'Hanging by a thread': Labour MP torches Starmer in Mandelson backlash

0:28The Telegraph

0:35Tim, we've just been at a Kemi Badenok speech, which we'll get onto in just a minute, but while we were waiting for the leader of the opposition to come onto stage, with some bizarre background music being played by the Tories, it's like the stuff that they can just play on repeat, they're not paying for any copyright. It was like elevator music on steroids. You had your earphones in and you started loudly guffawing. I didn't realise how loud it was. It was so loud. People were turning round. I think it was because the theme of the Prime Minister's event was Pride in Place. And he began by getting the name of the place where he was wrong.

1:11Let's listen to it. Now, I'm here today in Hastings for similar reasons. Because I love this country. Later on in the speech, a car alarm went off. I could have warned him he was in Hastings. and Hastings is so rough that even the sandcastles get burgled. But it wasn't a good sound when you're trying to talk about community cohesion. Also, he had tried to cobble together two different speeches. He had a speech planned about how reform is dividing our country, extremism, yada, yada, yada. One might argue that our country is being more divided by rape gangs, sex trafficking and alleged insider trading.

1:53But nonetheless, that was the idea. Our place is so important, people are so important, and our nation is really vital. But he had to add on to the beginning of that a statement about Peter Mandelson, and one really undermined the moral impact of the other. It had been publicly known for some time that Mandelson knew Epstein, but none of us knew the depth and the darkness of that relationship. What has come to light has raised serious questions. Information that was not known at the time of his appointment. Before he was appointed ambassador, Mandelson was asked directly about the nature of his relationship with Epstein.

2:48So the Prime Minister is now pivoting from, having been absolutely caught red-handed in the House of Commons at PMQs on Wednesday, saying, well, yes, I did know that Mandelson and Epstein had maintained a close relationship post-conviction. But now he's gone into this kind of defensive mode of, I was misled, I was lied to, yes, I was told that, but we weren't given the details. I didn't know the extent of it. He was asked whether he had stayed at Epstein after his conviction. And when, later, further information came to light, he was asked whether he had accepted gifts and hospitality, about whether he had been fully transparent about the relationship.

3:40The information now available makes clear that the answers he gave were lies. he portrayed Epstein as someone he barely knew. And when that became clear, and it was not true, I sacked him. Such deceit is incompatible with public service. Keir is a victim too. He's a victim too. If you have been affected by Peter Manilson, please call this number. Yes, Crimestoppers on 0800. 100. Also, this line, none of us knew the true extent of this. We discussed this earlier in the week, Wes Streeting. Well, you think you know someone. No, no, no. Hang on a minute. I mean, you likened it to the neighbours being surprised about Fred West's behaviour in your sketch, right?

4:34People always say that about a serial killer. Don't they? They kept themselves to themselves in a lovely garden. Yes, kept on burying, kept on doing a lot of gardening and suddenly their wife went missing. no, I'm sorry, it was very, very clear. Precisely because Peter Mandelson was so well-connected within Labour circles, it therefore follows. If you're saying we had to have him because he was indispensable, because he's so well-connected, you're also, by admission, expressing a knowledge in everything that Peter Mandelson represents is and is connected to. So I'm sorry, but that just doesn't wash.

5:09The bit where you gafford was at the point where Keir Starmer tried to have a go at the Conservatives... Oh, yes. ..for not firing Robert Jenrick after he made that pre-conference, I went to Birmingham to have a look at the bin strike and didn't see any white faces. I never thought I would see the day when the Conservative Party would tolerate, for months, a man who went to Birmingham and said that the city had failed at integration because he didn't see enough white faces. That is a disgrace and he should have been sacked months ago. Remember, he's bolted two speeches together. Yeah. And it looks like he has kept totally the text that he had prepared for the speech about diversity and inclusiveness.

6:04And he's attached to it the speech about Peter Mandelson. So he's gone from a speech in which he has said, Peter Mandelson should not have been an ambassador, I was right to sack him, etc., etc., the whole story being why did it take you so long, to a speech in which he references Kemi Badenock failing to sack Rob Jenrick quick enough. And whatever you think about Jenrick's remarks about white faces in Birmingham, they are not as damning as friendship with a pedophile accused of insider trading. The brass neck of this. I just can't believe it. So what he's trying to tell us is, one, I'm a victim.

