Starmer’s Crisis: Mandelson, Epstein and UK Anger (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Welcome to the Global News Podcast on YouTube, where we go behind the headlines. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway, and today we're asking what's gone wrong for the British Prime Minister, Sakhir Starmer. We're joined by our political correspondent, Rob Watson. And Rob, it's just over 18 months since Sakhir won a huge election victory, and yet now he seems to be fighting for his political life. How did we get here?

[00:00:26] Speaker 2: It is an extraordinary turnaround, Oliver, and you're right to point out that he got one of the biggest parliamentary majorities since the Second World War, since 1945. So he seemed to be all-powerful. I mean, I guess it is worth saying that he only got 34, 35-ish percent of the vote, and one does think that he partly won as a vote against the previous government, the Conservatives, rather than any love for him in particular or his Labour Party. But nonetheless, he had this whacking majority. What's gone wrong? Well, in essence, he promised during the election campaign of 2024 to deliver change, to make life in Britain better. And secondly, he promised that politics would be, it would be no drama, Starmer. There wouldn't be all the sort of divisions and scandal of the Conservative years, the 14 years before him. And obviously that has not turned out that way. And in addition, there were all sorts of policy U-turns and sort of a sense of just one mistake, unforced error after the other. And so he went from this massive majority to now being, I mean, quite extraordinarily, the most unpopular prime minister and leader since polling began.

[00:01:37] Speaker 1: OK, so things haven't been going well for a while, but now he's at crisis point and it's linked to the Epstein files. Just explain how that is.

[00:01:47] Speaker 2: Yes. And of course, we wouldn't be at crisis point were it not for what has come before, what we just discussed. Now, essentially, to make a long story short, in December of 2024, he had appointed Peter Mandelson, this extraordinary, influential figure in Labour politics over the last 20, 30 years, that had appointed him as the British ambassador to Washington to be a man with a great deal of skill and experience in somehow dealing with President Trump. But it was known that Peter Mandelson had been a friend of Jeffrey Epstein. And of course, in the emails that were released in September of last year and the more recent ones that have been released, it just suddenly looked awful, the closeness of those ties. And people were asking, what on earth were you doing, Prime Minister Starmer, appointing this man? What a catastrophic failure of judgment. And on top of all that anger at him already, it sort of brought things to a crisis for Sir Keir Starmer.

[00:02:46] Speaker 1: Yeah. And that takes us to a day of high political drama, which some thought he might not survive. Take us through it.

[00:02:55] Speaker 2: Yes, I was one of those who thought that maybe he was a goner. And, you know, despite 30 odd years of reporting on British politics, I've got to say, that was one of the most traumatic days. And I'd split it into four parts. But when when I woke up on Monday morning and I noticed that there weren't any senior government ministers coming out to sort of support the prime minister after he'd lost his chief of staff at the weekend, he'd resigned over the whole Mandelson appointment. I was thinking things aren't looking good for the prime minister. By the time I got to Westminster, to Parliament, I was there. And then suddenly you have the Labour leader in Scotland saying Sir Keir Starmer needed to go. And I thought, that is it. A lot of us thought, could he really survive that? The most senior Labour politician coming out against him. I went over into the House of Parliament, was near the House of Lords, the House of Commons. And you had this real sense of a moment of peril, of jeopardy. Would Sir Keir Starmer survive? And then in the early afternoon, clearly Downing Street had put pressure on members of the Cabinet, the senior government ministers, to come out and support the prime minister in social media postings. And then the culmination of the day was the prime minister. And it was extraordinary. It was dramatic to see. It was him arriving in those sort of oak panelled corridors of Parliament to address his members of Parliament, Labour members of Parliament in this committee room. They're all squeezed in there. And I watched as the prime minister went in, opened the door, and suddenly there were these cheers and clapping and banging of desks. After a few hours thinking the prime minister might not survive. It was quite a 24 hours, Oliver. Is the danger over for Sir Keir Starmer? No, it's not. And I don't think it will be over unless he could deliver on those two things that he promised. And that is to change Britain for the better, to get economic growth going, and to somehow eradicate, to get rid of all that drama, to be truly no-drama Starmer. And the signs suggest that that is going to be really difficult because despite all that banging of desks and clapping and cheering that I heard last night as he addressed his MPs, they have serious doubts about him. I mean, those on the left of the party think that he needs to change his policies to be more socialist. And those in the centre of the party don't think there's much wrong with his policies. But they just think he's not a very good politician. And they take the view that no one could recover from being this historically unpopular. And I guess we'll find out whether this is just a temporary retrieve for Sir Keir Starmer, as some believe, when there are major elections in England, Scotland and Wales in May. And that may well be when the peril returns for Sir Keir Starmer. Because I don't think anyone believes that the day of drama that he survived on Monday means that he's home and dry. He still does feel very much, Oliver, like a prime minister living perhaps on borrowed time.

