The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - The Last Days in the Starmerbunker

00:00:00.000 Hi folks, welcome to another of these political chats that I do with Dan.

00:00:03.200 Today we're going to be talking about what looks like the last days in the Starmer bunker,

00:00:06.620 because it's been a mad couple of days.

00:00:09.120 I did think when we started this series, the whole premise of doing a series about how it

00:00:12.780 gets worse for Labour was a very finite idea, because sooner or later you're going to have

00:00:16.400 a week where it didn't get worse, but somehow...

00:00:20.000 Well, on the plus side, sooner or later there's got to be an end to the Labour government,

00:00:24.420 right?

00:00:24.960 Well, yes.

00:00:25.580 And it feels like we're rapidly approaching that point now.

00:00:28.540 But before we go on, we'll leave a link in the description to this lad's hour.

00:00:32.960 Dan designed a game to accurately model what it's actually like being in the government,

00:00:38.060 what it is like being in the Starmer bunker.

00:00:39.920 And we played this game and came out of it realising why they make the decisions that

00:00:44.580 they're making.

00:00:45.500 Because the premise is that the decisions are basically split between three different factions.

00:00:51.320 The backbenchers and whether they revolt, the general public and whether they hate you more

00:00:55.540 than anything, and of course, the response from the markets.

00:00:57.860 And the point is that you can never really satisfy any of these groups fully.

00:01:02.820 And when you satisfy one, you harm the other two.

00:01:05.580 And it really changed our thinking on the way that government worked.

00:01:10.840 Because actually, all of a sudden, all of the ideology goes out of the window.

00:01:14.280 All of the high-minded ideals and goodwill goes out of the window.

00:01:18.800 And you are just sat there playing a strategic tactical game of just which one is the lowest

00:01:25.420 and which one can I actually appease with what has been dumped in my lap.

00:01:28.800 Because in the first week, and I designed it like this, in the first week, you try to come

00:01:33.120 up with base policies.

00:01:34.220 Yeah.

00:01:34.380 And in the second week, it's the market tanked and you were just all about the markets.

00:01:38.280 And in the last week, the Labour backbenchers were about to expel you.

00:01:41.460 So every policy was just about appeasing them.

00:01:43.840 Yes.

00:01:44.300 And so you can see that suddenly, you're not really thinking politically.

00:01:48.800 You're just fighting for survival constantly.

00:01:51.080 And this was unbelievably well-timed.

00:01:53.960 We did this on Friday.

00:01:55.400 And over the weekend, I mean, things have gone on.

00:01:59.000 So you do need a Lotus Eater subscription for this, but they are very cheap.

00:02:02.380 They're only £5 a month.

00:02:03.560 But it is worth it just for this alone.

00:02:05.980 Totally worth your time.

00:02:07.320 Dan makes amazing games, to be honest.

00:02:10.020 But anyway, right.

00:02:10.700 So let's talk about the Mandelson stuff very quickly.

00:02:13.860 So you'll notice that when they're talking about this, they'll say Peter Mandelson's friendship

00:02:19.140 with the notorious paedophile, Jeffrey Epstein.

00:02:21.580 So yeah, don't get me wrong, bad, right?

00:02:23.800 But actually, that's not why Mandelson has gone.

00:02:26.420 The problem with Mandelson is that he was literally funneling state secrets to Jeffrey Epstein.

00:02:31.240 Oh, it was textbook treason.

00:02:32.960 Actual treason.

00:02:33.820 I mean, Starmer came out and said this in the Parliament.

00:02:35.560 So them emphasising Epstein being a convicted paedophile, yes, he is.

00:02:39.360 And obviously, he's bad.

00:02:40.260 And why would anyone be friends with him?

00:02:42.120 But that isn't a danger to the realm.

00:02:44.240 That's just disgusting.

00:02:45.520 I mean, if you had to get rid of everybody who was friends with a paedophile,

00:02:48.620 there would be nobody in the halls of government around the world.

00:02:50.700 There'd be nobody in the BBC.

00:02:51.760 Yes.

00:02:52.480 I mean, literally.

00:02:53.480 The elite circles would just be empty.

00:02:55.600 So, I mean, that is not enough.

00:02:57.140 But what he did was give away market-sensitive information at a time of national crisis.

00:03:02.980 Yes.

00:03:03.180 Now, if I had done that while I was working in financial markets,

00:03:05.860 I would expect to go to jail for a minimum of 10 years.

00:03:09.440 Oh, I mean, there are people in jail for that for like 20, 30 years.

00:03:12.060 Yes.

00:03:12.560 This is really bad.

00:03:14.240 Oh, yes.

00:03:14.900 I mean, I can't think of a more serious corruption scandal that I've ever seen, to be honest.

00:03:21.080 No, it's crazy.

00:03:21.920 You have to go back to the height of the Cold War and the passing of like naval secrets and stuff like that to exceed this.

00:03:29.060 Yeah, yeah.

00:03:29.460 This is genuinely mad.

00:03:30.940 And just this, he did this multiple times and somehow he's still walking around free,

00:03:35.800 although the police did raid his Wiltshire mansion the other day.

00:03:38.560 Well, not only free, but the BBC is still doing puff pieces on him and getting magazine articles and, yeah.

00:03:43.700 Yeah, and the Times.

00:03:45.020 And the interesting thing about this is that Andrew did the same.

00:03:47.860 He also shared confidential information with Epstein because, of course, what these guys were,

00:03:52.320 were benefiting from an international ethnic network and they were funneling information to it so the network could benefit.

00:03:57.660 I'm not sure actually what information a royal has these days.

00:04:02.000 Sure, but the point is they're both just as guilty.

00:04:05.580 But the thing is, actually, Mandelson and Andrew are kind of sideshows to all of this.

00:04:13.420 They are, I mean, Mandelson is much more relevant than Andrew in all of this, but they love talking about Andrew because he was an ex-royal.

00:04:21.580 And so, anyway.

00:04:22.760 Well, I'll just quickly say it is interesting that in the world that we live in, it's safer to go after the royals than it is to go after the ethnic networks exposed in the Epstein files.

00:04:34.120 That is a very good point, actually.

00:04:36.680 And they're very willing to make a proper sacrifice of him as well because, I mean, Charles took action, kicked him out of the palace, stripped him of his titles, and now he's just Andrew, what was it, goth Coburg Windsor or something?

00:04:48.920 He's been reduced from 24 servants to a mere three.

00:04:51.460 Yeah.

00:04:51.940 He's practically destitute at this point.

00:04:54.040 Yeah.

00:04:54.260 And they are very quick to distance themselves.

00:04:57.940 You make your own bed on that one, Andrew.

00:04:59.800 Anyway, so getting back to these issues.

00:05:02.400 Now, I've got a lot of videos, but I'm just going to summarize them just for the sake of time.

00:05:06.960 This has been a real problem for the New Labour Project.

00:05:10.920 Yes.

00:05:11.540 A bit, yeah.

00:05:12.480 Because Peter Mandelson, for his entire career, has been a core part of the New Labour Project and was taken into Starmer's government as the American ambassador, who is, of course, controlling the election, the selection of politicians for the candidates for 2024, being responsible for the cabinet reshuffle, and being intimately connected at the very...

00:05:36.820 Oh, I mean, he was... If you take the holy trinity of Labour, it's Tony Blair, this guy, Alistair Campbell, and Mandelson.

00:05:44.440 Yes.

00:05:44.560 It's the three of them.

00:05:45.720 Yes.

00:05:46.260 And they've been best buddies for decades now.

00:05:48.400 They were in government together, and they are fundamentally, these are the guys who are responsible for ruining the country.

00:05:53.600 And so Alistair Campbell did this, just a quick piece of the camera on his own, no Rory Stewart here, where he basically tells everyone that he is very proud of New Labour, very proud of everything New Labour did.

00:06:07.420 Which is remarkable.

00:06:09.160 He was disappointed in the scale of the distancing from Peter Mandelson.

00:06:13.940 He thinks that people should be like, oh no, don't just throw Mandelson under the bus.

00:06:18.240 So he's still being pro-Mandelson at this point?

00:06:21.200 I wouldn't say pro-Mandelson, but he thinks that everyone should be cooling down the amount they distance themselves from Mandelson.

00:06:28.140 They shouldn't be throwing him under the bus so much, because, of course, he's very core to the New Labour project that he's so proud of.

00:06:33.440 But also, he concludes that he can't see a way out for Labour, and so he's losing sleep over it.

00:06:40.100 So he thinks this is the end of Blairism.

00:06:42.380 And if this is the primary spin doctor for the new Labour years, if he can't think of a spin to get Labour out of this, they must be pretty screwed.

00:06:52.380 And remember that the Blair project was bigger than just being in government.

00:06:56.780 Oh yeah.

00:06:57.080 The Blair project was, let's take every function of the state, take it out of Parliament, and shove it into quangos that will be permanently run by our people.

00:07:06.080 And that's what somebody, the Holy Trinity of Labour would have understood that mechanism, because it was the core driving thing of everything they did.

00:07:15.300 So if he is worried that this is going to unravel, the entire Blair project could potentially unravel.

00:07:22.000 I mean, that is huge for the British Constitution.

00:07:24.940 And you can see why it keeps him up at night.

00:07:27.440 Yes.

00:07:27.820 He thinks there's no way out for Labour, I can't sleep.

00:07:30.140 If this all goes down in flames, how does his memory, how does his legacy look?

00:07:34.940 How do any of theirs look?

00:07:36.260 The entire structure that the British works under today is ripe for being unpicked.

00:07:42.600 So, I mean, I don't think that Labour losing an election would cause him to lose sleep, because he's lost elections before.

00:07:48.980 The unravelling of the entire Blair project, that would keep him up, because that's his life work.

00:07:53.760 Exactly.

00:07:54.440 And that's exactly the point.

00:07:56.280 Anyway, so, like Alistair says, he's very proud of new Labour.

00:08:00.140 You have other figures in Labour who have thoughts on this.

00:08:03.220 Here's Maurice Glassman's opinion of Blairism.

00:08:06.700 It is not fascist.

00:08:08.100 Labour was straight with the working class.

00:08:10.200 We won the war.

00:08:11.060 Ernest Bevan is a hero.

00:08:13.020 So, yeah, so Labour has to, the government and the Labour Party has to repent and reject new Labour as an alien body that took over the party.

00:08:22.340 And this is where it leads.

00:08:24.800 Perversion and paedophilia.

00:08:27.480 Lord Glassman, that's strong.

00:08:29.340 You can tell us how you really feel, Lord Glassman, but is he wrong?

00:08:33.400 That's the point.

00:08:34.040 This is Harriet Harman with the Peter Martial Information Exchange.

00:08:36.900 Peter Maddelson being best buddies with Epstein and whatnot.

00:08:41.540 Like, he is right.

00:08:43.220 And we've talked about this before, how Tony Blair's managerial, middle-class, rationalist Labour wing took over the Labour Party and steered it in this direction, conquered the country, essentially, and reformatted it in their own image.

00:08:57.800 Glassman's completely correct.

00:08:58.900 And that phrasing about Labour rejecting it as some sort of parasite, vomiting it up, vomiting up new Labour, I mean, that would be consistent.

00:09:08.200 Every time that Labour has accidentally had a little bit of democracy, it has tried to go back to its roots.

00:09:14.720 I mean, that was what Jeremy Corbyn was.

00:09:16.180 That's what Ed Miliband was when he became elected leader.

00:09:18.920 That the body of, the tendency that coalesces around and in Labour does not want Blairism.

00:09:27.760 Correct.

00:09:28.520 And Blairism is going to defend itself by throwing up as many smoke screens as it can.

00:09:32.840 I mean, here's Sky News interview, and where they're trying to make this a feminist issue.

00:09:38.380 Now, this is really interesting.

00:09:39.800 And Alistair Campbell did exactly this, which is try to hide behind the victims of Epstein as a way of essentially deflecting the issue from themselves.

00:09:50.560 Specific political issues, but we spoke to Baroness Hazarika a little earlier in the day, who spoke about this actually being about male power and a boys club that didn't really care about women one way or another.

