreign.
- [01:06]
Manveen Rana
Hi, it's Manveen. The atmosphere in Westminster is febrile as the Prime Minister clings on in Downing Street. But his support seems to be ebbing away by the hour. To chronicle what's been an extraordinary day in British politics, our sister podcast, the State of It, pulled together three of the most well informed journalists in Westminster, Steve Swinford, Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogr, to shed light on what's happening behind the scenes. Here they are with an emergency podcast recorded earlier today, the State of It.
- [01:50]
Steve Swinford
Welcome to the State of It, this live recording of the political podcast from the Times and the Sunday Times. I am Stephen Swinford, the political of the Times.
- [01:58]
Patrick Maguire
I'm Patrick Maguire, chief political commentator for the Times.
- [02:01]
Gabriel Pogrund
And I'm Gabriel Pogrand, editor of Insight, the Sunday Times investigation.
- [02:06]
Steve Swinford
You're here, newly promoted. Congratulations, Gabriel. We come to you at yet another extraordinary juncture in British politics. I kind of think it will never happen again and then it happens again. So we just had a Cabinet where Keir Starmer has essentially sent a message to his Cabinet of put up or shut up. And he has issued a direct challenge at that Cabinet. Essentially, in his words, there's a process and if you want to trigger that process, there's a way of doing it. It's essentially, and this is my words, not his, come and have a go if you think you're hard enough. And that message is aimed at Wes, treating the Health Secretary and also others around that table that are backing Andy Burnham. And there's one question that really matters and I'm going to direct this to Patrick and cop out entirely in this moment from answering it. Is there any way that Keir Starmer can survive this? Patrick?
- [02:57]
Patrick Maguire
I think he can survive the day and maybe even the next 48 hours. But I was saying to somebody yesterday that we were always going to end up here this morning, which is a 24 to 48 hour period in which Keir Starmer denies the political reality unfolding in front of him. And that's exactly where we are. I was speaking to one of Keir Starmer's many former advisors in the early hours of Sunday morning, after the Prime Minister had given a 12 minute interview to the observer in which the one message he sought to get across was, eight more years. I'm going to serve for a whole decade as Prime Minister. You ain't seen nothing yet. And this former advisor texted me and said, I see he's entered the Willy Wonka phase of his premiership. And I said, what do you mean? And they said, he lives in a world of pure imagination. And that is exactly what we're seeing from the Prime Minister this morning. You're right, Steve. What he said at Kavanaugh is a straightforward provocation to West Streeting. It's also very Keir Starmer in that he's seeking refuge in process. It's not an acknowledgment of political gravity. It's aha. The rules say this, the letter of the law. Appropriately, as we sit here in temple, the letter of the law says this. Thus, I'm okay. Is he okay? Look, nobody challenged him at Cabinet, but that was because, as several people who are in the room and speaking to people in the room have told me, he didn't let anyone speak. He just gave a short statement in which he said, come and have a go if you think you're hard enough, now onto the really important stuff, that is Iran. No Cabinet minister challenged him, but the provocation is such that if West Streeting doesn't move, there are a lot of angry Cabinet ministers around that table who think, actually it doesn't matter if it's West Streeting, doesn't necessarily matter if it's Andy Burnham. What matters is that it's not Keir Starmer. So I would be surprised if we didn't have a Cabinet resignation or two by the end of today. And that's even before we get Andy Burnham's Finland Station moment at Houston. No arriving at Lenin. Houston, like Lenin, if Leonard had been kicked through the menswear section of Marks and Spencer's because both Andy Bird and West Streeting now have a small window in which they can define the terms of the contest. If West Streeting goes first, we'll all be saying, well, that's it. Andy Burn has Been frozen out the pace been set by Wesley. And if neither of them do anything, then another cabinet minister will get up and say, enough's enough. Keir Starmer's a joke, let's move on. Either way, Keir Starmer is not in control of what's going to happen today.
