McSweeney resigns as Starmer faces Labour backlash (Full Transcript)

Newscast unpacks McSweeney’s exit, Sarwar’s revolt, scandal fallout and polling that shows Labour’s support fracturing across the UK.
Download Transcript (DOCX)
Speakers
add Add new speaker

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Hello, it's James in the Newscast Studio. And it's Chris in the Newscast Studio. And also joining us this week is Professor Jane Greene, who is Director of Nuffield Politics Research Centre and President of the British Polling Council. Hello Jane. Hello. And with us too is Tim Shipman, Political Editor of The Spectator magazine. Hi Tim. Hi. Thank you for coming in. Now, this is the episode of Newscast where we take stock of the week's events and I think this week we need to cast our minds all the way back, not to Monday but to Sunday, when Morgan McSweeney, the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff, resigned following the scandal surrounding Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein. Now Tim, you've written a pretty remarkable, quite long piece, has to be said for The Spectator.

[00:00:42] Speaker 2: I thought it was short, by academic standards. It was really brilliant. Never going to win, feel the quality.

[00:00:47] Speaker 1: It's very, very good. Paid by the word, I'm sure. And what did you learn in your reporting for this piece about how central Morgan McSweeney was to Team Starmer and what was going on behind the scenes of his departure? Let's start with Morgan McSweeney.

[00:01:02] Speaker 3: Yeah, well look, I mean, Keir Starmer has never had Morgan McSweeney not at his side while he's been the leader of the Labour Party and they've been through highs and lows and they've, you know, evolved their project but McSweeney is a very political character and I think it's fair to say that Starmer isn't particularly. To the degree that they had an ism or a mission, I think it was McSweeney's creation rather than Starmer's and it's going to be very interesting to see how he copes without him and I think nothing sums up the sort of relationship as much as the way it ended and what I say in my piece, which I discovered, was that, you know, they had a conversation I think on the Saturday night where McSweeney said to him, look, I can stay in Downing Street as your Chief of Staff or I could go back to campaign headquarters and start planning for the next general election. In fact, McSweeney had ceased previously to be Chief of Staff to Starmer and gone off precisely to do that or I can leave altogether and that was an inconclusive conversation. They had another chat on the Sunday morning and in the end, my understanding is from Downing Street's side as well, is that he basically said, well, since I don't appear to have your confidence, we might as well call this quits. In essence, McSweeney kind of was the one who brought it all about and Starmer, it seems, couldn't quite make the decision and my piece is packed with people on the inside, every single one of whom is a Labour person, I should stress, all of whom are raising sort of pretty serious questions about how engaged the Prime Minister is and it's not just the stuff about the sort of sordid business of dirty tricks of politics, which you can imagine someone like Starmer's not that keen on. He doesn't seem that interested in policy. He doesn't seem to understand that a Prime Minister needs to kind of drive things from the centre and that whole sort of purpose and vision and energy seems to be lacking and whether or not he survives, and it looks for the time being like he's bored a lot of time, that these questions about his personal sort of characteristics and abilities, I think, are going to continue.

[00:02:51] Speaker 1: What did you make, Jane, of the McSweeney departure? What did that tell us or what should we read into it?

[00:02:57] Speaker 2: I mean, one of the fascinating things for me, like you win an election with an enormous majority and clearly you get a lot of credit for that, right? But myself and my wonderful colleague, Marta, we wrote a piece after the election and we pointed to the major factors behind that massive result and yes, of course there was targeting, of course it was a ruthless electoral machine, but the factors that drove the majority weren't McSweeney's doing. I mean, they were, you know, huge disillusionment with the Tories, very efficient vote because of tactical voting, because of voting against the Tories. Also, you know, there's a story in Scotland too about Labour's share there, but you know, those were the major factors and so there's McSweeney, which of course, you know, of course getting credit for that election result, but nevertheless not necessarily, you know, perhaps getting the right level of credit. And then, you know, looking forward, my understanding is, and I'm not remotely as informed about the politics, kind of the party politics as Tim is, so I'm, you know, I'm an academic, I'm a researcher, you know, but I do hear frequently that, you know, Morgan McSweeney's desire to focus on double counting reform voters because their Labour losses as well as reform gains, and they matter a lot in Labour constituencies that are now very marginal because of the loss of Labour's support, was really mystifying to so many people on the left who thought that Labour was, you know, essentially courting reform voters too much. Now, the proportion of Labour's lost voters to reform is very small in comparison to the proportions going to undecided and the proportions to going to parties on the left. And so what we're going to see in a couple of weeks time or a week and a half's time in Gorton and Denton is possibly a backlash against chasing reform voters and the first evidence possibly that votes lost to the left are doing more damage. And there has been, as far as I am aware, a very significant policy, but also electoral debates within Labour that has pointed to some of the things that McSweeney's been, you know, advocating for. And perhaps in Tim's piece, you know, I think, you know, there was some caution around his reasoning and his justifications for that. But my understanding is the reading of that has been he's been courting reform voters, he's been taking huge gambles with voters lost to the left, and that's ultimately what's going to do Labour the most harm.