00:10:03.060 Do you think, or rather, how big a reason do you think that is for the anger, the fury that we're seeing within the Labour Party now?

00:10:09.900 I think that is considerable, and I think that is also something where Labour Party, you know, has some introspection to conduct.

00:10:19.160 So, you can see that it's framed along male power.

00:10:22.120 Oh, yeah, this is just what men do, is run Epstein networks, don't you know?

00:10:26.640 And Alistair Campbell began his spiel by saying, I'd like to put the victims front and centre, and I've heard this repeated over and over.

00:10:33.200 So, hang on a second.

00:10:34.820 One, do you know that the victims want to be front and centre in the Epstein scandal?

00:10:38.500 Are you sure that they want the kind of level of public attention that actually is drawn to that?

00:10:43.840 But this is a way of you essentially creating a smokescreen, putting someone in the way.

00:10:47.720 Here's some cannon fodder.

00:10:51.300 It's like, oh, no, this is a feminist issue.

00:10:53.100 This is now ideological.

00:10:54.000 No, no, no, no.

00:10:54.880 This is a very concrete issue with the fact that the Labour Party is full of traitors who are literally funneling information to foreign networks that is a betrayal of the nation.

00:11:05.860 They're trying to throw essentially the women in front of themselves as a form of protective screen in order to say, no, no, we have to talk about Epstein's victims.

00:11:13.720 It's like, this isn't really about Epstein and his victims.

00:11:16.000 This is really about you funneling information to a foreign network.

00:11:20.080 The fact that a foreign network happens to be a disgusting paedophile network, as well as this international money power network, is obviously bad and gross.

00:11:29.340 But that's really not the issue.

00:11:31.260 And to try and make that the issue is to distract from the actual damage to the country.

00:11:35.160 Well, yeah.

00:11:35.540 And you said a moment ago that the chief spin doctor of the Blair Wright Project could not think of a way to spin out of this.

00:11:41.660 This is about as best you can do when it comes to try and spin out of this stuff.

00:11:45.500 And it's obviously paper thin.

00:11:48.120 Yeah, exactly.

00:11:48.660 It's not going to actually withstand any of the pressure that's put on it.

00:11:53.340 Jacob Rees-Mogg put up this video saying, look, I've actually been in the bunker as two prime ministers have fallen.

00:12:01.220 He says that essentially the permanent secretaries realize your time is up and so you won't get anything done while you're trying to hold on to your position.

00:12:11.960 When it becomes apparent that basically everyone else around you, even if your tight clique support you in the cabinet, if the rest of the country looks at you and says, no, I just don't want you here, the permanent secretaries actually take their motivations and sort of incentives from that and say, right, okay, this is very temporary.

00:12:31.560 And in fact, in Mogg's case, he was literally in the cabinet while they were drawing up a policy against what he had done because he had imposed this policy.

00:12:42.260 He's in the cabinet, but they knew that he's on the timer.

00:12:44.420 So they were just drawing up the policy with him there.

00:12:47.140 So it was just one of those things where it's like, look, the system actually doesn't care who's in charge.

00:12:51.240 So I don't know if he makes his point, but I mean, the key power that the prime minister has is the power of patronage.

00:12:56.780 It's the ability to appoint people and enforce his will.

00:13:00.780 Yes.

00:13:01.780 I think Starmer's at the point now where nobody wants to work for him.

00:13:06.320 Well, let's put a pin in that and come back to it, right?

00:13:09.680 Anyway, his former director of strategic communications says he's cooked.

00:13:15.400 He thinks he's absolutely cooked.

00:13:16.440 There's no way out of here.

00:13:17.820 Morgan McSweeney is saying that.

00:13:19.040 No, no, no.

00:13:19.400 This isn't Morgan McSweeney.

00:13:20.320 I can't remember the name of the chap.

00:13:21.700 Is it at the bottom there?

00:13:23.240 John Glancy.

00:13:25.680 Difficult place to work.

00:13:26.860 That chap.

00:13:27.380 Oh, okay, that guy.

00:13:28.000 I can't remember his name.

00:13:28.640 But he's the former director of strategic communications.

00:13:31.360 Is it at the chap?

00:13:31.960 I think it's at the chap.

00:13:34.460 Yeah, yeah.

00:13:34.920 Is this James?

00:13:35.380 James Leons.

00:13:36.800 He thinks he's cooked.

00:13:38.960 And so, yep, probably.

00:13:40.320 One of the problems that Robert Peston points out is that the Labour MPs, and this is, okay,

00:13:48.560 one of the things, one of the threads I want to take through this episode is that they are

00:13:52.700 completely detached from what the reality of the situation is, actually, right?

00:13:58.160 So let's, in fact, watch Robert Peston explain what the Labour MPs currently think.

00:14:02.480 Words on who should take responsibility for this.

00:14:05.480 Morgan McSweeney has done that.

00:14:07.260 Is that enough to save Starmer?

00:14:08.500 Well, I've been talking to lots of Labour MPs and ministers tonight.

00:14:13.900 The ministers on the payroll, as you would imagine, trying to put a brave face on it,

00:14:19.720 saying things to me like, you know, the country doesn't want a new prime minister.

00:14:24.260 But when you talk to backbench MPs, they are at their wits end.

00:14:29.200 So you can see that there's, the only lines that they have are delusional ones.

00:14:34.900 The country doesn't want a new prime minister.

00:14:36.240 So, oh no, that's exactly what the country does.

00:14:38.040 Yes.

00:14:39.840 There is a reason why he is the most unpopular prime minister since records began ever.

00:14:47.140 Yes.

00:14:47.620 That is the very definition of people want a new prime minister.

00:14:50.680 It couldn't be more crystal clear.

00:14:52.780 There is no, in fact, it's so unambiguous.

00:14:56.220 Yes.

00:14:56.360 There could not have been a more concrete and definite circumstance in which that would be obvious.

00:15:02.260 Yes.

00:15:02.800 The public, I mean, there was, there was a petition with three million signatures they debated in Parliament,

00:15:08.220 saying call a general election just a couple of months ago.

00:15:10.840 Like, if you, to get a petition with three million people signing it to call a general election,

00:15:15.040 it shows there is a great well of feeling in the country that people want to get rid of Keir Starmer.

00:15:21.100 Yes.

00:15:21.660 But the problem that the Labour Party has, there's no obvious successor to Keir Starmer, actually.

00:15:26.460 Angela Rayner is still embroiled in a tax scandal.

00:15:29.480 And for some reason, the HMRC are kicking their, dragging their heels over that.

00:15:32.960 And Burnham was blocked by Starmer.

00:15:35.080 So the only actual challenger that could have been had, Starmer is kept out of the Parliament.

00:15:40.260 Well, there's David Lammy.

00:15:41.500 I mean, he is the deputy prime minister.

00:15:43.100 Well, we'll, we'll, we'll come to all of these in a minute.

00:15:45.460 Oh, okay.

00:15:45.800 Because the thing is, it's not really about positioning in the Labour Party.

00:15:48.900 It's really about ambition and ability to sort of build a cohort and a faction within the Labour Party.

00:15:55.680 And David Lammy is very firmly in Keir Starmer's faction because David Lammy is very firmly a Blairite.

00:16:00.540 And so these people are not here to overthrow Keir Starmer.

00:16:03.440 They're, in fact, his principal support.

00:16:05.860 So he, he is in no danger from any of these people, which is why he blocked Burnham and not them.

00:16:10.400 Right.

00:16:11.060 So.

00:16:12.020 Yes.

00:16:12.480 Fair point.

00:16:13.400 The, the, the rest of politics guys put up another podcast talking about this.

00:16:18.520 And these takes are deranged.

00:16:19.980 And we're going to, I'm not going to play you any of it.

00:16:21.840 We're going to look at their comments section.

00:16:23.460 Right.

00:16:25.020 So the reason Starmer came in on a landslide isn't because he's particularly good.

00:16:29.560 It's because we as a nation realized the Tories weren't a viable political party.

00:16:33.420 Keir didn't win a landslide.

00:16:34.520 The Tories thought, that's really interesting, isn't it?

00:16:36.780 As I said, I'll watch this.

00:16:37.600 They think they, they, there's a perpetual, this is another thread that's going to run through this.

00:16:42.600 There's a perpetual feeling in the Labour Party that Morgan McSweeney and Keir Starmer are some sort of killer dream team because they delivered a 418 seat majority.

00:16:50.200 But of course, this ignores the historically contingent fact that is, actually, it was Nigel Farage that kicked the Tories out from, their legs out from underneath them.

00:17:00.440 And that's why they have it.

00:17:01.500 You can always tell a lot from YouTube comments and the distinction between genuine YouTube media and the non-genuine because, I mean, we would have to screw up quite badly for our audience to turn against us in every single comment.

00:17:13.360 It just doesn't happen.

00:17:14.480 I mean, look at these.

00:17:15.200 It never ceased to amaze me that Alistair Campbell has the audacity to criticize any politicians.

00:17:19.400 It may be that we were going through one of these weird periods in history where the main political parties are in existential peril because they do not represent the people of this country.

00:17:25.780 They represent transnational capital.

00:17:27.780 Yes.

00:17:27.940 Their own comments are just, and these are their fans.

00:17:31.720 Well, this is the thing.

00:17:33.080 You can always tell when a YouTube channel is astroturfed because their own audience is hostile to them.

00:17:39.040 Yes.

00:17:39.540 The country is becoming ungovernable, the comment is quite telling.

00:17:42.440 The problem is not the country of its people.

00:17:44.140 It's the standard of our politicians or lack thereof.

00:17:46.580 Again, this is just brutal, absolutely brutal.

00:17:51.620 So anyway, you can see they are sat on this reservation where they can't bring themselves to admit the failure of the new Labour project.

00:17:59.760 That's what this is all about.

00:18:02.420 They all have deranged opinions about McSweeney.

00:18:05.580 We'll come back to this for a minute.

00:18:07.060 McSweeney, the strategic genius.

00:18:10.680 2019, Labour's worst election defeat in terms of MPs.

00:18:15.800 2024, huge majority.

00:18:18.300 People say Morgan McSweeney was the man who transformed Labour's prospects from disaster to victory.

00:18:25.980 Do you give them some credit for that?

00:18:27.420 Look at Amber's smug face.

00:18:29.480 Look how smug she is because she's part of the Corbynites, right?

00:18:32.460 So she's not a new Labour girl.

00:18:33.840 I'm pretty certain that Diane Abbott is loving this.

00:18:38.540 She has been chewed out by McSweeney more than once.

00:18:41.300 Let's watch.

00:18:41.900 This idea that McSweeney was an election genius actually ignores the figures.

00:18:50.840 The truth is that in 2024, the Labour vote was more or less the same as it was in 2019.

00:18:58.660 What actually happened was a Tory vote split and half their vote went to reform.

00:19:05.440 So, and when people...

00:19:06.660 Completely correct.

00:19:07.620 That was it.

00:19:08.100 That was it.

00:19:08.380 Completely correct.

00:19:09.400 And yet the rest is politics.

00:19:11.320 And yet all of the other, you know, all of the top brass, Robert Peston, you know, all of these,

00:19:16.560 all of these top brass, I mean, Rees-Mogg probably is aware of this.

00:19:19.620 But all of the rest of them are just completely...

00:19:21.740 Well, I mean, Rory Stewart, I mean, he's a Blairite too, because the Cameron government

00:19:25.860 was a Blairite government.

00:19:27.080 Exactly.

00:19:27.480 And this is basically the first person you've shown who is not within the Blairite framework,

00:19:32.340 whether it be blue Labour or red Tories, yeah.

00:19:36.640 And Diane Abbott is the only one who's telling them the truth on this, which we've seen and

00:19:42.460 we've spoken about time and time again, right?

00:19:44.360 So you can see, again, these people are living in a delusional fantasy land.

00:19:48.880 And so my comparison to Hitler moving around the phantom divisions in the bunker, I think

00:19:53.400 really holds up here.