- [05:29]
Steve Swinford
There is a world, Gabriel, where Keir Starmer just grinds on that. He is the, as you wrote in your book, the hard bastard of the five A side football pitch who refuses to be moved. I mean, it is quite extraordinary what he's doing. He is resisting the pressure, but that he's got a strong argument, right? His argument is this speculation is having a direct impact on the cost of living. Look at what is happening to the cost of borrowing. The graphs which the FT does have shot up right this morning because of the uncertainty and the threat of a left wing takeover of a Labour government. There are real consequences to all of the speculation. And that I think does work in his favour to a degree, because he can make the case. This is really damaging. Whether Labour MPs are listening is another question.
- [06:14]
Gabriel Pogrund
Absolutely. Keir Starmer I think I last spoke to on the 2024 election campaign trail and one of the reasons, I suspect that a sort of Frode set in in our relationship, I'd cover this to Patrick as well, is that we wrote a book which he severely resented, whose central thesis was that he was the passenger at the front of the driverless train thinking he was setting its direction, when in fact the direction had been set for him by Morgan McSweeney. Now, Starmer described that as bollocks. Those were his words. And I actually did an event last week where I said that he may well have had a point. Because what I said was actually Sean of McSweeney. Over the last few months we've learned that perhaps there is something more to Starmer. It's possible that he is not merely aboard the Morgan McSweeney Express, but sat at the front of whichever train belongs to the person in a position of power in a given moment. So for the last few months the tenor and shape of this political project has changed. And now Keir Starmer, for some weeks and months has been giving a message on Europe on question of nationalization, on questions of the economy that much more strongly aligns with the sort of soft left center of gravity within the Parliamentary Labour Party. So my thought last week, and I'm offering you some honesty and sort of self effacement here, was that why would the Parliamentary Labour Party replace Starmer when they have him where they want him. I think the bit where I got this wrong was that you can't really predict the psychological energy of the parliamentary party in the aftermath of a set of elections such as these. Dominic Cummings very memorably leaned on the wizard of Oz to describe the Tory backbenches as being akin to flying monkeys. And I will say that the PLP have sort of given them a run for their money recently in terms of, you know, faced with all these collective action problems and, you know, as ever, the parliamentary party, you can slice and dice it into a million factions and micro factions, but faced with no unanimity as to the who or the what, you have this weird world where a backbench MP you've never heard of, Catherine west, has ended up being the tip of the spear. And I just think the emotion in this situation is so unpredictable, it makes the situation quite unpredictable. And here's one thing that I think is worth dwelling upon and is probably the reason why I agree with Patrick, which is that for all the reasons why it might seem preposterous to replace him, Starmer, is taste, which is there is just such contempt across the parliamentary party for him. I think there will be a sort of post Biden Democratic Party style inquest into how it was that Labour ever put in power. A man who it's own rank and file were so universally contemptuous of. I think it's one of the things which hasn't often been said out loud, but which now people in the plp, and by the way, in a cabinet. Absolutely in a cabinet, will need to address. I mean, it wasn't a secret. We did record in the form of 400 pages the extent to which these people had a purely transactional relationship with him. And when you have a transactional relationship and the underlying cost benefit is turned on its head, this man's an elections winner. Oh, wait, now he isn't. Then the whole pact is torn asunder and that is the essential dynamic of where we are.
- [09:44]
Steve Swinford
Now let's move on to some of the contenders. We should. We need to talk about Wes, Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, because a lot lies in his hands today. What he does next could determine the future of the Labour Party. So I'll just take you back to yesterday evening and I had this torturous conversation with Team West. So Wes street told Downing street back in January, look, guys, just so you know, I am preparing for power, I'm preparing for potential leadership bid, but I'm not going to go over the top it's just a contingency in case nothing.
- [10:13]
Patrick Maguire
Plotting was the phrase.
- [10:15]
Steve Swinford
Key quote is planning, not plotting. But unless things fall apart. Right. Now, yesterday's conversation was a question of threshold and definition. And I said to them, does 81 MPs going over the top constitute falling apart? And the answer to that was silence. And we had this circular conversation which I'm sure was deeply frustrating for both of us. But the end result is that, yeah, there is a world where that threshold has now been crossed, where clearly labor is to a degree falling apart. If we just talk about those numbers, 81 MPs, that's a third of backbenches. So that's non payroll. You've got ministers resigning, other ministers considering doing so. And what's really interesting is when you look at the 81 MPs, it's not one faction, it's actually pretty even. You've got a third hard left. Ish. A third are roughly. A third are soft left and then another third are moderates. It's coming from all wings of the party and all the different generations. So there is a world in which Wes Treating does go over the top by his own definition. But it will be a deeply dangerous moment for him personally and for the Labour Party politically. If he succeeds, then, you know, he, he gets a march on Andy Burnham and could become the Prime Minister. But if it goes wrong for him, he is politically damaged. He will be forever remembered as the Michael Heseltine of 2026 or James Pernell, however you want to frame that. So that is the challenge and the decision that Wes Treating is facing today. If he goes over the top, it could really screw his long term chances of ever becoming Prime Minister.