[00:05:52] Speaker 1: And looking at this more broadly, why is the Epstein scandal having such an impact in the UK compared to the US?

[00:06:02] Speaker 2: Do you know, I've seen several theories about this, and I'll share one of them with you, which picks on two aspects. And the theory is, number one, a rather sort of prosaic point. And that is that the people who've been affected in Britain, Peter Mandelson, former Prince Andrew and Ghislaine Maxwell, but particularly the former two, that they're sort of semi-public or public figures. You know, that they're sort of out there. Whereas a lot of the big names who've been affected in the United States tend to be more from the private sector. So that's a rather kind of prosaic reason. The second theory that I'd seen, which is, if you like, more kind of cultural and rather interesting, and I don't know what people will make of it, is that essentially, you know, the elite institutions themselves tend to think that a scandal is always a good opportunity to protect the institution. So, in other words, if you really, really make an example of Peter Mandelson, make sure he is properly disgraced, you save the institution, you save politics. And similarly, the royal family, by moving very early to ditch the former Prince Andrew, again are using a scandal to save the institution. So that's a theory. Whether it's a correct one, I don't know, but it's certainly an interesting one.

[00:07:16] Speaker 1: Yeah, talking of institutions, what has happened to the UK itself? It was once a beacon of stability. You had Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, both serving 10 years at the top. Now it seems impossible to govern. Why?

[00:07:32] Speaker 2: I can put a figure on that, right? I mean, it's six prime ministers in 10 years, and I suspect one of the reasons why Labour politicians stepped back from the brink on Monday and getting rid of Sir Keir Starmer is that they thought, oh my goodness, do we want to add a seventh prime minister to the list? But to get to your question, I think it's because, you know, reasonably or unreasonably, for about the last 20 years, British voters have felt that British politicians of whatever stripe have not addressed what they see as the three underlying issues driving volatility, not just in the UK, by the way, but lots of other European countries. And those three things are, number one, stagnating living standards. And that's something that hasn't happened in Britain since the Napoleonic Wars, Oliver, the early 1800s. Secondly, a widespread sense amongst voters, whether fair or not, that sort of Britain is crumbling, the state is crumbling, the transport doesn't work, hospitals, education. And then third is widespread concern about the high levels of immigration over the last 20, 30 years. So you put all those three things together, you have very, very unhappy, angry voters. And one of the things going back to the start of our conversation as to why Sir Keir Starmer is in such trouble, he came out, he became prime minister at a time when trust in politicians, when anger levels were already extremely high. So to somehow make a success in that kind of environment was always going to be a challenge. And it's a challenge that at the moment, I suspect even Downing Street would admit that he is failing.

[00:09:13] Speaker 1: Rob, thank you. Rob Watson, our political correspondent. If you like this episode, please subscribe here on YouTube. If there's anything you'd like us to cover in particular, leave a comment below. And for more international stories, download the Global News Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.