6:41And second, the Conservatives are just as bad as us. Now, of course, the real audience for this sad little speech in a little room in Hastings with a car alarm going off and a tiny audience and some Union Jack bunting hanging from the walls. That'll be about Coopers. Remember that? She owns lots of it. The real audience for this speech was actually Labour MPs. Yes. Would that explain why the Prime Minister, on a day after his darkest day, when he's fighting for his political life, turns up in a navy blue open neck shirt and a jacket and no tie? That was odd, yeah. Is that man of the people? What is that?

7:22I mean, I just thought it looked absolutely appalling. It lacked seriousness. He wears those colours because a man looks thinner in dark colours. That's why he dresses that way. We're not fools. We know what's going on. OK, well, he might be the one person in Westminster who isn't on a Zen pick or Manjaro, and that's fair enough. But, sorry, there is a contradiction at the heart of a speech talking about pride of place and talking about keeping communities together. He can't even keep his party together. Practice what you preach, mate. You've got Labour MPs, one of whom we're going to speak to in just a moment, Andy MacDonald, who is not happy with the scandal that's currently engulfing his party of the people, party of the worker, party of clean businesses.

8:04We'll get onto that in just a minute. But I mean, it's absolutely, it's extraordinary, really. I say brass neck because are you seriously thinking this is going to be washing with the public? Whom, by the way, are fully across the Epstein files. So there's a survey which has suggested that it's had 95 % cut through with the British public. They're across the details. If anyone starts insisting this is a Westminster Babble story, no, no, no. What we were also waiting for in the last couple of days is would Labour MPs break surface and criticise the Prime Minister directly? Now they have. I get the impression they're doing so not just because of the scandal itself, but the attempt to limit or restrict the publication of relevant documents to those approved by the Cabinet Secretary.

8:52That was so transparently an attempt by Number 10 to limit what the public can see that it seems to have been the straw that broke the camel's back Yes And it was very striking that not long after Barry Gardner Barry Barry Gardner Barry once told me in a car back from Question Time to Brent that if Brexit happened we would no longer see a sheep in the field of England I said Barry The silence of the lambs Clarice Barry! I think I said, what are you saying, Barry? I do like Gardner. He's stuck his head above the parapet here. And spoke for a lot of backbenchers by refusing to rule out whether or not the Prime Minister should go, which is as much as a man could do at that moment in the political cycle.

9:40So in other words, MPs are starting to signal openly that they have lost confidence in the Prime Minister. And as we know from covering Partygate, the downfall of Boris Johnson, and at the downfall of Liz Truss, that's the key moment when MPs, reasonable MPs, not the usual suspects, but moderate Labour MPs start to openly say they're upset. Also, we have to just be watching here what else is piled on top of all of this. And I think the allegations against Mandelson are going to get more serious because there's going to be all sorts of investigations now in the coming days and weeks about associations with Russians and associations with the Chinese and this whole ongoing spectre of him being investigated for misconduct in public office.

10:25And to be fair, there is a legitimate reason to say that at the moment we're not getting these documents because the police have intervened and said, well, hang on a minute, we can't release anything to the public that might prejudice a future trial. But at the same time, and Kevin Badenot got onto this when she gave her speech this morning, some of this isn't prejudicial at all. It's just confirmation of who knew what, when and how and why they didn't query it. For instance, I know that in this newsroom, a great amount of effort is going into trying to establish Peter Mandelson's relationship with Oleg Deripaska, and that is somebody who was placed under US sanctions in 2022 for his alleged involvement in the annexation of Crimea under Putin.

11:09So this is where it really gets serious, doesn't it? It's all very well talking about the tittle-tattle of being in Y fronts and frankly, absolutely cringeworthy messages that were exchanged between him and Epstein, we're now getting into the weeds of, well, what did he know? What did he share? Yeah. And who did he share it with? Yeah. Some people were saying Epstein was in some way a Russian asset. We also know, to go back to the point about everyone knew, we knew that Marco Rubio raised alarm with Labour about the appointment of Mandelson. In comments understood to have been relayed to Downing Street, the US Secretary of State is believed to express a deep unease about the peers' relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and his links to China.

11:48And Sophie Ridge of Sky has posted up an old interview she did with our old friend, Lord Glassman, Morris Glassman, the blue Labour chap, who says that when he was in the United States, he met administration figures at the time who were showing him pictures of Mandelson with Epstein and saying, what's this all about? Right. And that Glassman fed that information back to Number 10 and he says he was told to quieten down about it. Also, just in the whole vein of what do people know about Mandelson's character and so on, I had a really interesting conversation with somebody who knows him quite well and I'm trying to get beneath the skin of the man because we've got this kind of rather complex analysis of his character.

