Starmer’s worst week yet (after last week)

0:13This is Political Coancy with Ed Balls and George Osborne.

0:27so we are remote this week george is off on some trip to i don't know a mysterious location it will be some business visit or something impossible to tell from the camera i mean your background gives nothing you know this is clearly not a davos ski slope you aren't at the winter olympics north of Milan is my guess. I'm a citizen of the world, Ed. Everywhere is my home. Wasn't that the reason why Theresa May sacked you? Because you were a globaliser and therefore a citizen of nowhere. Wasn't that the problem? Yes. She was at Davos this year actually explaining that view. Right. Now, I've had loads of people coming up to me over the last week about EMQs and your revelation that if Nick Clegg had asked to be Chancellor in 2010 as the price for the coalition he'd have got the job people think well you know is that really right is george right about that really interesting thought revelation insight but i don't know if you've seen while he's been away the lib dems are clearly so cross about the fact that nick clegg could have run the treasury and been the chancellor if only he'd thought of it they've now decided to abolish the treasury entirely daisy cooper the deputy leader announced yesterday the treasury is going to go under the liberal democrats when they become the government they're going to have a department of growth which is going to i think be based in birmingham right i don't know if you know you're influencing power from beyond the political grave but i mean the treasury is going to be got rid of because of that nick clegg annoyance yeah i mean my advice to my great friends of the liberal democrats who supported all those eight budgets i delivered were great allies in the coalition government and as nick himself would say we achieved i think a great deal.

2:08We achieved it actually by having a strong treasury with a very strong liberal democrat. That's the number two, Danny Alexander. And my advice to the liberal democrats is a department of growth based in Birmingham, much as I love Birmingham, doesn't strike me as the way to achieve a liberal democrat world. I would build up the treasury and yeah, maybe I would say when as seems quite possible now, Ed Davies doing his coalition negotiations with Kemi Bader-Nock or maybe with Keir Starmer, maybe he should insist that he goes into the Treasury as Chancellor. Chancellor Davy, I mean, he's your Politician of the Year.

2:43I mean, it has a ring to it, doesn't it? Politician of the Year, the year before last. But I mean, can you just imagine the irony? Ed Davy goes into negotiations, comes back and says, I'm going to be Chancellor. Kemmi's agreed. And his deputy, Daisy, says, I'm really sorry, but we've actually abolished the Treasury. So there is no Chancellor of the Exchequer anymore. So it may be worth a conversation at some point about whether trying to clip the wings of the Treasury or set up departments of growth ever works. And we've referred to this a few times. Unfortunately there, Ed, I think that's one of the reasons people like this podcast is that we disagree quite a lot.

3:15I suspect we're going to agree on, generally on views about whether it's a good idea to abolish the Treasury or not. So let's start by talking about and seeing if we agree that after last week, which was undoubtedly Keir Starmer's worst week. This week has, I think, also been Keir Starmer's worst week, even worse than last week. Although there'll be some people saying, no, the fight back started this week. So we're going to look at all the different things. I mean, it has been a wild few days. Where does this leave the Starmer government at the end of the turbulence? Yeah, no, fight has been the word of the week, hasn't it?

3:51But we're then going to turn to the Munich Security Conference, which is on this weekend. Keir Starmer is going, as the Prime Minister. And a year ago, people might remember that's where J.D. Vance put a bomb under European politics and gave this speech attacking, decaying Western Europe and lending support to populist parties. Well, year on, how is that conference shaping up? How is the dust settling? And then we're going to finally turn to the refurbishment of Parliament, something which we've been talking about for years, a report out the last few days with the two options, which both are multi-billion cost one of them involves for years MPs leaving the palace of Westminster entirely and we're going to ask is this ever going to get done if they don't refurbish parliament what would it mean is this another planning blighted massively expensive HS2 debacle but Let's start with the last few days.

4:51On our podcast last week, we had just had that terrible defeat for Keir Starmer at the hands of his own backbenchers with Kemi Badenok on the humble address, which meant that he had to agree to the release of all of those emails and WhatsApp messages from all his ministers and advisors to Peter Mandelson, but also for that to be not overseen by the Cabinet Secretary, but by the Intelligence Security Committee. and the after crisis of that rolled on we said in our podcast last week would morgan mc sweeney make it through the weekend and how much in danger keir starmer was and we thought we'd just kind of go through this roller coaster quickly and kind of mark the important milestones over the last week and then stand back and say where does this leave the keir starmer premiership but we start with i think last weekend where there was a lot of speculation that Keir Starmer may be going to fall on his sword and of course what was actually going on was every cabinet minister and advisor were desperately searching through their whatsapp and email messages to find out what they'd actually messaged to Peter Mannerson and what he'd messaged back and what that was going to mean when this was released into the public domain but of course on Sunday first big event the chief of staff Morgan McSweeney falls on his sword, leaves Downing Street.

6:10But before we get to that, just something you said is worth reiterating, you know, that vote by the parliamentary Labour Party to support the Conservative motion that all this information should be published, that has not yet happened. So we still have, we're about to talk about the events of the last week, but there is still this time bomb of the release of all these Mandelson files. And we've had some idea and some consequence already before these things are even published. But, you know, just everyone should remember, this thing is far from over because that's coming. I think with Morgan McSweeney, you know, you and I both know him, me not particularly well.

6:44I mean, ironically, I got to know him whilst discussing the job of being the ambassador in the United States. And I was very impressed by him on my conversations with him. And I think you and I would understand you meet people who kind of get politics, who, you know, who are very political, understand political strategy. And Morgan is one of them and they're quite rare even at the top of politics and so his departure is a big loss for Keir Starmer and you know this isn't the podcast when we don't have the time to do the whole history of this but you know there is a kind of argument that Morgan McSweeney made Keir Starmer as much as Keir Starmer made Morgan McSweeney so I think this is you know for the kind of Starmer operation his departure feels to me like kind of really ripping the wires out of the kind of central command module.