- [11:49]
Patrick Maguire
Yeah, but he'll never have another opportunity like this. The clamor in the parliamentary Labour Party for somebody to take ownership, show leadership and make this stop. And these are all people who, even if they have their own factual leadings, even though they don't want west street to be Prime Minister, one want to be led and two, know their voters will never vote for the Labour Party or not enough of them will ever vote for the Labour Party if Keir Strommen's leader. So there is this, this clamor to make it stop. And I think there are some cabinet ministers who would have a preference. But right now I think this situation is so grave. I don't care if it's Wes, I don't care if it's Andy. Can one of them do something? Can we just make this stop? And I was just reading A text there from one of the people who resigned yesterday from a government job, and they were pointing out that Keir Starmore was refusing to see Cabinet ministers individually to talk about this after the Cabinet meeting. And they just said to me, this is typical and ridiculous, as Gabriel said. Gabriel used the word contempt, and I don't think that's too strong a word. If anything, it might be too mild a word for the feeling towards Keir Starmer and the way he's carrying on today among the Labour Party, among junior ministers, among people who've resigned and people who are thinking about resigning to bring this to an end. So if West Streeting doesn't take ownership and do this in a clear way, if Andy Burnham doesn't try and set a clear frame for what's about to happen, then I think we're going to see many more people taking this into their hands, and it's going to happen in a very messy way.
- [13:18]
Steve Swinford
Okay. But we should talk about one person who has shown arguably leadership in this moment, and that is Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary. So we broke the story last night at the Times that she had been to see the Prime Minister. She should be one of three Cabinet ministers to do so, and said, you need to set out a timetable for your departure, and that is a pretty unsustainable position. We revealed the same about Ed Miliband about a fortnight ago, did the same thing. But to have people sitting there in your Cabinet that, you know, want you to go. She's in a really difficult position. She is very personally upset by what happened in her own constituency in Birmingham, with the council there falling, you know, from labor, falling from power. And just more broadly, it got to be a big question about Shaban and what she does now, because she could precipitate a whole thing now.
- [14:04]
Gabriel Pogrund
I mean, we've often talked about the dis analogies between Starmer and the other postmodern Labour election winner, Tony Blair, in that Blair had a sort of coterie and a project, and Starmer is sort of weirdly rootless within the Labour Party. And I think that is why you have a situation like this where somebody who should ostensibly be, you're an occupant of a great office of state. You are in principle a pillar of this premiership. She's gone in 48 hours after these local actions, said Kier, the game is up. And it is a weird situation now, by the way, we were just in the Green Room a few moments ago looking at who's actually coming out on the airwaves and defending him. Steve Reed, I think, was the only senior member of the Cabinet who actually emerged from this meeting and made a principled argument for Starmer going on. So maybe a sort of touch of the downfall of Thatcher in terms of, you know, people going in with the. The Scotch and the revolver and saying, there's an easy way and a hard way to do this. But, yeah, one thing that militates in Starmer's favor, because he's an anti politician or is disinterested in politics, he sort of, weirdly, you can see a world where he just doesn't actually engage with what's going on. Quite a Boris. The sort of Johnsonian thing of. I'm not even going to name what is unfolding around me. I guess one of the problems with politics is people feel that what led to their initial victory is a formula that can be repeated again and again. And in this instance, Starmer just ignoring politics may not work, but it could buy him some time and it will force what you were just outlining, which is somebody at some point to say, enough.
