00:00As the Mandelson-Row rolls on, the pressure on Sir Keir Starmer is no longer just about one appointment.
00:07It's now about how decisions were made at the heart of government.
00:11Who knew what and whether Number 10 was fully in control of the process.
00:15All politicians know from the moment they sort of enter into the so-called game, as it were,
00:21that their time is going to be limited.
00:23It's a question of whether it's at their own hands or at the hands of the electorate.
00:26Keir Starmer would hope, of course, to get to the next election.
00:28He would hope to win it, but there is no chance of that.
00:32So it's a question of sort of how it's engineered.
00:35If the party is to survive what's going to happen in the general election.
00:40But, of course, what we've got in the meantime is a local election.
00:44But, of course, Keir Starmer, the man who got the stonking great majority back in 2004,
00:5124, I should say, the so-called loveless landslide.
00:54And he was never a person that's endeared sort of love amongst the electorate in general.
01:01So, of course, there's been a lot of noise around Keir.
01:03But, of course, what we've had in sort of recent sort of days is the whole issue of Mandelson.
01:08He must rue the day he ever set eyes on this man.
01:11And most particularly sort of put him in as the sort of the ambassador for the U.S.
01:15But, of course, there's a whole set of circumstances.
01:18And what's now starting to become clear is that there was a view within the party or the sort of
01:24the hierarchy who want to do this.
01:25It's mainly as a sort of sop to a certain Donald Trump, of course, a man that could sort of,
01:32who's snake-like tendencies,
01:33who could deal with the sort of the uber snake in the sort of the White House, Donald Trump.
01:37Apologies to all sort of Trump supporters.
01:39But, hey, that's the way it is.
01:41And, of course, that they felt that, you know, because he was a privy councillor, a member of the laws,
01:44yeah, he was OK.
01:45So they wanted to rush this through.
01:47Now, of course, it all comes down to how much did Keir know?
01:50And Keir Starmer appears to have known not very much about the sort of the fact that he had failed
01:55the sort of the vetting procedure,
01:57not, we're led to believe, although it's all sort of whispers and sort of, you know, we don't have any
02:01sort of definitive proof on this.
02:03It wasn't about his Epstone connections, bad as they may be.
02:06And, of course, that's been the whole toxicity of the man has, you know, his impact on others has been
02:12sort of dreadful.
02:12It's more to do with sort of the business contacts that Mansell had.
02:15But we still are unclear about what Keir Starmer really knew.
02:20And it seems he knew very little indeed.
02:22And, therefore, we ask ourselves, if, as the prime minister, you don't know what's going on about the sort of
02:27the appointment of sort of people into sort of really key positions,
02:30then it seems to be a pretty poor show.
02:33But, of course, you know, you can't be across everything.
02:35So, you know, I think this this this problem or this issue will rumber on for the next number of
02:41days, maybe in a couple of weeks.
02:42But as I sort of said a couple of moments ago, what Keir Starmer is facing is, dare I use
02:48the word obliteration?
02:49Certainly a sort of a lot of seats have been lost.
02:53At best, they're looking at losing a thousand seats.
02:55It could be a lot more than that.
02:57And loss of control over sort of key councils, including sort of Birmingham, where, of course, there have been a
03:03lot of problems.
03:03So I think the backlash of that and the sort of the sense that sort of Labour or Labour Party
03:07are facing sort of an electoral doom going further into the parliament and particularly coming up to the next election,
03:14which, of course, is technically not for another three years.
03:16And they will be looking for a sort of change of leadership and a change of direction, which may save
03:21their seats.
03:21But there are many who believe and I'm inclined to believe that this may be true.
03:26I think there's not an awful lot that they can do at this point to rescue the party's fortunes.
03:31What has made this more damaging for the prime minister is the gap between the government's official defence and the
03:37evidence that has since emerged.
03:39Starmer says he was not told about the key vetting concerns before Peter Mandelson's appointment went ahead.
03:45And insists the process has been changed so appointments cannot be announced before clearance is complete.
03:52But fresh testimony from former top civil servant Sir Ollie Robbins has intensified questions about whether warnings inside government were
04:01handled properly and whether political pressure was brought to bear.
04:05The problem, for Sir Keir Starmer, is that this has become a story about judgment and authority as much as
04:11procedure.
04:12Opponents say it points to a failure of oversight at the top of government, while allies have been left trying
04:18to contain a controversy that keeps generating new questions.
04:21But I do believe within the Labour Party, there is a sense that unless they do something pretty radical, then
04:28they're going to be sort of facing sort of an oblivion come the next election, for which it may be
04:32very difficult to recover.
04:33So in the sense that if you're looking at that, you might as well go for something really radical.
04:38And I don't see sort of Keir Starmer as being part of the long term solution to what the Labour
04:42Party needs.
04:43So I think, you know, to come back to sort of the original question, he is a dead man walking.
04:47And it's just about the sort of the methods by which his passing, if you like, or his demise is
04:54engineered within the party.
04:56So even if Downing Street believes the rules have now been tightened, the wider political fallout has not gone away.
05:02The issue for Starmer is whether voters see this as a contained mistake or as another sign of a government
05:08being pulled off course by a crisis of its own making.
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