7:33And we don't know yet how Keir Starmer is going to reconstruct the team around him. And he's got a couple of very senior and effective deputies, but they're not known to be kind of political strategists of the kind of Morgan McSweeney type. He's definitely lost his kind of political brain. And that is a big problem, not least because it's often been discussed. And he himself would say, I'm not the person who's steeped in politics. It's not that this particular the prime minister is going to drive political strategy in the way that maybe previous prime ministers did. The aftershock of McSweeney's departure is going to be felt in, you know, what was already not a very effective number 10 operation, whether they can fill the hole that he created.

8:16And it just, you know, I thought the most effective line later in the week that Kimmy Bainlock was able to deploy is you've had all these cabinet secretaries, you've had all these chiefs of staff and you have all these directors of communication. You look in the mirror who's the problem you know Morgan McSweeney's departure I think was the most striking example of that even though it came at the beginning of this very bad week for him I think that is right although I think you know in a way there was a contradiction in what you just said and just to kind of unpick it there is no doubt that he was a brilliant political strategist and ran that campaign in a very effective way in the whole Keir Starmer pre-election operation and I think there was a genuine question as to whether he would go into Downing Street at all.

8:59And it was supposed to be Sue Gray running Downing Street, and that clearly failed. Morgan McSweeney ends up as the Chief of Staff. But the thing about being the Chief of Staff in Downing Street, it's a very different job to running a political campaign. And you can't control all the levers. And you have to put in place the people who can run the policy, and who can run the media, and who can run the parliamentary operation. And your job as the Chief of Staff is to get the right people in place, and then come in when there's a crisis and solve them. And I'm not sure that was ever the job Morgan McSweeney wanted to do.

9:32De facto, it ended up that he didn't allow or there wasn't somebody else doing that instead of him. And you have to say, if you end up with so much turbulence in number 10, all these changes of media operations, all these changes of political operatives, but also all these U-turns and failures, that does tell you that number 10 was not functioning. and you know I've not had this conversation with Morgan McSweeney but you know did he in retrospect think he was the right person to do that job you are right to say it all comes back to the principle but the principle Keir Starmer he has to choose the right person to be chief of staff and I'm not sure whether Sue Gray or Morgan McSweeney were ever the right person to do that job.

10:15No I think you've you've fairly picked me up on that because it was not like Morgan McSweeney I think people felt was doing a good job in terms of running the government. It might have been a very good job in defining who Keir Starmer was and getting him elected and seeing off the hard left in the Labour Party. But it's right. And it kind of comes to, you know, in the end, to what degree can you blame the advisors rather than the king? But we'll come on to that, won't we? You then get to Monday where, as I said, lots of speculation that Keir Starmer might stand down. I think all these cabinet minister is actually thinking if he stands down now when we've still got all these mandelson emails and messages to come out i mean this is a bit of a nightmare nobody quite knows what is going to be revealed and how and then out of the blue just after lunch on monday anis sawa in scotland makes a speech where he says keir starmer must go down the street has got to change he's basically saying if keir starmer doesn't go i'm going to lose the scottish elections and they are third in the opinion polling.

11:17I think there's lots of people who might have thought at that moment, is this the beginning of a spiral? Number 10, get their act together. They demand tweets from the cabinet. Within the hour, every cabinet minister tweets their support. I mean, you could look at that from the outside of politics and say, that means they're all massive supporters of Keir Starmer. What was actually going on was they couldn't afford to be the one who didn't do the tweet. And unless they all thought this was the time for him to go or at least a sizable chunk they had to keep their options open for the next moment i think fundamentally you know angela rayner from the outside west streeting from the inside john healy or ed milliband or whoever they all thought this is not the time that is why you had that expression of support which which ends up in a parliamentary meeting at six o 'clock which becomes like a rally for keir starmer i've been to so many of these on the Labour side.

12:14You know, Tony Blair's had a bad local election results. There's a weak kind of speculation. Is he going to stand down? Nobody plunges the knife. You get to the Monday and actually at that point, well, if he's not going, we'd better get behind him. Rallying speeches, the whips organise it, people clap and cheer and everybody walks out and the media think, well, does that mean everything's turned and he's secure? And everybody in the room knows, absolutely not. It reminds me of Ian Duncan Smith, Yes, the quiet man's here to stay and he's turning up the volume because I was, you know, I think I've talked about it before on one of our EMQ episodes.

12:50I was a junior whip. We were in opposition then, very different from government. But, you know, we were all having to stand up and give these standing ovations during Ian Duncan Smith's speech. And he went a couple of months later. But at the time, everyone says, you know, all he's rallied the party. And yes, I've been to many of those meetings in the upper committee room corridor in Parliament where you get a big kind of thumping of the desk. I don't know if the Labour MPs do it. The Tory MPs like bang the desk. And if you think of the demise of some of those Tory prime ministers recently, like Theresa May, like Boris Johnson, you know, they always get the kind of rally a few weeks beforehand.

13:27And everyone thinks, oh, well, maybe they're safe. But I thought the most interesting thing, and I don't know for sure whether members of the cabinet were thinking the way you suggest, but that strikes me as very, very likely that Anindzidangelo Reynod. I'm not ready to go yet, so I'm going to wait till he actually jumps. And also let Cleus Starmer clear up the problems right now. Let him lose the Gorton by-election, let him get the Mandelson stuff out, let him absorb this, and then we'll see further down the track whether that's the right moment. You don't think that's a bit too... People always think it's not the cabinet at a moment like this or the parliamentary Labour Party.

14:05It's a series of individuals making calculations about what's their best option at that moment, probably with limited coordination. Maybe if there's some very close friendships, they may coordinate things a bit. This is a feature of politics. There's that whole, like, do you plunge the knife in and does that then damage your own chances? And history has got lots of examples either way. It's not the case that the person who wields the knife never wears the crown, the kind of famous thing said of Michael Hestine. But anyway, they all decided that this wasn't the moment. I think Anasawa was the one who had a reason to need to go now because of his Scottish electing challenge.

