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00:00It's Keir Starmer's final week in office. 739 days ago now, he swept to victory with a massive
00:07majority, pushing out the Tories and became Prime Minister. Today, we'll tell you where we think it
00:12went wrong for Keir Starmer. And generally, you begin at the beginning. Because the truth is,
00:18the first 100 days can define your premiership, as Andy Burnham is about to discover. Indeed.
00:24I'm Helen McNamara, the former Deputy Cabinet Secretary. And I'm Clea Watson, a former Special
00:28Advisor to Theresa May and Boris Johnson. And this is In The Room.
00:36Before we get into it, we would love it if you follow us on Instagram, where you can find all
00:40the best clips of the show. And you can find us at intheroom.pod. You can also watch us on
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00:54on
00:54intheroom at independent.co.uk. Cleo, where do we find ourselves in the final week of Keir
01:00Starmer's premiership? Yeah, so it's a classic period for just getting a few final bits and
01:04bobs done. A little T crossing, a little I dotting. The kind of final stages is when a Prime
01:11Minister wants to suddenly secure a legacy. They want to be able to point to things that they got
01:15done, even if that means it's in their very final days. We've talked before about how we had that
01:20word, Theresa May. So on Monday, the Home Secretary was in the House of Commons, laying out her plans
01:26for how she wants to deport the Rochdale grooming gang leader. And it's not easy, actually. It requires
01:33a negotiation involving the Foreign Secretary with Pakistan. It might even involve sanctions.
01:39But there'll be real frustration and real eagerness to get this through. And Andy Burnham's already made
01:45it clear in a tweet a couple of weeks ago that he wants this man deported as well, and that
01:50we just
01:50can't have people like this released in prison and roaming about in the UK and actually being provided
01:57for by the taxpayer for now, which is what's happening with him. There is also the Hillsborough
02:03law, which is a commitment that Keir Starmer made right at the very beginning, in his first 100 days,
02:09in fact, which we're going to be talking about shortly. So the Hillsborough law is a duty of candour
02:14for public officials. So they have to tell the truth in inquiries and investigations, which,
02:18to be honest, you would expect.
02:20There is a bit of an undignified rush going on at the moment, not just the things that Keir
02:24Starmer is trying to get his ownership of, but in government departments, you see that
02:28across the board at the moment, that people who think they're not going to be in the same job in
02:33a week's time are busy, like batting things out of the department really quickly. So we've talked
02:38about Keir Starmer in legacy mode. He is finally, and we said this right back at the beginning of our
02:43first episode, I think that he should govern like no one's watching and show more of his
02:48actual personality. And finally, finally, and frustratingly for people who were very supportive
02:53or are very supportive of Keir Starmer, he has literally in his last few weeks started
02:57showing more of his personality. And it's been quite, he's been quite funny. Keir Starmer tweeted
03:02at the Norway leader after our great victory at the weekend. He said, your boys took one hell of a
03:08beating. And for those of you who don't have this at the top of your minds, that was in fact,
03:13a line used by a Norway commentator in 1981. I'm reliably informed. It's a bit for my time.
03:20I was not paying attention. And it's a football joke. So double over the head.
03:24Anyway, we've done it anyway. There you go. Something for the lad. And he said, I really
03:29enjoyed this. He said, as part of the celebrations for pride, he said that we had the gay, very proudly
03:33that we had the gayest parliament ever, which is a great thing to say. So he's been suddenly,
03:38he feels like with the weight of the world off his shoulders, perhaps, he's been much more fun,
03:42come across much more like himself, has genuinely started to sound and feel authentic. And you've
03:48got loads of people saying, hang on a second, where has this guy been? Who was in your body for
03:52the
03:52whole of the two years of you being prime minister? And why haven't you been showing us
03:56this side of your personality?
03:58Rachel Reeves has had the same thing. She did this interview with Laura Koonsberg on Sunday.
