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00:00The big question this week, will Keir Starmer go?
00:02As we discussed on our bonus episode last Friday, the local election results were not
00:06good news for Keir Starmer. We're recording justice ministers are coming out of a cabinet
00:10meeting, something that we're going to get into later because we've been in the room for those
00:14awful, awful meetings. So today we're going to give our advice to the runners and riders who
00:19may well be leading the Labour Party at some point in the near future. I'm Clare Watson,
00:23a former special advisor to Theresa May and Boris Johnson. And I'm Helen McNamara,
00:27the former Deputy Cabinet Secretary. And this is In The Room.
00:33Well, it's a red letter day because 2,000 of you are now following us on Instagram,
00:38which we are so thrilled about. If you'd like to join those ranks, go to at intheroom.pod.
00:44You can also watch us on YouTube. Our channel is called In The Room Politics.
00:48And if you've got a question about the confusing, confounding and sometimes maddening world of
00:53politics, you can email us on intheroom at independent.co.uk.
00:58I've sent a few of those myself.
01:00I don't know why we're promising we can answer any questions, but you can definitely email us
01:03questions and then we'll have a go.
01:04Well, Helen, we recorded on Friday about the local elections. What the hell has been going on
01:09since then?
01:09It's only a few short days ago, but it already feels like quite a long time. So at the time
01:13of
01:13our recording, 81 MPs have said that they think that the leader of the Labour Party should step down.
01:18We've had a clutch of PPSs, which is the most junior kind of non-ministerial role in the
01:24government, resigned yesterday and were rather hurriedly replaced. We've had one junior minister
01:29also resigned because she thinks Keir Starmer should go. We're very much still at the who
01:33stage of affairs in terms of people resigning. So no one that anyone's really heard of, but
01:37you know, you never know. That might come soon. For a leadership contest to be triggered.
01:42So although apparently we're getting very close to the number of MPs who want Keir Starmer to go,
01:47what they haven't done is a line behind a particular candidate, which is in the Labour
01:52Party's rulebook, which we've all become deep experts in. You theoretically need 81 people
01:59to back one MP to really trigger a leadership contest.
02:03Yeah, exactly. And that is something the Prime Minister was quite keen to draw attention to
02:07at Cabinet this morning. So he said the Labour Party has a process for challenging a leader
02:13and that has not been triggered. The good old process coming up once again.
02:18His hands are tied, Cleo. The process hasn't been triggered. There's nothing the guy can do.
02:23Yeah, and it really reminds me of Starmer, the lawyer here, which is the idea that there is,
02:28you know, an absolute rulebook. He knows it better than anybody and that shall be applied.
02:32And I think, as you have been keen to point out before, when that meets politics, that isn't really
02:38the case. Things can be written down and codified in lots of different ways. But, you know, we have
02:43an unwritten constitution. The Labour Party's leadership rulebook can be fairly unwritten when
02:48it really matters too.
02:50I'm sure that's right. The other big kind of Keir Starmer the lawyer thing we had was that it was
02:54all
02:54going to be solved with one big speech, I think, which we'll get to in a minute. So other things
02:59that
02:59happened over the weekend, we had the appointment of Harriet, some oldies but goldies, Harriet
03:04Harman and Gordon Brown popped up in Downing Street. I think Harriet Harman was appointed
03:09to do a job that she was also appointed to do last year, or even perhaps the year before
03:13that, to advise on policy for women and girls. And Gordon Brown's title is something like
03:20International Global Economics Finance, I don't know, Envoy, maybe?
03:25That is actually pretty close, Helen, but it's not quite right. Officially, it is Special
03:29Envoy on Global Finance and Cooperation.
03:32Oh, totally understand what that job is, yep.
03:34Yeah, it's a little word salad.
03:36It didn't go down very well with people who thought that the voters on last Thursday were
03:41not saying what we really want is a return to 2008, please. So I'm sure that the intent
03:46was to do something that was going to really help out Keir Starmer and practice the reality
03:49of that was not so much.
03:51It really occurred to me, actually, just quickly on those two appointments, that, you know,
03:55former Prime Ministers actually have pretty busy diaries. I don't just mean them on the
03:59golf course. But, you know, the idea that on Friday afternoon, someone in number 10 will
04:04thought, oh, yeah, we should get Gordon Brown back in, who incidentally, you know, very popular
04:09within SW1 in Labour circles, not amazingly well received across the rest of the country.
04:14But that those announcements were therefore planned quite well in advance. And I just wonder
04:19what results they were expecting from the local elections, where...
04:23Where that was the answer.
04:24Yes.
04:25Yeah. And it had a slight vibe of him getting mum and dad in to stop people bullying him,
04:30I would say. And that's with deep respect to both Harriet Harman and Gordon Brown.
04:34In the way these things often happen, there was a surprising little intervention over the
04:38weekend from Catherine West, who, for me anyway, is a little known, well, she was a little
04:43known Labour MP, essentially saying that if a cabinet minister doesn't get going and challenge
04:49the Prime Minister, get him to resign, then she was going to put her hat into the ring,
04:53which does, by the way, as a side note, have this kind of amazing echo back to me of Tory
04:59MPs of yore who've tried to get these things going. And, you know, I've talked with colleagues
05:03and after sounding them out, I have decided to do the honourable thing and make a complete
05:09tit of myself.