14:43But why would you, if you're looking into the Labour movement from the outside, you know, we've had the mayor of Manchester, who's one of the most senior English figures in the Labour Party. Now you've had the leader of the Scottish Labour Party. And let's remember, it was only two years ago, or less than two years ago, that Labour was celebrating the big comeback in Scotland and the saltire was being waved at the Labour Party conference. It feels like Starmer has sort of lost the party outside Parliament, the representatives of the Parliament of party outside Westminster, i.e. the Burnhams, the Sarwas and so on.

15:21I know Anasawa a bit and he's a smart guy. When he makes his call on Starmer to resign, does he know he's got no one who's going to come out of the trench with him or that this is going to be a failed attack or does he not care i don't know i think it's unlikely that he coordinated with anybody there was a number 10 attempt to say no we're streeting within contact with him but that all looks pretty spurious to me i think he knows that the feedback on the doorstep in scotland to keir starmer is so bad that unless he goes out and does something distancing he's going to be dragged down in an election in a couple of months time and so I think the point you make is right the idea that because the cabinet came round and the PLP was supportive that therefore Starmer ended that Monday stronger I mean absolutely untrue he ended that day much weaker because he'd lost his chief of staff and he'd had to get the cabinet to come out and do that show of unity but the fundamental thing as you said is you know the Labour leader in Scotland said he's got to go why didn't the Labour leader in Wales follow suit?

16:26There was a lot of speculation that she would, Alunard Morgan. Very good question. And that is the one person who I think Anasawa might have thought was going to move. She did put a statement out in support, quite lukewarm, but she did. Of course, that night you had Wes Streeting then issuing all his WhatsApp messages. I thought that was a smart thing for him to do. Very smart. Very smart. I completely agree. There was a little bit of, you know, is this disloyal keir starmer saying you know this is contrary to collective responsibility and the police inquiry although the police inquiry is into what happened in 2008 9 10 not into the decision to appoint peter van der son last year i thought it was a smart thing to do and he needed to kind of get out from under that there'll be lots of other cabinet ministers thinking you know if only i could do the same although there may be some who don't feel confident that the publication of their messages going to work in the way it did actually work for West Streeting.

17:21And then, of course, on Monday morning, Tim Allen resigned. Why did Tim Allen resign as the head of communications? I don't know the answer to this, but if I had to guess, it's because Tim Allen had gone back and looked at the WhatsApp messages that he had exchanged with Peter Mandelson once he was in Downing Street last year and concluded that these weren't messages he wanted to be in the public domain. I mean, that is my guess, but I don't know the answer to that. Yeah, there's still some mystery over why Tim goes because you know he's a very experienced comms person but more than that he was after McSweeney's departure the most sort of senior grown-up in Downing Street on the political side and there's a world where he could have become the chief of staff after McSweeney.

18:01Now I thought you know we know that Wes is a gold subscriber to this podcast and a big fan and I'm glad to say at least someone was listening to us last week. I definitely feel we could go by when maybe in downing street i know they listen to the podcast but maybe they don't hear it but wes was clearly following our advice last week which was the vice actually directed at starnell which is get everything out publish it get it done and here we are we've got another week and come back to the point i made earlier still none of these mandelton messages have been published whereas wes is out from under it i mean i thought the most damaging thing that wes said was obviously the The thing that everyone in private is saying, including all the cabinet, is, you know, where's our growth strategy?

18:43I mean, that's the thing he reveals. I think we have been saying for two years that you have to have a diagnosis of the problem. But we did have a speech on Tuesday after his cabinet from Keir Starmer. Although this was not a speech which showed contrition or talked about what had gone wrong or tried to answer Wes's challenge. Instead, it was a absolutely classic backs to the wall, under pressure, fight back speech. It is worth listening to this clip we put together. This is just some excerpts. But Keir Starmer, in his speech to apprentices who I think all sat there looking a bit baffled by what they were listening to, he used the word fight 26 times.

19:25Here's a little flavour. Because I know what I'm fighting for and who I'm fighting for. and I'm fighting for them. And I will never give up on that fight. There are some people in recent days who say the Labour government should have a different fight, a fight with itself, instead of a fight for the millions of people who need us to fight for them. And I say to them, I will never walk away from the mandate I was given to change this country. I will never walk away from the people that I am charged with fighting for. the fight coming up in politics the real fight is not in the Labour Party it's with the right-wing politics that challenges that the politics of reform that is the fight that we are in and I will be in that fight as long as I have breath in my body I should say to our listeners that the little bell there the sort of ring bell was inserted by us rather than somebody ringing a bell in the actual speech that was only half of the fight so i think that was 13 of the 26 in that speech but uh you know kirstarmer fighting back it feels like do you remember theresa may i will go on for 10 years boris johnson i'm fighting on in the maelstrom of immediate pressure this is a classic technique i mean i think probably even in duncan smith fought on until he was shot by the Conservative Parliamentary Party.

20:53Who's advising Starmer at this point? I mean, you know, someone's writing that speech, someone's talking to him about the language he uses. I mean, is Morgan Mosvini no longer in contact at all with him, do we assume? Or, you know, because he's still organizing things, isn't he? Even though, as we said, the kind of wiring in the centre has all been ripped out. He's lost his comms director, his chief of staff. You know, There's really almost no one I can imagine in the cabinet he trusts to have these conversations with. You know, unlike Cameron or Blair or indeed Gordon Brown, there's not a bunch of very loyal cabinet ministers, you know, who are the sort of praetorian guard.

