00:00You don't get his voice at all. You don't get any of his opinions. You occasionally get through a private
00:04secretary reporting back to people. We discussed whatever issue with the prime minister. He agreed. He always agrees. And then
00:12eventually, there were three text messages he wrote to Peter Mandelson, which is in his own voice. And it's during
00:19the general election and then just after. And even in personal communications, he's saying things like, thanks. Good to hear
00:28from you, Peter.
00:28People just want politics that treads more lightly on their lives or a unite message is more strong than a
00:34division one. And it's so good just to be getting on with the job of governing.
00:38Your impressions got really good.
00:40Like so.
00:40Just it's too late here. It's not going to be any used to it now.
00:43I know. I've only had done voice notes. But you just think, like, where is this guy? And we are
00:50losing sight of what this whole thing is really meant to be about, which is what led him to make
00:55some of these decisions.
00:56And why are we even here to begin with? And there is no mention throughout these documents of any victims
01:04of sexual violence.
01:05So I think there's two really important things there. I think that Keir Starmer is not just absent in the
01:13sense that there's hardly any mention of him. He's sort of a completely absent presence.
01:19I don't think I've ever seen another situation where you would read the set of messages from the people who
01:24are working this closely to the prime minister, and you wouldn't be able to feel the shape of a prime
01:29minister.
01:29So it's not really about kind of, can you see that, but you can, you can piece together the person
01:34and the atmosphere they create and the fact that there's deference and people will be forever referring to.
01:39Actually, it's more common to, when you'd see a set of documents like this together, you'd get like 15 different
01:45versions of people saying, well, the prime minister wants this or that or the other.
01:49And they'd all be contradicting, because obviously people would be saying the prime minister wants what they want, and magically
01:53that would coincide.
01:54And you'd be trying to say, well, hang on a second, how can this prime minister who is all over
01:57this actually want all these contradictory things?
02:01So the absence of the prime minister is not just interesting and striking in the fact that there's no actual
02:07sign of his person, his voice, his messaging, his anything, but he's not, he's not there as a, as a
02:14kind of presence in the land in any of the conversations.
02:17There's no kind of, well, what does he think and what we're doing and why we're doing this?
02:21And actually, the prime minister was very clear.
02:23Most of the time, even with Boris Johnson, you and I occasionally get really cross because we'd get some back
02:28channel message from some department where somebody, some special advisory number 10 that neither of us could remember the name
02:33of, had been going around saying the prime minister wants.
02:35You're like, hang on a second, what's that?
02:37There is just no, the prime minister wants here.
02:40And I think that is really striking.
02:43You're much more important point about where are the victims or where is the sense of what actually is the
02:49problem here or what is the culture that allows you to get to a point where you just brush over
02:54the fact that this is a known association with somebody who has committed some horrible, horrible crimes.
03:01And that is known against women.
03:03I am really, really fed up with hearing the kind of we must think of the victims just said like
03:08a piece of throat clearing and a cough.
03:10When you think it has, in fact, and maybe, maybe we can be proved wrong.
03:16Maybe it is the case that the UK government has thought quite carefully about the actual women who live in
03:22this country, UK citizens who were affected by this scandal, who were abused, who every time this story is put
03:30to the top of the news, not their doing, not their making, nothing to do with them.
03:34They are, in fact, dragged back into it, whether it's, OK, they might not be dragged back into it as
03:38impersonally they're on the front page of the newspaper.
03:40But it can't be anything other than traumatising.
03:43Are the government doing anything at all to support those people?
03:48They must know who they are.
03:49Like it might be the people think, well, actually, no, thanks very much.
03:51I don't really want your support and help.
03:53But it will be monstrous that if in all of this, for all of these fine, you know, there's not
03:57even enough fine words in here, by the way, about.
04:00There aren't any.
04:01But has anybody actually done anything?
04:03There aren't any.
04:03There aren't any.
04:03There aren't any.
04:03There aren't any.
04:03Mm-hmm.
Comments