[00:05:27] Speaker 4: The thing that intrigues me out of all of this is that there's been this persistent critique, and you hear it all the time from folk within the Labour Party, about a lack of sense of definition of what the Starmer project is all about.

[00:05:38] Speaker 1: Which is what, Tim, you've written a lot about.

[00:05:41] Speaker 4: And therefore, how they go about selling it and does that lead to so many of the U-turns, etc, etc. The one thing that intrigues me off the back of this week, and particularly now with the absence of Morgan McSweeney, is the extent to which the Labour Party having, to borrow Ed Miliband's phrase, looked over the precipice of getting shut of him.

[00:06:00] Speaker 5: I think the way I would put it is that Labour MPs looked over the precipice once Anas Sarwar made his statement, and they didn't like what they saw. And they thought the right thing to do was to unite behind Keir, to focus on the country because we didn't want to go down the road of the Tories, when they were in power, chaotic, disorderly leadership contest.

[00:06:23] Speaker 4: And concluding that they didn't want to in this instance, not least because the thing I keep hearing is that sort of sense of, even if you're of the view that you want rid of him, the thought of going through a leadership campaign whilst in government, which is probably a kind of guaranteed negative in terms of the perception of the brand of Labour as a governing force, and all of the stuff that people would throw at them about it be a recurrence of what happened under the Conservatives, coupled with if you're an individual Labour MP, you might not get who you want out of the process.

[00:06:52] Speaker 3: Well that's the thing isn't it, you know you're going to get someone and it might be better from your perspective, but it might be worse.

[00:06:58] Speaker 4: But it might not, and there's a guaranteed negative of a campaign in the middle. Therefore, this is just the intriguing thing I ponder at this point, to what extent right now does the collective of Labour MPs think, ah maybe this is a guy we can mould? Yeah. Because the evidence suggests that might be possible. Well they've seen McSweeny mould him. Completely.

[00:07:20] Speaker 3: And Joe is right, we've got all these debates, but they haven't chosen which path they're on.

[00:07:23] Speaker 4: Yeah and so is he mouldable? And if they conclude, rightly or wrongly, if they conclude that that might be yes, that's a further, if you like, barrier to entry to going through the whole process of replacing him.

[00:07:34] Speaker 1: Now one person who is not of that view and is done with him is the leader of the Labour Party in Scotland, Al Sarwar. We come to Monday, Monday afternoon, and he becomes the most high profile figure in the Labour Party, Labour movement, to call for the Prime Minister to go in this news conference in Glasgow. I mean my take on that is that he just didn't think he had any real choice other than to do the absolute, you know, desperate thing. I mean it's contested whether or not it was desperate. Certainly the Scottish National Party have described it as desperate. I mean it does look certainly extreme, a pretty extraordinary gamble. Why is he doing it? Because, and you'll be able to tell us about the polling, but I mean it strikes me that he's doing it because he was staring at a loss. And not just a loss, but potentially coming third in the Scottish parliamentary elections on May the 7th, when there are also elections for the Welsh Serif and also some, but not all, English local councils and a few mayoralties as well. And Al Sarwar was looking at defeat and losing his job. And so I suppose there's a world in which even if he still doesn't win these elections, and you can tell us what the polling says in just two secs, Jane, but even if he doesn't win, can he squeeze up to second place, not be humiliated by coming third behind reform, cling on to his job, potentially in his world see the Prime Minister pay the price for that, but he can keep his job, Al Sarwar, and carry on. I mean I'm not saying that that's a necessarily very attractive prospect, but maybe some people in the Labour Party in Scotland think that's his only choice. What's your take on why Al Sarwar moved?