- [15:53]
Steve Swinford
Yeah. I mean, just to give you an idea of what it's like in number 10, I remember talking. There are real parallels with Boris Johnson today. So Boris Johnson gave what was actually a very good speech when he said, when the herd moves, it moves and the momentum takes you with it. And no politician is indispensable. That's what you discover. Because Boris Johnson spent a lot of his premiership thinking he was indispensable and suddenly discovered that he won't. He wasn't. But in that building right now, there will be a real air of anger, there'll be frustration. And in Boris Johnson's case, I remember it vividly. There was real paranoia. I remember, like, getting calls from people about the snake Michael Gove and what he was up to in the background. And Starmer will be feeling that. There's no way. You can't feel that kind of pressure as much as he gives this granite edifice of an exposure in that building. You wake up in the building, you go to bed in it, and everyone is consistently telling you, you're doing a terrible job. It's really, really difficult. And that was too much for some. The Tory prime ministers, I. I know of examples of them just losing it with their staff when they kept waking up and being told they were terrible at their jobs. And I cannot imagine what the pressure is like. It's all very well for us on the outside. This isn't a let's all feel sympathetic for K Star. But on a human level, the pressure in that one building where you live and you work is epic. It's quite something that's going on there.
- [17:14]
Patrick Maguire
Yeah, it is. But I'd say a lot of the people who work closely with karma. No, Kirmer don't necessarily describe a man under pressure. They describe, in their view, a man who is obstreperous, who is vain, who is stubborn. That's the word I hear again and again and again from his close allies. He's stubborn. He is almost energized at moments like this because he is so convinced of his own reptitude. And that, in part is obviously about what he sees as the national interest, but it is also his desire, and it's been his desire since childhood. You know, just read what his book for Tom Baldwin wrote. Read what, you know, friends from outside of politics told Gable and I for. For our book. There is this just overwhelming desire to win and to be proven right, to, you know, to prove people wrong, as he has been doing since he came from that ramshackle home in. In Reigate. And that is what we're seeing again, writ large across the whole government and indeed across what is left of the Labour Party in Westminster and the country. And it is, as Gabriel said, a completely different way of conceiving of this to the people who would like to see him go. And ultimately, only one perspective can win out. But in the meantime, that means a bit like Boris Johnson in 2022. Steve, if there are coming up resignations today, who would bet against Keir Starmer saying, okay, the three of you have resigned, here are three more hires, and then will it be for the replacements to resign as Nadim Zahawi famously did after about 24 hours as Chancellor? So let's see.
- [18:50]
Steve Swinford
Yeah, I mean, is this extraordinary? We need to talk about the other guy coming down on the train from Manchester, Andy Burnham, and where things are. We've got a scoop that we're working on at the Times at the moment, which we'll put up in a bit. But there is at least one cabinet minister we know that is working directly with Andy Burnham to try to sort out his issue, which is a seat. He is the mayor of Greater Manchester, Manchester. He is like. And this is genuinely. He's really popular. I sound shocked when I say that. But no politician is popular anymore. They are all really unpopular. And it's the case of who is slightly more unpopular than someone else. But Andy Burnham is a genuinely popular politician. He is.
- [19:28]
Patrick Maguire
Can I just break In Steve, Andy Burnham has arrived at Euston.
- [19:31]
Steve Swinford
There we go. Lenin.
- [19:32]
Patrick Maguire
He's getting into a car. I can see the street. It's where the Ubers pick you up outside of Euston. And he's actually wearing a suit jacket, so you know, it's serious. There's no, there's no collared shirt. But he has dressed up for the occasion.
- [19:44]
Gabriel Pogrund
No Fred Perry.
- [19:45]
Patrick Maguire
No, no Fred Perry today. The moment calls for something more serious.
- [19:49]
Steve Swinford
So the Cabinet are working people in the Cabinet to actively find him a seat and they've therefore got a vested interest in the timeline. And the timeline matters here. It matters a lot. So Wes treating wants a really quick contest, quick and dirty. You get him in, great. That favors him. Andy Burnham campaign.
- [20:07]
Gabriel Pogrund
Slow, quick and dirty.
