Inside Andy Burnham's far-Left plot to oust Keir Starmer

0:04Camilla: The Telegraph.

0:10Manchester Socialist Mayor Andy Burnham wants to be the next Prime Minister, as confirmed in an exclusive with this newspaper. We speak to the man who got the scoop, Tony Diver, to explore what does Andy Burnham really believe in and could he actually pull this off?

0:25Camilla: And we speak to Tory chairman Kevin Hollingrake, who is calling for Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer's right-hand man, to be investigated by police over undeclared donations. Could this be the moment that the Prime Minister loses his job? Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Tim Stanley. And me, Camilla Tomini.

0:55Camilla: Andy Burnham, the King of the North, Labour's answer to the Oasis brothers is mad for it. Because he wants to be the next Prime Minister. We know that, don't we? Because Tony Diver, who joins us in the Daily Tea studio, has interviewed the man. He's not held back. We'll come to you in a minute, Tony. But let's just listen to Andy Burnham. Thank goodness on BBC Radio Manchester this morning. Doubling down, Tony, on the interview he gave you. When I left Westminster, which is almost 10 years ago now, I took a vow not to speak in code, to answer honestly, as people say politicians don't do. Well, I do try and do that.

1:31So I was asked a direct question by a journalist and I gave an honest answer. And obviously that's been reported today. MPs were in touch with me. But let me also give an honest explanation of what I said to those MPs. It's not up to me. It's not my decision. That's a matter for you, for the party in Parliament. And also, I said to them, and it's got to be about more than a personality contest. You know, the Tories were just constantly going through this at the latter end of the time that they were in government. It's got to be about a plan, a proper plan for the country, a proper plan to be reformed.

2:12That was Andy Burnham. Classic Burnham opening there. When I left Westminster, I made a pledge not to speak in code. He's such a ruddy bloody ordinary bloke, isn't he?

2:21Camilla: He's an honest broker. Tony, in your interview with him, what did he precisely say in relation to his personal ambitions? Well, I asked him the question that everyone has asked him, which is, do you want to be Prime Minister? Do you want to lead the Labour Party? And are you going to challenge Keir Starmer? And he gave me a strange answer, which is to say, it's not really up to me. It's up to Labour MPs. It's up to people in Westminster. They're the ones who get to choose who the Labour Party leader is. So I said, OK, well, do any of them want you to do it? And he said, yeah, actually quite a lot of them have contacted me over the summer and said that they would like me to stand.

2:54So there we go. Those two answers together tell you one thing, which is that Burnham wants it. He certainly thinks the Labour MPs want it.

3:00Camilla: I love this. This is perfect political deflection. Look, it's not my ambition. You know, at the end of the day, if other Labour MPs call on me to take on Starmer, then I will take one for the team and project myself as the next Labour leader and indeed prime minister. So incredibly humble, isn't he? It's so humble. But also, it's as if there was an advertisement in the paper for traffic warden. Mrs Brown, do you want to be the traffic warden? It's not up to me. No. He's all about talking normal, but normal people never speak that way in this strange ambiguity and deflection all the time. Well, I did make the point to him that it is up to him.

3:36Yes, because he'd have to run. He can't be forced to run to be Labour leader. And let us say this right now, so it's out of the way. How would he physically do it? What does he have to do? because we're talking about challenging Starmer by next May. What would he have to do to get there? It is a complicated process, but quickly, he'd have to win a by-election and there isn't one currently in Greater Manchester or anywhere in the North West, so we'd have to have an MP stand down. A by-election would be called. He'd then have to be selected as the Labour candidate in that seat, which would require thumbs up from the NEC, the sort of committee that controls the Labour Party, which is in turn controlled by Keir Starmer and Morgan McSweeney, so he'd basically need the thumbs up from them.

4:14He'd need to be selected by local members as well. They'd have to give their consent. Then he'd have to run a campaign in the constituency, beating off Reform, who are actually doing pretty well in a lot of those seats. Not necessarily in Manchester Central, but certainly in the suburbs around Manchester. Reform is polling very well.

