Politics returns: Tories reshuffle & Starmer slopes off

0:28500 orders a month was manageable.

0:37Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse Shots, the Spectator's daily politics podcast. I'm Oscar Edmondson and I'm joined today by Tim Shipman and James Heal. And politics is back. We've got lots to talk about today. Not least the Conservative reshuffle, James cleverly going for London Mayor. But also, in the last hour or so, Keir Starmer has announced that he's sloping off and will no longer be an MP. For the last time, I can talk about Sake Starmer and his shocking decision to stand down immediately. That's always been my favourite Starmerism when he was particularly outraged about it. Well, I'm pretty shocked this morning.

1:11Well, we'll get on to that. But let's start with the Tories, with James Cleverley, who has triggered what ended up being a more comprehensive reshuffle than the one that we expected, Kevin Bade, not to make James. Yeah, my understanding is there was a report in The Telegraph last Tuesday that suggested that there was going to be quite a minor reshuffle to take account of the giant of Helen Grant standing down as Solicitor General and the fact that Claire Coutinho is pregnant again. And so it would therefore be more two or three changes rather than a whole reboot. But my understanding is James Cleverley saw this report and decided he wanted to jump at this point when he wants to leave the Shadow Cabinet and stand for London Mayorists.

1:46I think every one of the Conservative parties has suspected he's going to be doing for months. No surprises here. So what they did, Kittemian Bay and Knox's team, was to give him the big Sunday Times piece. He had his moment in the sun. Then the Monday Daily Telegraph was Tom Tuganat coming back. Tom Tuganat has privately signalled he would be willing to come back as Shadow Foreign Secretary, which in 2024, he wasn't willing to serve on the front bench, but now he's back in the past. He's quite good mates with Kimi Baden-Ot. My understanding back in the day was that she sort of phoned him up and said, I'm a bit short of space.

2:13Obviously, I'll give you a job if you want one. And he sort of said, no, don't worry. I'll have a bit of time off. I'll make some money. You know, as an act of friendship to her, effectively said, it's all right. worry about all those other people who were after your job and I'll sit it out for now. But it does make, you know, it makes sense that he returns. Yep. So we've now had the wide ranging Conservative reshuffle that many people thought would take in a few months time. Mel Stride has gone, been replaced by Andrew Griffiths as Shadow Chancellor. Priti Patel has been replaced as Sharon Foreign Secretary by Tom Tuganat.

2:44We've seen a whole new raft of talent come up. Katie Lamb has been given housing, James Cleverley's old post. We've seen Rebecca Paul get culture. we've seen Harriet Cross get the Scotland office with Andrew Bowie move to energy I mean the whole thing has been completely redone and I think that despite the briefings of reforms obsessing over the fact that Tom Tuganat once was critical about leaving the European Convention on Human Rights overall I would probably say this is a younger slightly more right-wing shadow cabinet in some ways and effectively it's Kevin Bainock's way of saying we're ready for a general election we've got the personnel and we've got the structures as well so we've got this briefing around these different teams there's the so-called new economic unit of having the treasurer and business together something that frustrated Bednock when she was in government.

3:23And we've also got law and order with things like Chris Philp and Timothy working closer together. Tim, I mean, one of the big headliners that Mel strides out. Yes. Andrew Griffith, what do you make of him? As predicted by and indeed recommended by certain people at The Spectator. When I interviewed Kemi Bednock, I sort of said, come on, Kemi. Mel's a terribly nice chap. He's quite bright. He's worked in business, made money, understands how the economy works. But he's just the wrong vibe. He's a David Cameron era kind of vibe. And that's not what the Tory party needs right now. Nice man, dressed like a bank manager.

3:58Mal Stride got better as a performer. He was trying to sort of do the kind of social media stuff that is now expected of politicians. But it didn't come naturally to him. You know, fair play to him. He was an old dog who wanted to learn new tricks. But as I know, to my cost, when you get to a certain age, there's only so many pirouettes you can perform. you don't just need to do the pirouettes when someone says hey shippers why don't you do a pirouette over there and i'll do my best as mel stride has done but to be good at this stuff you've got to have it in your blood you've got to want to do it you've got to know what to do and you've got to sort of you know and the contrast between mel stride is a bit older than andy burnham and andy burnham you know this stuff comes naturally too was becoming pretty embarrassing now andrew Griffith, you know, he's a former Sky executive.