04:02And she was asked any advice for, you know, an incoming chancellor. And Reeve said, don't cry
04:08on national television, because there was that awful moment of her in the House of Commons that
04:11people will remember that she was on the front bench in tears. And you just think, where have you
04:17been, guys? Where have you been? And it's such a shame. It's like the moment the pressure's off,
04:20it happens consistently. The moment the pressure's off, people start being themselves.
04:26Amazingly, they get a pretty good response to that. You know, similarly with Keir Starmer's team,
04:31I want to talk about shortly about his many turnovers of staff and how he has not always
04:36got both the appointments right, but how he's treated people right. But, you know, by all
04:41accounts, his exit drinks a couple of weeks ago, he was really funny, really sincere, really
04:46passionate. And again, his own staff was sitting around thinking, where's this guy been?
04:50Oh, for goodness sake, where has this guy been?
04:56Let's take you back to the summer of 2024. It wasn't quite as hot as it is now. But England
05:03were in a major football tournament, I'm told. Euros 2024. And eventually we did lose to Spain
05:11in the final, just nine days after Keir Starmer became Prime Minister. Charlie XCX's album Brat
05:19was in the charts. It was absolutely dominating culture.
05:23In the charts.
05:24In a top 40, too.
05:26It even hit radio, too.
05:29And we even had the US Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, talking about it on the
05:35campaign trail. And I think it's also important to just contextualise that, you know, where politics
05:40was at the time. Labour had just come in here on a landslide majority. Everybody, every
05:45available commentator was saying the Democrats are going to win. Kamala Harris is going to
05:50take over from Joe Biden and everything, you know, peace and sanity will remain. So everyone
05:56had this very comfortable feeling that summer that the grownups were in charge. But Britain
06:01had a new prime minister with a huge majority, of course, and the potential to reshape the
06:06country. I mean, that's the main thing. He felt he had a mandate to bring the change
06:10that he promised. However, he did not have a, quote, hot girl summer.
06:15He didn't. Instead, he spent the first 100 days basically squandering the massive bounce
06:21that he came in with. So he had huge amounts of political capital walking in that black door.
06:27He had the kind of hopes and aspirants of an awful lot of the electorate who decided they'd
06:33had enough of the, how many years it was, 14 years of the Conservatives. They wanted to
06:37give a new team a chance to govern. There was a lot of confidence and aspiration in the
06:42sense that this was going to be a government that was going to hit the ground running with
06:45new ideas and fresh thinking and a different, there was, they had all of the favourable
06:50conditions, if you like, to succeed. And instead of which, from the outside, it felt like they
06:55spent the first six months kind of repeatedly punching themselves in the face. And they didn't
07:01spend any time at all on winning the win, as it's called. It's an American phrase that
07:06an electoral phrase that a friend of mine was talking about last night that basically
07:10winning the win is a really important thing. And instead of that, what they chose to do
07:15was spend the first six months retelling us sort of what we all knew that we were in
07:20a bit of a sticky situation as a country. They were still shouting about the Conservatives
07:24being terrible. It felt like for weeks and weeks and months after they'd already won,
07:29it's like, you guys won. You landed that message or we all got that message. That's
07:33why you're now in Downing Street. Stop telling us how rubbish the other guys were, who, by
07:37the way, we all voted for too. So who are you trying to impress with telling us we've all
07:42been idiots? And then what are you going to do about it?
07:45There's a little bit of stat that I can just chuck in here. On the first hundred days of
07:49polling, because we all love to be kept along with that. Blair floated in on a net plus
07:5563 approval, which is just 63. I mean, amazing. Imagine a prime minister that people like.
08:01Yes. But by day 100, he was still plus 54. Wow. I mean, that's absolutely astonishing.
08:07So just for contrast, Keir Starmer came in on net minus three, which, by the way, he'd love
08:14now. But I mean, compared to where he is now, which is well past minus 50, still after 100
08:20days, he was minus 26. So that's a pretty big drop off. There's a very short honeymoon.