[00:09:11] Speaker 2: So Labour in Scotland, Scottish Labour, have always tried to have a distinct brand. And that's particularly important when Labour's in government in Westminster, and when the Westminster London government is seen as failing. And you know, let's be completely, you know, this is the most basic thing ever, it's the most obvious thing in the world, but the disillusionment is massive, isn't it? And so what we're seeing across the UK, but this is playing out in Scotland because of the SNP in a different way, is a very significant, very rapid loss of support for Labour that's happening everywhere. And that's also happening in Scotland. And we're also seeing the Conservatives start to lose some support. Now that's unheard of in opposition for the main party of opposition to be losing support. Now, what does that do in Scotland? Well, it makes the SNP, whilst less popular than it was, have a very commanding lead. And because its main rival was the Labour Party, and the fact that the Tories are still losing support everywhere, and also in Scotland, is giving reform an edge. And so you're in this kind of extraordinary situation, where the SNP is dominant in Scotland for, you know, frankly, almost as long as the evolution's been in place, right?

[00:10:25] Speaker 1: Well, after the first eight years with Labour led down, they very, very quickly managed to get control.

[00:10:31] Speaker 2: But dominant in a way that, you know, as an electoral force that has been on the ascendancy and has remained a hugely, hugely stable force, you know, partly because of the importance of independence in Scotland, but not only because of the importance of independence. Now, you know, the SNP lost support, obviously, when Nicola Sturgeon resigned and all the difficulties around that last election in 2024, Labour were just inching ahead, they weren't, you know, they weren't kind of recovering from their former glories in Scotland, they were just inching ahead, and really taking advantage of the fact there that the SNP had been unpopular as a Scottish government. And now Labour don't have that ascendancy. So the SNP, despite losing support too, is nevertheless have a commanding lead, because Labour support has plummeted everywhere, and the Conservative support has continued to decline. And reform and now looking like in the polls in second place, but they're just inched across above Labour. And what we're really seeing is massive splintering. So you can then be in second, but on a very relatively low vote share, historically speaking, anyway.

[00:11:34] Speaker 1: I mean, I suppose what's striking about that is the SNP is continuing, apparently, I mean, people haven't voted yet, it's up to people to vote. You know, I'm not prejudging that, but their apparent ability to detach and critique of their performance in government, Labour would say public services are not performing well in Scotland, the SNP would dispute that they say the NHS in particular is getting better. But leaving that to one side, for those who accept or believe that the public services are not doing well, the SNP seem to always manage to be one step away from that, because they can say, sure, you can vote for us anyway, because we believe in a more radical constitutional change, a completely different solution. So you don't, you aren't, we have two ways of voting for us as a Holyrood government. But also, if you don't like that, you can vote for them in another way. And so perhaps that perhaps the constitutional question, even though it seems to have gone flat in the last few years, is still bubbling away. I mean, polling for independence is still near enough 50% in Scotland saying they want independence.

[00:12:31] Speaker 3: They're the biggest beneficiaries, aren't they, of the fracturing that Jane is talking about, because we've effectively got seven parties that could end up with 20, 30, 40 seats at the next general election quite easily. It's much more about turning out your core vote than it used to be, which is why you see the left of the Labour Party saying, come on, we need to focus on that. McSweeny's argument and people on the right of the Labour Party would say, yes, but even 70% of our voters want to control migration in a big way. We need to tick that box and then focus. You know, this has been quite a left wing government economically, but they haven't shouted about it. Maybe they'll start to shout about it. Maybe that's what Keir Starmer will suddenly produce. But the danger is that the last time the British public elected the soft left of the Labour Party to run the country was in 1974. They basically haven't done it since. So this is what has, you know, some of the below rights and the old right worried. But they've clearly lost the argument.