00:19:54.960 Anyway, so Morgan McSweeney resigned and everyone, I mean, for a period of about 12 hours or so

00:20:02.780 overnight, it was really difficult to know what was going to happen.

00:20:06.060 Was Keir Starmer going to go?

00:20:07.120 Because Keir Starmer was going to come out and give a speech and he wasn't going to give

00:20:09.940 a speech.

00:20:10.600 And everyone was...

00:20:10.920 That was the weird thing on Sunday night, wasn't it?

00:20:12.580 A press release went out saying, get ready for the lectern coming out tomorrow.

00:20:17.200 And then half an hour later, it got, oh no, he's changed his mind again.

00:20:20.180 He's going to try and fight it.

00:20:21.340 Yeah.

00:20:21.600 Keir Starmer's full of U-turns.

00:20:23.480 So...

00:20:23.800 He even U-turned his own resignation.

00:20:26.380 He actually did, yeah.

00:20:27.620 But eventually, Morgan McSweeney resigns.

00:20:30.300 And of course, he puts out a statement saying,

00:20:34.400 Mandelson, disgusting.

00:20:36.000 Oh, can't believe I have anything to do with him.

00:20:38.360 But you were his protege.

00:20:40.380 You lobbied for him to be brought into the Labour government and given such access?

00:20:47.800 There was also a line in there, if you read his resignation, and the line was something

00:20:53.180 like, I apologise for the advice that I provided when I was asked for my advice.

00:20:59.840 So actually, he's subtly turning it back around and saying, yeah, but I didn't actually decide

00:21:03.720 this.

00:21:04.000 He did.

00:21:04.340 I just gave my opinion.

00:21:06.380 And who knows what happens?

00:21:07.420 Because, I mean, like, Morgan McSweeney is like the Dominic Cummings of Labour.

00:21:11.080 And Dominic Cummings went pretty damn hard against Boris Johnson in the months after his

00:21:16.820 resignation.

00:21:17.500 That's true.

00:21:17.860 So, who knows?

00:21:18.800 And actually, you want to remember which way round this relationship went.

00:21:23.200 Morgan McSweeney was a bigwig in Labour before Keir Starmer.

00:21:27.640 Long before.

00:21:28.220 He spent his entire career in the Labour machinery behind the scenes.

00:21:32.800 And when the question of, we need a new leader, came up, Morgan McSweeney was making the case

00:21:38.100 for Starmer, not the other way round.

00:21:40.720 He is the senior partner in this.

00:21:42.720 And you'll notice that, remember, when this was brought up in Parliament, when this was

00:21:46.220 first going on during the PMQs, and he still said, Morgan McSweeney is an essential part

00:21:49.820 of this government.

00:21:50.940 Well, OK, but that's weird that you were that quick to defend him.

00:21:54.420 It kind of implies you're dependent on him, and not the other way around.

00:21:58.020 But also, OK, now you've lost an essential part of your government.

00:22:00.100 And what's your decision-making capacity, Keir Starmer?

00:22:02.600 Because you are, A, not a politician, you're a lawyer, and B, you're a terrible politician.

00:22:08.980 And C, Morgan McSweeney was clearly doing everything that you did.

00:22:12.880 He was obviously explaining these things to you.

00:22:15.160 I mean, the chief of staff attends cabinet.

00:22:17.440 I mean, he has basically access to everything.

00:22:20.540 He's got basically the highest security clearance you can have without actually being the prime

00:22:23.920 minister.

00:22:24.400 Yes.

00:22:24.580 I think, and I've gone back to this a number of times, I think we are past the stage where

00:22:28.320 politicians actually decide anything.

00:22:30.660 I think they're frontmen, they're narrative shapers, they're the people who take the blame,

00:22:34.940 the buffer.

00:22:35.740 If I had to point to anyone who's actually running the government, I'd actually say it

00:22:39.200 was McSweeney.

00:22:40.120 And that's why it was unimaginable to be able to sack him.

00:22:43.300 And that's why he had so much pressure on him.

00:22:45.520 Because, I mean, leading up to this, the entire, like, year and a half that Labour have been

00:22:49.420 in government.

00:22:50.420 Oh, how long has it been?

00:22:51.520 What, 18 months?

00:22:52.460 Something like that?

00:22:53.280 I think it's about that.

00:22:55.720 It feels longer than it's been.

00:22:56.960 But McSweeney has been the guy who's constantly been dumped on by Labour, by the backbenchers,

00:23:02.080 by the Corbynites, by, you know, the trade unions, by whoever.

00:23:05.000 Yeah, because he's the one who tells them no.

00:23:06.400 Exactly.

00:23:06.920 He's the one who's actually making decisions.

00:23:09.920 Anyway, Starmer has decided to replace him with two part-time girlbosses, which is just

00:23:14.200 incredible judgment.

00:23:16.280 I'm sure, I'm sure they'll, I'm sure they'll do brilliant.

00:23:19.000 What could go wrong?

00:23:19.860 Yeah, I mean, why would, but this thing, why would you want, if you were a competent

00:23:23.100 person, why would you want to come into Starmer's government now?

00:23:27.520 Oh, yeah.

00:23:28.480 Like, there's, there's a reason why Mog didn't get involved after the Conservative government

00:23:34.220 started collapsing, you know, as he stepped back, because he knew that someone was going

00:23:37.760 to be left holding the bag here, and he didn't want to be him, which is very smart,

00:23:41.060 frankly.

00:23:41.780 And so these two ladies have decided to, I mean, there's really weird optics on this as well.

00:23:47.120 It's genuinely a kind of Islamic perspective.

00:23:49.820 We can have one man or two women.

00:23:53.360 It's just really bad optics.

00:23:55.540 Is this feminism?

00:23:57.680 Anyway.

00:23:58.380 Are they actually part-time and sharing the role?

00:24:00.620 I believe so, yeah.

00:24:02.240 I believe they're actually both part-time.

00:24:04.500 Can you not find somebody who's willing to be chief of staff and effectively run the UK

00:24:09.560 government?

00:24:10.220 I mean, is it that difficult to recruit to, that you need to do a job-sharing arrangement?

00:24:14.500 I mean, I wouldn't, I can't imagine it's easy for Starmer to find people to help him.

00:24:21.980 Now, these, these two, again, they're fairly long-running Labour Party operatives, and obviously

00:24:27.960 a part of the new Labour system.

00:24:31.060 But Starmer only has people in the background to draw upon now.

00:24:34.960 So he's only got the sort of, the people who have been running the Labour Party to bring

00:24:40.820 in.

00:24:41.000 He can't bring in anyone with any significant public presence, because they're like, no,

00:24:44.340 God, why would I want that?

00:24:45.600 You know, these are people who don't.

00:24:46.680 You're not getting Alastair Campbell back at this point.

00:24:48.520 No, exactly.

00:24:49.100 You don't get...

00:24:49.420 What you have to do is go and find the girls that were making the tea when Blair was in

00:24:55.260 power, who were somehow still working there.

00:24:58.120 Who've just worked their way slowly up the hierarchy.

00:25:00.160 Who somehow survived the Corbyn era, and it's like, okay, well, you're the only available

00:25:04.440 Blairites who are still here.

00:25:06.560 Yes.

00:25:07.160 Congratulations, you're now, you know, chief of staff.

00:25:10.020 Oh, I can't, because I look after the kids on Thursdays.

00:25:12.140 Right, you and you are now chief of staff.

00:25:14.640 What was the name of the admiral who took over after Hitler killed himself?

00:25:17.520 Dottnes or something, right?

00:25:19.080 Just like, yeah, the German admiral, the Nazi admiral who actually surrendered to the Allies.

00:25:25.220 I don't know.

00:25:25.680 I can't remember the guy's name now, but it's like, he just kind of inherits this unbelievable,

00:25:30.400 like, these ladies are in the same sort of position.

00:25:32.900 But anyway, the point being, everyone knows, everyone knows his position is, I mean, as the

00:25:37.700 BBC say, dire, right?

00:25:39.480 This is immense peril.

00:25:41.060 This is a position that, honestly, I mean, Kirsten, I remember when he came in, he was

00:25:45.920 saying, yeah, we're going to bring respectability back to politics, we're not going to have

00:25:49.120 any scandals, and it's been non-stop scandal, day after day after day, until the Epstein

00:25:54.600 files drop, and it's like, right, your government is basically controlled by Epstein?

00:25:58.540 It's like, what?

00:25:59.980 Like, non-stop scandal?

00:26:01.700 If it actually had been what he envisaged it to be, the Epstein stuff could have come

00:26:06.980 along, you could have gone hard on Mandelson, you could have made the issue about him,

00:26:11.060 But this has arrived at failure after failure after failure.

00:26:15.540 So, and it just plays to the issue is, that your judgment and your whole political world

00:26:22.400 view is broken.

00:26:24.140 And your instincts as a politician are bad.

00:26:28.680 Oh, he's not a good politician at all.

00:26:30.120 No.

00:26:30.560 And everyone can see it.

00:26:31.640 And the fact that he's been so exposed for being so dependent on the gross Blair I Know.

00:26:37.220 In fact, the way that the Telegraph put it is, the sordid regime of Keir Stump.

00:26:43.500 And it's like, well, that's true, to be honest.

00:26:45.740 Like, it is sordid to have Peter Mandelson around you, and it always has been, and everyone's

00:26:49.300 always known it.

00:26:50.180 And the fact that Labour have been so dependent on Mandelson just to get anywhere is like,

00:26:54.380 okay, that's gross?

00:26:56.340 What is wrong with you?

00:26:58.540 Anyway, so there are lots of takes like this, which is, this is a really, really good writer

00:27:03.640 from Alex Wickham.

00:27:04.520 I can't remember where he's from, I found.

00:27:06.480 Bloomberg, right?

00:27:07.540 UK political editor from Bloomberg.

00:27:09.160 There's a really good writer pointing out that this is basically the end of Blairism,

00:27:14.300 right?

00:27:14.480 It's the kind of debauched, depraved end of Blairism.

00:27:17.380 It's all coming down, and everyone can see that that's happening.

00:27:21.440 And as you said, Starmer, he's got to address the nation.

00:27:24.420 I mean, this is his government in crisis, the very core pillars of Starmer's government

00:27:29.620 are being, are falling away.

00:27:31.560 I mean, I don't, like, no one knows who's really in charge of the Labour Party now, when

00:27:35.320 now McSweeney, the Labour government, now McSweeney has popped out.

00:27:38.760 Well, Starmer doesn't have the political talent for it to be him.

00:27:43.360 Exactly.

00:27:44.100 So, I guess we're just going to get whatever the best two part-time women can do.

00:27:48.820 And maybe they'll be brilliant, who knows?

00:27:51.920 Maybe.

00:27:52.140 But Sky weren't persuaded.

00:27:55.360 They set up this, just a live Downing Street camera.

00:27:58.760 Oh, they just filmed the door waiting for him to come out?

00:28:00.560 Yeah.

00:28:01.100 Yeah.

00:28:01.340 And this went on for hours as well.

00:28:03.240 This is only, like, a minute of it.

00:28:05.080 But I was watching this all afternoon, because I was expecting Keir Starmer to come out with

00:28:10.400 the lectern and explain what his position was.

00:28:13.540 And you understand why the news firms have to do this, because they want their people there

00:28:18.240 if he walks out and resigns.

00:28:20.160 So, they have to leave a guy standing there all day.

00:28:22.620 Exactly.

00:28:23.340 So, revealed preference.

00:28:24.800 But they don't do that every day.

00:28:26.420 They only do it when they sense the moment is near.

00:28:29.120 And so, you can tell that in the Westminster media sphere, they're all like, okay, yeah,

00:28:34.900 no.

00:28:35.960 In normal circumstances, if this was a Conservative Prime Minister, they'd be Liz Trussing themselves

00:28:41.240 or Boris Johnson-ing themselves any minute now.

00:28:44.140 Yeah.

00:28:44.340 They'd just come out.

00:28:45.080 Or Theresa May, like, come out, have a bit of a wobble in her voice, you know, serving

00:28:49.780 the country I love.