08:26And there are threads in how those first 100 days for Keir Starmer went and the decisions
08:31that were made and not made, which are, I think, have been highly kind of, they've made
08:36a big impression on Andy Burnham's team and what they might do and might not do. But I
08:42would say there are kind of three big things, really. First is something that Morgan McSweeney
08:48said on a podcast with Nick Robinson a couple of weeks ago, which everybody has said repeatedly,
08:53that one of the problems is there wasn't a plan. So they'd put all of their effort into
08:58trying to win the election and next to no effort into working out what they were going
09:04to do with power once they had it.
09:06Yes. And I'm told that there was this crazy scene on day one where the political team sat
09:12down with the new civil servants they were getting to know and both sides said, so what's
09:17the plan? Which is just, it's just, it goes beyond comprehension to have not had that put
09:24in place. And just to have a little example of this, you know, Morgan McSweeney was in
09:28charge of running the campaign for 2024, which I think everyone can agree went very, very
09:33well. Congratulations to you.
09:34That's high praise from you. Is that game recognises game?
09:37He did a good job. And a referendum on the Conservatives, you know, that is, that's a
09:42bullseye. The 2019 general election, because we were quite confident, also we were confident
09:48we'd win then. Dominic Cummings did not come onto the campaign with us. I mean, he was in
09:53touch and we had some phone calls with him and he kept a kind of hand on the tiller for
09:57what was going on with the campaign. But he was thinking, what are we going to do from
10:02day one in December to turn the country around and make the changes we want? You know, there
10:09was, there was looking ahead and I don't think it was hubris, which is often the accusation
10:12to do that kind of planning. And the reason this has become a sort of blueprint for failure
10:18later on is that everyone will remember the various resets we've had under the Starmer
10:22government where it's been pillars and milestones and markers and, and that constant need to like
10:29redefine your goals and your priorities and to try and kind of reestablish a plan is a sign
10:36that there was never a plan to begin with. Do you not also think sitting alongside that
10:41as a kind of original cardinal sin is not having your proper team chosen? And I don't
10:47just mean cabinet positions. I mean, having your actual like political staff who are going
10:52to come in and get the plan underway.
10:54I do think that, but I think there's a related point to the not having a plan, which is not
10:58really being literate in the thing in which you are doing. So I don't think there was
11:03enough consideration given at all to what being in power really means and how you exercise
11:09your power and a kind of shyness, I think, to properly inhabit the role of being the prime
11:15minister, like you are the guy. Once you're the prime minister, everything you do is scrutinized
11:21and that should be a good thing. It should be that you are able to, with a wave of your
11:25hand, start a ripple that means that some poor soul in Defra now has to do something different.
11:30Like you inhabit extraordinary amounts of power. And right from the off, I don't think
11:36Keir Starmer was comfortable with exercising that. So really little things, well, little
11:40things that I would think are big things. He didn't have all the conversations appointing
11:44his ministers. So this is one of the heightened moments that you as a prime minister can use
11:49to like force loyalty on people and make them feel amazing. You should be every single
11:54opportunity you get to kind of build the team around you, make them feel great, make them
11:58feel like they're your guys. And to give them their marching orders.
12:01And to give them, instead of which, like, Sue Gray, who was the then chief of staff, did
12:04some of those conversations. It's like, well, okay, so then therefore equals in their mind,
12:09she's the powerful one. It's like ducklings with an imprint of who their parent is.
12:13She says patronizingly. But that is effectively how it works, is you need to, as a prime minister,
12:19like gather as much power to yourself as possible and then spend it judiciously. And there was
12:24none of that done in the first stages. And I don't think he ever recovered from not properly
12:28inhabiting the power at the beginning. You need to come in with a big swashbuckle. You
12:31need to come in like really showing because people, you know, both on the downside, people
12:36ought to be really unhappy about falling out of your favor. And they ought to be killing
12:41themselves to try to be in your favor.
12:43Yes, I think a great example of that for the recent era is that I read this morning that
12:48Ed Miliband is potentially going to change his stance on North Sea oil.
12:54That's politics, right? That's the game.
12:56It just goes to show already that he's smelled where Andy Burner might be on this. And he's
13:04therefore completely willing to change his principles.
13:06That's the smell of Boddington's beer.