[00:13:24] Speaker 1: And we have the intriguing prospect. And again, I'm not prejudging the vote, but the possibility on current polling, there's not elections in Northern Ireland, but Sinn Féin, an Irish nationalist party, the biggest party in Northern Ireland, Scottish National Party, potentially continuing to run the Scottish government, maybe a Welsh nationalist party running the Welsh government and who might be the winners of the elections in England or the most successful party in England as a party that many people, and they would, some of them dispute this, but many people would view as an English nationalist party. Are we seeing the fragmentation of UK politics along competing nationalist lines, Chris?

[00:14:01] Speaker 4: We are. And were that to be the outcome, that'll be part of the analysis the day after. But the other part of the analysis, if you join the dots from every element of that picture that you've painted geographically, is one where if that plays out, Labour are scratching their head in every conceivable geographic and rivals direction, whether it be in that situation, losing to the SNP in Scotland, losing to Plaid in Wales and losing to reform and not just reform, but reform in many parts of England. I'm aware that we've only got to Monday so far.

[00:14:31] Speaker 1: Let's skip really quickly through the next couple of days of the week, just quickly. We then, after the Anas Sarwar news conference. There's a distinction between Monday lunchtime and Monday tea time. A big distinction if you're Keir Starmer. To wit, we get a lot of statements in social media from the cabinet supporting the Prime Minister and from his potential rivals, Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting also coming out. Obviously, he survived. Another day.

[00:14:58] Speaker 4: Yeah, and I just took away in a sentence, because it's been one of those weeks that he'd also lost his Director of Communications in the process of that morning prior to the Anas Sarwar announcement. I mean, at lunchtime on Monday, the jeopardy was absolutely real. And the whole thing could have come crashing down. And there is no serious dispute that that is the reality of that.

[00:15:20] Speaker 3: There's a lot of nonsense being talked now that the press has made all this up. No, I mean, they were in Downing Street. They didn't know if Anas Sarwar was put up to it by Wes Streeting and whether a whole bunch of other people were going to follow. And let's be frank, there were cabinet ministers phoning each other over the weekend saying, what should we do about this? This is a total mess. And they were all silent at the time. And they were totally silent.

[00:15:38] Speaker 1: Was he put up to it by Wes Streeting?

[00:15:40] Speaker 3: Not to my knowledge. And not to mine either. I was told pretty early on that this was for the reasons you said earlier, James, that, you know, he was in a total bind himself and he felt he had to do it. But, you know, they're close allies and it doesn't take much for Downing Street to get in a panic. They ran a very good war room. They propped him up. Fair play to them.

[00:15:59] Speaker 1: But then events roll on. As you say, the Labour whip is suspended for Matthew Doyle. Keir Starmer is former director of communications for his past association with Sean Morton. Now, he's a former Labour councillor in Moray in the north of Scotland who admitted indecent child image offences in 2017. On Wednesday, Kemi Baden honed in on that question to Sir Keir of what he knew about the situation when Matthew Doyle was appointed to that role, Chris.

[00:16:28] Speaker 4: Yeah. And so what you ended up with was a situation where if we allow ourselves a two-week rather than a one-week trajectory of British politics, you have the Prime Minister appointing a long-established Labour figure to a job in his gift. Information then coming to light that raises questions as to whether that was a good idea. And then the Prime Minister blaming a combination of the process and the individual for giving them the job in the first place. And then a process begins to take the job off them. And that applies pretty much... The cases are very different, to be clear, but that applies equally to Lord Mandelson and to Lord Doyle.

[00:17:04] Speaker 3: And this is what did for Boris Johnson, was constantly having the same process of something happens. In Johnson's case, it was, we don't tell the truth about it. We send everybody out with a dodgy version and then we have to keep changing it. And with Starmer, it's, well, we did this. We thought it was fine. Now we're claiming it wasn't. It wasn't really our fault, Gov. But actually, there's plenty of evidence, if you look at the chronology of the Doyle appointment, that they should have known.

[00:17:27] Speaker 4: And even if they didn't at the time, Matthew Doyle making the argument that at the time he believed, the guy in question believed, Morton, who was charged at that point rather than...

[00:17:37] Speaker 1: But hadn't been convicted, crucially.

[00:17:39] Speaker 4: If you fast forward to when the Sunday Times had its revelations, case of Gabriel Pogrundt, immediately after Christmas, at that point, they could have decided to either say the peerage is null and void, or say he won't be in possession of the Labour whip when he becomes a peer. Neither of those things happened until just now.