21:33Who is the kind of inner team now? Well, I don't think we know the answer to that. We know that Richard Hermer, the Attorney General, very close to Keir Starmer, as you say, Keir Starmer does not really speak to cabinet ministers about politics or policy, certainly not when he's under pressure in this way. So I'd be surprised if anybody else was involved in that moment. There are some very effective people around him now. He's appointed Vidya, Joe Cuthbertson, who I know well, to be acting chiefs of staff. They're good, experienced. Amy Richards, his head of politics, I've known her for a very long time, hugely respected by both the young advisors, but also senior people who've been around for some time.

22:12But are they the ones who are actually being listened to by Keir Starmer? Is it actually voices off? Is Morgan McSweeney, Paul Ovenden, both of whom have left number 10, are they still involved? Is Keir Starmer listening to his advisors in the room, but then making his decisions with a different group of people? I don't think we know the answer to that at the moment. We're going to come on to appointments in a moment. Is Keir Starmer using this moment to make his operation coherent? Or does it actually become less functional and more disparate and disconnected? I hope he's listening to the people around him.

22:48If it was me, I would get Steph Driver, who was his head of communications until Tim Allen was brought in. I would get her back as she resigned. But she's really good. There are some good people he could have around him. but is he going to appoint a new chief of staff is somebody doing it from the outside i don't think we know the answer to that at the moment i don't think that fight speech was a problem but i think the next day we get to planus's questions my view is that this was a big misjudgment that coming into the house of commons keir starmer needed to show more humility more contrition find a way to diffuse and deflect the attacks he knew he was going to get.

23:30And of course, by this point, he's under new pressure about the fact that another one of his heads of communication, Matthew Doyle, who left and has gone into the House of Lords, it turns out that he had been campaigning in support of somebody who was charged with and then later convicted with under 16 child sex offences. And that Gabriel Pogren from the Sunday Times had been exposing this for weeks and weeks and weeks well before the final decision to make him a Labour peer in the House of Lords that had come out and how did Keir Starmer respond in PMQs to Kemi Badenoch and then to Ed Davey with these new allegations in a very aggressive angry way as the sketch writer said it left quite a lot of these especially women Labour MPs silent on the back benches Yet despite the Prime Minister knowing this, he gave Doyle a job for life in the House of Lords anyway.

24:28Why? Prime Minister. Mr Speaker, Matthew Doyle did not give a full account of his actions. And on Monday, I promised my party and my country there will be change. And yesterday, I removed the wick from Matthew Doyle. I'll tell you what other action we've taken, Mr Speaker. along with the safeguarding minister, I and this government have introduced the most far-reaching vile against women and girls strategy. And I'll tell you what else we've done. This government is introduced to pay rise for millions of working class women. What did the leader of the opposition do? She opposed it. This government's introducing greater protection for women at work.

25:11What did the leader of the opposition do? She opposed it. The problem was just an hour after Prime Minister's questions, Number 10 then had to tell the lobby that in fact the Prime Minister had known Matthew Doyle's engagement with the child sex offender before the appointment had been made. He'd actually been given the information. So it was a bit of a rerun of the Mandelson thing, wasn't it? I mean, no, quite extraordinary. And I also thought there were other bits in the PMQ exchange where it's just sort of rather pleading where he goes, you know, I'm one of only four people who've ever led the Labour Party to victory in an election.

25:46It's a man who's protested too much, doesn't he? Also from Ed Davey, who asks, to appoint one paedophile supporter cannot be excused as misfortune, to appoint two shows a catastrophic lack of judgment. And Keir Starmer's response is basically to say the Liberal Democrats supported austerity. Now, I mean, it was such a look over there moment. I think in these situations, you have to engage with the issue. I don't think Yabu worked for Keir Starmer at all in Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday. I mean, the question, you know, what kind of defence could he have mounted? And it's very hard on the Matthew Doyle case because of what had happened before with Mandelson.

26:24He's never tried with Mandelson to mount the, you know, we were facing a very unusual American administration. It's essential to Britain's national security and economic prosperity that we engage at the highest level of that administration. I went for a unusual appointment in Peter Mandelson. And actually, he was doing a good job as ambassador. But of course, all these things, you know, he never tries to kind of raise it and try and explain what he was trying to achieve with things like the Mandelson appointment. And you can do that kind of thing at PMQs, even though it's a very sort of, you know, it's a bit of a bear pit, to put it mildly.

27:02I thought it is worth noting, Kemi Baden-Ock is now quite far ahead of Starmer on who would make the best leader of the country. I mean which is a big achievement for her in the last 18 months given where she started and all the you know speculation about her future and she has had another good week. And you can absolutely say that if there are events in the coming weeks which bring down other individuals if the promise ends up going Kemi Bainot will be able to say that she and not Nigel Farage was the person who last September led the charge on the Peter Manson issues. She will be thinking she and advisors have really called this right.

27:39We're going to be talking about this, I suspect, next week. We should just end on, you know, this also thrown into this mix. And, you know, again, I'm not entirely sure why you would throw this into the cauldron this week. There's been lots of speculation that the cabinet secretary, the most senior civil servant, appointed by Keir Starmer only about a year ago, with a lot of people saying, was this the most imaginative choice? And does he need someone more dynamic? Chris Wormle, there's a lot of speculation that he is about to go and be replaced. And someone you and I both know, Antonio Romeo, who's currently the permanent secretary at the Home Office and has done lots of jobs in government.

28:19She's sort of tipped for the top job and certainly would be a dynamic and creative choice. But even that appointment now, you know, there's sort of open season on that because it hasn't been made. So there's just a lot of speculation about it. The former permanent secretary or permanent undersecretary, as they call it technically, at the Foreign Office, Simon MacDonald, who already has one prime ministerial scalp under his belt because he's actually the man who initiated the downfall of Boris Johnson. He has come out and started essentially alluding to the fact that he doesn't support this appointment process of the cabinet secretary and indeed that his advice on vetting of candidates for jobs, which has been the kind of theme of all of this, has been ignored.