13:08I mean, not to hammer Sue Gray too hard, but I think there is a point here, which is not
13:14just your cabinet appointments. And that has to be done well. And you're quite right. You
13:18want the prime minister having that, you know, look him in the whites of the eyes. This is
13:22what you're going to do for me. This is my mission. The political appointments for the
13:29special advisors sounded really negative and horrible as well. So there's this story that
13:35when the prime minister was making his speech on the steps of Downing Street and they were clapping
13:39him in and they were standing outside, they didn't know if they were going to have jobs or not,
13:44which is from a practical point of view, just stupid because you need people getting their
13:49feet under the desk straight away and getting to work because I mean, now more than ever,
13:54the honeymoon is short as we've just shown with the polling, but also just atmospherically,
13:59how horrible to have people not at all sure if their work has been valued and whether they're
14:06wanted. And I think it sets, you know, that has also set a very dangerous precedent for the rest of
14:11his premiership where there's been a feeling that they might be thrown under the bus. And indeed,
14:16they have been, including Sue Gray.
14:17I think if you wanted a civil servant who is deeply expert in the, you know, running of the
14:23Whitehall machinery on domestic policy, you wouldn't have picked Sue Gray for that job. But I find it
14:28really frustrating and unfair that there's so much criticism in the Labour Party now. It's like
14:32it was all Sue Gray's fault that they weren't prepared for government. If you're a person who
14:36was going to be a minister in government and you hadn't bothered to trouble yourself on what the
14:40plan was for your department and you had no theory of change and you have no understanding of what
14:45makes a really good Labour government and you hadn't bothered to educate yourself about how the
14:48civil service worked and you've not really thought about what has worked and not worked in our country
14:53for the last 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, that is not Sue Gray's fault. Like there is
14:59a
14:59there's a massive rush to blame and to assume that one person is somehow magically going to do all the
15:06thinking about governing for you. No, governing is like an active verb and it's a professional skill
15:11and I find it so...
15:12And it's a team sport.
15:13And it's a team sport. And I think there is still, and I hope maybe we're going to see something
15:18different now, but in my experience, the Labour Party in particular is not very good at thinking
15:24about things beyond the Labour Party in particular.
15:27On our next thing for totemic issues where things can go wrong, I think is the cash, clothes,
15:34sunglasses, freebies scandal where...
15:37I was so surprised by that.
15:39Me too. Me too. And it's, well, and I think actually, the country was too, because Keir
15:45Starmer had hammered Boris Johnson over party gate and, you know, propriety and ethics and
15:51standards in public life. And then literally in the week he became PM emerged, he was accepting
15:56clothes and glasses and all this stuff from a Labour donor, Waheed Ali, who, as I understand,
16:03was also given a pass for the building. So there was this really quite murky cash for access
16:09point to the whole thing. And you just thought you've been promising your restored trust in
16:14politics and...
16:15And you're at it.
16:16Here we are.
16:17But I think that's also revealing of another kind of, I think, fundamental problem, which
16:23is an assumption because maybe everybody in politics thinks that they're good and their
16:28side of the goodies and they're on the right side. But again, I think that it's more common
16:31on the progressive side of politics for people to think that, you know, I'm a Labour person
16:36or I'm a Liberal Democrat, therefore I'm definitely on the side of the angels and therefore everything
16:41that I do is good. And there is this kind of massive blindness to you are just as fallible
16:46as the next person, actually. And it's not OK to accept these sorts of people are going
16:52to judge you in exactly the same way as they judge your political enemies. And a kind of
16:57failure to not internalise that just because you think you're right, that doesn't mean that
17:01everything you do is right and you're above the normal laws of gravity that apply to politics
17:07and people in power.
17:08Yeah. And it's therefore undermined things like Keir Starmer's ability to attack Nigel
17:13Farage. Like a theme of his premiership has been this trust in politics and the rise of
17:20reform. And it's quite hard to lay a finger on the guy. And five million is obviously a lot
17:25more money than £2,000, but it's £2,000 on a pair of glasses or whatever. It all falls
17:32into the idea of everybody's at it, unfortunately.