[00:17:57] Speaker 1: And just out of fairness, have you been able to get in touch with Lord Doyle?

[00:18:02] Speaker 4: I have been in touch with him. He's not commented publicly at any of the stages this week since Prime Minister's Questions. He did put out a statement earlier in the week in which he acknowledged an error of judgement and called the crimes vile and emphasised that at the point at which he was campaigning for Morton, Morton was possessing to him his innocence, and he was charged at that point rather than convicted. Thank you.

[00:18:24] Speaker 1: Now, after the Prime Minister's Questions, Sakhir had to face the Women's Parliamentary Labour Party. What was your reporting telling you about? How are the mood there?

[00:18:35] Speaker 4: Yeah, quite a few of us sort of picked up a sense of this, which was that, so this was Keir Starmer going in front of female Labour MPs and peers and getting a fair old amount of stuff exactly along the lines of firstly on the micro, if you like, the boys club stuff. And then I think some of the more, the bigger macro stuff of the, it sounds a very clunky way of describing these things, but you see what I mean in that context. But then also this sense of, to use a horrible Westminster phrase, the cutthroat of the last few weeks, people have noticed, surprise, surprise, because it's been so extraordinary, hasn't it? The revelations around Epstein and Andrew Manbatten-Windsor and Peter Mandelson, et cetera, et cetera. And the sense, particularly because of the Lord Mandelson and Lord Doyle story of, to quote Emma Llewell, Labour backbencher, the sense that she'd been shouted at in the street, that she was from the, I think the phrase was the paedoprotectors party.

[00:19:34] Speaker 1: Wow. They said people were screaming at her in the street, I think was the quote that you heard from her about calling her a member of the paedoprotectors.

[00:19:40] Speaker 4: Now she hadn't anticipated that particular description, seeing the light of day beyond the room, but it was quite a big room. And so these things tend to leak into the ears of reporters. But that sense of, that perception of how, at least for some, Labour is perceived.

[00:19:57] Speaker 3: And that is, I mean, from their perspective. And this is where it comes back on Starmer, isn't it? And this is where Kemi Badenoch did quite well at PMQs. She said, you know, on the grooming gangs, on Mandelson and on Doyle, you only cared, Prime Minister, when your own job was at threat. You know, there'd been these scandals and they play out in the way that they always play out and pressure is brought until the Prime Minister changes his position, on which he did on all three of those things. And, you know, if you asked him, he's an honourable man, he would say this sort of thing troubles him greatly. But in terms of his political action on it, that is a perfectly reasonable political point that the Leader of the Opposition made.

[00:20:30] Speaker 2: I've been using the word disillusionment for some time since July 2024. But it's not disillusionment anymore, is it? It's fury. And this isn't just about this. I mean, you know, you've also heard Labour being accused of being the pro-genocide party because of Gaza. And you've also got the Greens, you know, very, very consistently campaigning and appealing to people who are just appalled by, you know, Keir Starmer not moving away from Israel's actions in Gaza.

[00:20:55] Speaker 1: Israel would deny that there is genocide in Gaza. Of course, of course.

[00:20:59] Speaker 2: And also, you know, the Labour Party would deny that they're the pro-paedophile party, but it doesn't stop people's, you know, this bubbling up of anger, which isn't just about Gaza and it's not just about Epstein. It's, you know, fundamentally driven by a very, very difficult, pressing, everyday difficult financial situation, which is kind of the, you know, my opinion is still the driving force of a lot of discontent. But, you know, I think disillusionment is just, frankly, too weak a word now.

[00:21:30] Speaker 1: And with the Prime Minister's position looking, I think, fair to say, precarious. I mean, still precarious, isn't it? Even if it might be better now than it was when Anas Sarwar popped up. We have had some interesting moves from some Labour figures this week, haven't we? We've had Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, in an interview with The Garden calling the last few weeks unforgivable, saying, I want to get the words right because it's really important. It does look to people outside that we're more interested in ourselves and less interested in preventing chaos. We've talked about Angela Rayner briefly. We've seen Wes Streeting doing various things that were interesting, publishing his WhatsApp conversations with Peter Mandelson, in which he was talking about the necessity for a growth strategy for Labour. I just think it's interesting when you see people moving. Am I reading too much into these things?