00:28:50.920 And then, you know, because they are, the Conservatives are playing politics as it is

00:28:56.080 supposed to be played in this country.

00:28:57.660 If you have actually lost the confidence of your own party and the country, by extension,

00:29:02.940 then you do the right thing for the party itself, and you resign.

00:29:06.940 You have failed.

00:29:07.620 And that is the important part about Keir Starmer.

00:29:12.320 He is, as far as I can tell, a madman because he is refusing to do this.

00:29:18.900 Well, he actually believes that he's an entirely virtuous character.

00:29:22.580 I think so.

00:29:23.340 And also, I think that he has more of a commitment to power than even the Conservatives.

00:29:28.900 And people think cynically that the Conservatives are all about power.

00:29:32.260 It's like, no, there is something more to the Conservatives.

00:29:34.420 It's all about preserving the Conservative Party.

00:29:36.520 But Keir Starmer doesn't seem to care about the party at all.

00:29:40.000 He seems to care about the Blairism.

00:29:41.840 There was an interesting comment that he made to his own backbenchers at a meeting.

00:29:46.660 I think the difference with the Tories is, is if they leave office, they expect to come

00:29:50.540 back again.

00:29:51.920 The comment that Starmer made at a meeting with the backbenchers, he said, look, I am only

00:29:56.940 the fourth Labour Prime Minister to ever get elected.

00:30:00.600 He understands how rare it is for the Fabians to get hold of the keys of power.

00:30:05.300 And he's like, we are not giving this up easily.

00:30:08.040 We'll come back to that.

00:30:08.920 OK.

00:30:09.220 Because you're exactly right on that.

00:30:10.640 So anyway, Tim Allen, the director of communications, also resigned.

00:30:14.880 He was, again, apparently very close to Mandelson.

00:30:18.320 So it's like, OK, interesting how this is.

00:30:22.880 Pressure is on.

00:30:24.080 Morgan McSweeney's gone.

00:30:25.080 Now his director of communications is gone.

00:30:26.740 And I mean, this is the Alistair Campbell position, the spin doctor.

00:30:31.360 Can't spin it.

00:30:32.420 Right.

00:30:32.580 The director of comms has come out.

00:30:33.640 I'm like, I've got nothing.

00:30:34.840 Yeah, I've got nothing.

00:30:35.620 I'm going to have to resign, I'm afraid.

00:30:37.100 So again, Keir Starmer, the core pillars of support for his government are falling away.

00:30:40.920 Yeah.

00:30:41.360 And so, OK, this is not good.

00:30:43.640 We're expecting to see Chris Wormald resigning, which is the cabinet secretary.

00:30:48.440 Yeah.

00:30:48.700 Again, to be replaced by a girl boss.

00:30:50.060 It hasn't actually happened yet.

00:30:51.220 But all of the rumours that he's going to.

00:30:53.540 Let's go full girl boss.

00:30:55.280 Why not?

00:30:55.640 Why not?

00:30:56.040 Yeah.

00:30:56.260 Why not?

00:30:56.540 How much worse could it get?

00:30:58.220 But the point being, that's the leader of the civil service.

00:31:02.100 And this is, again, the core infrastructure of the government.

00:31:07.320 You know, the cabinet and the MPs are all up.

00:31:09.000 But these are the people who hold them all up.

00:31:10.540 And this is all just falling away.

00:31:12.440 And it's wild.

00:31:14.100 As you said, there was a U-turn on his own resignation.

00:31:17.200 And I decided that he wasn't going to do that.

00:31:18.960 And if you thought this was as bad as it could get, then the leader of the Scottish Labour

00:31:23.820 Party came out and gave him a press conference in which he just said, you need to resign.

00:31:29.400 You need to just quit.

00:31:32.260 I won't play it just because, uh, this is Anas Sawa, for anyone who doesn't know, leader

00:31:37.920 of the Scottish Labour, who just came out and said, um, I'm good buddies with Keir, but

00:31:43.380 too many mistakes have been made.

00:31:44.740 The good things that Labour have done are being drowned out by Starmer's mistakes.

00:31:49.360 It's time for a change in leadership.

00:31:51.060 I'm not backing other candidates.

00:31:52.860 Um, he just has to go.

00:31:54.300 And when asked by the press corps, he says, yes, I did speak to Starmer about this.

00:31:58.580 And I told him I was going to do this.

00:32:00.320 So Starmer is getting these, Starmer, you've got to resign.

00:32:03.240 I can't, I'm not going to resign.

00:32:04.460 You've got to, I'm going to go into a conference calling publicly for your resignation as the

00:32:08.760 leader of Scotland's Labour Party.

00:32:10.280 And Keir's just like, I'll take it on the chin.

00:32:12.960 And, and, and one of the questions that followed this was, was asking about his motives of doing

00:32:16.880 it.

00:32:17.020 And he said, look, if we don't get rid of him, we're going to have SNP in Scotland.

00:32:20.720 Yes.

00:32:21.280 And that is a great point.

00:32:23.160 I mean, the irony of this is, of course, he's great buddies with Peter Mandelson.

00:32:27.600 Like literally great to catch up with my old friend in the UK's relatively new ambassador

00:32:31.660 to the US.

00:32:32.600 Like they all love Peter Mandelson.

00:32:35.160 He's a new Labourite too, right?

00:32:37.960 Well, he, he was the most senior surviving figure because Alistair Campbell had gone off

00:32:41.960 to do his podcast and write his books and do whatever he does.

00:32:45.140 Uh, Blair is dark Lord in Gaza.

00:32:48.220 Yeah.

00:32:48.480 God knows what he's up to.

00:32:49.900 I mean, he, he's just putting the strings all over the world.

00:32:52.460 I mean, he no longer operates at the national level.

00:32:54.640 He, he, you know, he, he's on, you know, galactic terms at the moment.

00:32:58.200 So Mandelson was the most senior Blairite that was still extant.

00:33:02.460 Correct.

00:33:02.780 And they all, they all loved him.

00:33:04.480 They all knew him.

00:33:05.380 Um, anyway, Welsh Labour was supposed to do the same thing as well.

00:33:09.440 Uh, Welsh Labour first minister was set to follow Anas Sawa and calling for Keir Starmer

00:33:13.780 to resign.

00:33:14.560 But, uh, they, they decided what they were going to do is see how it went.

00:33:19.040 Right.

00:33:19.900 And it didn't actually go brilliantly.

00:33:21.900 So they decided not to do it.

00:33:23.640 Uh, they decided, you know what?

00:33:25.020 I'm just going to, uh, support the prime minister full confidence in the prime minister.

00:33:29.500 Yeah.

00:33:29.720 Bollocks.

00:33:30.040 Look, somebody got on the phone and was absolutely bellowing and threatening down the line.

00:33:34.820 Exactly.

00:33:35.200 And, and this Ewan Morgan chap broke.

00:33:38.720 And, but why is Scotland in Wales, uh, Labour in Wales and Scotland doing this?

00:33:43.140 Because they're getting destroyed.

00:33:46.220 Absolutely destroyed.

00:33:47.220 Oh yeah.

00:33:47.480 They're going extinct.

00:33:48.680 Absolutely.

00:33:49.340 Like, as we've covered in previous episodes of this, Labour used to be neck and neck with

00:33:54.140 the SNP in Scotland.

00:33:55.480 Now they're not.

00:33:55.920 Now it's reform and the SNP, uh, neck and neck.

00:33:58.860 And in Wales, Labour, Labour on 10% when they used to be on like 50%.

00:34:03.600 Like Labour, Labour have died in Wales.

00:34:06.260 They are over.

00:34:06.880 It's plague, cumry and reform.

00:34:08.180 I seem to remember on most of the polls that we looked at, zero seats in Wales.

00:34:12.260 Literally zero seats in Wales.

00:34:13.440 And like one or two in Scotland, where there are like 50 seats for grabs.

00:34:17.460 Like it's like, it, it is over for the Labour party in these areas.

00:34:22.540 And this is why these guys have come out and go, look, no, Keir Starmer has to go because

00:34:26.560 he's ruining us.

00:34:27.680 He's ruining Labour in Wales and Scotland.

00:34:30.680 Will the Labour in Scotland, Wales, we're gone.

00:34:32.900 We're gone if you carry on.

00:34:34.620 And Keir Starmer has just told them to essentially suck it.

00:34:38.480 But we'll get to that in a minute.

00:34:39.760 Anyway.

00:34:40.240 So the question is what, what's going on?

00:34:42.240 Well, we're streeting again, another very Mandelson acolyte and the person most likely

00:34:48.360 everyone thinks to be chosen as the successor to Starmer, if there is, needs come one, decided

00:34:54.120 what he was going to do is leak his WhatsApp messages with him and Mandelson.

00:34:58.660 And everyone was like, why have you done that?

00:35:00.800 And he's like, well, I think this is going to underscore how I'm no longer close to Peter

00:35:04.340 Mandelson.

00:35:05.080 But actually, in fact, we'll come to exactly what he said.

00:35:07.920 What it did is the complete opposite.

00:35:09.460 I've got these messages here and I've only just, to be honest, Wes, I'm literally just

00:35:15.980 reading them shortly before you came in.

00:35:18.480 But there is a lot of genuine intimacy here and friendship.

00:35:23.380 You know, Wes, to you, to Peter, great pitch, lovely photos in the time Peter sends you a

00:35:28.440 kiss.

00:35:29.200 There's well done on the BBC.

00:35:31.500 This is Peter Mandelson to you in June 25.

00:35:34.900 I'm literally reading them as I go along.

00:35:37.020 Well done on the BBC.

00:35:38.160 Very good.

00:35:38.780 Kiss.

00:35:39.620 Are you planning to visit the US this year?

00:35:41.900 You hope so.

00:35:42.920 Exclamation mark.

00:35:44.180 Kiss.

00:35:46.520 Are you embarrassed by that?

00:35:47.960 I mean, that's quite an intimate friendship, isn't it?

00:35:51.160 No, an intimate friendship with Peter Mandelson.

00:35:53.800 So let's reverse engineer what's going on here.

00:35:57.880 He had a discussion with his close guys and he said, look, I want to be Labour leader.

00:36:02.860 And they said, yeah, but anyone who's running for Labour leader at this point is going to

00:36:06.320 get the Mandelson question.

00:36:07.680 And he thought to himself, ah, compared to everybody else, I barely knew him, knew the

00:36:14.780 guy, and what I'll do is I'll publish everything with him so that they can see that my interaction

00:36:21.320 was minimal.

00:36:22.200 But what he forgot was that minimal for a Labour figure still looks like extreme connection

00:36:29.100 to the rest of us.

00:36:30.160 Yes.

00:36:30.600 He just thinks that he comes better off compared to everybody else.

00:36:34.680 Yes.

00:36:35.120 Not that he wasn't really close to Mandelson, which he clearly was.

00:36:38.220 So this is another way of saying that Mandelson infected all of them.

00:36:44.740 Correct.

00:36:45.300 He was just like, Mandelson's WhatsApp must have been like Epstein's emails, where it's

00:36:50.120 just like this non-stop, you know, string of him replying stuff all day.

00:36:55.420 But he doesn't have kids, so he's got plenty of time to be WhatsAppping everybody.

00:36:58.260 Exactly, right?

00:36:59.380 And so here's a selection of them.

00:37:01.780 And this is just the most fascinating one, right?

00:37:04.100 This is this first one.

00:37:05.080 Because obviously he goes on, he criticises Israel, he criticises Starmer, right?

00:37:09.920 But it's not that that's actually the most interesting, but it's this.

00:37:12.480 Because it tells us about the mindset of these people.

00:37:15.680 So these are private messages between the people at the very top of the Labour Party

00:37:19.060 and what they think about the world.

00:37:21.320 There's no reason to think they aren't, just like with the Epstein files, there's no reason

00:37:24.380 to think these aren't completely candid and completely honest and straight up with

00:37:27.040 one another, right?

00:37:27.900 So Wes Streeting says, I fear we're in big trouble here.