17:35I think the other totemic issue is the Winterfuel Allowance backlash. And funnily enough, I had
17:42to look this up earlier because my memory of the Winterfuel Allowance was after the first
17:47hundred days into the autumn bit. But the row began quite early on. They managed to create
17:53this narrative that instead of saying, obviously, it's completely unfair for the very wealthiest
17:58pensioners to be able to claim Winterfuel Allowance along with the less well-off, they
18:04managed to make it sound like they were going to just take money from everybody. Well, not
18:10everybody, everybody who was eligible. They didn't make the means testing point. And it's
18:15just been a perfect example of what was actually quite a reasonable idea that they managed to
18:21completely miscommunicate, get wrong, rumble on for ages, have a huge row, you turn on
18:28in the end anyway. So it hasn't saved us any money. But people remember as a really nasty
18:34and unpleasant taking from the worst off. And that has happened in so many policy areas
18:39since.
18:40So that was all part of, if you remember when they came in, one of the things that Rachel
18:43Reeves did was shout quite loud about this £21 billion or £22 billion black hole that the
18:49Tories had left the finances in a mess. And I remember at the time thinking, it feels like
18:54you're talking in a different election campaign and shouting about something that we've all
19:00kind of moved on from wherever that was. So again, they hadn't internalised. That might
19:05have been what they needed to do if they had a very narrow majority and they needed to make
19:09sure that they were insulating themselves for what was to come. But with a stonking great
19:15majority like that, you didn't need to come out shouting about the Tories. You didn't need to
19:20come out with these really, really aggressive kind of, we're going to take really hard decisions.
19:25We're going to be really hard. So please, no, no more hard decisions. Can you set us out
19:29something which is positive and hopeful? And you're absolutely right about the winter fuel
19:33allowance. I mean, it has echoes, I'm afraid, of the Treasury officials have like a list of things
19:41that they always try on with ministers. George Osborne came a cropper with this in the early
19:45stages of the coalition. People might remember the whole row there was about putting VAT on
19:52the pasty budget. So there is a kind of comedic list of like every single time the Treasury has
19:58its things that it hates. And it particularly hates, to be fair to the Treasury officials,
20:03wasting money. And one of the problems with the winter fuel allowance is the notion that because
20:07it goes to literally every single pensioner in the country, we know in terms of the way that
20:12wealth is distributed in our country, there are an awful lot of extremely wealthy pensioners
20:16who get the winter fuel allowance. So much so that there's a special charity that if you were
20:22that same-minded as a wealthy pensioner, you could donate your winter fuel allowance to a charity.
20:27I think, to be honest, that might have been the straw that broke the camel's back for the Treasury
20:31officials. They're like, hang on a second. We're now funding a charity. That's a perfectly rational
20:36argument to be made for wouldn't it be better if we made sure that, of course, people who don't have
20:40enough money, their houses are warm for the winter and they're looked after properly. But you could
20:46have packaged that all up as in, we're going to take the winter fuel allowance away from some people
20:51who don't need it at all. And by the way, we're also going to do something that you'll really want.
20:56We're going to use this money to fund the reversal of the two-child benefit cap, which is an extremely
21:01totemic issue for the Labour Party because child poverty is one of those things,
21:06quite rightly, that they get extremely agitated about.
21:10But good rational arguments were never made. So that's a perfect, it happened also with,
21:15you know, the welfare rebellion and indeed the two-child benefit cap where
21:20a really good fairness argument was consistently not made. And unfortunately, that has set the tone
21:28for, again, they're just like the Tories, they're coming for the worst off and they're not looking
21:33after people and then not having a good control of their parliamentary party. So having to U-turn
21:38anyway and it ends up costing us more money.