29:09This is what he's been saying overnight. Due diligence is vitally important. The Prime Minister has recent bitter experience of doing the due diligence too late. It would be an unnecessary tragedy to repeat that mistake. I mean, they are saying she's already been approved as suitable for this job so why do any more process? I repeat the due diligence needs to be thorough if the candidate mentioned in the media is the one in my view the due diligence has some way still to go. And Simon McDonald goes on in the interview to say that he has been offering to speak to number 10 about his concerns. This all goes back to events which happened when he was the permanent secretary in the Foreign Office and Antonio Romeo was the consul in New York and some investigation into alleged misconduct back then.

30:00He says he's been trying to speak to Number 10 and they've not been listening to him. As you say, why they are in a row about the Cabinet Secretary, I have no idea. Maybe they think that you can kind of get this out when there's other stuff going on, but it's not working. Look, there is a lot of anger about the way this has been done. If the Prime Minister wants to change the Cabinet Secretary, fine. It is a bit embarrassing that he only appointed him a year ago. What is causing huge anger in the civil service is that rather than this being done properly there is a briefing operation coming from Keir Starmer and his team basically attacking and disparaging Chris Wormald who they appointed as incompetent not up to the job and telling everybody that Antonio Romeo is going to get it without a process and I think the treatment of Chris Wormald is what was making people angry but we're now in a position where look you know I know none of the details of what's gone on and like you I've always respected Antonio Romeo and I think she's a tough and good operator but she cannot now go in as cabinet secretary with a target on her back for the whole of the media to think there's something to find here because Keir Starmer once again after Peter Mandelson and after Matthew Doyle has not done the due diligence properly you cannot have Keir Starmer turning around again and saying nobody told me about these things so there is no way they can simply appoint Antonio Romeo there has to be a proper process but the damage done with the senior civil service by the treatment of chris wormhole is not going to go away and you know once again you just think what is this downing street operation why do they think this is the right way to build team and camaraderie and get the civil service working for them the idea this government has not delivered and done u-terms and doesn't have a vision and as west streeting says doesn't have a great strategy the idea that is because chris wormhole has not been an effective cabinet secretary come on take some political responsibility that starts at the top if the primast and his operation is not succeeding improve your operation and do better but don't go and brief the media about the cabinet secretary in this pathetic way it causes massive anger and it just makes me feel embarrassed i mean it did if If you look back on the last seven days, you know, he has shredded his relationship with some of the key people who got him into Downing Street and lost his chief of staff and his director of communications again.

32:25He has lost the relationship with the Labour Party outside of Westminster, as represented a couple of weeks ago by Andy Burnham, now by the leader of the Labour Party in Scotland, and Scotland is absolutely critical to the Labour Party's national fortunes. He has essentially kind of lost control of the PLP because, Barnum Energy Labor Body, because they voted against him last week to release all these documents. And we're going to see where that gets everyone. And now he's done further huge damage to his relationship with the civil service. It's quite a lot, isn't it, in a week? We have both said over the last few weeks that when you've got these low poll ratings and you've got these massive challenges coming up, the by-election at the end of February and in the May elections.

33:08The test every week, is this a week where we have made things better, not worse? And once again, we have a week which has made things worse rather than better. It may be he's going to get a grip on his operation now, finally, and there are some good people in there, but this cabinet secretary thing is a terrible mess. It may be that they're going to get the policy better explained, more underpinned by values in the coming weeks than we've seen. And that's what we've been hearing from Ed Miliband and others asking that from West Streeting too. Although, of course, this is interpreted as a lurch to the left.

33:43Although the big problem for Keir Starmer is, is he left wing? Is he right wing? What does he actually stand for? And that's a thing he's never really defined. But the underlying fact is this. We've just had growth figures to show the economy is barely growing. We had a report from the Resolution Foundation to say that this year living standards are going to be flat. there's going to be no rising living standards this parliament and basically pensioners will be a little bit better off and now people who are getting more support because of the ending in the two-child limit are going to be slightly better off.

34:14Working people who don't get child tax credits are going to be worse off. There is nothing which suggests the economy is going to grow more strongly this year in a way which is felt by people which will override the tax rises to come. This government needs a growth plan. They need people to feel better off. And if that doesn't start to come through quickly, they're in a lot of trouble. And has anything happened in the last week to advance that agenda? Nothing. No, I think, you know, pointing to today's growth figures, which show the British economy, again, barely growing in the last quarter by just 0.1 % and 1 % over the last year.

34:49I mean, that's the other. If one pillar is leadership, and as I was just saying, the leader of the opposition is now ahead of the prime minister on leadership the other pillar usually of political success is economy economic competence and that's lost too anyway we will come back to all of this i'm sure next week the one place where i think people have consistently said and certainly i think keir starmer has performed pretty well is on the international stage and so i think it will be a blessed relief for him to get out of downing street out of westminster at the start of a parliamentary recess and head to munich for the munich security conference where he is one of the star speakers and we're going to turn to that conference next welcome back so if you're a general or a spy chief or a defense minister, or perhaps if you head up one of the world's big arms companies, you will be heading to the Hotel Bayerischerhof in Munich for the Munich Security Conference.

36:02I went about seven or eight years ago to this conference. I never went as chancellor. It's quite an interesting conference, and it's grown and grown and grown. It has a much more intimate feel than a Davos or the United Nations General Assembly Week in September in New York. It really is still kind of crammed into this one hotel. And it's a conference of the sort of essentially the Western security allies, their militaries, their intelligence operations, and so on, and commercial companies associated with those parts of government. And the Munich Security Conference was not one of the most important events of the year.

36:38But I think it's become that. And one of the reasons for that was last year, J.D. Vance, the newly elected vice president of the United States, came and instead of doing what vice presidents have done in the past, it's often a conference which vice presidents go to rather than presidents, which is, you know, we all love you and we've all got to work together to defeat our enemies. He turned the fire on the people in the room. And just a reminder of what he said a year ago at this conference. The threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor.