00:37:30.960 And not just we.

00:37:32.860 And I am toast at the next election.

00:37:34.600 What have we been saying?

00:37:35.900 What have we been saying?

00:37:36.760 What, that?

00:37:37.380 The entire front bench of Labour is gone.

00:37:39.720 Yes.

00:37:40.140 Right?

00:37:40.400 Every single constituency they're in.

00:37:42.260 Right?

00:37:42.460 He says, we just lost our safest ward in Redbridge, 51% Muslim, is Ilford South, to a Gaza independent.

00:37:49.060 At this rate, I don't think I'll hold, will hold either of the two Ilford seats.

00:37:52.960 As in, they got, we literally said, Wes, you're getting great replaced.

00:37:56.240 What are you going to do about it?

00:37:57.420 And he's just like, shit, I'm getting great replaced.

00:37:59.680 What am I going to do about it?

00:38:00.600 I'm starting to think we should invite him on this show.

00:38:03.500 Because his analysis is exactly the same as ours.

00:38:05.900 Oh, no, it's way worse.

00:38:06.820 Oh, is it?

00:38:07.400 No, no.

00:38:07.820 He, his, his, their diagnosis of the problem is way worse than ours, right?

00:38:11.620 Okay.

00:38:11.760 So Wes then says, which doesn't clear answer the question, why Labour?

00:38:17.600 Again, we've raised that exactly, right?

00:38:19.840 Yeah.

00:38:20.080 Lord Mandelson, the government doesn't have an economic philosophy which is then followed

00:38:24.020 through with a program of policies.

00:38:25.760 Wes Streeting, no growth strategy at all.

00:38:27.420 You, you think the reason the Muslims have decided to vote for a Gaza independent is economic.

00:38:35.240 Yeah.

00:38:35.980 You morons don't seem to understand why these people are turning on you.

00:38:41.380 I mean, you literally then go on to Israel is committing war crimes and don't connect these

00:38:45.420 two things together.

00:38:46.660 Right?

00:38:47.700 Like, yes.

00:38:49.340 You, the people who are voting green do connect them together.

00:38:52.360 Exactly.

00:38:53.040 And also, Wes, you just don't represent them, right?

00:38:56.140 In the same way you don't represent the rest of the country, they are Muslim and you are

00:39:00.600 an Englishman.

00:39:01.740 You are a secular internationalist.

00:39:03.920 Why would they need you if they could...

00:39:05.980 I haven't read from all of them.

00:39:07.040 Does he, does he get the ethnic point at all?

00:39:09.780 No, never comes up, right?

00:39:11.260 And, or at least not in the ones I've seen anyway, maybe there was somewhere else.

00:39:14.740 But the point is he can see that, oh, well, 51% Muslim, that's the implication.

00:39:18.760 Oh, I know that there is something about that constituency that doesn't want to vote for

00:39:22.260 the Labour Party anymore.

00:39:23.440 Yes.

00:39:23.880 But, but what can I do?

00:39:25.500 I think I'm toast.

00:39:26.100 He's starting to grasp bits of it, but not, yeah.

00:39:28.900 I've actually great replaced myself, which is really stupid.

00:39:32.380 But the point is, Mandelson's reply is just, oh, you need an economic policy.

00:39:36.460 Good point.

00:39:36.860 No growth strategy to it.

00:39:37.780 It's not about growth.

00:39:38.920 What it's about is genuine sentiment and representation.

00:39:42.180 Why would these people want to vote for you when they have sufficient demographic strength

00:39:45.880 to vote for their own?

00:39:46.640 And the second, right, that's it.

00:39:48.940 And, of course, streeting is currently in third position in Ilford North as well, behind

00:39:54.280 reform and the Greens.

00:39:56.820 So, you know, I mean, this is the left wing policy in every Western government.

00:40:03.460 It's let's great replace our voters because the voters are difficult.

00:40:07.520 Yeah.

00:40:07.760 But once you great replace the voters, the voters will then replace you.

00:40:12.140 Yes.

00:40:13.240 Because they still have the power of selection.

00:40:15.100 I mean, it's such an obvious point that, I mean, we stopped making a point that obvious

00:40:19.980 years ago because it's so obvious and it looks like Labour are just starting to realise it.

00:40:24.360 Have we destroyed ourselves?

00:40:25.620 Maybe you did, Bryce.

00:40:26.880 Maybe you did.

00:40:27.380 I mean, all they needed was a Lotus Eater subscription five years ago and they would have, they wouldn't

00:40:32.700 have got into this mistake.

00:40:34.360 Too late for them now.

00:40:35.080 Well, anyway, so, yeah.

00:40:38.820 Streeting then had to, he was accused of putting Anas Sawar up to the coup against Keir Starmer

00:40:44.380 because, of course, they're all in the same position, right?

00:40:47.260 Scotland Labour, Scotland Wales, the front bench.

00:40:50.140 They're all like, right, OK, Starmer's destroying us.

00:40:53.060 We're all going to lose our seats.

00:40:54.840 This is over, right?

00:40:56.220 This is, we are just literally on borrowed time waiting for the actual connection to

00:41:01.880 be made in the form of an election.

00:41:03.480 The second I have to go to the polls, that's it for my entire political career.

00:41:06.780 To be fair, and I don't know if you've got the Liz Trust tweet coming up, have you?

00:41:11.180 I haven't, no.

00:41:11.760 OK, the Liz Trust tweet was something along the lines of, we don't need to just change

00:41:16.420 leaders or even governments, we need to change the system.

00:41:18.940 Of course, but the point being, it's still about the election to choose who is subject

00:41:25.280 to the system.

00:41:25.940 Yes, but what I'm saying is, is that people like Wes Sweeting probably thinks they've got

00:41:30.560 a chance if they replace Keir Starmer.

00:41:32.660 They haven't got a chance if they replace Keir Starmer and if, and probably reform doesn't

00:41:37.220 have a chance because this whole system is broken and nobody is yet thinking at the depth.

00:41:41.120 Of course.

00:41:41.880 Necessary to change it, I think.

00:41:42.960 But on the day-to-day level of politics that Wes Sweeting is living in, he's realising

00:41:48.060 I just don't have a seat anymore.

00:41:49.760 So I'm occupying this seat illegitimately for some Gaza independent candidate from Ilford

00:41:53.920 North.

00:41:55.580 And therefore people are like, oh right, so you put Anas up to this to put on all the

00:41:59.120 pressure, because at the moment, I mean, look how much pressure is on Keir Starmer from

00:42:02.120 the people closest to him.

00:42:03.840 We're resigning from the cabinet, we've got rid of the person who controls the Labour policy

00:42:08.120 because he was controlled by some international nonce buddy and the regional Labour parties

00:42:15.120 are coming out and this is all getting leaked so no one's got any confidence in you within

00:42:19.260 your own cabinet.

00:42:20.480 Like, oh, you don't have a growth plan, you're screwed, you don't know what you're doing.

00:42:23.540 You don't know what you're doing on Israel or Gaza, you don't know what you're doing on

00:42:25.620 any of these things.

00:42:26.180 And yet somehow Keir Starmer is not even immune, but just blockheadedly.

00:42:31.480 I'm just going to ignore it.

00:42:32.940 I'm just going to ignore it.

00:42:34.580 But of course, he said, no, no, I didn't put Anas up to this.

00:42:39.780 And who knows?

00:42:40.680 I imagine that there's a group chat with basically all of them except Keir Starmer and

00:42:45.260 Morgan Sweeney, right?

00:42:47.040 Yes.

00:42:47.480 Where they're like, guys, what are we doing?

00:42:49.640 What are we going to do?

00:42:51.220 Because he is going to destroy all of our political careers and the only way that we

00:42:57.360 can think of saving them, which is no guarantee, by the way, is by getting rid of him.

00:43:01.820 Mind you, they can destroy him, he can destroy them as well.

00:43:06.080 Exactly.

00:43:06.600 Because all he has to do is say, look, oh, OK.

00:43:09.220 We'll come to it.

00:43:09.760 We'll come to it.

00:43:10.900 Because you're exactly right.

00:43:12.700 They are in a kind of prisoner's dilemma here, right?

00:43:16.420 But notice what's happening is this is essentially a coup from within the Blair

00:43:20.700 rights against Starmer.

00:43:22.860 Not only have we had the outer, like the left or the soft left.

00:43:26.000 It's a given they want to destroy him.

00:43:27.540 Of course.

00:43:27.980 But now it's his own people who are like, guys, what are we going to do?

00:43:30.980 What are we going to do?

00:43:32.200 But when they come publicly, they're too scared to actually mount the challenge, right?

00:43:37.220 So anyway, it was apparently debated whether Streeten gets the kick or not.

00:43:42.960 But he didn't.

00:43:43.680 He didn't.

00:43:45.480 And this isn't.

00:43:46.560 I mean, the problem is if you get fired by Starmer at this point, it doesn't particularly

00:43:49.940 hurt you.

00:43:50.660 No, no.

00:43:51.340 It just hurts Starmer.

00:43:52.240 Because again, look at you.

00:43:53.560 I mean, Starmer loses, what, four people in one day?

00:43:56.420 Yep.

00:43:57.260 That's crazy.

00:43:58.680 But he didn't go in the end.

00:43:59.820 Or he hasn't gone yet.

00:44:00.760 I mean, at time of recording.

00:44:03.280 And as we speak, the redactions of the Mandelson files are currently underway.

00:44:08.880 So they're redacting names and sensitive information.

00:44:12.720 But I imagine that this is not going to go well for Starmer either.

00:44:16.180 So, OK, you've just lost a lot of people.

00:44:18.740 Your own parties are coming out against you.

00:44:21.240 Even the closest guys have leaked their messages saying, he's terrible.

00:44:24.300 What are we doing?

00:44:25.040 He's going to ruin us all.

00:44:26.360 And tomorrow, or the day after, we're going to get the depth of the involvement of Mandelson

00:44:31.380 in Starmer's government.

00:44:34.480 Like the Epstein files, we're going to be able to look through it.

00:44:36.260 And bear in mind that with West Streeting, he released those thinking that he got a

00:44:40.940 clean bill of health.

00:44:42.340 So what's going to be in these files when they come out?

00:44:45.080 I mean, none of it's going to be good.

00:44:46.720 And the other really worrying thing is that, step back and think that, you know, Mandelson

00:44:52.080 as an ambassador to the US, that's a crazy high security level.

00:44:58.520 You get briefed on stuff that even cabinet ministers don't get briefed on.

00:45:02.340 Loads of military stuff.

00:45:03.460 So the exposure is enormous for this government.

00:45:07.420 And the fact that Mandelson was caught funneling information to Epstein, it just, it couldn't

00:45:13.480 be worse.

00:45:13.960 And you can't believe that he just did it back then.

00:45:16.800 It just couldn't be worse.

00:45:17.660 Who is his funder now?

00:45:21.760 Who knows?

00:45:23.060 And how has he not been arrested?

00:45:25.060 This is just wild that he's not been arrested.

00:45:27.420 It is literally treason.

00:45:29.220 I just don't understand what the rationale for not arresting Mandelson is.

00:45:32.720 Charge him with this.

00:45:34.100 I mean, what's the argument?

00:45:36.360 And the argument is going to be, well, he's so core to Starmer's new Labour government

00:45:40.600 that we den't.

00:45:42.720 Like he, if there's anyone who knows where the bodies are buried, it's Peter Mandelson.

00:45:49.040 Well, yes.

00:45:50.100 I mean, your point earlier about Morgan McSweeney, what if he turns on Starmer?

00:45:54.720 Starmer.

00:45:55.100 Starmer.

00:45:55.620 But yeah, I mean, the amount of stuff that Mandelson must know, he could bring down every

00:46:03.300 Labour figure from the last 30 years, I bet, if he wanted to.

00:46:05.880 I bet he could.

00:46:06.600 I bet he's got files on everyone.

00:46:09.400 And so it's just one of those things where it's like, I think that might be the reason

00:46:12.060 he hasn't been arrested, guys.