12:31On the one hand, it's probably best summed up by Jemima Goldsmith who has retweeted today, this tweet aged well. And she had said back in 2013, Peter Mandelson is one of the most odious, self-satisfied, misogynistic men I have ever met. Compellingly, fascinatingly horrible. And there are quite a lot of anecdotes to suggest his high-handed behaviour. What's the phrase? He kisses up and kicks down. I got a slightly different view of him, of somebody who basically spoke to his more vulnerable side, said that he did have aspects of extreme naivety to his character, that he was very much caught up in the finer things in life, that he could be grandiose because he wanted to be sleeping in the best Egyptian sheets and wearing the nicest silk shirts and sort of attracted, obviously, to Epstein because of his wealth, but also describing him as somebody who was quite touchy-feely and very needy.

13:33I was sort of getting this impression of a sort of pantomime game in some ways. And also that he had this unique skill, obviously, in regard to spinning, PR spinning, and networking within political circles. And the contact pointed out one of the reasons he came unstuck is he thought he could apply those sorts of tactics to the business world. And the business world doesn't operate like that. The business world actually has the capacity to chew up somebody like Peter Mandelson and spit him out. So I just think that just gives a little bit more context to the character that we're dealing with here.

14:08And also for what it's worth, my understanding is, is that just with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in mind, and we've had this revelation that Ghislaine Maxwell said, by the way, that that photograph of Andrew with his arm around Virginia Roberts-Giffray, who sadly took her own life last year, is genuine. There had been a debate that it wasn't and that his fingers had been superimposed on the image and all this. She's in an email discussing a photo. She appears to be commenting on a legal matter. And she talks about how, yes, they came to her house. A photo was taken. Yeah. But if that is referring to the photo, it should be noted that she also says in this document, I do not recall asking for the girl to give him a massage.

14:51No. And she makes no reference to sex between the two. I know, but problematically, it drives a coach and horses through his I was at Peter Express in Woking. Because it looks dark in the background. So it suggests that they're there together in the evening. And Mrs. Giffray later said that they went to Tramp Nightclub and that's when we get his second alibi. He can't have been at Tramp sweating because he can't sweat and all the rest of it. But I make that point because just in relation to the former Duke of York basically having to disappear from public life completely. I think friends of Mandelson are now saying to him, if he didn't realise already, that he is finished.

15:29And at the age of 72, do you know what? Just retire, go and get some library books out, maybe plan a trip across America in a camper van and do not even think of re-emerging. On your point about he was very good at spinning. This is what Dominic Cummings says, that the world of politics is different from business because business is about actually getting things done. politics is about talking and massaging the truth. And okay, Mandelson was maybe good at that, but what is the real world application of it? And what did it mean in practice? It meant massaging lies and falsehoods under new labor.

16:01I know that a lot of people in Westminster seem to find that an amazing, admirable gift. I've never felt that way about spin, about him or Alastair Campbell, or any of those people, many of whom actually, I have to say, relied as much upon threats and abuse as they did upon charm and wit. Yes, there's a wonderful clip from Michael Howard on Newsnight and he had a reputation, didn't he? Anne Whittacombe said there's something of the night about him and he, many, many years ago, sits on Newsnight and says, this whole operation, this so-called sofa government being run by Blair with Mandelson and Campbell, it is destructive, it is evil, it is abusive.

16:42People didn't, I mean, I say people didn't listen, People said that all the time about Blairism, but it's all coming home to roost now. Tim, shall we take the temperature of the Labour backbenches by speaking to Andy MacDonald, who joins us now on the Daily Tea, the MP for Middlesbrough. Thank you very much indeed for coming in. My pleasure. Now, this is a men of your gotcha, but we did think it was interesting to revisit the Labour Party manifesto, which has got this power stance of Keir Starmer saying change. Stop the chaos is mentioned 15 times. To restore this hope, we must first end the conservative chaos.

17:16Only a Labour government can break this cycle and stop the chaos. Highest standards is mentioned five times, as one would expect with a Prime Minister that was elected on an integrity card. And stopping violence against women and girls is mentioned nine times. what do you think now looking at this manifesto and reflecting on the last 19 months but specifically Andy the last few days well I think we have to accept that this is chaotic people are shell-shocked by what's happened over the last several days and you're quite right to to point that out but those high ambitions about order as opposed to chaos have hardly been implemented over the last several days to say the least and more so it's a fair charge in my view but it's what we now do about it that's an important thing.