05:10So there was...
05:10I felt there was quite a lot of exhausted middle-aged woman, as an exhausted middle-aged
05:15woman, I can say this, energy coming from her, like, oh, for God's sake.
05:18Oh, I'll just do it myself.
05:19If not, are you going to do it?
05:21I'll have to do it myself again.
05:23Yeah, it's true. But it also had this kind of interesting cascade effect, because she
05:26was on the Laura Koonsberg show on Sunday, immediately before Bridget Philipson. And it also put a bit
05:33of pressure elsewhere, because I saw our old friend Josh Simons, off of Labour Together,
05:38was writing in the weekend papers, Helen.
05:41Yes, he did. So that was another kind of, for close observers of these things, Josh Simons,
05:45who wasn't until recently a Cabinet Office Minister, was kind of touted very much as
05:49a new Tony Blair a few years ago, who ran Labour Together, the think tank that Morgan
05:54McSweeney set up. And then he said, she said. But Josh coming out in public, with a kind
06:00of quite heartfelt thing, actually, about the problem being that Keir Starmer and the Labour
06:04Party, what the Labour Party was doing in Westminster, was miles and miles and miles away from what
06:08his constituents in the North West actually wanted. It was, yeah, it's quite a surprising
06:13intervention. Yeah. Although I should just say on the Laura Koonsberg and the Bridget Philipson
06:16and Catherine West appearing on the show on Sunday. With bobs on bobs.
06:21It also engenders a slight panic between you and I that we might have accidentally given
06:24ourselves Labour bobs, but I think we're okay. I'm taking serious hair growth supplements to try
06:29and sort myself out. Or I might just go for full Mohawk instead.
06:33Reverse Mohican. Reverse Mohican. The other interesting symmetry was that the Prime Minister gave this
06:38interview to the Observer saying he is going to be Prime Minister for 10 more years, which I thought
06:44was, you know, I'm going to be Britain's next top model. But also there was this incredible picture
06:50from the Prime Minister's Twitter account from 10 years ago, with the Prime Minister, Wes Streeting,
06:57and Catherine West herself taking their seats in the House of Commons.
07:01I mean, there was always a tweet, but this one is particularly good, seeing the three of them
07:04together. And then on Monday, in the kind of typical salami slice fashion that has been,
07:11I would say, a hallmark of this government, the Prime Minister gave this big make or break
07:16speech. Well, they billed it as a make or break speech. So they kind of went out there saying
07:20this is what it was going to be, which is another kind of classic lawyer thing.
07:24Yeah, it's asking for trouble because it's make or it could be break. And I would say most Labour MPs
07:29decided it was probably a break situation. He came out tireless, jacketless with his sleeves
07:35rolled up, which does have this kind of, you know, I'm here, I'm on the job, I'm ready to
07:40get going. But then he did read word by word from an autocue. So it doesn't quite have the
07:46same heft and power, I would say. But I think having these points, you know, judge me by the
07:52local elections, judge me by my make or break speech, judge me by the King's speech that we
07:58keep having these kind of goalposts shuffled along for essentially Labour MPs to make up
08:04their minds.
08:05And there were three things that he said in the speech, weren't there? So the first was
08:08quite surprising. We've talked a bit about this on podcast before, of just how far the
08:13government are going towards not just alignment with the EU, but kind of slightly suggesting
08:18that we would rejoin the EU, which is remarkable. And there's been lots of polling, lots of Labour
08:23MPs kind of congratulating themselves that this is great, because actually, most people think
08:26Brexit was a mistake. You might well think Brexit is a mistake, you know, opinions vary. But
08:32the question isn't, should we go back to 2016 and decide whether to leave or remain? It's
08:36from where we are now, should we rejoin the EU? And that's a like massive thing to just
08:41drop into the mix.
08:42Yeah, those are not going to be on good terms that we would rejoin. I also think this is
08:46something that we talked about on Friday, about how you interpret polling, are you really
08:50listening to what the public is saying? And when you actually dig into people's takes
08:56on Brexit, it is not Brexit itself that the majority of the public hate, it's that politicians
09:02haven't followed through and delivered it properly. And lots of people can end up being
09:07in favour. Some of the really interesting polling I've seen, which we'll put into our show notes,
09:11people can be interested in rejoining, but when they hear the implications of what that actually
09:16means, particularly on free movement, people don't like it.
09:20I also think that it's this mistake that I keep seeing again and again from, frankly,
09:28people who are quite well off, elite, they have a very particular set of views that they
09:34don't want to change. And as discussed on Friday, I don't think they'll be changing their
09:38views based on Thursday's local election results. And that is the idea that Brexit is the cause
09:44of people's problems, not a symptom of how people are feeling. This is exactly where the
09:49public have been pretty much since the 2008 financial crisis. And these people need to
09:54wake up to understand what vast ways of the country are actually saying here. And I don't
10:00think talking about closer alignment is really going to cut it.
10:05He did a very strong kind of his own personal leadership, which, I mean, it's quite odd to
10:10deliberately lean into not the Labour government, not the Labour movement, not the manifesto, not
10:15the team, but that I, I, I. There's a lot of kind of I, I, I am going to lead,
10:20which I don't,
10:20I mean, that's perhaps not a wise choice to have done yesterday and probably something that's pushed
10:24people who might well have been with him even further away, because it does feel quite egotistical.