- [20:09]
Steve Swinford
Andy Burnham. He needs time. He has to find a seat. He has to contest that seat. Let's say it's a Manchester seat, which is logical. Okay, Andy Burnham's really popular in Manchester, he's really well liked. But I'll tell you what isn't liked. The Labour Party is incredibly unpopular in Manchester at the moment. You look at the election results from last week, there is no guarantee he'd win that by election. So we are, you know, there'd have to be a discussion about whether he could stand with the Labour's ruling body. Starmer would probably try to stop him. We are talking about. He needs months, he needs all the way. If you're lucky, key, there's a world in which he could become an MP by the autumn. But if you're not, we could be, you know, towards the latter part of this year before he gets a shot. So you've got a load of people that want Starmer to go, but just not quite yet. They need time to get Andy Burnham in and I'm not sure, given the pressures involved here and the kind of, the fear, the way it feels, I'm not sure that's going to be possible.
- [21:01]
Gabriel Pogrund
You know, in some ways, Starmer is a really lucky general because if when you examine the field of candidates, so many of them appear, if not fatally flawed, then for some quirk of circumstance, then at least not foregone conclusions. Angela Rayner still has the HMRC monkey on her back and she, until she can fling it off, there's no way she can put herself forward as a serious candidate. Andy Burnham, you just outlined Steve. And then that leaves streeting. And I think one thing that is difficult to overstate is that there are a lot of people that would much rather a perpetuation of the status quo. Than have a person that they, you know, fictitiously or otherwise, believe to have been grown in Peter Mandelson's laboratory. So, you know, there are lots of reasons why the status quo may persist for a bit of time yet.
- [21:56]
Steve Swinford
We should also talk about two underappreciated things. We're in this world where all things are possible right now. Who knows where it goes next? And two of those things are one, Angele Reina and two, I say it quietly, Ed Miliband is a distinct possibility. Don't necessarily rule it out. Because if you are in a world where Andy Burnham cannot get back in time and the leadership contest is triggered, then despite the tax investigation, Angela Rayner is seriously thinking of having a shot at it. And she would, as you have previously reported. Patrick, what was the phrase that was used about eyes?
- [22:29]
Patrick Maguire
I would rather stick pins in my eyes than back that expletive she said of Wes. Allegedly, I'm told. She then denied it, I think.
- [22:39]
Steve Swinford
Yeah, but I mean, it was pretty well sourced at the time from memory, so she is obviously keeping her options open. And Ed Miliband, he was the first mover, like two weeks ago he told Starmer to set out a timeline and there is a world in which he could actually end up being prime minister. Now he has told friends, I don't want it, I don't want the top job. And he's widely viewed as a kind of kingmaker for Andy Burnham and as putative chancellor. But don't rule it out. Like all things are possible right now.
- [23:08]
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- [23:39]
Steve Swinford
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- [23:42]
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- [24:04]
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- [24:09]
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- [25:25]
Patrick Maguire
Can I outline two scenarios that are doing the rounds in government, one of which feels more plausible to me than the other? The first is what happens if West Streeting goes over the top. This is what Keir Starmer's remaining loyalists are trying to trying to spin. And several of them have been having this conversation with me over the past 24 hours. West treating, say today he responds to Keir Starmer's provocation at Cabinet, which was there's a formal process. If you want to challenge me, use that. So say everything that Wes3 team's allies were briefing last week is true. He does have a list of 81 MPs and he signs them up. Keir Starmer in that scenario is automatically on the ballot. And Keir Starmer says, all right then, if you want to challenge me, I will run against you. Now, I think the point at which 81 MPs are willing to challenge you, you're finished. But some members of Keir Starmer's cabinet, and this is probably just brinksmanship, because I think it's an absurd scenario, say they are genuinely convinced in that scenario that they could convince members of the soft left to endorse Keir Starmer to stop Wes stressing that Keir Starmer could win. Now, I think when you consider for a moment what endorsing Keir Starmer and giving this notoriously stubborn immovable man, even in this context, a fresh mandate from the labor membership would mean, I don't think anyone would actually do that. So that's one scenario. The other scenario, more outlandish, is this. Say we're treating Challenges today. Then immediately a conference call is convened. WhatsApp blows up. Ed Miliband is ringing Louise Haig, Louise Hayes ringing Angela Rayner, Angela Rayner's ringing everybody else. And they think, what the hell do we do? Some people genuinely think and they come from all wings of the party. This is the Ed Miliband scenario. Ed Miliband doesn't want West Reason to be Prime Minister. Nobody is quite sure about Angela. You know, does she want to run? Does she want respect? Can she run? Is she the right candidate? People see a scenario in which Ed Miliband, despite his denials, feels impelled duty to stop Wes. Only I can stop Wes. A bit like de Gaulle, right? Only I can save the Republic from itself. You know, 2026 is 1958 to Ed Miliband and he does it and he runs for leadership and wins. But some people suggest this supplementary twist. Again, this is far too clever by half. Ed Miliband shows that politics can be different because what does he say? He says, I'm going to become Prime Minister on a time limited basis and my first act is to say to Labour nec, you must let Andy Burnham run for the leadership, run for a parliamentary seat and he can do so on the basis could be about to be Prime Minister. Andy Burnham gets back, I resign and the soft left are in power forever and ever and ever and we're going to win the next election. Now both of those scenarios are so convoluted I can see neither of them happening. But that just goes to show the preponderance of theories that are taking root in the Labour Party this week.