21:41There was a lot of that stage and I think this is a genuine warning for Andy Burnham and his
21:45team
21:46coming in where they spent a lot of time describing problems. So there was a huge amount of this is
21:51all
21:51terrible. It's going to be quite difficult for Andy Burnham anyway to come in and do that without
21:55obviously hammering his own side or looking again. And I would really caution against the Burnham
22:01team coming in and trying to dismiss the record of the Starmer government. We saw that not work
22:07repeatedly with the rolling changes of conservative prime ministers is that people really don't like
22:12that. You need to kind of own what you've done and set out something positive because the other
22:16kind of cardinal mistake that I think was made in the beginning of that period after the Labour
22:22victory was they didn't seem to make any time or effort to try to win over their own side.
22:27So you had all of these new MPs who, you know, you come into parliament thinking this is like
22:33such a pinnacle of my life achievement. I've wanted to be an MP. I'm so excited about being able to
22:38make a difference and get things done and...
22:41Brat summer. Everyone's excited. Everyone's so excited. And then actually obviously the jobs go
22:47to the same people that they always have gone to and it's kind of Buggins' turn and who's been
22:50hanging about in the Labour Party for how many years and it's not necessarily like who are the
22:56most talented, what's the most talented team we can deploy to the problems of our age. It's well
23:00actually that person was in the shadow cabinet and I had that argument with that person in student
23:04politics, whatever. It's all kind of quite murky and insidery. And then you've got this vast army of MPs
23:10with no job, who feel... And then the government inside, and this is also personality, a lot of
23:16governing is character. So you've got both Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves who are not kind of
23:19out there building the connective tissue with people, kind of retreating into their vast White
23:25Hall towers and leaving these MPs entirely bewildered as to what was the point of them and not kind of
23:31brought alongside the project. And I think that was a really big mistake. If there's one lesson for
23:37Andy Burnham from all of this, I think it is, you've got loads of political capital at the moment,
23:41a bit like Keir Starmer had at the beginning of his period as Prime Minister, you need to build more,
23:47build more, hoard it, because you're going to need it for those rainy days. So that's everything about
23:51how are you treating people? There'll be lots of disappointed people. How many people are in that
23:56selfie in Westminster Hall with him? Like 250 MPs? There are not 250 jobs? Like the actual people
24:02management of this next few days in letting the disappointed people feel like they're disappointed
24:08for now, but actually there's a great hope for them in the future. In managing and inspiring your
24:12team, all of that political capital needs to be built up to the maximum and then hoarded and spent
24:18very carefully from now on in. And also, you haven't got 100 days. You know, that honeymoon is
24:24getting shorter and shorter and the rainy days are coming very, very quickly. Life's only going to get
24:28harder from here. So you have to move. You sound like Keir Starmer in 2024. I don't want to hear
24:33that. I want to hear it's all going to be great. We've got to move very quickly, change is coming
24:37and now we shall sit for quite some time. But on all these issues, whether it's policy or people
24:43or plan, get it together and get it together quickly and put it into action quickly. Because
24:49in terms of moving fast and breaking things, do that, but do it kindly.
24:54Bit of kind breakage. Great advice.
24:59Two things we've always known about Keir Starmer. Number one, his dad was a toolmaker. Number
25:04two, he really likes football.
25:06We've got a lot in common, he and I.
25:09You and Keir have got so much in common. And this week is not just about Burnham versus
25:13Starmer. It's also about England versus Argentina, Cleo. And what's going on in football. Our audience
25:20might be surprised to learn, because I was also surprised to learn, that Keir Starmer has
25:24presided over the best win ratio England have had under any serving prime minister. So in
25:29history, blow me down, England have won, wait for it, 76% of matches since he became
25:36prime minister. And his club, Arsenal, also won the league. So maybe he's got a lot to be
25:41proud of.
25:41All of his luck has gone into football, not into politics, which, you know, on balance,
25:46I'm not sure if that was the best thing for us. I do secretly hope, obviously, I hope
25:50that England get to the final, but also for Keir Starmer, I hope that England get to the
25:54final on Sunday and he can sneak in attendance at England winning the World Cup on his last
26:00day in office.
26:01I would love to see him in New York with, like, shirt up over his head, paint him pain on
26:07his belly. My father was a toolmaker.
26:10Letting off a flare. I don't think that's the kind, I've been to the football with Keir
26:12Starmer, he exhibited none of that sort of behavior.