00:46:13.360 Yeah.

00:46:14.020 Anyway, so...

00:46:14.600 So you say that in a year's time, we're going to be talking about Peter Mandelson didn't

00:46:18.600 kill himself?

00:46:20.860 I mean, I suspect that Peter Mandelson is the person who would be responsible for that

00:46:25.020 kind of thing, not the recipient of it.

00:46:26.720 Yeah.

00:46:27.200 So I don't know.

00:46:28.800 I honestly, we're in a position now where I dread to make predictions.

00:46:32.260 It's fragile as hell.

00:46:33.460 Exactly.

00:46:34.400 Febrile is the watchword, isn't it?

00:46:37.900 Anyway, so Labour Out was trending, and this was trending all the time.

00:46:41.540 Obviously, everyone hates him, because remember, Keir Starmer's personal rating is at an all-time

00:46:46.840 low, obviously.

00:46:48.460 People hate Keir Starmer.

00:46:50.060 They've hated him for months.

00:46:51.960 They've hated him ever since the bloody Southport riots, and it's just got worse.

00:46:56.520 And obviously, you know, two-thirds of the country get out.

00:46:59.020 And not even a fifth of the country who think he's doing a good job.

00:47:03.560 17 percent.

00:47:04.620 What are you doing?

00:47:05.580 Get out.

00:47:06.280 And this is just Keir Starmer's personal rating.

00:47:08.400 Obviously, when you look at the overall approval of the Labour government, I mean, everyone

00:47:13.020 involved is as complicit, because they're all terrible.

00:47:17.920 So even if they did get rid of Keir Starmer...

00:47:20.560 Oh, it'd change.

00:47:21.320 No, it would just...

00:47:23.560 They'd get maybe a few days of respite, and then the underlying systematic problems

00:47:29.660 will re-manifest, and it'll be the next guy.

00:47:31.300 Yeah, the approval...

00:47:32.800 They might get the bump, but it'll just tank straight.

00:47:34.540 The Tories tried this.

00:47:35.720 They got rid of Cameron, and then got rid of May, and then...

00:47:38.800 They just kept chopping them, and eventually they realised, oh, it doesn't make any bloody

00:47:42.080 difference.

00:47:43.260 So, anyway, the polling averages are, of course, brutal.

00:47:47.760 Labour have been fairly consistent on 19 percent, but this is before all of this kicks in.

00:47:54.120 So basically, next week, we'll find out what this has.

00:47:57.640 Oh, the Conservatives could get back to second place.

00:48:00.060 Maybe.

00:48:01.120 I mean, the Conservatives' average of polls at 16 is atrocious.

00:48:05.420 And then when you're translating that into the predicted seats, I mean, even if it's just

00:48:09.760 the average, like, Labour are losing 330-odd seats out of this.

00:48:15.720 So, greatest wipeout ever, right?

00:48:17.300 So, you can see why they're all, like, you know, they're clenching.

00:48:22.120 And they're like, Keir, what are we doing, Keir?

00:48:24.020 What are we doing?

00:48:24.900 We're on a hiding to destruction here, Keir.

00:48:27.040 What are we doing?

00:48:28.420 So, meanwhile, what's the response from within the Starmer bunker?

00:48:33.260 Oh, right.

00:48:33.780 What are the cabinet actually saying?

00:48:35.580 What are they publicly projecting?

00:48:37.820 Well, Rachel Reeves.

00:48:38.880 And this went around.

00:48:39.840 There must have been a WhatsApp group or a message that went around the cabinet, where

00:48:43.200 it's like, listen, guys, Keir Starmer is really in trouble here.

00:48:46.740 You're all just going to have to go out and tweet that you support him fully.

00:48:49.280 And he has your complete and full confidence.

00:48:50.240 Oh, it's so obvious when they do this, though.

00:48:52.200 They do this every time there's a big issue they want to talk about.

00:48:54.440 They all tweet the same damn thing.

00:48:56.200 Exactly.

00:48:56.780 And it's really transparent.

00:48:57.980 But, you know, Rachel Reeves, rebuilding Britain takes time.

00:49:00.940 But thanks to the decisions we've made, NHS-led witness have fallen, blah, blah, blah.

00:49:04.100 With Keir as our Prime Minister, we are turning the country around.

00:49:06.800 The moment there's a new leader, she's gone.

00:49:09.400 Of course.

00:49:10.160 Yeah.

00:49:10.580 They're all gone.

00:49:11.520 Yes.

00:49:12.860 Lammy, fully in the Starmer bunker.

00:49:15.680 Keir won a massive mandate 18 months ago for five years to deliver on Labour's manifesto

00:49:20.540 that we all stood on.

00:49:21.540 We should let nothing distract us from our mission to change Britain.

00:49:24.440 And we support the Prime Minister in doing that.

00:49:26.960 I mean, he's another one.

00:49:28.040 He'll never have a job in politics again after this.

00:49:30.980 Yeah.

00:49:31.540 I mean, why would you want David Lammy around you?

00:49:36.440 In times like this.

00:49:37.680 If Labour survives at all, they're going to reinstituate the old left.

00:49:41.760 But it's probably too late for that because that's already moved to the Greens.

00:49:44.660 Yeah.

00:49:45.480 But Blairite, yeah, that's not coming back.

00:49:47.700 It's all done now.

00:49:49.920 And so these people look like zombies.

00:49:52.740 Like, no one wants the change that you were promising.

00:49:55.380 You shouldn't be in government at all.

00:49:57.360 It's only because of a historical contingency that Nigel Farage,

00:50:00.780 the Conservatives basically should have put Nigel Farage in charge.

00:50:03.220 Right.

00:50:03.660 That's what should have happened.

00:50:05.040 And if the Conservatives actually had wanted to survive,

00:50:08.700 they would have done that.

00:50:09.900 But now they're at 16%, Labour's at 19%,

00:50:11.980 and Farage is at like 28%.

00:50:13.620 I mean, to be fair,

00:50:14.140 the Tories are probably the last visage of Blairism at this point.

00:50:17.980 They probably will be.

00:50:18.720 I think the Labour Party will implode.

00:50:19.800 I think you've got Darren Jones,

00:50:21.000 who's the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister.

00:50:23.360 No, no, we're all standing behind,

00:50:25.840 get behind the Prime Minister and Labour.

00:50:27.020 He's pushing the modern and diverse.

00:50:28.940 I mean, good luck with that.

00:50:29.620 Yeah, exactly.

00:50:30.920 It's a modern, diverse, Britain led by Labour,

00:50:33.160 or a dark, divisive Britain under reform.

00:50:34.800 Woo, dark, divisive Britain.

00:50:37.040 If only Nigel Farage is the man.

00:50:39.800 Ed Miliband, of course, you know,

00:50:41.260 well, we've got to focus on the country and not Keir Starmer,

00:50:44.960 because, of course, this is really inconvenient for Keir Starmer.

00:50:47.900 And so they all posted,

00:50:49.680 there's something like 35 posts like this.

00:50:52.120 The problem is, no, no, these get discounted to zero anyway,

00:50:57.040 because, I mean, how many times have we seen politicians do this

00:50:59.800 and then the next day backstab them anyway?

00:51:02.320 Of course.

00:51:03.900 So it's kind of pointless for them to even attempt this.

00:51:06.980 Sure, but what it shows us is that Keir Starmer and his cabinet

00:51:11.220 are literally all sat around in the bunker like Hitler in downfall.

00:51:14.900 Yeah.

00:51:15.260 What can we do?

00:51:16.240 What can we do?

00:51:16.840 And the answer is this.

00:51:18.020 You have to go out and show the rest of the country

00:51:21.060 and show the party, show all of the subsidiary parties

00:51:24.060 that the Parliamentary Labour Party stands,

00:51:26.500 or the cabinet itself, stands united with the Prime Minister.

00:51:30.160 We fall and die together, or, you know, or not at all.

00:51:34.200 And so we think we can ride this out if we just grit our teeth.

00:51:37.040 But that will be within the core Starmer bunker.

00:51:40.720 Yes.

00:51:41.480 The civil servants, they'll be all off writing up their reform papers.

00:51:49.980 Yeah.

00:51:50.440 You know, they'll be preparing for reform coming.

00:51:52.560 Yep.

00:51:53.000 Everybody outside the direct Starmer bunker will be planning,

00:51:56.560 can I take over from Keir?

00:51:58.800 Who's going to take over from Keir?

00:52:00.160 How can I get in good with the person who's ultimately going to win?

00:52:03.480 I mean, we're purely in a nucleus of a few people at this point.

00:52:07.080 And apart from Starmer, I'm struggling to think who else is in there with him.

00:52:11.200 Well, exactly.

00:52:12.080 It's literally just his cabinet, right?

00:52:13.940 It's literally just...

00:52:14.820 Half of them will be plotting against him

00:52:16.480 and just putting out something like this to save face.

00:52:18.680 Quite possibly.

00:52:19.260 But the thing is, they all know that the next election,

00:52:21.100 they're all gone anyway.

00:52:22.500 They're no longer MPs.

00:52:23.520 So they are literally like,

00:52:25.280 we are not going to be here ever again.

00:52:28.360 This is the one shot.

00:52:29.520 And this is basically what David Lammy said.

00:52:32.220 I've waited 14 years to get here.

00:52:34.740 Is it time for Keir Starmer to go?

00:52:36.300 No, no.

00:52:39.800 David Lammy, is it time for the PM to go?

00:52:43.260 We've waited 14 years to get here.

00:52:46.320 How's that?

00:52:48.400 That was not the right thing to say, David.

00:52:51.600 No, but what a brilliant mask-off moment.

00:52:53.580 This is just about power.

00:52:55.400 Yes.

00:52:55.960 We've just...

00:52:56.660 We've been waiting forever.

00:52:58.560 We so rarely win elections because everyone hates us.

00:53:01.680 Now we're here.

00:53:02.380 We are clinging on with all of our might.

00:53:05.320 We don't care.

00:53:06.180 We just want the power.

00:53:07.040 And that's basically what Shamana Mahmood's statement was as well.

00:53:10.740 Labour governments don't come along often.

00:53:13.520 Yep.

00:53:15.540 And they think that the mandate is,

00:53:17.340 oh, we want the mandate so we've got five years guaranteed.

00:53:19.720 It's like, no.

00:53:20.860 That's not how that works, actually.

00:53:22.740 No, it's a quirk of fate that you got in,

00:53:24.340 and you're going to ram through every spiteful socialist lefty policy that you can think of

00:53:29.340 until you inevitably get turfed out and never to be seen from again.

00:53:33.700 Exactly.

00:53:34.200 And Nigel Farage should be literally every single day coming out with a whiteboard with a list of things

00:53:38.540 I'm going to repeal on day one.

00:53:40.280 And whatever Keir Starmer announces that day,

00:53:42.020 you write it down on the whiteboard and say,

00:53:43.620 right, that's it, Keir.

00:53:44.520 That one's undone on day one too.

00:53:46.560 See you at the next election.

00:53:47.580 And the reason you do that is because it will make it so hard for Keir Starmer to do anything.

00:53:52.660 Exactly.

00:53:53.040 It signals to all of the infrastructure in the government.

00:53:57.840 Cooperation belts away.

00:53:58.960 Exactly.

00:53:59.420 Just like Mog was saying.

00:54:00.280 It's like, well, they were drawing up the counter policy to the policy I was proposing

00:54:03.580 because they knew I was going in two years or a year or whatever it was, right?

00:54:06.540 Or two months, I think it was.

00:54:07.760 So what Farage would be signaling is to all the civil servants,

00:54:12.180 to all the permanent servants, don't do anything.

00:54:13.860 Don't do anything.

00:54:14.480 Don't waste your time.

00:54:15.280 Because on day one, I'm getting ready.

00:54:16.880 Control everything.

00:54:18.020 And what will that do?

00:54:19.740 Psychological warfare against Starmer and his cabinet.

00:54:21.720 They are currently besieged.

00:54:23.540 They're currently in the bunker.