37:13And what I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America. So I would say that has been one of the most consequential speeches of the last year, and possibly one of the most consequential speeches of any vice president in history, you know, because vice presidents don't tend to make the really important speeches on behalf of their governments. And its shockwaves has been felt in the 12 months since. And you can see that in the chair of the security conference, who's a kind of great figure of the German establishment called Wolfgang Ischinger.

37:51You know, he has introduced this year's conference by saying that the world has entered a period of wrecking ball politics. Sweeping destruction rather than careful reforms and policy corrections is the order of the day. The US post-1945 international order is now under destruction. And what a place to say it in Munich, because, of course, that order came to be after the wreckage of the Second World War. Do you think the Vant speech still reverberates today? Do you think this security conference marks the destruction of the Western order in the way that its organizer suggests? Well, I think it's about events.

38:35A year ago, when Vance made that speech, and if you remember, he highlighted Britain, and it's a retreat from free speech, but also was coruscating about the way in which immigration was changing Europe. That was before the Donald Trump massive increase in tariffs. It was before the humiliation of Zelensky in the White House. It was before what we've seen subsequently in Venezuela, the takeover there without any attempt to justify an international law. Or if you remember at the end of last year, that statement of American foreign policy. And in the document, as you say, they say the most powerful of those who take the axe to existing rules in institutions is US President Donald Trump.

39:22And they say in their document that a year ago, we thought we could retain the international order based upon an America supporting a rules-based approach, being in favour of open trade, being a champion for democracy and liberal values. and they say on all of those fronts a bulldozer has been taken so i think you are right that the van speech was you know a signal of what's to come but what's to come afterwards has been the very powerful thing and of course um we're still in the middle of that so you know on the one hand progress in the middle east on the other hand you know i mean there is a coming crisis in cuba because of the oil embargo from venezuela what is going to happen in venezuela what is going to happen, as you've been saying for the last few weeks, to Iran.

40:11This is a country now which, in its actions as well as its speeches, is breaking from the way things have been done in the past. And it does pose this big dilemma for leaders. As you said, Keir Starmer was speaking on Saturday. I was talking about that Franco-British meeting I was at a couple of weeks ago. And a year ago, it was possible to think Plan A can still work. Plan A means keeping the Americans on side, trying to persuade them that sticking with NATO, sticking with the campaign against Russia and Ukraine, trying to persuade them to mitigate what they do on tariffs, and a little bit of hoping the next president isn't going to be quite as wild, that that strategy can work.

40:56And that was clearly what Keir Starmer was going after when he went to the White House. That was what Peter Mandelson was put into Washington to deliver. But critics on the other side have been saying to Keir Starmer and to Emmanuel Macron in France, hang on a sec, all of the evidence is that this is a bulldozer rather than somebody who you can try to mollify and modify. And what's your plan B? I mean, what happens if this does become a United States, which is in a more permanent way, withdrawing from the global trade order, walks away from Ukraine, ends up walking away from NATO, the row we had in the last few weeks about Greenland, what is your alternative?

41:37And as you said a couple of weeks ago, Mark Carney went out bravely to say, you've got to start thinking about what we do in the new world rather than hoping the old world is going to come back. And the big test for Keir Starmer is what he's going to do on Saturday. And of course, he will go and say America's an important ally of us. But I think compared to a year ago, after the Vann speech and subsequent events, simply speaking publicly on the line that, you know, America is going to be our secure ally. I mean, that feels much more risky now. And by the way, domestically, politically, he will run out of road in the end if he stays in that position, compared to what Albanese's done in Australia or Carney did in Canada, being more taking on the Trump argument.

42:25Does Keir Starmer start to talk about the foreign and defence and security implications of Britain and Europe having to shape a world where America can't be relied upon anymore? I think his instinct will be to play it safe and not to do that. But I think that's quite risky. And if he simply turns up and says the most important thing about the European relationship is the economy. Rachel Rees was saying these things at the LSE last night, the economy and economic cooperation. I think those things are hugely important. But actually, at the moment, it's about defence and security, where the big questions are.

43:02And whether that's about defence spending, or European defence cooperation, or European defence procurement collaboration, I think Keir Starmer will be tested as to whether he reflects the world of 2026 rather than the rather hopeful world pre the van speech of january 2025 yeah you see i i think i slightly disagree with you here because if you could say that the kind of keir starmer strategy of the last year internationally has worked which was keeping the americans bound in you know donald trump arrives in the white house J.D. Vance comes to Munich and lays into the Western allies. And yet a year later, everyone gathers again.

43:42Marco Rubio now attends this conference as Secretary of State. There are 50 American lawmakers going. So America is still completely bound into the multilateral conversations about security. President Zelensky is turning up at this conference to get an award for his heroism. Donald Trump has not imposed some brutal peace in Ukraine and rewarded Putin in the last year. He might over the coming months, but he hasn't done it yet, even though he said on coming into office he'd end the Ukraine war within 24 hours. On Iran, yes, the US have taken unilateral action, most notably back in June last year, the strikes on the Iranian nuclear facilities.

44:23But they're now trying to draw Iran into negotiations. with the threat of a strike and that carrier sitting offshore. So a lot of the kind of international order and American leadership of it remains in place. And I think if you're Keir Stammer, you could say it wasn't always popular at home, but I kept Trump engaged and I kept the American administration engaged. And America remains a very important security ally and hasn't abandoned NATO, abandoned Ukraine, torn up the international order. But I think the kind of irony is at the very moment when you could go to Munich and say, my strategy works, and I'm not going to do a Mark Carney, you know, I'm actually choosing not to give the big speech that Carney gave.

45:07Domestic pressures do exactly the opposite, as you suggest, to get up there and be a bit like Carney and be a bit like Albanese. And, you know, maybe I underestimate our prime minister, I just don't think if he tries to do a Mark Carney speech, it's going to be anything like as good as Mark Carney's speech. And it's going to feel a bit like after the event. So I would double down on what he believes in and appears to believe in and double down on the approach he's taken internationally. But I just don't know whether he's got the domestic room to do that anymore. Because, of course, it's part of that strategy that's blown back into domestic politics, the appointment of Mandelson.