18:19Who do you personally blame for this? Well I heard the Prime Minister this morning and it was a very combative speech, making apologies for having believed Mandelson. But I don't think that's what the apologies should be. I think he should be apologising for his error of judgment. He got it wrong and I don't think many right thinking people would have ever accepted what Mandelson was saying, given what we knew, what was in the public domain. And it's at that point where you listen to wise counsel and you say, no, we're not touching this man with a barge pole. He has got history. We've been here before with him as a party.

19:10We certainly can't engross him into that position in Washington. It was a colossal error. But I think there's got to be an admission now that there was sufficient information in the public domain for them to come to the right decision instead of the wrong one by putting him there. You say he should have listened to wise counsel, but from what we can make out, the counsel he was getting was from Morgan McSweeney, who was saying, please go ahead and appoint him. Perhaps the Prime Minister didn't want to. So does his counsel have to take responsibility and go? Look, I think there's been blinkers around Peter Manelsman.

19:47There's been such a desire to accept what he says. He's now gone as a figure from the Labour Party, but it's his influence that we've got to now purge from our movement. He's had his tentacles have reached through the Labour Party for far too long. And those relationships with people like Morgan McSweeney in question. So if Morgan McSweeney is listening to Peter Mandelson, and say, no, it's all right, nothing to worry about here, then Morgan McSweeney has failed. And he's failed the Prime Minister and he's failed the party and the government. Can we just nail down the credibility of the Prime Minister's claim that he didn't quite know what Peter Mandelson was all about?

20:34I mean, we've spent all week giving our telegraph inside a view on how we perceive Mandelson and his history of being associated with scandal. but can you just let us in on what is the Labour insider view on him across the party? We obviously know of his associations with the Blairite factions but I don't find it credible that the PM didn't know precisely what Mandelson was all about. Well I think it's universal across the Parliamentary Labour Party that people are just aghast and kind of understand how it could be that they didn't take full recognizance of the evidence in front of them. And it's quite surprising now how many people are openly distancing themselves from Peter Mandelson.

21:22Well, I've tried to put a lot of distance between myself and Peter Mandelson for many, many years. Just explain that. Why, Andy? I mean, what was your relationship with him like? Well, I've always found him to be utterly poisonous. His interests are more geared towards oligarchs, financiers and royalty. He lived in a very rarefied atmosphere of privilege and wealth. He was always seduced by that. How that is supposed to be consistent with the values of the Labour Party and the Labour movement just flabbergast me. That is not who we are. It's not why we come into politics to be in the service of people like Jeffrey Epstein and furthering his interests.

22:07We're here for the ordinary people of this country. Our job is to concentrate on uplifting their living standards and their lived experiences, not feathering the nests of rentiers and financiers across the globe, which seems to be where Peter Mandelson is attracted to. And, of course, then that has massive influence on government policy. He's had far too much say in the politics of the Labour Party and the policies of the Labour Party. Now is the moment we have got to make that break. And I ask myself, are the people who are currently in leadership capable of recognising that and capable of doing something about it?

22:50because what it says on there, change, the obsession was about changing the Labour Party. And I know Keir well. I like Keir. I served in a shadow cabinet with him. But I would say to him, who gave you the right to change 100 years of history? We are a broad church, and that broad church has served us well. And there was a Mandelsonian determination to narrow down the Labour Party. So they thought it was credible to get elected, but it's unrecognisable. Let's be honest about why we were elected, and it's because of the collapse of the Conservative Party. In your introduction, you set out from the manifesto that recital of the chaos that they put us through, of the austerity and the rest of it.

23:41Absolutely disastrous 14 years, and my goodness, did we want to break from that. But have we made that change? And it's that obsession with narrowing this offer down has got us into the difficulties that we're experiencing today. It's so interesting to note that at PMQs, when he was asked directly about Morgan McSweeney, the Prime Minister referenced his role in changing the Labour Party. It does often feel like Keir Starmer talks more about his success at doing that than he does about his successes in governing the country. Absolutely. And it seems to be so detached from reality, this obsession with that concept of changing the Labour Party.