10:29Okay, so a quick recap on where we are, Helen. So since the Prime Minister's speech Monday
10:35morning, which feels eons ago, frankly, where he said he wasn't going to walk away, he was going to
10:40fight off any leadership challenge. That's true. He's doing that. And he's in the process to help
10:45him because we are approaching this magical threshold of 81 MPs who are unhappy with his
10:51leadership, but they are not all backing a contender yet. So, you know, an amazing Labour
10:58inertia is what is keeping him safe for now. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, it's going to be the
11:03King's speech and the horses are all trotting around nervously, getting, getting ready to go on
11:08parade. Yeah, big excitement for that. And in the meantime, there's this awkward situation where
11:14the Prime Minister's had a cabinet meeting this morning. And, you know, we're told that the members
11:19of the cabinet, like Shabana Mahmood, who's the Home Secretary, have said that he should set out a
11:23roadmap for when he is going to go. So we're going to have a lovely chat next about how incredibly
11:29awkward the interpersonal part of all this is, because, you know, if it's tricky to watch on
11:35Twitter, and if it's tricky to watch on the news channels, can you even imagine what it is like
11:40behind that black front door?
11:44So I was watching on the news last night, and it was that absolute classic when these things
11:48happen, everyone's outside Downing Street with the outside broadcast cameras and the lights. And
11:53I just think to myself, this is like really, actually, you have to have a bit of sympathy
11:57for the people the other side of the door, particularly, there's like teenage children
12:01that live on that street. And you sort of don't have to do it like this. I do feel there's
12:05a real
12:06kind of there's a grubbiness and a kind of feeding frenzy and just a slight unpleasantness sometimes
12:12about how far we quickly tip into how intrusive this is. I think you and I've both been in Downing
12:17Street when it's really, really grim. And there's, you know, the end of Theresa May's premiership,
12:23there was quite a lot of showdown cabinet meetings where the various points, you know,
12:29she was coming under massive pressure, and she was going to be made to step down. And you're just
12:34kind of, there's this massive anticipation, because the cabinet meeting is the one thing
12:38that is, everybody knows when it is, everyone processes up, it's a very kind of performative
12:42piece of theatre. And if you're actually in the room, quite often, and I suspect, obviously
12:48you don't know, this has been the case today, it's a bit of a damp squib. So you get all
12:52of
12:52this kind of, I'm going to be briefing this, and I'm going to be saying this, and actually
12:55quite often, ministers telling their own teams, or I'm going to do this, and I'm going to
12:59do that. And then they all sit there together, having slagged off the prime minister,
13:03like almost up until the door of the meeting room, sometimes quite literally having been
13:07sending messages, and then they sit there in the room together. And there's like just
13:11a massive awkwardness where they're shuffling and looking at their shoes or trying to talk
13:17about all sorts of, you know, non things, and no one's really catching each other's eye.
13:21And then somebody in our day, it was quite often Michael Gove, who would suddenly make
13:27an impassioned defence of the prime minister, and he'd be looking at him thinking, pretty sure
13:30that quote just before this meeting came from you. But here you are, here you are standing
13:36up telling everybody it's really not okay. And then there's like a virtue signalling thing
13:40that goes around the table. And all these people who you know full well, are trying to topple
13:44the prime minister, and then saying, the thing is, I just think colleagues really should calm
13:48down and remember who we are and what we're here for. And you get this massive pomposity
13:53with the undercurrent of like, we all know that you're all you're all at it.
13:57Yeah, a lot of regretful nods, a lot of clapping, actually, and not like ironic, like slow claps,
14:02but actual kind of happy clapping. I mean, it also needs to be said, I've been very much
14:10at the kind of junior end of the spectrum as a staffer here, and obviously, more senior,
14:15but coming in and working in that building, when you're not in the room for those kind
14:22of really intimate, should we stay? Should we go? What's our plan? You know, it was brief
14:25that the prime minister was getting in takeaways last night, and a few key advisors were there,
14:29and they were working out what to do. And you know, as far as I can see, about 8pm last
14:33night,
14:33they started hitting the phones to get people to come out and defend them. I was thinking,
14:37have you guys been on an away day or something? Where have you been? But if you're elsewhere
14:41in the building, you know, it can be a lovely sunny day like it is today, and Tuesday, 12th of
14:47May,
14:47and then you go inside, and it's like all the sunlight and vitamin D and oxygen has just
14:53left you. And you've walked into the kind of underworld of the vampires. And it's the sense
15:00of dread that is kind of dripping through the walls. And the sense of inertia, like you,
15:05it sounds really difficult. But many, many staffers just sit and refresh Twitter and are getting more
15:12information from watching the news like anybody else than they are from inside the building,
15:16because a kind of information tree just breaks down, and the doors close. And that bunker
15:23mentality people talk about really does happen. And it's like a bunker within a bunker.