[00:22:19] Speaker 3: No, I don't think so. I think everyone's manoeuvring. But I think this goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning. There is a huge tension about what Labour should do. If Labour is going to have a growth strategy, it probably needs to have a different net zero strategy. That is a tension that they haven't resolved. If they're going to swing to the left, what are they going to do about some of these other issues that the public cares about? And you may have a situation where you ended up either with a more left-wing Keir Starmer or a more left-wing somebody else, but that doesn't really resolve the tensions within the party. And all parties, when things aren't going well, spend a lot of time gazing at their own navels, and it's a pretty unpalatable look for the rest of the public.

[00:22:57] Speaker 4: The thing that's going to intrigue me over the next week or so, more than that, and we've seen it I think in the last couple of days, is cabinet ministers out in public in front of the cameras, frankly, just being willing to freelance a bit more than you would normally expect. Now, some of that is, as they would see it, just being candid about the mess of the last couple of weeks, but it's gone beyond that, and it's not just been West Street-ing either. So I think that's intriguing. And then just the beginnings, and it is early, and there's a danger of over-reading into this, of is Keir Starmer in particular, it goes back to my moulding point at the beginning, is he, I don't think he has said anything in the last few days that is radically different from stuff he's said before. I was at the event on behalf of the broadcast pool that he did in Welwyn Garden City the other day, but the things he is choosing to emphasise just seem to be tilting a bit more towards the soft left, I think. Now, does he maintain that? Let's see. Is it a strategy? Again, let's see. Who knows? But I just think there's the beginnings of that, and there might be a logic for him doing that, A, because it might be where he's a bit more comfortable, and B, because that's probably where the centre of gravity of the Parliamentary Labour Party is, and if he fancies keeping his job, that might be a rational thing for him to do.

[00:24:06] Speaker 1: You mentioned someone else, you know, maybe the potential of someone else leading the Labour Party and leading the country. What is your assessment, Jane, of what would be the effect of changing a leader for a political party? I mean, I suppose it depends who the leader is, but is there something general that can be said about the effect of that in polling terms?

[00:24:27] Speaker 2: So what you need to, you know, I think the first point to make is that it's not a simple equation where you say popular person makes party popular, right, obviously, and there's so much more here. So what do you need? You obviously need somebody who's likeable and interesting, but also competent and also has a very clear vision, and you also, you know, so those are, that is what a leader brings. It's not just a sort of, oh, I like that guy, therefore, it's going to kind of rub off on the party, right? It's actually, I kind of don't like the party, therefore, I don't like the person running it. So there's not necessarily going to be a very significant change, and the massive risks are division is very bad. I mean, Tim, you alluded to this, you know, it's unpalatable, it's very bad, electorally speaking. So you have a period of time where you're having an in-fight and a bump fight, and you look like you're talking about yourself. That does a whole load of damage. And so can you then bring in somebody who has enough of the clarity of vision and the competence to actually lead in a direction that people start to look at afresh again and say, oh, okay, that's maybe, you know, what I thought you might be like, maybe back in July 2024, or not as bad. And that's a huge unknown. And so I don't look at polls that say leader this or leader that, you know, could potentially, or person X, person Y, could be more popular, because until you see, you know, somebody govern, and somebody actually command respect within their party, and put some of this division to bed and actually deliver, we have no idea.

[00:25:56] Speaker 1: Right, we're nearly out of time, but we cannot go, we've spoken a bit about your long read. A very long read. We cannot go without looking at one of the strangest, as you call it, one of the most bizarre shortlists of all time for the post of US ambassador, Peter Mandelson, George Osborne, and I quote you, the rugged TV survivalist Bear Grylls, since it was believed he would appeal to Trump, also a star of reality TV.

[00:26:21] Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, occasionally you chance across these completely bat discoveries, and you think this cannot possibly true. And then actually, having written a great deal about turmoil in British politics over the last decade, it's so bonkers that it simply has to be true. And it is. And even more weird, of course, is that George Osborne was originally Keir Starmer's selection to be, it was McSweeney that talked him into Mandelson, ultimately. Yeah, Bear Grylls, I'm not sure how far he got down the track. This may just have been a clever sort of move by someone to put him on the list. This may have been Morgan's way of definitely getting Mandelson. But yeah, it would have been interesting. I don't think I have anything more to add other than just smiling.