24:23And it so infected the body of the Labour Party itself. Well, you're having people who were expelled and excluded for liking a tweet. Faiza Shaheen, Woodford, Ian Duncan Smith, yes. Fantastic candidate. and we don't want her. She's much more aligned with very much left of centre politics. So we'll remove her from even standing. And that's been done consistently to members, to councillors, and this control freakery that's beset the Labour Party has got us into the mess we are in today. So there needs to be a wake-up call and a change. Having said that, he could be credited with cleaning up the Labour Party after the Corbyn years.

25:05Well, honestly... The whole party's mired in anti-Semitism. Well, I absolutely object to that. Of course. I object to that because Peter Mandelson was the hard... I stood... Let me answer the question on this because you're grimacing. Well, there was a number of parliamentary inquiries and there was an independent report which unfortunately found that it was anti-Semitic. I stood on a platform in Trafalgar Square and called for peace between Israelis and Palestinians so that they could live in peaceful liberty. and I was absolutely hammered for that. I was suspended. Peter Mandelson weighed in, enjoyed himself immensely and said Keir Starmer was right to put me outside the tent and after four and a half hellish months I was found not to have brought the Labour Party into disrepute and restored and I remember that well and that's the sort of opportunism that Peter Mandelson indulged himself in.

26:03But Jeremy Corbyn's career came to a crashing Houghton demise in 2019. He was beaten by Boris Johnson. So that was as a result of an anti-Semitism scandal engulfing your party. MPs like Luciana Berger forced out, needing protection to attend a Labour Party conference. If we want to re-litigate, we'll do an entirely different podcast on that. because, you know, that's a view of history that a lot of people do not share. And I don't want to fall out with you, but, you know, we could have very, very vigorously different views about all of that episode in our history and how people used and abused that issue for their own gain.

26:47And if you talk about Jeremy Corbyn... I can see Andy's point here that many left-wing Labour Party activists, they would just say they're Labour Party activists, have slogged their guts out for the last few decades working to get Labour government selected to do classic Labour things like helping the working class. And yet they put one foot wrong and they get kicked out. Someone like Peter Mandelson. Oh, I totally see that point. We're all on common ground on that. Who now it seems was just exploiting the party in order to make contacts and potentially, allegedly, to make him and his friends money.

27:17Oh, he was afforded protected status. They not only stay in the party, they get to decide who goes in and who goes out. There's no disagreement with that. Look, let's find some common ground here because I would imagine you may well be aligned with the Telegraph readership, although whether you can go this far, Andy, I don't know. Asked, should Keir Starmer resign? Yes, 91%. No, 9%. What do you think? Well, his premiership hangs by a thread, and I think the next several hours and days, and especially as we will return to our constituencies and test the temperature back in our constituencies, That's going to be important.

27:56But I think Keir Starmer missed an opportunity to show some humility about his error and accept it and own it and tell us how he's going to respond. He's still got that opportunity in my view and I'd encourage him to do it. But trying to muddy the waters over I can only accept what was in front of me when everybody and their dog knows that there was better information available, more accurate information, It's not washing. So the 91 % have probably got it right at the minute, but he's got to reflect on, is his continued premiership in the best interest of the country? Because it is country first, party second.

28:43So where are we going with this? He's got a lot of thinking to do over the next several hours. I think the Conservatives really dislike Keir Starmer because for years he called us corrupt and venal, and then it turns out he was doing this. But is it fair to say the left are annoyed with him too because he has demanded so-called discipline and purity for the last few years and it turns out that at the heart of his own project he was harbouring this dreadful thing? I think corrupt is a big... I think Keir Starmer is a good man, he's a decent man. I don't think he is personally corrupt. But he has tolerated...

29:19Absolutely. He has, with a great deal of misjudgment, he has allowed someone who shouldn't be in the Labour Party into the very highest point. Agreed, agreed, absolutely. But this was known, I mean I've been in the party since 1979 and Mandelson has been a part of our soundtrack for all those years. I've always thought him a disreputable, untrustworthy individual and I've not been slow in saying so. But to allow him back once, twice and then three times into the heart of government is just such a huge error. But I think there's been this whole atmosphere around Mandelson and his influence within the party.

30:00As I say, not only have we got to get rid of him, we've got to get rid of his attitude, his philosophy, in terms of politics and policy. That's what's got to change. Kemi Badenock has extended an offer of friendship across the House by saying, come to us, come and speak to Shadow Chief Whip Rebecca Harris. if you want to have a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister, we'll obviously support you. Would you like to have a little word with Mrs Bader? Yeah, thanks, but no thanks, Mrs Bader. Very kind of you. I'm sure you meant it out the goodness of your heart. She's saying that the country's suffering and that you need a change of leadership.