45:44I guess my counter to you is only that. I'm saying there's plan A and plan b keir starmer has been running plan a which is engagement and hope and mark carney was we've got to talk about plan b which is what happens if america disengages and i'm saying if keir starmer only talks about plan a and defines himself against mark carney i actually don't think people will think that's in the real world and i don't think it works for him domestically politically i'm not saying lurch and make the carney speech but i'm saying he just needs to be open about um the challenges that we face and the reality the reality set out in this munich report and that doesn't mean he has to go full barrel carny style against trump and vance but i think he just has to show that it's not the same speech as either given a year ago and maybe you can make that tangible about the nature of collaboration but i don't think it's the collaboration which is going to work for him for this speech is going to be about the single market or goods cooperation is going to be about defence and security.

46:48I think if he doesn't give a bit there and say a few tough things about what Vance has said over the last year about Britain, he's willing to say some tough things about the owner of Manchester United and his views about immigration. Maybe he needs to say the same thing about J.D. Vance and his views about values and democracy and social cohesion in Britain. I was talking to one of his most senior foreign policy advisors a couple of weeks ago, and I was saying, you know, I do think he's done the right thing in terms of his positioning on the international stage. And this person said to me, I just don't know how long we can keep that up because the domestic politics is encroaching.

47:28so we will see we will see with the um the speech he gives this weekend as i say he's probably glad to be out of the country on the world stage of course he can't entirely leave the palace of westminster behind him because um it's falling down and he does have to make a decision or indeed the members of parliament who are in parliament with him also have to make a decision about the renovation of that building and that's uh popped into the news this week and we're going to talk about that finally welcome back we are going to talk about the future of our parliamentary democracy not our values or our procedures but the actual building that the amazing 19th century iconic round-the-world building, which is the Palace of Westminster.

48:24When I was a Member of Parliament, over 10 years ago now, we were discussing the fact that this building was decaying, and there were mice, and there was asbestos, and leaks, and continual repairs having to be done. And a debate was beginning about how to refurbish and modernise Parliament. Very controversial, even back then because could you refurbish parliament while parliament continues to operate or do you have to decant the members of parliament the MPs and the Lords out of the old palace of Westminster while it was being refurbished back in those days there was talk about moving parliament to Richmond House just up the road which was the old health department building some people saying well actually what you ought to do is move the House of Commons to Leeds or Manchester, do a radical thing, maybe with the thought that it would never come back after the refurbishment was done.

49:20We dug out this clip from a more youthful Laura Koonsberg talking about the refurbishment of Parliament back in 2014 on Newsnight. The building is getting older, faster than we're able to deal with it. The stonework, for example, is crumbling beyond recognition. Newsnight has been told the working assumption for the cost of restoring the palace is£3 billion. One senior insider said, I'd be surprised if it stays at that. An initial report costing the alternatives is complete, but the authorities are reluctant to start an almighty row, let alone reach a verdict before the election. Yet every day a decision's delayed, the fabric of the building gets worse.

50:01Every day a decision is delayed. I think we've been delaying this decision now for more than 12 years. and the costs are no longer in the£3 billion. There was a report out in the last few days. I mean, there's been a whole series of different bodies looking at how to do this. And the choice is, do you fully move the Commons and the Lords out of the Palace? On that basis, it's not£3 billion. It's£11 to£15 billion and will take 19 to 24 years. Or do you try and keep the Lords and the Commons on site while this refurbishment happens? In that case, it takes 38 to 61 years, and the cost goes up from 19.5 to 39.2 billion pounds.

50:45And that's the choice. Without a recommendation, plus ça change, plus ça même chose. I'm not sure why you threw in some French when we're talking about the historic home of English democracy and, more latterly, British democracy. But back when I was chancellor, this came across my desk, and I was all in favour of getting on with restoring this building. but I have to say I was pretty much alone not not entirely alone voice to be fair there were other members of the then coalition cabinet who were in favor but there weren't enough of us and the arguments against are quite straightforward you know if you're a politician who wants to go and explain to the public that you're going to be spending billions of pounds on renovating the house of commons you know it's such an easy thing for your opponents to attack they're spending money on themselves when they should be spending money on the health service and I think quite a lot of politicians, this was certainly the view of quite a lot of my cabinet colleagues at the time, was like, yeah, but does it have to happen on our watch?

51:39Do we have to be the people who move out of the House of Commons? Well, this is our chance to be MPs in that historic chamber. Norman Foster came up with a great idea for a temporary structure on Horse Guards Parade. And we certainly don't want to move to Manchester or York or whatever. So there's always a reason to say no. And it's hard to say yes because you open yourself up politically to a very obvious attack but but but this is britain's most famous building this is an absolutely fabulous amazing building such an extraordinary gothic creation when you go to the house commons if you go to the basement where some of the function rooms are you can see the runners-up in the architectural competition to rebuild it after a fire and it's worth remembering the reason why people think this building is renovating is partly because it's a massive fire hazard.

52:28Well, when it burned down in the 19th century, you know, there were quite boring plans to have a sort of Greco-Roman building, a kind of neoclassical building, but they went for this Gothic creation. And if you just let the thing crumble, if you let the whole thing rot, if you run the risk that one day there is some horrific fire, then I think you've done a huge disservice to our history and to our nation. And you have to bite the bullet and say, look, it's not easy. It's not popular, but this building is our most important building in the country. And it's a huge rambling complex. It's going to cost a lot of money to redo it, but it's worth doing.