15:28I think that the people in the people outside of the inner circle in number 10 are obviously the
15:31least often quite often the least well informed in the whole of Whitehall. Yeah, because nobody,
15:36nobody remembers to tell. I'm a Peter Hill, the principal private secretary for Theresa May was
15:41really good at remembering that actually, yeah, he was everything that happened in the in the inner
15:46circle, and then was happening outside in the media. And there's this gap in the middle where
15:49all the people who worked in the building might actually quite appreciate it if their bosses stood
15:53up and said, actually, this is what's happening today, or this is where we are, or this is where
15:56we're worried. It's a, it's very easy to forget all of that when you're in the office.
16:00The thing that was really useful for me, though, as a junior staffer was our office was right
16:04next to the cabinet room. So we looked out onto the sort of vestibule where all the cabinet
16:10meet beforehand for coffee and biscuits. And it's obviously incredibly awkward, because
16:14they all know that they're different runners and riders, and they're giving up to say something
16:18and it can take some of the sting out of it, because they have to stay and chat and be
16:22human
16:22with each other before they have their actual meeting. And I would see another little room
16:27where you would occasionally take a cabinet minister in to have a nice chat. And there is
16:32this box, isn't there? Like a, like cubby holes where they can all put their devices.
16:37Yeah. So it's quite an important rule that, that you're supposed to, before you go into
16:41the cabinet room, even if you're a cabinet minister, put your phone in this little cubby
16:44hole. They don't always do that. Some cabinet ministers carry more than one phone. So they
16:50have a phone for leaving.
16:51The old burner.
16:52The old burner and a phone for taking with them. One of the things that obviously nobody
16:56really, apart from an incredibly niche set of people, I was very, very outraged to find
17:01out. But one of the cabinet, I think it's Steve Reid, tweeted from inside the cabinet.
17:07In support of the prime minister.
17:08I mean, it doesn't matter. It can be in support of anything. You shouldn't be tweeting live
17:11from a cabinet meeting. And also you shouldn't be. Darren Jones, who was out there doing his
17:15Darren Jonesing in defence of the prime minister. That's the chief secretary to the prime minister
17:19who runs the cabinet office and is the poor soul who is, it's quite often featured in our
17:23podcast because he's sent out to defend the indefensible regularly. And there he was doing
17:28the morning media around this morning. He briefed out the cabinet agenda, Cleo. You're not
17:35supposed to do that. You're not supposed to say, actually, this morning, we're talking about X or Y
17:39or Z. The cabinet is supposed to be a sacred place. So I was very offended by that. And also
17:44outraged to discover that there's 32 people attend that meeting.
17:48What? I think they've probably gone past the like Christmas dinner extension. They must have
17:52had to buy another one. I don't know how you even get 32 people in that room.
17:55Yeah. Do you think they're on like double, double decked couches or something?
17:58Maybe they're like one in, one out. Maybe they've just really snuggled. Maybe they're
18:01much more slender.
18:02Yeah, that's intense. And that's not including, obviously, staffers who sit around the outside
18:06too. That's a full room.
18:08That room is not going to snuggled.
18:10You can't really avoid eye contact in that situation because there's just too many eyes.
18:13No, it's not every way you look.
18:15Maybe that's the way to get out.
18:16Well, how about the name that everybody keeps talking about? I want to talk this morning about
18:22Andy Burnham. And does he have a route to become leader of the Labour Party slash Prime Minister?
18:28That's why I find this one really interesting. So I think there's a like fable of what is
18:33not working in the tale, the recent tale of Andy Burnham.
18:36Should we begin with the first point, which is he is not an MP. He's the Mayor of Greater
18:41Manchester.
18:41Apparently, he wanted to stand as an MP. So he wanted to resign the Mayoralty. And he
18:47wanted to stand as an MP and rejoin Parliament. And he wanted to stand for Gorton and Denton,
18:51which is the constituency where there was a by-election where it was Hannah Spencer, the
18:56Green former plumber, who is now an MP. And it was Andy Burnham had wanted to stand and
19:03contest that seat, which had been held by the Labour Party. And he'd been blocked from standing
19:07by the NEC, which is the governing committee of the Labour Party. Shabhan Mahmood, the
19:12chair, had recused herself rather magnificently from that decision. But all of the briefing
19:16was that it was Keir Starmer and his team. They've been very clear that Andy Burnham was
19:20not allowed to resign the Mayoralty, trigger a Mayoral election, and that he was not allowed
19:26to get back into Parliament. Now, my view is that when you look at the outcome of that
19:30election result, which was basically the Green Party won, and then the vote was split,
19:35really, Green, Reform, Labour, it might have been a much more politically smart thing to
19:40do to let Andy Burnham fight that seat. Because if Andy Burnham had fought that seat, probably,
19:45I mean, who knows, he might well have won. And then he would be part of the runners and
19:49riders now. But actually, what could have happened is that the vote would have been split between
19:55Labour and the Greens and the Reform candidate would have won. Now, you might think that's like,
19:59why would that be in the interest of the Labour Party? Well, instead of going into this
20:03recent round of local elections, having given the Greens a massive bounce of having won this
20:08election in the Labour heartland, you know, having annoyed Andy Burnham on the sidelines,
20:13you could have had a living example that if you want to stop reform, you've got this,
20:18it doesn't work, the kind of Greens-Labour split. So it could have actually been to the Prime Minister's
20:23advantage to let Andy Burnham stand. But that would have required foresight.
20:26It would have required foresight. And I mean, I'm not a political operative. And if even I can work out
20:32that might have been better, then probably you'd hope that they could be smarter than that.