30:38She's agreeing with you. Thank you very much. She's saying country first. Conservatives are just filling their boots, and I understand that. Who can blame them? Who can blame them? We did and we do the same if the roles were reversed. I get that. That's politics. But I'm trying to think about things beyond that. These indulgences across the dispatch box are great entertainment, great theatre. But, you know, we've got to do the thing that's in the interest of the country. And that's where we're at right now. Which figure in the Labour Party would be in the interest of the country to replace Keir Starmer should the time come?

31:14If the time comes and we're in that discussion, I'll want to know not just who they are, but what are they saying to us? What's the offer? Because I need to see that the critical issue of cost of living is going to be addressed in a fundamental way. I want to see that person set these policies out in front of us and let us have an informed choice. I am not hanging my hat on a particular personality or the other. It's of absolutely no interest to me. But, of course, we've been here before when promises and pledges have been made and they've been quickly set aside. So we've got our most vigorous and rigorous examination of anybody who comes forward and suggests that come the day, if a vacancy arrives, I'd like to fill it.

32:03Realistically, could you ever give your hat to Wes Streeting? Well, Wes would have to set his stall out. I mean, amongst other things, I am viscerally opposed to any further embrace of PFI. Now, we're talking about that in the context of community health partnerships. You know, I went to my local hospital last week and they had, you'll have heard of Maggie's. This is the centre that provide wonderful psychological and therapeutic care for people suffering from cancer. So they've taken over a unit in my hospital. And maybe these figures aren't absolutely accurate, but it just gives you an illustration.

32:42They put their new sign up, Maggie's,£600 or something like that. The PFI outfit charged them about£6 ,000,£8 ,000 for the same thing. Now, we've got to get out of this. This was a disaster. Yeah. And it was an attempt to get these things off the bus. A disaster that a Labour government did, Andy. Well, actually, no, take it back. It was started. We turbocharged it. You gave it rocket fuel. We gave it rocket fuel. And it was a massive error, and we are living with the consequences of it to this day. For goodness sake, let's not do that. So, you know, if that were to become an active discussion with somebody like Wes, well, what's our approach to this?

33:17Because many in the love movement, you know, they're bearing the scars of their community. We're devoting so much of precious NHS resources to servicing PFI contracts. Now, that was wrong. Why on earth would we want to go near anything like it ever, ever again? It's beyond me. so that's got to be off the table. All right, so two areas of common ground. Hatred of PFIs, which will very much strike a chord with the Telegraph audience, and Keir Starmer's days desperately numbered. Andy MacDonald, thank you very much indeed for joining us on The Daily Tea. My pleasure. Thank you. Thanks for the tea.

34:03Tim, let's get on to the Tory side of things as we found common ground there with Andy MacDonald of all people We mentioned that Kemi Badenok has offered Labour MPs the opportunity to vote no confidence in the Prime Minister with them on the back benches, which is all well and good and you there mentioned streeting as an option but your question to Mrs Badenock earlier at the press conference we just attended at the Horse Guards Hotel is a pertinent one. Tim Stanley, Daily Tea. Good morning. Oh, I have to stand up. No, I don't understand it. Do I have to stand up? OK, fine, I'll stand up with the camera.

34:37And now I've knocked my coffee over. No, don't worry about that, that's fine. Good morning. You've invited Labour MPs to kick out Keir Starmer and, quote, do better. Well, if they did do that, it's very likely they would replace him with Angela Rayner.

34:56Speaks for itself. What do you think of Angela Rayner? Do you really think she would make for a, quote, better government? And is there a risk that in defenestrating the Labour moderates, you're actually inviting a proper socialist to take over Britain? So I think that is an excellent question. I'm not worried about Angela Rayner. I think that I can deal with Angela Rayner. The real...

35:21But you've hit upon something that is crucial. It doesn't matter who they change leader to, it's still going to be a Labour person. What we need them to look at is the mistakes that they've been making and how they can fix that. Whoever it is that they pick has to acknowledge that a lot of mistakes have been made. The country is not crying out for socialism. The country is crying out for competence and fixing the economy, putting money in people's pockets. Businesses are crying out for relief. They want the government to get the boot off their necks. It is not a coincidence that Labour MPs can't get into pubs and hairdressers at the moment.