53:06Let's go for the simple option, which is take everyone out. You're not trying to run building works whilst trying to run a parliament with all the security attached to that and get on with it. And other countries have done these big renovation projects. When they're finished, everyone goes, well, why didn't we do that earlier? So I'm in favor of getting on with it. not least because of the conversations we were having on this podcast about Keir Starmer you know he is in no space where he is going to be able to take a big controversial decision like this so I do wonder whether it's the kind of thing where you might try and set up sort of an independent commission that looks after the building of parliament itself and comes up with recommendations try and take it out of the hands of the day-to-day legislators because like there's no incentive on them to do it but you know you and I both had offices many offices in that building I had, you know, lots of different offices, including in the old historic one.

53:55I mean, the actual office of the Chancellor's Exchequer, which is immediately behind the speaker's chair and should be one of the final offices. I mean, when I was there, I remember it was damp. There were moths everywhere eating everything. You would occasionally see mice running across the floor. I mean, it was it's not it's not fit for purpose. And it's it's our great showcase for our democracy and for the world. Did you see that clip of Kemi Badenock doing an interview from her office a week or so ago? And during the interview, an eagle-eyed observer saw a mouse ran across the skirting board while she was doing this live interview.

54:34I mean, it's disgusting, Ed. In fact, the roof, I remember, fell in as well into my office as Chancellor. And what does everyone want as an MP? what you want to do is get out of the old palace and get yourself a lovely office in the new building next door portcullis house that's what that's what that's what people aspire to so i'm going to take the other side of this argument while pointing out by the way that they've tried independent commissions before in the last 10 years and then when they come up with a recommendation they then decide to ditch them and start again good blog by the hansard society who just explained the scale of this challenge the building covers the area of 16 football pitches across 65 different levels, 40 miles of cabling, 250 miles of pipework and an estimated two and a half thousand separate sites of asbestos, they say that you are right.

55:21The easiest thing to do is to just spend the 15 billion pounds, decant everybody and just get on and do it. As you know, no parliamentarian ever wants to be chucked out of the House of Commons. Maybe you have to bite the bullet. But there is a counter-argument very powerfully put actually i think a former conservative candidate authority in these matters nicholas boyce smith who says you know this is all crazy and crackers points out that you know the alternative is spending 75 million pounds a year on repairs and renovation but to be quite honest 75 million a year compared to 15 billion pounds over 20 years might actually be better value for money but he says look what they're trying to do here is ridiculously over engineered they set out the different options and they've gone for the almost the most ambitious you're taking a 19th century building and trying to turn it into a 21st century zero carbon building it can't be done other than massive cost you need to make sure there's disabled access but you don't need to have that in every floor every lift has to be converted unless you're willing to pay disproportionate cost you don't need to invent new atriums you actually could just do this step by step area by area while allowing the commons and the lords to carry on go for the cheap option preserve it as a 19th century building rather than pretending it's going to be converted into something else and and that you could actually do it for less money and there's a broader argument here is this our planning kind of building procurement British way of doing things, which you and I have criticised in the past, we've talked about why is it the case every infrastructure development always seems to take longer and cost so much more than other countries, is because it's so over-engineered.

57:11HS2 was massively over-engineered. The cost went from 10 billion to 40 billion to 100 billion before it finally got ditched. Why don't we just be less ambitious, do this area by area, place by place, and not spend all of this money now the architects and the people on this commission and the speaker of the house of commons will all be appalled at me saying that maybe mr boys smith is right maybe what you need is steve reed the housing secretary to stand up and make a speech in which he says the reason we don't build enough houses and the reason we don't do the chancellor infrastructure is because we go about these projects like they're going about this new parliamentary refurb the best is massively the enemy of the good do it less ambitiously more sensibly and let's use it as a template for how we improve our planning system more generally i think a lot of what you're saying makes sense which is the over-engineering the zero carbon all that kind of stuff right and and it's a it's an old 19th century building but fundamentally restoring an old 19th century building of that size that scale that complexity with all the security challenges you know this is a prime terrorist target heroic policemen have died defending the building in our lifetime it's still going to cost billions to do it well and to keep the pugin interiors and the barry exteriors i think you can reduce the cost but i don't think you can turn it into a kind of ongoing maintenance job i think it's going to need that moment when someone says right let's leave the building and let's do the great job and for people who say that's like a betrayal of our history and who wants to be an MP, not in the famous House of Commons chamber.

58:48It's worth remembering that chamber was bombed in the 1940s. Winston Churchill, interestingly, made the decision as prime minister when the bombs fell to try and save Westminster Hall, the thousand-year-old building, rather than the 19th century House of Commons. So it burned down entirely. It was rebuilt in the 50s. And throughout that whole period of the kind of latter half of the Second World War, the Attlee government, introduction of the NHS, all that did not happen in the chamber of the House of Commons. It happened elsewhere. The House Commons moved into the House of Lords and the House of Lords moved out.

59:20If you want a kind of midway option, the one that most people supported, not the peers, but as you soon discover when you're a member of the House of Lords, ultimately it's the people in the other chamber who are making the decisions. Well, we are starting the heated debate anew here on this podcast and we'd love to hear your views. My prediction is this, if you go for the full decant 15 billion option in 10 years time the next generation of podcasters will still be debating whether or not we should get on with the refurbishment of parliament and they should make a start maybe lindsey hall the speaker will send us in a voice telling me how wrong i am and backing the george osborne approach to parliamentary refurbishment so we're looking forward to hearing from him and for others in the meantime that's all for this week yeah we're going to be back on monday for ex-ministers questions and if you can't wait till then you can listen early and ad free by joining our kitchen cabinet or indeed becoming a gold subscriber and don't forget our kitchen cabinet members not only get our episodes ad free they get a newsletter every two weeks they get a full reading list you can read the nicholas boysmith article in the link which we'll be providing and many other things as well and members only chat and of course a political currency mug and actually you know we may even throw in a centrist dad cap well hold on you're not piggybacking onto our highly successful podcast no i'm not what we'll do is we'll put the link in for our next gig and then people can come along and buy their merchandise there but the political currency mug is worth having links to join the kitchen cabinet are in our show notes yeah see you on monday for emqs see you there

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