20:36The other thing that is a bit like your point about everyone's an expert on developed betting,
20:40we've all, you know, become experts on the Labour election rulebook. I mean, there's a very good
20:45House of Commons library note, which she's had her highlighter pens up, people. So look out.
20:51Well, I love the House of Commons library. It's very good. But it has in it that the rules are,
20:58and everyone's talking about the rules are, you have to be an MP in order to be a candidate for
21:03the leadership of the Labour Party. That was only written down quite recently. So in general,
21:08do you have to be a member of Parliament in order to lead the parliamentary Labour Party and be the
21:13Prime Minister? For sure. There's no nowhere that says actually, these things have to happen in the
21:19perfect sequence. So it would be perfectly possible were the Labour Party to decide to do this,
21:24to have a leadership election, to allow Andy Burnham to stand, and then to kind of sort it
21:29out slightly afterwards. So if he becomes a leader of the Labour Party, then have a by-election. And
21:33then, I mean, super awkward if he doesn't manage to win that seat. So you'd want to really,
21:38really deploy the big guns. But all of that is possible. I think it is just a perfect illustration
21:44of the kind of mess we've got to and the way that people get so trapped in this very,
21:49very closed thinking. These aren't laws of gravity. This is a rule book which the Labour Party
21:53has changed God knows how many times, including disastrously in 2014 to make it one member,
21:58one vote, which has allowed all sorts of other things to discuss. They could just let Andy
22:02Burnham be part of the competition. And actually, everybody should want that. If there is going
22:07to be a contest now for leader of the Labour Party, for the love of God, it needs to be
22:11a
22:11clean one and not have like another king over the water. And I didn't get my chance and I got
22:15wrapped up in some sort of process. Let's just go for it. Pick a person and then back them
22:20and then please get on with it. Helen, do you think that there is a sort of mandate
22:24problem with Andy Burnham because he has not actually been elected to become an MP? Do you
22:30think people can make a fair argument that this is not what the public voted for if he becomes
22:34Labour leader? So you can either say that Keir Starmer was the Labour leader at the point of
22:38the election, therefore he needs to be the Labour leader until the next general election. That's
22:42a perfectly kind of quite pious, but you can make the argument. Or you can say actually what matters
22:47the most to the country, the party, the, you know, insert whatever, is having the best
22:53person to do the job. And I think there will definitely be people who will recoil with horror
23:00and if Labour Party members are pearl clutches, they will be clutching their pearls, pearl wearers
23:04rather. At the notion that actually you could just say what the hell, Andy could be on the
23:10ballot paper and then sort out the MP bit slightly sequentially or be doing it live while
23:14there's a by-election going on or whatever, whatever. But actually I don't think really
23:18process is the point and what people will really care about is, is this person any good? Are
23:25they actually effective at managing the parliamentary Labour Party? Do they have a plan? Do they
23:29look like a good Prime Minister? Do they sound like a good Prime Minister? The kind of technicality
23:34of actually, according to the rule book on page 34, he should have done this in this particular
23:38order and it's been an unconstitutional, but I mean, who cares? All of this stuff is completely
23:43made up and the Labour Party excel in sort of processes it applies to themselves and then they
23:48also excel in processes it applies to the rest of us. But it's like a bit, wake up and smell
23:53the
23:53coffee. We don't, even if we ever did live in that world, we definitely don't live in it now.
23:57We have got to have a functioning, effective, good government as soon as possible, not least just
24:02get sensibly through the next winter. Yeah, I agree with that. I think a botched leadership contest
24:07now means whoever replaces Starmer honestly could be gone by Christmas. And, and we have another one,
24:14like, I think we could have a Liz Trust situation if it's not done right, because it is such a
24:20divided
24:20parliamentary party. And we've said this so many times, but the thing that keeps Keir Starmer safe
24:25is the failure for them all to coalesce behind someone. And so you have to have a situation where
24:31people don't feel like a key candidate was kept out on a technicality and that kind of thing.
24:39Am I right in thinking he also could come in through the Lords, which would be quite out there?
24:44It would be, it will be bold. He could do, but I just don't think he, I don't think he
24:48needs to.
24:49It's perfectly possible. If enough MPs, back to Andy Burnham, the magic 81 number of MPs say,
24:55actually, we'd like it to be Andy Burnham, then you could start the contest, start the by-election,
25:01you could do it sequentially, you could do whatever, all of these things are possible,
25:03because they are not laws carved in stone, even they are laws that can be changed with the stroke
25:08of a pen. And actually, Keir Starmer, as a former lawyer, would be pretty good at redrafting the
25:13handbook to reflect this. Maybe that's a retirement project.
25:16Yeah, exactly. I thought of a perfect job for myself.
25:18I mean, the other thing that's happened really rapidly, a bit like talking about members of the
25:21cabinet suddenly saying, come on, shouldn't we be more grown up than this? You can see in both the
25:27MPs, the SPADs, the briefers, the commentariat, just how rapidly everyone goes from, let's get
25:32Keir Starmer to, I'm just not sure we should be changing our leader all the time. And shouldn't
25:37we be asking bigger questions? And it's sort of, you get whiplash from the change in tempo of like,
25:43is this really the answer to the country? Any of these people who want to be leaders of the Labour
25:47Party need to set out really clearly, not just to their own members, but also to the rest of
25:51members, what is the point of making them the leader? And what are they going to do? What's
25:56their answer to the questions? Because Labour have the most extraordinary amount of actual real life
26:00power. They don't feel like it. It doesn't feel like it, but they really do. They can change the
26:05country if they want to. They just need to coalesce around a plan and then do it.