35:59That is not because they're crying out for more socialism. What we want to see is them putting the British people back at the forefront of their minds. They're not thinking about any of the people out there right now. They're just thinking about themselves. so let's stop talking about Angela Rayner or West Streeting let's start talking about the people out there that's what I'm worried about I sounded really bossy in that by the way because I was saying for you to stand up but I was only doing it because Will and John were saying stand up so you could be seen for the video I forgot there was a camera and when I stood up my phone fell out of my lap and landed onto my coffee cup but don't worry there was very little coffee in it so there was no spillage on those beautiful antique carpets at the lovely Horse Guards Hotel in London I should explain also that Nigel Farage had earlier said at an event he was holding in Wales, at which he unveiled the new leader of Reform Wales, name yet to be supplied, that one should be careful what one wishes for.

36:53Yes. Because, of course, we could get rid of Starmer and bring in either Angela Rayner, who would probably be more left-wing, remember? Rayner is behind the Employment Rights Bill. True. Or, actually, we could get someone like Wes Streeting, who we mentioned in our discussion with Andy. who I suspect would be better than Starmer. Yes. And do they want to have an opponent that's better than Starmer? Yes. Not least at the dispatch box. Note, too, that Akemi herself brought up Shabana Mahmood. Yes. Now, she feels she can do that because no one thinks that Shabana Mahmood can win a vote among the members in the Labour Party.

37:32Therefore, it's a sort of tactical play to say, I quite like Shabana because that signals to Labour that I think she's really right wing. So therefore, Labour will be less likely to vote for someone known as the Tories' favourite Labour minister. Either way, it's notable that people do recognise that Shibana Mahmood could make quite a good leader of the Labour Party. Yes, she would. And that's why she will never get elected. That's why she'll never get the job. The Labour Party could make a big thing about the first woman leader, couldn't they? And therefore, Angie may benefit. Despite having been beaten three times before by the Tories.

38:09I know, I know. But also, I just can't comprehend a situation where Labour are going to be able to sell to the country the idea that a scandal hit prime minister who's been removed from office should be replaced by somebody herself involved in a massive tax scandal. I think we all need to calm down. First of all, very difficult for a prime minister with a historic majority to get booted out of office. Maybe McSweeney will lose his job in the next week or so. I don't believe Keir Starmer is going to. He has a mandate. Okay, that manifesto was thin, but he's the only person in Labour who does have a mandate.

38:51cast your mind back to Partygate and Boris Johnson. It actually took quite a while to get rid of Boris. And they eventually had to do it because they concluded that the government couldn't function. Remember, everyone was resigning under him, etc. So he simply had to go. The Tory government was never the same afterwards. They then lost a prime minister almost within a month, Liz Truss. And then they had Rishi Sunak, who was quite unpopular and just didn't make much of an impression at all. And had a disastrous election campaign. Whatever the size of your majority, this is a point Jacob Rees-Mogg always likes to make, you need to have the mandate of heaven, heaven being the voters.

39:29Yes. So on the one hand, I think it's really hard to get rid of Keir Starmer. On the other hand, if you did get rid of Keir Starmer, whoever you replaced him with would have a difficult time because the public will say, we didn't vote for you. Having said all of that, I do think both West Streeting and Angela Rayner, for very different reasons, are infinitely better candidates for prime minister than Keir Starmer, of which I truly believe Angela Rayner would be the stronger. Good grief. She might be able to attract some Green voters back. It would be a more traditional Labour offering. And also she's just compelling as a personality.

40:03Are you saying better for the Labour Party or better for the country or both? It is a gamble. But if I was a Labour MP, as I say, recognising that historically it leaves you in a tricky position, I still think I personally would take the gamble on one of those two because they are just so much better at politics than Keir Starmer. Maybe Starmer survives until the May elections, and if they are catastrophic, then kind of by implication, he loses his mandate, or his mandate is diluted somewhat. It's like, well, nobody wants you, just please go. So that could be the crunch point. But prime ministers have hung on with the terrible...

40:40Remember John Major... Clung on, not just hung on, but clung. John Major even resigned the job in a put-up or shut-up leadership election and then won it. Yes. When you're the guy who was elected, it's difficult to get rid of you. And I just think that Westminster should remember that in the next few days. You are asking for something really historically unusual, a man who's just been elected in a historic landslide to step down. Now, to finish, after you had asked your question of Kemi Badenock, I sat down with her for a couple of minutes, and I just wanted to try and get under the skin of this extraordinary PMQs that we discussed on yesterday's Daily Tea, because she's the one staring into the whites of his eyes.