- [28:26]
Gabriel Pogrund
And can I just say, by the way, I think that the ridiculousness of what Patrick just outlined is, is another one of the big factors that favors Starman. We should say. I don't want to misquote you Gov, but I believe that Andy Burnham was the only political figure who a con a reasonable proportion of the non labor voting public believe would be a marked improvement on Starmer. So I think about it was only about a third of people, I should say. But he's the only person who commands a, you know, a sizable share of people who didn't vote labor at 2024 election and who say he would do a better job than Starmer. And the ongoing ambiguity about what happens next is, I think one of that is the, that is a really big powerful tool in Starmer's Swiss army knife. And I think, you know, I've actually got very pleased to have my mother in law sat in the audience visiting from the United States. I think if you were to explain this situation to somebody coming from outside the Westminster bubble, possibly outside the country. You know, it is difficult to articulate how we are in this situation where for six months we've done podcasts where we've outlined every week that Starmer faces a reckoning come these May elections. Every week it seems like Starmer has contrived to find a way to compound his own political predicament by you turning on a given policy. Or inexplicably, I still can't get over this, committing to producing a, you know, British Library's worth of correspondence about the appointment of Peter Mandelson. You know, he's done so much to press the bruise of his own situation, and yet here we are and there is still no clarity on what happens next. And that, I think, in politics is also a powerful thing. And I'm not here to say, yeah, how, how, how dare we indulge in this talk? Because it's clearly, it's of the essence and it's unignorable fact that there are dozens of MPs saying now they don't have confidence in the Prime Minister. So, you know, it's not a crime for us journalists to be remarking upon it. But we ought to remember as well that there'll be a lot of people pub in, in the public and possibly in the Parliamentary Labour Party as well, who say you've had enough time to prefer prepare for this moment. And the fact you fail to do so in its own way militates in favor of keeping Starmer around for a bit longer.
- [31:01]
Patrick Maguire
Well, yeah, look, and more to the point, millions of voters are saying to Labour Party they have no confidence in Keir Starmer. And your point about. We've, we've known this is coming for ages and I've heard that from several people in government outside of it in the past couple of weeks. Sorry, couple of days. It feels like weeks. All of them have said to me, number 10 knew exactly what was going to happen in these elections and they could have guessed what the reaction was going to be. So why do they seem so ill prepared? Have they not been acknowledging this? Ditto, by the way. Andy Burnham, West Street. Right. You know, it might be that Wes treating sending his allies to resign from government and call for the Prime Minister's head yesterday might have been part of a plan. It might have been an instinctive response. You know, Team Wes is keeping its council, but, you know, Andy Burnham has known for a long time that this will be his Moment there just seems to be a sort of lack of. Some people have compared this to AJP Taylor's very famous war by timetable theory of how the First World War started. And indeed that is, you know, if in our book we say that was how it seemed to Starmer in 20, when he was being challenged 2021, 2022, when it looked like he was going to be challenged for leadership on a couple of occasions and people were mobilizing because they could see others mobilizing. That doesn't really seem to have happened in this instance. So, yes, the sort of the stasis and the arm pass we're living through right now is partly because of Keir Starmer stubbornness, but it's also just because of a sort of, I think, a squeamishness, a reticence, a. An excess of caution among the leaders and this, I think, nonsense belief that he who wields the knife will never wear the crown. The ultimate sort of suffocating cliche of British politics. When actually, if you look through history and these are the comparisons where Streeton should be aware of, right, actually you don't wear the crown if you never wield it. Like, you know, wielding the knife gives you an opportunity to wear the crown. Roy Jenkins isn't Labor leader in 68 after DREVL set a local elections because he doesn't wield the knife. Everyone thinks he's on serious and dilatant. Margaret Thatcher is, you know, she wields the knife and wears the crown in 75, you know, similarly, David Miliband bottles it is never leader of the Labour Party because he thinks I got a better chance than his brother. Beats him, you know, repeat to fade. So this is, this is the remarkable thing. I think everybody's calculations seem off and everybody's behaving in quite a strange way, regardless of what's at stake. So the emotional process, the messy emotional process is what's taking its place. Because everyone's thinking, can someone else make the first.