4:44He was a senior bod under Boris Johnson. He's been around. Look, I think he is not the most sort of natural politician that you've ever seen in your life. But he's very, very, very active. He's very, very bright. And my WhatsApps are constantly full of Andrew Griffith's observations about things, his responses to things, which are always quick and pithy and he's someone who I think is certainly more with it in terms of modern politics and the other one that's uh sort of interesting is you know Katie Lamb going to take on Angela Rayner I can't wait to watch that in the House of Commons prim and proper Katie Lamb against sort of you know handbags swirling Angela Rayner and it will be a real contrast of I think it's fair to say brains style you know sort of home counties versus northern working class lass i suspect they will come to have a sort of grudging respect for each other but along the way i think that could be one of the more interesting departmental question times going forwards yeah i got the scoop on this and effectively opposition is is both a constructive and a destructive thing obviously it's destructive in the house you've got to take apart the government's agenda we very much look forward to the battle of the personnel between Agisela Rayner and Katie Lam.

6:02But there's also a creative element here. And Katie Lam has a really exciting, interesting brief. Housing. What do the Conservatives think about housing? James Cleverley, great guy in many ways, but was very much not invested in some of these questions and now has gone to London to seek fame and fortune in the capital. We have in Katie Lam is quite an interesting young thinker surrounded by lots of interesting Yimby types. You've got Sam Bidwell from the former think tank, the Ant Smith Institute, works in her team. I'll be very interested to see what she makes of the issues on housing, communities, obviously, lot of the integration stuff she's been talking about and also knotty questions such as the Islamophobia definition.

6:34I presume she'll come out hard on that. I suspect we'll see some videos on that. And so all these different things. Local government reorganisation as well. There's 10 ,000 potential councillors up for grabs next year. What do the Conservatives think about these issues? And Katie Lam has been trusted with a big brief, I think at the age of 35 this summer, with solving something like that. So I think for Kimmy Baden-Og, this is an important moment. It's giving that sort of sense of multi-generational party, young talent coming through the ranks. But it's also a mask off moment. I think this is it.

6:59She's chosen the cabinet she wants. She's got the team in place. If they don't see a polling bounce by May, June, people will start to have much more difficult fundamental questions about the Conservatives because it's entirely her team. She's Kemenised the party. Can they deliver now? And speaking of yesterday's men, we also have the news today that Keir Starmer is off. He will no longer be an MP. He's decided to resign. Tim, any surprises with this one? I mean, I'm not surprised at all. Keir Starmer, having had a very successful career in the law, decided a few years ago, oh, I think I might try this politics lark.

7:33I'd quite like to be the Prime Minister. And, you know, fair play to Keir Starmer. You know, he played it sufficiently well with the internal politics of the Labour Party that he got the job. He didn't do it very well, but he's not a man of Parliament. He's not a man with politics in his blood. So he's not going to, as Theresa May did, stay on for an age, representing the good folk of Hoban and St Pancras, as she did for a while, the good folk of Maidenhead. And it is striking that the number of people in and around Starmer's inner circle who basically said, oh, that Rishi Sunak, he's a millionaire.

8:05He'll disappear off to California. He won't be bothered to stay around and do the honest toil of parliamentary work. Well, Rishi Sunak's still there, turning up, discussing the interests of the Richmond farming elite that he represents. And Keir Starmer is off, apparently, to spend more time with his foreign affairs, which, you know, great. Good luck to you in all of that. I mean, you know, we've heard he wants to be... New Secretary General, potentially? We've heard he wants to be the Secretary General of NATO. I mean, I think he'd be on stronger ground if he'd managed to stump up the cash for British defence.