41:18Kemi Badenock, Tim and I discussed it as the PM's darkest day, footage has emerged showing him visibly shaking at the despatch box. He's been bullish in his speech this morning but what can you tell us about his state of mind? How did he actually seem up close and personal yesterday? It was quite a gobsmacking moment, really really shocking when he confessed that he knew about the depth of the relationship that Peter Mandelson had with Epstein even after the criminal conviction. And you're right, he was shaking. He looked like someone who had been cornered and he could tell that his MPs were not behind him.

41:57I could see them. They all looked sick listening to the things that he was saying. He knew that the information would inevitably come out because his MPs were not going to support him in a cover-up. And I think that's what you witnessed, a man boxed into a corner. What is amazing is that this morning, he's actually come out saying, well, actually, I didn't mean to say that. I meant something else. Peter Mandelson lied to me. Even now, he's still pretending that he is the victim in all this, and we should not feel sorry for him. How would your offer of leaning across to Labour MPs and offering to support a vote of no confidence work in practice?

42:34We're not being governed right now. I think even Labour MPs can see that. We have different politics, but government has ground to a halt. Everything has stopped working. You know, today we had a ridiculous case of a police officer's spine being broken and people being let off. And no one's looking at it because they're all busy checking their emails, who's implicated in the Mandelson files and so on. And I know that there must be Labour MPs thinking we have to do the right thing for our country. Yesterday, many of them forced their government to release the files supporting our motion. This wouldn't have happened if Conservatives hadn't forced the motion.

43:08So what I'm saying to them is, if you think this isn't working anymore, you know, Starmer is gone. It's a matter of when, not if. He's gone. Come and talk to our whips and let's see what we can do to get a better government in place. Labour have a huge majority. They will be in power till 2029. Most of those MPs will never vote for an election because they know they'll lose. But surely we can do better than this. History is littered with political scandals involving all parties. I'm thinking back to Profumo, cash for questions, expenses, party gate. How do you think this ranks on the sleaze-o-meter?

43:41This is number one. This is number one. What's happened with Mandelson is someone at the heart of government, very senior position, forwarding market sensitive information to a man who we now know was a convicted paedophile. There's all sorts of murky stuff coming out in those files. There are even allegations, the Polish authorities are saying that he might have been, Epstein might have been a Russian asset. I think that that's very serious. I mean, Profumo didn't know what Christine Keeler had been up to. This is very, very serious. There's so many files, so many names implicated. I think it'll take a while for us to get to the bottom of it.

44:24And that's why I'm happy the police have opened an investigation. Therefore, leave aside a vote of no confidence. This is a resignation offence for the Prime Minister. Someone should lose their job. He appointed Peter Mandelson. Despite the advice saying this man is not appointable, he appointed Peter Mandelson. And if he's saying he didn't see that advice, then Morgan McSweeney must have seen the advice. At least one of them should go. Well, Prime Ministers decide, advisors advise. It's not going to be enough to just defenestrate McSweeney. shouldn't the Prime Minister now be announcing this week, today, tomorrow, at the weekend, his resignation?

45:01Well, this is why I have said to Labour MPs that if you want to do something about it, you know we're our WHIP's office. Kemi Badenock, thank you very much indeed. Thank you. She's saying there that she thinks this is the number one political scandal of modern times. Mm-hm. Oh, my memories are short. When did Kemi enter Parliament? 2010 or 15? There was the expenses scandal before that. But for an individual prime minister, if we think about Cash for Questions and Major or Partygate and Boris Johnson or Market Implosion and Liz Truss, Blair and the Iraq War. Yes. I mean, this is a proper, proper scandal, isn't it?

45:41It is, and I think it's morally more problematic than Boris Johnson. Yeah, it's got a paedophile involved. It's got a paedophile involved. It's got alleged insider trading. And Boris Johnson, I know this is an unpopular view. He really, in my opinion, did just drink some bad wine and eat some cake. I've never quite understood why the public was so exercised about it. Except that he was imposing rules upon us that, OK, he didn't follow, but he shouldn't have imposed them. And he didn't really agree with them. But in this case, this is about facilitating access of power of a very duplicitous and greedy person, about whom we all suspect much, much more is going to come out.

46:22I bet Boris Johnson's quite enjoying all this. Well, we know Gordon Brown is. Yes, indeed. If Gordon Brown could laugh, he'd be laughing. He would. We'll be back tomorrow, 5pm.

46:50Thank you.