26:14Flares up his bottom?
26:15Zero.
26:17Well, you can say that again, because in terms of his legacy, I feel like it is definitely
26:22missing some flair.
26:24Oh, I love what you've done there.
26:26Can I just trot through, because...
26:28You can.
26:29Trot. I don't want to reel off a big list of what he would think of his, you know, policies
26:35and legacy defining kind of markers. But I think there are a few things I'm going to read
26:43out here that will explain some of the atmospherics and how he'll be remembered. More vibes-y,
26:50if that makes sense.
26:51I'm ready for it. Go.
26:52Mandelson for ambassador. Big mistake. Huge.
26:56Obviously, we've talked about the welfare row and winter fuel and just this sense that
27:01it was the same old Tories, essentially, but with red rosettes.
27:05I think another classic of the genre is this indecision with what he thinks about the civil
27:10service. So he came in and said, we have a Rolls Royce service here. And then he did
27:15a speech saying they were stuck in their tepid bath. And, you know, going alongside that has
27:19been this big churn in cabinet secretaries where he's not been able to make up his mind
27:24on the kind of person he wants to lead his agenda. What do you make of that? Because
27:28you've also got fears for the constitution, as I understand it.
27:30I do. I think one of the interesting things that I wouldn't have put money on when I thought
27:35Keir Star was going to be prime minister, that actually kind of constitutionally and
27:38in terms of relationships with the civil service, and we're in a much worse position in terms
27:42of the kind of fundamental way in which government operates than we were at the end of Rishi
27:48Sunak's time. Rishi Sunak was a much more vanilla, old-fashioned prime minister in those
27:52ways. But actually, there's been some quite, I don't think people have noticed because
27:55people don't assume this is what the Labour Party do, but they've broken some extraordinary
27:59conventions about, say, the publishing, the live publishing, and live and selective
28:04publishing of some material from discussions within Downing Street, which you should never
28:09do.
28:09Which came out during the Manderson files.
28:11It did.
28:11I remember you saying at the time, showing the government's working in live time is just
28:15a really dangerous precedent.
28:17Well, it's dangerous because you can't do it when it's favourable to you, and then refuse
28:20to do it when it's unfavourable to you. The reason you have these things is to protect
28:24the space for people to have proper arguments inside government and not reveal them for some
28:29time afterwards. So they've been quite reckless constitutionally on a few things and taken
28:33some risks with the way that appointments have been managed. But again, not in a kind
28:37of capital letters, we're going to reform this thing, this is all wrong, and here's our
28:42better and brilliant plan. But in a slightly sneaky kind of just pushing boundaries and being
28:47a bit flexible and appointing political advisors who are operating a bit like ministers, but not
28:51really like ministers. And it's kind of none of the things that I felt we really needed.
28:56The thing that Keir Starmer has not been able to knock on the head though is what you
29:00might call the ghosts of permanent secretaries past because Olly Robbins has popped back up,
29:04your old mucker, Olly Robbins. What's going on there?
29:07It's been reported in the press today that Olly Robbins is suing the government or taking
29:11legal action against the government. It's actually much more stylish and as you'd expect.
29:17So what Mr Robbins has done with the support of the First Division Association, which is
29:21the trade union for the very senior civil service, he is judicially reviewing the decision of
29:27the Prime Minister to sack him. Now you might think, well, you know, so what? So he's very
29:33stylishly not gone for an employment tribunal, which would have been an option for him, instead
29:37of which he's gone to the most capital letters, constitutionally massive thing you can possibly
29:41do. And I would guess, but I don't know, that the reason for doing this is if this is
29:47successful and that through judicial review, the FDA are able to demonstrate that is unlawful
29:55to sack a permanent secretary in the way that Olly Robbins was sacked. What they are doing
30:01is by the back door creating properly permanent jobs for permanent secretaries. So the FDA have
30:08been trying to do this for some time. I hate this so much.
30:11He was literally quivering at the notions, but it is extraordinary and really clever. So
30:17I am probably more with you than you might think that it is quite important that it's possible for
30:22ministers to be able to call time on the appointment of their most senior civil servant.