- [33:29]
Gabriel Pogrund
Yeah, I don't know if it's an apposite comparison, but the, the death of John Smith, there was this similar thing of, you know, it's Gordon Brown's, he's got to go for it. And then Tony Blair decided, no, in actual fact, it is me. I'm not going to be Brown's mentee. I've got my own political vision, my own political economy, my own sense of politics, and I'm going to. I'm going to own that fact. And I think, you know, if we're permitted to talk about him outside the context of Epstein. I think that Manderson has said that Blair's incision in that moment was one of the things that persuaded some of his parliamentary colleagues that he had the sort of brutality and winning mentality to do the job. And I do think this notion of being. I'm not sure you would have heard the phrase at the beginning, but just to, just to repeat it, this notion that streeting is. What is it? Preparing but not plotting.
- [34:27]
Patrick Maguire
Planning but not plotting, but not plotting.
- [34:29]
Gabriel Pogrund
What's that mean? What are we expect to take from that? You are preparing to be Prime Minister. You're, you're getting ready to do that job, but you don't wish to actually give effect to that outcome. So what are we. What is, what are his colleagues meant to take from that? I think, you know, Patrick has been quite forceful in outlining that these last 24 hours they have been Streeting's moment and the notion that you'd be ready, but then wait, as you were saying, Steve, until the autumn for Burnham to come in to have a contest. I agree these cliches can be quite obstructive and they can have their own effect on, on politics.
- [35:08]
Patrick Maguire
Well, it's not this idea that the Labour Party, you know, doesn't like disloyalty or registered. It's like the point at which nearly 100 MPs, probably more than 100 now MPS, have come out and said, we think the Prime Minister's rubbish. Get rid of him, please resign. Is the point at which actually you'll be thanked for being disloyal to this Prime Minister. He's not a popular guy. No one's going to say, well, that's a bit gauche, or, you know, please, please don't say what we're saying. You know, it's different for you. You know, it's a wide open goal and I really just don't understand.
- [35:31]
Steve Swinford
Can I make an argument for something that Keir Starmer is right about? So Keir Starmer says this has real world consequences. It has implications for the cost of living. All of this chaos and turmoil is damaging. He is right about that. Look at the cost of government borrowing this morning. That is not wrong. And I have this sometimes when I'm struggling to sleep, I like to repeat things in my head over and over just to see where we go. So I play this game with myself where I name all of the Prime Ministers since David Cameron. So we get David Cameron, Theresa May. Who are we after? Theresa May? We go to Boris Johnson, we go to Liz Truss, we go to Rishi Sunak here, Starmer, and it's okay. And I just do that on loop for a bit till I eventually kind of, you know, die of exhaustion. But it is ridiculous. It is this question of whether Britain is actually governable anymore. And when I talk to friends and family, like in our jobs, when things like this are happening, there's. And I'm so acutely aware of it, there is an adrenaline to it, right? There's another person's gone over the top, another minister's resigned, the spreadsheet's getting bigger. You know, this person's tweeted this. It's all politics on hyper overdrive. And sometimes when I talk. I was talking to a friend this morning and they were just saying, it's just mad Steve. Like, you look at it from where we're sitting. I just want someone to get on with actually running the country. And there is a fundamental problem with British politics in the external. Things happen. You know, wars happen. Ukraine, Iran, they have an impact. And voters obviously blame the incumbent government. But it means that we are now in a. Either we've got a really awful set of politicians, which we may well have. I'm not saying we don't. They could not be fit for purpose. Or there is something fundamentally wrong with our political system now. And there is just this. I'm not saying regicides in the DNA. I don't know quite what it is. I don't know where I'm going with this point, but I think that, you know, Sokir Starmer was not wrong when he stood on the steps of Downing street and said he wanted a politics that would tread more lightly on people's lives. That might have been terrible for journalists like me. I remember turning to my colleague and saying, oh, my God, it's going to be like early days of Gordon Brown. What hell are we going to write about? But actually, I think there is a desire for that. It's just that that the economic circumstances and pressures that come from us being an open trading nation and uniquely exposed to the rest of the world create immense pressure in and of themselves.