26:09All right. So that's where we are up to now. We are in sort of silly season now, post the
26:15cabinet
26:15meeting, because no one quite knows what's going to happen next. We've got to see how MPs,
26:21Labour MPs sit with this new information. The Prime Minister is sitting behind his process and
26:27they have to coalesce behind someone. And, you know, a sign that we are in this silliness is that
26:31we've just been able to track Andy Burnham's train journey from Manchester down to London. He has
26:36arrived, everyone. So hold on to your hats.
26:39But there are others too. Shall we start with Angela Rayner?
26:44Yes. I mean, she is a good, a very magnificent thorn in Keir Starmer's side, actually, because
26:49obviously they were a kind of team of rivals while she was deputy leader of the Labour Party and deputy
26:55prime minister. But by all accounts, they haven't always seen eye to eye. They represent quite different
27:01wings of the party. And so when she left government in September, the kind of opportunity for her to
27:09be on the back benches, get a base beneath her, causing some problems, I think has been pretty
27:14inevitable. And she has made some quite tricky statements about Mandelson, about some of his
27:20policy positions in the last few months that have not been helpful. So it seems pretty clear she's been
27:26gearing up for something like this. Apparently, she's been making money in the city, talking to
27:31traders there and big banks. And she's been learning about defence and kind of boning up on that part of
27:38her knowledge that she doesn't really have, which I think is fair enough. She is also just a flaming
27:44redheaded vixen. And I kind of love her. Much of the public have really liked her until this HMRC tax
27:51situation, which is when she had to step down as deputy prime minister, because although the row
27:57is still ongoing, she allegedly did not pay tax on a house that she bought. And that has actually
28:05really not gone down well. If you look at focus groups about her, the tax thing is just really hated
28:13by people. And so they had to be quite careful, I think, about backing Ange, as fun as she is.
28:20You know, she reminds me of someone who, when you have one of those friends where you think,
28:25you're really fun, I love going out for like a drink or dinner with you. Would I start a business
28:30with you and like, remortgage my house to do that? I don't know. And I don't know if that is...
28:36It was just giving me a really strong stare.
28:38No, I'll do it with you in a second. Here we are. My wagon is attached to yours, Helen.
28:44But I wonder whether when push comes to shove, some of that, you know, enjoying her authenticity
28:51and thinking that she's fun. I wonder once the kind of head to head polls start coming out,
28:57which they inevitably will, some of her backers might lose their nerve.
29:00It was surprising. She did issue a statement on Sunday, I think it was, which was both managing
29:05to be kind of, well, this is not okay, the situation needs to change, but not, it kind
29:10of pulled its punches quite a lot. And I thought that was surprising that, that definitely said
29:14to me that she's not actually sure if she wants to do this, because if you really want
29:18to do it, you'd be coming out fighting.
29:20And actually, as has been pointed out by quite a few people, she did not talk about immigration
29:24in that statement. She was very complimentary about Andy Burnham and said it was a mistake
29:29that he'd not been able to run in Gorton and Denton. So we'll park that for now.
29:34But, you know, to have backed a potential rival, but, you know, the government's immigration
29:39record is actually pretty strong. It's come at, it's come down under the Labour government.
29:44Really significantly.
29:44Yeah.
29:45Really significantly.
29:45Yeah. And it's quite interesting to not sort of point to that as a success. And, you
29:51know, there were these stories that she thinks Shibana Mahmood should go as Home Secretary.
29:57Poor Shibana, she keeps, you know, I must take her name out of my mouth, but I quite like
30:01and I want to get on to talking about her shortly. Angela Rayner, she might have been supportive
30:05of Andy Burnham. She did not talk about Wes Streeting, though, in her little chat EPD
30:10statement. What do you make of Wes, Helen?
30:12Well, I think Wes is that all the Westminster rumours are that Wes is the one who is most
30:16ready to launch his campaign. I think the question about Wes is incredibly ambitious for the Labour
30:21Party and for himself. That's not a crime. He is a very good communicator. He's very good
30:26in the telly. He's got a very quick turn of phrase. He's not frightened of tackling arguments
30:32head on. So he's quite good if you put him against a reformed person or a green person.
30:35There's lots of kind of boxes to tick on where Streeting could look really good. The question
30:39is still the question, which is why and what? Because he has not set out in any way, shape
30:45or form what his mandate or prospect is. He's not got a reputation as being a big developer
30:50of ideas or a thinker in the Labour Party. His like, his heritage is not, here is my diagnosis
30:56of the problem of our state and here is my plan for doing it. So I think the fear when
31:00it comes
31:00to Wes is that, Wes, she said, talking about him when it comes to Mr Streeting or the Secretary
31:05of State for Health. I like to call him Wesley Snipes because people snipe at him pretty badly
31:10too. Oh, I see what you've done there. He's got his detractors, Helen. Okay. I would say.