30:28It's kind of, you know, bad cases make good law or good cases make bad law, whichever way you think
30:32of it. I cannot imagine this is not going to be successful because by any account, even by the
30:38prime minister's own account, what happened to Olly Robbins was not something that is in any way
30:43aligned with how the civil service and ministers are supposed to operate. So kind of watch this
30:48space as this rumbles on. It actually might be for the first time putting the way in which civil
30:53servants are employed into our legal framework without any proper process.
30:59One of the, one of the lines he had, which sticks in my mind, and I think is indicative of
31:04so many
31:05of his problems is his Island of Strangers speech, which at the time he claimed he had not read through
31:12properly. He hadn't really written. He didn't realize was, he didn't realize it was so offensive and that
31:18it would remind some of his labor backbenches of Enoch Powell's rivers of blood speech, which I don't think
31:24is quite right. But ironically, he has left us as an Island of Strangers because, you know, one of his
31:30key pledges was to restore trust in politics. And we are, we remain a 40 year low for trust in
31:38politics.
31:39And it's not just that we have a more fragmented politics. So when, when the House of Commons rose for
31:45the general election in 2024, we had 10 parties across the House of Commons, which probably sounds like
31:52quite a lot for the time. But that's because we have various, um, little independent parties, which are
31:57very important. But we now have 15. Because as people remember, we have, of course, reform, we have
32:04restore Britain, we have your party, the that that kind of fragmentation continues. And that will not be
32:11something that Keir Starmer will feel proud of as a legacy defining moment.
32:16I also want to come back to Keir Starmer's excuse for saying Islands of Strangers, which is that he hadn't
32:22read the speech, which I think if I look back to things that are like death knells for me, listening
32:27to what
32:27was going on, the sort of, it's not my fault. I hadn't read the speech before. I didn't write it.
32:33That is literally
32:33the last thing you want the Prime Minister to ever say. Because even if that was true, you definitely
32:38shouldn't admit it.
32:39It's so incompetent.
32:40But and it chucks your team under the bus.
32:41It's like a victim mindset. And that's another thing that I found so puzzling in this last couple
32:46of years is that a party with an absolutely stonky majority, I mean, a bigger majority than
32:51anybody's had since the days of Tony Blair, coming in and then pretending that they're somehow the
32:56victims of circumstances when they should be all the power in the land. And I really hope that that's
33:02one of the things that Andy Burnham and his team have internalised that actually, please don't tell
33:07us that governments can't govern. Don't tell us that, you know, we'd love to, they'd love to help us out.
33:11They'd love to do all this stuff. But unfortunately, it's dot, dot, dot. If you're in the position
33:16you are, if you're holding power, you can exercise it. And it's so corrosive for our democracy
33:20and for all of us to repeatedly have to listen to ministers tell us that they would love to
33:25help, but they can't, because they can and they should and they must.
33:29Well, Helen, on Friday, listeners will be able to see whether Burnham has got the right
33:33attitude on can and must, because we're going to be talking about the transfer of power and
33:38what he must do from day one to make his premiership the best possible success.
33:43Yes. And we're also going to be taking us back to when we've done transitions of power
33:47in number 10 as well, just some of the practicalities and how does it really feel like and what's
33:53the tick tock of the day. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. Remember to
33:57follow the show on your podcast player of choice and leave us a five star review if you enjoyed
34:01it.
34:01And please do email us your feedback and questions. We are at intheroom at independent.co.uk.
34:07And if you're listening on Spotify, you can leave little comments underneath. We like to read them
34:11and you can keep up with the best bits of the pod on Instagram at intheroom.pod.
34:16This podcast is part of the Independent Podcast Network and produced in association with Next
34:20Chapter Studios.
34:21The executive producer is Rod Adahali and the producer is Sam Durham.
34:25A special mention again to our lovely content editor Myra Nushka, our lovely video editor
34:30Vali Raza and our lovely videographer Dan Faber.
34:32Thanks for listening. See you on Friday.
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