- [37:50]
Gabriel Pogrund
William Hague wrote a good, I thought, very perspicacious column in the paper today, saying that governing from the center left in the year 2026, it. It is bloody difficult, but it's not impossible. And Keir Starmer makes it look impossible. I do think that there's a massive question to be had about whether systemically, you know, the velocity of political news, the sort of media politics, nexus has made it functionally impossible to be in a position of power for longer than a few years. We've had, you know, four prime ministers in four years. But I do think that part of why we are where we are is because of decisions that Starmer has made.
- [38:35]
Patrick Maguire
Yeah, absolutely.
- [38:35]
Gabriel Pogrund
And unmade. You know, he chose to, you know, winter fuel, which we wrote in our book, was a decision he made on the fly without any consideration of the political implications of that decision. That's not like, you know, Patrick and I wrote. We did write a mischievous story about Starmer's sort of unorthodox arrangements for a donor paying for his spectacles and such like. But that's not. That's not the Fourth Estate being mischievous. It's not him being unduly trashed by the tabloids. Yet there are some big tectonic political decisions he's made which have caught up with him, which might be a little distinct to what we've seen before.
- [39:17]
Patrick Maguire
Yeah, the flip side of all this stuff about what Keir Starmer says about, oh, instability. Look at the bond markets. Whenever this kicks off, you know, borrowing costs go up. So I've got to stay because they only trust me, is that he is the instability. The reason we have these recurring and, you know, you can make the, you have, you know, have these, you know, chin stroking discussions about the nature of democracy in. On Hyperspeed and everything we've all been saying, but ultimately, right, the government's in a mess because the Prime Minister doesn't have any politics, because the instability is him, because he occupies every possible position within labor history on a loop on like a sort of fortnightly basis. He reinvents himself constantly, sometimes within the space of the same speech. He doesn't do politics, he doesn't have any sense of political economy. There has been no clear agenda. They govern in one way, which is a sort of as a conventional centre left European social democratic government with all of the policy choices and decisions on tax and regulation that imply. But they speak in the other direction, right? So business don't like them, progressive voters don't like them. And it's all very well and good saying to Keir Starmer, look at the bond market. Well, actually the bond market is spiking because you're the cause of the political instability, because you're the reason the government is failing. So as long as you're in office, we'll keep this instability baked into your premiership because you have no clear agenda, no real political facility with your back benches or anybody else. The cabinet don't rate you, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, the bond market isn't something that sort of is uniquely in awe and respectful of Keir Starmer. You know, he is responsible for the political situation that keeps blowing it up. And I think, you know, regardless of and also he's, by the way, he's proven himself unwilling to take the decisions that would really calm it down because he's incapable of prosecuting and winning. You know, ironically, as former head of the dpp, Right. He's incapable of prosecuting an argument for, you know, the big crunchy fiscal reform that the bond market would dearly love to see. And, you know, he'll be, you know, knocked down with a feather if his backbenchers don't like anything. So that is ultimately the problem.
- [41:24]
Steve Swinford
I think that brings us to an end. So thank you so much. You know, we are very privileged to be here.
- [41:31]
Gabriel Pogrund
Thank you to you and Autry and Molly Guinness and Harry Kitson.
- [41:41]
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