31:14I will refer to him from now on as the Secretary of State for Health until that is not true.
31:17So anyway, the Secretary of State for Health. Are you just going to get like a better communicator
31:21version of Keir Starmer? I think is the question. And has he actually, yes, he's been Secretary
31:26of State for Health. The NHS has gone through some really difficult and challenging things.
31:30Some things are going well, weightiness are going down. Some things are going really badly.
31:34Like the abolition of NHS England has not been a well run or smooth process. There's all
31:38sorts of kind of question marks there. So is he going to bring the sort of excellent
31:42public administration, attention to detail, grip, ruthlessness, and an actual plan for
31:48what the country needs? Like big question mark, I think. Is he well organised and well
31:52liked? This is his family. I mean, he's been part of the Labour Party since he was a student
31:56politician. It's very much in the blood. And it's worth remembering that these people have
31:59known each other for decades. Their adult life has been spent with each other. So the kind
32:06of ties and the grudges and their loyalties go back a million years.
32:10Yeah. And he carries with him, this is part of my Wesley Snipes gag, but he carries with
32:16him a lot.
32:16He's commit to the gag. Keep it. It's a good gag. We're going to sweat it.
32:19So good. But he carries with him a lot of the baggage that the Prime Minister does. You know,
32:24he's seen as very close to Peter Mandelson. He's seen as very close to Morgan McSweeney. He is
32:32despised, actually, by some of the Labour MPs. And there are already briefings that are kind
32:39of trying to kneecap him before he's even become leader or prime minister. The Mandelson
32:43point, I think, is an important one. Because if you remember, he was the opening cabinet minister
32:49who sort of jumped the gun on the Humble Address and the Met investigation by releasing his text
32:54messages between himself and Peter Mandelson preemptively.
32:58Which is a very good political move, to be fair to him. He's got good judgment on those
33:02things.
33:03Well, he certainly felt it at the time. But I wonder, depending on when the next tranche
33:07of the Mandelson files comes out, whether he'll be actually looking quite exposed compared
33:11to the other candidates, because they'll only have his messages to judge.
33:16I'm sure this is for one of our later, you know, when we've got the other tranche, but
33:20a Labour Party insider said to me the other day that 43% of all Labour Prime Ministers have
33:24had to fire Peter Mandelson. Like, all Labour Prime Ministers ever.
33:27I thought that was a really, a really excellent stat.
33:32That's an amazing stat. Do you want to know another quite good stat?
33:34Yes.
33:3565% of the Prime Minister's reset speech, make or break reset speech yesterday morning,
33:42was recycled from his party conference speech in October.
33:46Not so much of a reset. That's the big story.
33:49The other thing about West Streeting, which is material, actually, particularly when it comes
33:53to whether donors are going to back him or not, is that his parliamentary majority is
33:58tiny. And on any vote projection, I mean, and he only just scraped through, it's under
34:02a thousand. He only just scraped through the last election. It's almost impossible to imagine,
34:07given where we are now, that he was, that seat is safe. And so you're going to have a leader
34:11of the Labour Party who has to basically run away from their own constituency. It's called
34:16Chicken Run, famously, and go and take somebody else's seat. And that is a, that is a bad look.
34:22Okay, well, we've done Andy Pandy, Wesley Snipes and Angela Rippin. How about we just have
34:30a little look at a few lesser mentioned names, but people I, a couple of them, I think are
34:34genuinely quite credible and good.
34:36Are you going to talk about Alcans again?
34:37I haven't got a chance. Yeah. I mean, Alcans, I think he's good. For anyone who is not familiar
34:44with him, he's a defence minister. He used to be commanding officer of the special boat
34:47service. He would, he would negotiate pretty well. That's for sure. I mean, he's done quite
34:52a bizarre tweet this morning, which is just a picture of the sky saying good morning, which
34:58I, sometimes it's just better to say nothing at all, as Roland Keating would say. I think
35:04he is, I think he's impressive. He's just an interesting, tough character. I suspect he
35:10just comes across as a bit flat-footed politically.
35:14If you're not watching this on YouTube, it's worth just going to have a look at Cleo's face.
35:18I'm wearing burgundy and I've gone burgundy. What can I say? Someone who else has got me
35:21blushing is Siobhanah Mahmood, the Home Secretary. I think she's, I think she's got a really good
35:27track record. She has just stayed tough and she stayed on her brief and, and she just liked
35:33it across system, which I don't think, you know, I hear civil servants really like her.
35:37She's a good minister.
35:38Ed Miliband, could he make a return, Helen? Okay. Yvette Cooper, the Foreign Secretary.
35:45Sorry?
35:45She's not got a Labour Bob, so she's out probably.
35:47She's out on Bob grounds. I'm sure we're going to get to this again, that there will be no
35:52female candidates. And I do, it does drive me mad that if you look at other parties, it's
35:59just insane that the Labour Party have not managed to elect, or go anywhere near electing
36:04a female.
36:04And yet so many senior officers of states have got women in them, but you're right, none
36:09of these women are being talked up at all.
36:11No.
36:11And I just talked up Siobhanah Mahmood and now that's over.