[00:27:04] Speaker 4: I just think it's just just what a glorious detail.

[00:27:08] Speaker 1: Well, that is what could have been. And that is a good note on which to end. Chris, thank you very much. Jane, nice to see you. Lovely to see you. Tim, thank you very much for coming in. Pleasure. That's all from this episode of Newscast. Bye-bye.

ai AI Insights
Arow Summary
In a Newscast round-up, presenters James and Chris discuss a turbulent week for Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s team with pollster Prof Jane Greene and Spectator political editor Tim Shipman. The conversation centres on the resignation of Starmer’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney amid scandal and internal Labour doubts about Starmer’s engagement, political instincts and ability to drive policy from the centre. Shipman reports McSweeney effectively precipitated his own exit after offering Starmer options to stay, return to campaigning, or leave, concluding Starmer lacked confidence in him.

Greene argues Labour’s 2024 landslide owed more to Tory collapse and tactical voting than McSweeney’s strategy, and criticises an internal focus on courting Reform voters at the expense of losses to the left—warning Scottish by-election and Holyrood dynamics could expose this. The panel explores Labour’s lack of a clear ‘Starmer project’, the risks of U‑turns, and MPs’ reluctance to trigger a leadership contest in government despite serious Monday jeopardy after Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar publicly called for Starmer to go—likely to protect Scottish Labour from electoral humiliation.

They examine reputational damage from the Doyle/Morton case and the Mandelson/Epstein fallout, with parallels drawn to Johnson-era scandal management: delayed action, shifting explanations, and perceptions that Starmer responds only when his job is threatened. Greene notes public sentiment has moved from disillusionment to fury, driven by economic pressures and compounded by controversies including Gaza. The discussion ends with intrigue over manoeuvring by senior ministers, a possible tilt toward the soft left, and a bizarre reported shortlist for US ambassador including Peter Mandelson, George Osborne and Bear Grylls.
Arow Title
Newscast: McSweeney quits and Labour’s Starmer crisis
Arow Keywords
Keir Starmer Remove
Morgan McSweeney Remove
Labour Party Remove
Downing Street Remove
Anas Sarwar Remove
Scottish Labour Remove
Reform UK Remove
SNP Remove
leadership challenge Remove
Peter Mandelson Remove
Jeffrey Epstein Remove
Matthew Doyle Remove
Sean Morton Remove
Kemi Badenoch Remove
PMQs Remove
polling Remove
tactical voting Remove
party fragmentation Remove
UK nationalism Remove
growth strategy Remove
net zero Remove
Arow Key Takeaways
  • McSweeney was central to the Starmer operation; his resignation exposes doubts about Starmer’s political drive and governing grip.
  • Labour’s 2024 majority is framed as driven largely by Tory collapse and tactical voting, not solely by Labour’s campaign machine.
  • Internal Labour strategy disputes persist: courting Reform voters versus stemming losses to the left.
  • Anas Sarwar’s call for Starmer to resign is seen as a defensive move to protect Scottish Labour’s distinct brand ahead of elections.
  • Polling suggests fragmentation across the UK, with nationalist and Reform challenges reshaping multi-party competition and turnout dynamics.
  • The Doyle/Morton and Mandelson/Epstein controversies risk lasting reputational harm; critics say Starmer acts only under pressure.
  • Cabinet figures appear to be manoeuvring and freelancing more, hinting at soft-left repositioning or leadership contingency planning.
  • Changing leader may not quickly fix polling without unity, competence and a clear, credible governing vision.
Arow Sentiments
Negative: Overall tone is critical and uneasy, emphasising scandal, internal dysfunction, lack of direction, public anger, and electoral peril; any positives (avoiding leadership contest, cabinet rallying) are secondary.
Arow Enter your query
{{ secondsToHumanTime(time) }}
Back
Forward
{{ Math.round(speed * 100) / 100 }}x
{{ secondsToHumanTime(duration) }}
close
New speaker
Add speaker
close
Edit speaker
Save changes
close
Share Transcript