8:37But look, he did a decent enough job, for the most part, on foreign affairs. So maybe that is where his future lies, but it sticks in the craw a little bit for those cynical old hacks of us. It was six weeks ago. You say, oh, no, I'm not going anywhere. You know, he was explicitly asked, Henry Zephman at the BBC asked him, are you sticking around? Yes. For the whole parliament, yes. And ironically, then gives the story to the local paper up where Henry Zephman used to go to school, and then Henry Zephman broke it on Twitter. So it's a delicious North London stitch-up, the whole thing. And think of this, we're told Andy Burnham's making a speech today about setting out his vision for Britain.

9:15Well, he's the second item on the news right now. It obviously suggests that, A, he's got no interest in politics really outside of his own career, and B, that he doesn't give a stuff if it cuts across Andy Burnham's parade. Thanks for kicking me out. Here you go. Have some of this. No love lost. Have some of this, Andy. I mean, it just shows the relationship between the two men. It's clearly not all sunshine and roses, despite what some might say. It's a way to derail Parliament on the first day back. Why not do this in recess? There's a nice, I suppose, satirical element here that Keir Starmer thinks that he's going to have more future and influence, potentially walking away from Parliament than inside it, which maybe reveals something about his view of politics.

9:54But I'm fairly sceptical. I mean, I think that we have this idea of Starmer as a great foreign policy guy. A lot of that was, frankly, anything people could have done in office. I don't think he played a particularly great hand on SAFE, you know, the European defence talks. I'm not necessarily sure things worked out with the US brilliantly. and I suspect that now he's no longer in charge of a G7 NATO nuclear country. People will have less interest to say. I don't think that unlike Rishunak, for instance, who is clearly a very bright guy who is very into tech, I'm not sure what wonderful insights Keir Starman will have on the world stage and I think that it was very much the pompom circumstance and the appearances of foreign policy more so than the kind of realpolitik and the sense of how actually power is wielding the international arena, which did him a good stead.

10:40One of my main WhatsApp group has had great fun in the last hour or so, ranking the prime ministers you would actually want to listen to in a paid speech. And the consensus is that there's sort of several tiers. Tony Blair by a bazillion miles in the lead. And then probably Cameron Johnson. Some people like John Major in that second tier, but I think that's a little bit. It's living, I guess. And then a sort of earnest, still clever, got thoughts, Sunak Brown tier. You're not necessarily going to blow the doors off. and then you're into sort of some combination of May, Starmer and Truss at the bottom.

11:15I mean, much as I spent a great deal of my professional career having great fun covering the antics of both David Cameron and Boris Johnson, I think the only one of those prime ministers I would pay my own money to listen to would be Tony Blair, who has a habit of saying new things about new problems in a way that the rest of them don't. I feel like I could predict almost everything each of them was going to say on any given subject. Oh, totally. It'd be really interesting to see which type of ousted Prime Minister Keir Starmer's going to end up being, if he's going to be writing constant op-eds, throwing barbs.

11:43Oh, I don't think he has any interest in that. He thinks most of the cut and thrust of politics is pointless and silly and beneath him, and that is why he failed as Prime Minister, and it's why he won't be a terribly interesting ex-Prime Minister. And we do think that the most interesting thing he might have done was his last act in Parliament with this potential by-election now. Holborn and St Pancras, Andrew Feldstein did very well there last time. I think that it's going to be a real interesting battle to the Greens select. And Andy Burnham... A lot of talk that Zach Palanski might stand at the moment.

12:14I mean, this may be overtaken by events, but the Green Party is certainly not reigning in that speculation. They're saying, well, he's been a London MP for 20 years. He'd love to do something like that. And the assumption is that the Greens and the sort of guards of independent fraternity will do some kind of deal. And frankly, if you were the Labour candidate, someone is about to get a phone call and say, what we need now is a pointless sacrifice. Take yourself off to Hoban and St Pancras. Take a shufti. Don't come back. Well, of course, we love a by-election here on Coffeehouse Shots, so you will hear everything as it breaks on the podcast.

12:48Thank you so much, Tim. Thank you, James. And thank you for listening.

13:20We'll see you next time. inventory, track returns, all automatically. Everything your operation needs, all in one place. Upgrade your shipping operations to stress-proof your biggest sales days and capture every bit of potential revenue. Go to ShipStation.com and use code AUDIO and get 30 days free.