36:15Just to finish, regardless of who ends up being amongst the runners and riders, perhaps
36:20we could do a bit of catch-all advice for them and things that are worth doing, covering
36:26bases. So each one of them, if they haven't already got a spreadsheet, they need to get
36:32a spreadsheet going. And it'll be colour-coded, which we love, depending on whether they think
36:37someone is in their camp, whether they're a maybe.
36:40This is the first rule of politics, learn to count. So basically work out who your backers
36:44are.
36:44Obviously, the best thing to do is to have a few endorsements. And if you've got loads,
36:49you want to be able to trickle them out at the right time. You might have a few, you
36:52know, former senior Labour people. I bet everyone's trying to get Tony Blair. You might get people
36:58in the House of Lords. You know, for Labour, you want union bosses backing you. You want
37:03to have clusters of MPs. So you were just talking about the 2024 new intake of Labour MPs. They're
37:08quite a powerful lobby now. And they can use that to both, you know, actually shape where
37:16they want the parliamentary party to go and to get a few, you know, particular things.
37:21It might be jobs, but it might be, you know, funding for particular interests that they have,
37:27that kind of thing. Inevitably, there's trying to meet with newspaper editors and lush them
37:31up a little bit to get them behind you saying nice things about you. And I think one of the
37:37things I would say to, and I suspect it's going to be Wes Streeting who'll be most accused
37:42of this, is at least in Tory leadership contests, nobody wanted to wheel the knife first. Nobody
37:48wanted to be Brutus. So there was this kind of lemming quality of everyone trying to work
37:54out who's going to go first. And I actually thought, and you were able to correct me,
37:59that Catherine West might have been a decoy over the weekend to try and like pave the way
38:04for somebody else. But it sounds like she really did just go for it very bravely by herself.
38:09She fired her own starting gun and I thought she'd been helping somebody else. And there's
38:14another little bit just for the MPs who are working out what to do. There's this really
38:19crucial moment on resigning from your PPS or ministerial jobs where quite often you don't
38:27want to be the first to go because if it goes wrong, you're out on a limb, but you don't
38:31want to be the last to go because you're unlikely to be able to leverage yourself a better job because
38:36you've just fallen in with everybody. And it's so grotesque. And everyone's trying to
38:40work out what everybody else is doing. And again, it's not a good day for governing the
38:44country. We've got a cost of living crisis. We've got an international crisis. But still,
38:49this is what it boils down to.
38:50That is absolutely solid gold advice about how to win a leadership election that anybody
38:55wants to, should listen to. My side of this is not any of that, obviously wouldn't occur
38:59to me. My side of it is, are you ready to actually govern? So I would hope that for the
39:05country's
39:06sake, actually, whoever is going to be leader of the Labour Party next is going to come out
39:10fighting and have a plan, a bit like the first 100 days in 1997, where you know exactly every
39:17single day the thing that you're doing. And you've gone through every single department
39:21of state. Quite a lot of the governing this government has been doing is basically on the
39:26edges. So instead of asking big and fundamental questions about how our economy is structured,
39:32what matters, the really kind of profound principle stuff, they are instead taking a
39:36little tiny set of questions, which the civil service is serving up to them, which are all
39:40kind of the icing on the surface.
39:42In the public interest.
39:43In the public interest, of course. And they've not got into tackling any of the big fundamentals,
39:47which is the, why does everybody keep voting the same way, saying this isn't working for
39:51me? You are not going to get the answer to that, or any change that works in time for
39:56the next election, unless you do something really radical. So whoever the next leader
39:59is, they need to come in with a really radical, achievable programme for government, which they
40:03have, by the way, got the agreement of before they are elected. So you'd want the new leader
40:07to have a really rock solid team of people. I mean, I'm probably just now making up something
40:13that just doesn't exist in any way, shape or form. But in your ideal scenario, all the
40:18governing that I've seen that works, particularly around the Prime Minister, is when you have a
40:22rock solid team of the people supporting the Prime Minister who will lie down in the road
40:26for them, but are smart enough to be able to shut the door and say, actually, you've
40:29really cocked that up, go back out and sort it out. So there needs to be brave, honesty
40:33and a really close team, but who are super loyal.
40:35Yeah, I totally agree. I think actually the two bits of advice inevitably marry together
40:40really well. Because if you're taking the kind of small P politics bit, this is an existential
40:46crisis for the Labour Party. And they've got to treat it as such. And they've got to really
40:51get this right. They have to be quite swift. And they have to be very, very clear. Similarly,
40:57they have to treat it as a crisis once they come into government. And I completely agree,
41:03the only way to treat this is as an imminent, imminent threat to us if we don't get things
41:10right. And that's the only all the kind of hyperbole we see on Twitter and the kind of
41:16feeding frenzy that we get that energy needs to be channeled into actually governing as
41:22efficiently and kind of aggressively as possible.
41:25Thanks for listening to today's episode. Remember to follow the show on your podcast
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41:30And please do email us your feedback and your questions. That is in the room at independent
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41:42on Instagram at in the room dot pod. This podcast is part of the independent podcast network and is
41:47produced in association with Next Chapter Studios. The executive producers are Carrie Rose and
41:52Olivia Foster. And the producer is Sam Durham. And a special mention to our content editor,
41:57Maya Anushka, our video editor, Vali Raza, and our videographer Dan Faber.
42:05Thanks for listening. And we'll see you next week.
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