00:54:24.740 They're like, okay, we'll just get the things done that we can get.

00:54:26.860 And if Farage is just outside saying, no, you're not,

00:54:29.620 throws in another shell.

00:54:30.580 No, that's gone too.

00:54:31.420 That's gone too.

00:54:32.060 That's gone too.

00:54:32.800 Whatever you do is a waste of time.

00:54:34.320 Why are you still here?

00:54:35.680 Well, and I think this is what they understand.

00:54:38.440 They can achieve for the Fabians more in one day in Downing Street

00:54:44.020 than they could 10 years outside of it.

00:54:45.900 Yeah, they think so.

00:54:46.840 And they're very much aware of that.

00:54:48.580 That's what they think anyway.

00:54:50.100 Because again, the system at this point has revealed itself to not be working with them.

00:54:55.680 Everyone hates Starmer.

00:54:56.860 Starmer's been useless.

00:54:58.060 Mandelson was too much of a curse.

00:54:59.500 And they assumed that because he'd always been fine,

00:55:02.080 he'd always survived the scandals and come back and come back.

00:55:04.600 It'd be all right.

00:55:05.400 It's Mandelson.

00:55:06.260 No, they didn't think the Epstein files were going to drop.

00:55:08.960 And this is going to ruin them.

00:55:11.080 No one saw it coming.

00:55:12.280 And I think we talked about this offline because it happened just after our last one of these chats.

00:55:16.840 But, you know, I think I was saying to you,

00:55:19.220 it would have been so easy for him to have handled that situation better

00:55:22.240 because he walked into that PMQs like a lamb to slaughter,

00:55:26.460 not understanding that Kemi was just going to beat him up on it.

00:55:29.740 And I remember saying to you,

00:55:30.780 all he had to do was the morning before PMQs,

00:55:33.940 come out and absolutely bury Mandelson,

00:55:36.940 take away Kemi's, you know, fire.

00:55:39.280 But instead he just walked in and started talking about procedures.

00:55:44.020 And of course he got rolled by.

00:55:46.380 And they don't seem to have understood.

00:55:48.220 It doesn't seem to have occurred to them that there was a problem.

00:55:52.360 Well, it's more that Starmer,

00:55:54.640 the things that he relied on were always kept close to his chest, right?

00:55:59.520 Like he would happily and ruthlessly slice off parts of labor that he didn't need.

00:56:06.140 But it came to Morgan McSweeney.

00:56:07.620 And he was like, no, essential.

00:56:09.600 I can't do that.

00:56:10.500 Therefore, Pete Mandelson, I can't just bury him.

00:56:12.960 I'll call him a traitor in Parliament, but I can't actually just bury him.

00:56:15.760 And so suddenly it's like, right, the thing he's standing on is now crumbling.

00:56:20.200 And so, I mean, these guys are completely isolated.

00:56:23.520 And I think they're going to be an interesting historical artifact in the future

00:56:27.340 where people say, oh, this is like the Labour government of 2026,

00:56:31.780 when literally, and I remember saying this years ago now,

00:56:34.880 when I was doing my master's in like 2024, I think it was,

00:56:37.620 when I went to like this meeting, Keir Starmer had just been elected, right?

00:56:42.940 So that was, was it 2024?

00:56:46.080 I can't remember the days go by so fast.

00:56:47.820 But the point is, not long after Starmer had just been elected,

00:56:49.980 we had this like meeting, right?

00:56:51.540 And everyone goes in and everyone, because this is conservative, of course,

00:56:54.140 everyone's like, oh God, Keir Starmer's going to be awful.

00:56:56.200 I'm like, well, don't worry.

00:56:56.980 I don't think he's going to last out the time.

00:56:58.560 And they're like, yeah, but there's no way of removing him.

00:57:00.000 And the Labour Party won't just give him up.

00:57:01.700 I'm like, yeah, I know.

00:57:02.660 But what will happen, I think, is that essentially everyone around him

00:57:06.260 will just be looking at him and saying, Keir, why are you still here?

00:57:08.900 Everyone wants you to go.

00:57:10.160 And he's arrived in that position now.

00:57:12.440 And I didn't know how it was going to happen.

00:57:14.280 I just knew he would do things that were so goddamn unpopular

00:57:16.500 that nobody wants him here.

00:57:17.660 And so the question is, can Keir Starmer face down the entire country

00:57:21.160 and just stick it out?

00:57:23.220 And the answer is, he's going to try.

00:57:26.600 I mean, constitutionally, yes.

00:57:28.780 Yeah, but I mean, like, Lame Duck doesn't even half describe

00:57:33.860 the position that Keir Starmer is in.

00:57:36.100 Like, he said, no, we're going to go forward from here with confidence

00:57:38.260 and continue changing the country.

00:57:40.140 And then he's got his little spiel underneath.

00:57:41.980 But the point is...

00:57:42.600 He won't be able to do anything, but he can just squat it.

00:57:46.920 And that's his point.

00:57:47.900 I mean, if anybody can be that soulless and unimaginative

00:57:53.160 and procedural, Keir Starmer is the guy for that job.

00:57:56.900 I mean, it's wild to have so many people.

00:57:59.840 Not just...

00:58:00.140 I mean, like, it's one thing having all your political enemies saying,

00:58:02.440 no, I hate you, get it.

00:58:03.400 Obviously, you know, Keir Starmer and them all like, you know,

00:58:05.900 Boris Johnson should resign.

00:58:07.120 Yeah, of course, you think that.

00:58:08.680 Obviously, duh, right?

00:58:09.960 But then you've got your own sub-parties.

00:58:12.860 You've got your backbenchers.

00:58:14.320 And you've got members of your own cabinet who are like,

00:58:17.340 oh, this is a bit rough.

00:58:19.140 And Keir Starmer somehow is immune to all of this.

00:58:23.220 Just, like, Keir, you're not welcome.

00:58:25.480 Everyone around you is saying you're not welcome.

00:58:27.400 And so why did they all make a statement in his support?

00:58:29.500 Well, I'm guessing that he threatened them with the general election.

00:58:33.520 Okay.

00:58:34.160 Yes, that was the point I tried to make earlier.

00:58:36.640 So they can destroy each other.

00:58:38.880 Because if they try and push him out, he's perfectly able just to walk out onto that podium

00:58:45.540 and say, I'm calling a general election.

00:58:49.400 Yeah.

00:58:49.600 So they've got, it's mutually assured destruction.

00:58:52.780 Exactly.

00:58:53.520 In other times, the Labour MPs would have been like, okay, I think I can win my seat.

00:58:59.320 I'm in Ilford North.

00:59:00.660 Yeah.

00:59:01.260 Strong Labour, you know, I'm in Wales, wherever.

00:59:03.400 Strong Labour constituencies.

00:59:04.480 Okay, call a general election, I'll survive it, and you'll be gone.

00:59:07.540 I mean, there were maybe 30 to 40 Labour MPs who could be pretty sure they're going to

00:59:11.880 win their seat, and that's it.

00:59:13.080 Well, like we saw on the electoral...

00:59:14.060 And they've got 300 of them.

00:59:14.820 Like we saw on the electoral calculus, even, like, quite optimistically, 68 of them survive.

00:59:19.740 You know, and it could go down to as well as 14.

00:59:21.920 Yeah, but you don't know which one survive.

00:59:25.120 Only about 30 or 40 know that they've got such a robustly strong seat, and then the next

00:59:30.880 20 to 30 are random.

00:59:32.780 It's not even clear that any of them have safe seats anymore.

00:59:36.640 And so, exactly, as you say, like, they're all sat there in the Stamber bunker, sweating,

00:59:41.240 and like, right, okay, you've kind of got to resign.

00:59:44.560 And Kirsten's like, if I'm going to resign, I'm calling that general election, or you'll

00:59:47.680 get one called for you, whatever, you know, the public will demand chaos because of chaos,

00:59:52.200 whatever.

00:59:52.720 And basically, he's just threatening them, no, you're all going to lose your jobs, or you

00:59:55.880 stick by me.

00:59:56.740 It's that simple.

00:59:57.220 And normally, I'm quite good at thinking through to the next level.

00:59:59.560 But if I was a Labour MP, what do I do in that situation?

01:00:03.240 I think I've been checkmated.

01:00:05.260 Yes.

01:00:05.420 And so, he tells everyone, nope, nope, I'm not doing that.

01:00:12.860 Keir Starmer's one of the only four Labour leaders.

01:00:14.640 I'm not, I'm not resigning.

01:00:16.520 You can resign if you want.

01:00:18.180 Lots of other people are resigning, but I'm not resigning.

01:00:20.900 And there was this really interesting, like, you know, statement where he just comes out

01:00:24.480 and says, I've won every fight I've ever had, I've ever been in here.

01:00:29.320 And so, I'm going to fight this, and it's like, what?

01:00:32.120 Yeah, but.

01:00:33.180 Okay.

01:00:33.700 First of all, I don't think that Keir Starmer's been in an actual fight ever.

01:00:38.080 Ever.

01:00:38.800 What he means by, I've won every fight I've ever been on, is I have had arrested people

01:00:44.560 who I don't like every single time.

01:00:46.460 Why have you turned so much if you win every fight?

01:00:48.740 Well, and that, yeah.

01:00:49.720 But also, Morgan McSweeney masterminded me, but also, he just got lucky because Nigel Farage

01:00:57.080 decided this was the moment he was going to step into right-wing politics, and it split

01:01:00.540 the right, as Diane Abbott correctly pointed out, and it's ruined the Labour and Tories

01:01:05.560 for now, but Farage has obviously taken up that ground, blah, blah, blah, right?

01:01:09.060 So, this, this, like, tough talking is very, very peculiar.

01:01:13.720 We won with the landslide majority.

01:01:15.300 I've, in every fight I've been in, I have won.

01:01:16.920 It's like, okay, well, you're living through the counter-example to that right now, where

01:01:22.240 you're fighting the entire country, and everyone around you, and so all they can do is essentially

01:01:27.560 say, right, Keir Starmer is either going to ruin us all, or we stick by him like flies

01:01:33.840 on paper, right?

01:01:34.840 If he actually does this, if he actually hangs on for another three years in this condition,

01:01:41.160 it's mad.

01:01:42.160 That would be torrid for everybody involved.

01:01:46.320 It would be torrid for us, the electorate, the British.

01:01:48.840 It would be awful for him.

01:01:51.060 Yep.

01:01:52.240 I mean, none of them can go into a pub in England.

01:01:54.900 Like, not one of them, they're all banned from the pubs of England, because the landlords

01:01:58.380 in England are just like, oh.

01:02:01.180 Like, it's just, what do these guys do with themselves?

01:02:04.320 But then, Keir Starmer received a standing ovation, a 37-second applause as he entered the

01:02:10.480 room to speak to the Labour MPs in 10 Downing Street.

01:02:13.760 Because this is when they're in the heart of the bunker.

01:02:15.720 And obviously, everyone's just like, all right, so this is like North Korea, right?

01:02:19.620 This is like...

01:02:20.140 I was thinking of the Stalin thing, where nobody would want to stop clapping, because the first

01:02:25.440 person to stop clapping gets shot.

01:02:26.780 And we know that Starmer has been controlling his party with an iron fist.

01:02:33.220 And so this is exactly the kind...

01:02:34.660 It is genuinely turning into kind of like Soviet-level politics.

01:02:38.360 It's like, no, if we have a kind of glass nose here, then we all fall, and the entire Soviet

01:02:42.020 Union falls apart.

01:02:43.240 So Labour just have to literally bind themselves together and say, like, we're just gonna sit

01:02:48.140 there and knuckle down and just grit our teeth and get our way through it.

01:02:53.140 And somehow, we're gonna limp on.

01:02:55.200 And it looks mad.

01:02:56.220 I mean, again, Diane Abbott came out and was like, well, I think this was stage.

01:03:00.780 Because...

01:03:01.120 Oh, you think, yeah.

01:03:02.500 This is catastrophic.

01:03:04.740 I think he's not gonna last beyond May.

01:03:06.640 And they want him to take responsibility for these failures.

01:03:10.580 But the thing is, I think they don't understand the second-order effects of all of this.

01:03:14.980 Because if you think about it, like, you can, in Keir Starmer's position, just say, I'm

01:03:20.460 actually just gonna sit here forever until legally I have to call an election.

01:03:25.140 So, okay, well, technically we can't remove you.

01:03:27.480 But do you think there are gonna be any second or third-order effects of this?

01:03:30.440 Like, do you think, like, it's not just about what happens in Parliament.

01:03:34.780 Because as we spoke about earlier, the power of selection still lies within the electorate.

01:03:38.840 And we are watching, like, this is when all anyone's talked about politically in this

01:03:43.600 country for the past three or four days.

01:03:45.820 So it's just like, right, okay, so the general public is watching you, clinging to power for

01:03:50.340 power's sake.

01:03:51.980 And they're gonna be like, right, okay, but I don't like the Labour Party already.

01:03:57.060 I don't like the way they're behaving in this moment.

01:04:00.160 And you can do whatever you want.

01:04:02.820 But this, I've said before, I think this is the last Labour government ever.

01:04:06.600 And let's just go back to the point that I made at the beginning of all of this, which

01:04:10.440 is the core Blairite project was to take every amount of power that you could have in Parliament

01:04:15.640 and separate it out to people who are going to be their friends.

01:04:18.700 And even if they are people who are Blairite-minded, if they can see the Prime Minister has lost

01:04:25.480 patronage and that he's basically got no power and he can't do anything, all of them are

01:04:31.000 going to start protecting their own arses as well.

01:04:32.860 And so basically, the Blairite project has built a structure that relies on everybody wanting

01:04:40.240 the top man to be a Blairite.

01:04:42.100 If he falls, if he crumbles, if he no longer has power, the whole mechanism of the British

01:04:47.600 state is now free to start doing their own thing and protecting their own interests.

01:04:51.800 So the whole mechanism of the British state crumbles at that point.

01:04:55.380 And if Nigel Farage, I mean, Farage is weak on a lot of things, but he might not be weak

01:05:00.740 on the quangocracy.

01:05:02.460 He might not be weak on the Blairite structure.

01:05:05.000 Well, apparently that's the whole project of this Sri Lankan chap.

01:05:08.960 And this is the point that David Starkey has made and spoken about this great repeal bill

01:05:15.000 as in, it would be very, very electable to say, I'm going to undo all of the damage that's

01:05:20.960 been done to the country.

01:05:22.180 Here are, you know, 10 points of things that Blair did that we can just literally write

01:05:27.560 one bill, pass it on day one and pop the whole thing up.

01:05:31.220 So that was actually what David Cameron first ran on.

01:05:35.220 Oh, really?

01:05:35.960 Yeah, it was a great reform bill.

01:05:37.800 And it was talked about on day one, they're going to reverse everything Blair did.

01:05:40.620 And when it came to it, they bottled it.

01:05:42.500 Unbelievable.

01:05:43.700 Unbelievable.

01:05:44.240 But anyway, the point is, I mean, let's hope Farage doesn't bottle it.

01:05:47.440 But the point is, this is coming to an end.

01:05:51.080 We are definitely in the last days of this Starmer bunker because they're cleaning on by

01:05:56.440 the skin of their teeth.

01:05:57.660 And there are loads of challenges coming up.

01:05:59.280 The Mandelson files are about to drop.

01:06:01.380 You've got the Gordon and Denton by-election that's going to drop.

01:06:04.240 There's become kind of totemic about the future of the country.

01:06:07.600 You've got the local elections in May.

01:06:10.020 And that's assuming that no other giant scandal just falls into his lap.

01:06:13.940 Oh, and they will.

01:06:14.700 And I mean, we've got a bunch of other loose ends.

01:06:16.540 What's happening with the Ukrainian rent boys, Starmer?

01:06:18.680 Why are they attacking your properties?

01:06:19.960 That could drop any time.

01:06:21.260 We could find out whatever the dirty nonsense behind that is.

01:06:25.200 We could find that out any time.

01:06:26.900 And yet, for some reason, Labour are like, nope, there's no second-order effects.

01:06:31.340 We are like Wile E. Coyote.

01:06:32.740 And if we just keep running off that cliff...

01:06:34.540 As long as you don't look down.

01:06:35.620 As long as you don't look down, gravity won't take hold.

01:06:39.660 And so there are a couple of other things, right?

01:06:41.440 So Burnham has called for stability and unity.

01:06:45.680 And in a different, like, door-stepping interview, he was like, oh, yeah, I support Keir Starmer.

01:06:50.520 So obviously, there's sort of things they have to say in the front.

01:06:53.240 But there's no way Burnham isn't making moves in the background, right?

01:06:56.140 Because he is basically the last hope that the Labour Party have.

01:06:59.280 He's actually a relatively popular guy.

01:07:01.340 I mean, when we say popular, it's always proportional.

01:07:03.120 He's got, like, a minus 5% approval rating or something, but that's...

01:07:06.220 Which is stellar in Labour circles.

01:07:07.820 Stellar in almost all political circles these days, to be honest.

01:07:10.720 So, like, you know, Andy Burnham probably is one of the most popular politicians in the country.

01:07:14.520 Because he comes across like a fairly normal, likeable guy who doesn't hang around with Peter Manson in his underpants.

01:07:19.920 So, good thing there.

01:07:21.760 So, he is obviously thinking, how am I going to get a bloody seat?

01:07:25.980 Because, I mean, Gordon and Denton was probably the best possible shot he was going to have.

01:07:29.940 I mean, that's off the table now.

01:07:31.600 And it doesn't look like there are any Labour safe seats.

01:07:35.340 So, who knows?

01:07:37.080 I don't know.

01:07:37.900 I suspect that what would happen is somebody who's got a safe Labour seat, as much as one can be,

01:07:42.460 will just resign and let him take the seat.

01:07:43.980 Well, that's what they thought that was happening with Gordon and Denton.

01:07:48.400 Starmer blocked it.

01:07:49.440 Didn't the guy quit for scandal or something?

01:07:52.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:07:52.460 For, you know, WhatsApp messages about some of his local constituents.

01:07:56.640 There will be some Labour MP who's got something else to do with their life,

01:08:00.960 who doesn't need the money, who will step aside if they need to.

01:08:03.320 Well, one would think.

01:08:04.040 I mean, that guy didn't have to resign.

01:08:05.920 Yes.

01:08:06.240 You know, there was nothing forced.

01:08:07.200 But, I mean, if Starmer's still in position, he can just block that one as well.

01:08:11.720 Exactly.

01:08:12.680 Starmer, what stops Starmer from just blocking him forever, right?

01:08:16.600 No, we need the Manchester mayorality far too much.

01:08:20.020 Can't be Andy Burnham.

01:08:21.060 You're gone, right?

01:08:22.040 And then you've got Angela Rayner.

01:08:23.460 So, of course, she's come out and publicly backed Keir Starmer.

01:08:26.040 She's, oh, yeah, this is terrible.

01:08:27.720 Terrible, terrible, terrible.

01:08:29.720 Full support.

01:08:30.760 Full support from the Prime Minister.

01:08:32.140 He has my full confidence.

01:08:33.400 And notice how every time they say this, this is the kiss of death, right?

01:08:35.980 Yes.

01:08:36.220 I mean, Starmer's like, no, Morgan McSweeney has my full confidence, gone the next day.

01:08:40.040 Like, it just keeps happening, right?

01:08:42.220 So, that's interesting.

01:08:44.480 What's also really interesting is that an Angela Falida website briefly went live before being pulled down.

01:08:51.900 The Red Queen is making moves behind the scenes.

01:08:58.360 Oh, dear.

01:09:01.060 You don't want, you don't.

01:09:02.420 If, I mean.

01:09:03.760 The domain was registered with the same company as her official parliamentary site.

01:09:06.320 I mean, it's one of those things.

01:09:09.560 Of course, she's going to be doing this in the background.

01:09:12.260 But a basic hygiene level, don't accidentally publish it.

01:09:15.580 I mean.

01:09:16.400 I mean, it shows you the competence of labour, right?

01:09:18.780 But they've said, oh, then it's a false flag operation.

01:09:21.580 Obviously, deliberately.

01:09:22.380 No, no.

01:09:23.360 No one thinks so.

01:09:25.080 They've all got one.

01:09:26.380 West Street has got one of these.

01:09:28.120 Andy Burnham.

01:09:28.860 They've all got one.

01:09:30.020 I wonder, and he probably has.

01:09:32.820 I think David Lammy's probably got one.

01:09:34.320 He probably thinks he can win as well.

01:09:36.320 I mean, we were talking about this.

01:09:38.000 Like, if someone were to actually do the decent thing and resign, who would you want to take over?

01:09:42.820 David Lammy.

01:09:43.420 And it would be David Lammy.

01:09:44.340 Yes.

01:09:44.920 Just out of comedic.

01:09:46.320 Oh, yeah.

01:09:46.820 Comedic reasons.

01:09:47.740 For then, for three years, we would have a Ugandan arguing with a Nigerian about what the British people are entitled to.

01:09:54.420 Exactly.

01:09:55.040 And that destroys all of the arguments about multiculturalism.

01:09:58.480 Who is it for?

01:09:59.260 It's for foreigners and not for us.

01:10:00.620 So, at least we would have that.

01:10:01.560 And then, finally, Nigel is, of course, on war footing with the election.

01:10:07.040 Nigel is well aware that this is life or death for Keir Starmer.

01:10:10.960 And it's entirely possible that literally in the next couple of weeks, even if Starmer decides I'm going to double down, losing the by-election or various other things that come along, it's very obvious that Starmer is in an incredibly precarious position.

01:10:25.140 And it's very likely a general election will be called.

01:10:26.960 Actually, I want to make a point there that Conor, formerly of his parish, has been making, it's very important, actually, is that they've only just started hiring people to fill out seats for the next general election.

01:10:38.820 He just announced, in fact, yesterday, I'm going to get candidates.

01:10:41.980 So, what I'm saying to everybody watching this, if you've managed to keep your nose clean and hide your power levels, but you're one of our guys, get yourself on that list.

01:10:51.040 They're going to be desperate for people.

01:10:51.960 Yes, and do not say anything. Do not sit there in the interview and give anything other than what you think the safe boomer Farage answer would be.

01:11:00.960 Don't admit to watching Lotus Eaters. Don't do anything. Hide your power levels.

01:11:04.840 Delete your social media accounts.

01:11:06.160 Yes, do that first.

01:11:07.640 Delete any naughty things you may have posted when you're in frustration.

01:11:12.140 And then, you know, don't ever have an account under your name, basically, where you post politics, because otherwise Farage will wax you.

01:11:17.620 And then, Conor is exactly right. Go in, sit down, in your best suit, and say, yep, I think Nigel Farage is the man to save the country, and I would like to do my part by representing him in wherever it is you live.

01:11:29.420 Give every safe opinion you can think of.

01:11:31.520 And then, that will at least make sure that the people around Farage are half-decent, even if Farage himself is not necessarily the most reliable of properties.

01:11:42.520 So anyway, the point being, a lot has happened in the past couple of days in British politics.

01:11:48.580 Seismic changes are occurring. It is the death of Blairism.

01:11:52.020 The people running the Blairite project are useless, like stiff-necked, bull-headed, unaware that the country hates them and wants them gone, and that the moment has become pregnant for a change in politics entirely.

01:12:07.040 Now, whether Farage is the guy who can actually deliver this, obviously, you know, but on the other side, if Nigel is the guy, great, wonderful, I'm happy, I don't care, you know, I'm not...

01:12:17.600 Worth a shot.

01:12:18.060 I don't personally hate Nigel Farage, so, you know, I just, I'm not that confident in what he will do, but maybe he's, you know, savvy political operator, blah, blah, blah, maybe he can get it done.

01:12:26.620 But the point is, things are changing. Paradigms are shifting, and we are witnessing in real time.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - February 10, 2026

The Last Days in the Starmerbunker

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