4:30Camilla: Yeah, Nigel Farage has said wherever he stands, he's going to have an epic battle on his hands because they'll put a reformer up against him. He does have great popularity in Manchester. I mean, that's certainly true. Andy Burnham is a popular guy in Manchester. but in a lot of those seats reform are the big challenges here. Well, to be fair to him, he's the most popular Labour politician in the country right now, which isn't saying much. That is not a high bar. I think Dracula and Genghis Khan poll above all the other Labour MPs. So let's imagine that someone kindly steps aside in his local area, that he gets the nomination, that he wins the seat.

5:12Once he's in Parliament, how does he become Prime Minister by May? So then he turns up in Parliament, first day back into the hornet's nest, the place he says he hates so much. He then has to convince... Having done all this to get back there. He then has to convince 80 MPs to nominate him to challenge Starmer. You have to get to 20 % of the Parliamentary Labour Party, which is 80 MPs at the moment, on their current arithmetic. And that would trigger a leadership contest, which actually would then follow the same rules as the deputy leadership contest which is going on at the moment. If Starmer wanted to stand against him to fight to keep his own job, he would be allowed to do that.

5:48So presuming that Starmer did that or someone on the Starmer wing of the party, whether it's Wes Streeting or Rachel Reeves or Bridget Phillips or whoever it is, he would then have to beat that person and then he would become prime minister.

6:00Camilla: This is so interesting that this man has managed to manoeuvre himself now into being the left-wing candidate, having been a proud Blairite. Yes. Who is this man? Yes. For those of us with memories long enough, he has had a blessed political career. He likes to play School of Hard Knocks, but he was a special advisor at 28. He was in parliament by his 30s. He was a cabinet member by, I think, 38. He was a supporter of the Iraq War. He was an ultra Blairite. Then under Gordon Brown, he was a supporter of Brown's agenda. He was an ultra Brownite. He ran for leadership twice, 2010 and 2015. He was opposed to Corbyn.

6:41He's regarded as anti-Corbynite. He left Parliament, became mayor of Manchester, been re-elected. There's a lot of evidence of economic success there. Can't take that away from him. But he also supported Keir Starmer for the leadership and said he was a fantastic bloke. Matthew Paris, in his inimitable way, tells a very funny joke. A Blairite, a Brownite and a Starmerite walk into a bar and The barman says, how are you, Andy?

7:04Camilla: You could add Corbynite to that, by the way. Tony, you uncovered that he is quite happy to lean into your party, our party. What's the name of the party? He was quite warm in his words towards Jeremy Corbyn and Zahra Sultana. Well, actually, yeah. I mean, in terms of the British Constitution, the most radical thing that he suggests in the interview is introducing PR, proportional representation, getting rid of first-past-the-post. Why would Labour MPs support that? He says that the only way Labour is going to be able to consistently be reform or the Tories or whatever form the right wing parties take in this country is to form a progressive majority, which he says would be Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens, possibly the Corbyn party as well.

7:44Camilla: This is literally the stuff of telegraph right there. He didn't like Corbyn when he was Labour leader, but he's willing to consider entering a coalition in government. Yeah, but he's talking in Corbynister language now. He's talking about 50 % higher rate of tax. He's talking about taxing properties in the southeast more because he's developed this sort of northern chip on his shoulder, even though he was educated at Cambridge and made his entire career in Westminster. He was a child of Thatcher, apparently radicalised to become a socialist by the miners' strike. This is the other kind of conceit around some of these politicians.

8:20Camilla: He's literally born in 1970. By the time he gets to secondary school, thankfully for him, Thatcher's recovering the country from the hell of Labour in the 70s. And he is able to socially mobilise himself to Cambridge. And now he's positioning himself on the hard left, purely out of political opportunism, because he wants to catch all of those Labour MPs. If he wants to get to those 80 nominations, Tony, he wants to mop up all of those disgruntled Labour MPs who are on tiny majorities who don't think the party's left enough, but they think that Corbyn and Sultana are two left. So he's between hard and far left.

8:58Well, yeah, and I actually think there's something to be said about his relationship with Jeremy Corbyn, because he was actually, after the 2015 leadership election, which Corbyn won, to many people's surprise in the Labour Party, the only challenger to Corbyn from the 2015 race, who then went on to serve in the Corbyn Shadow Cabinet. and he stayed there until he stepped down as an MP in 2017. So that's two full years in the Corbyn Shadow Cabinet. Other sort of centre-right MPs who went into that shadow, people like Michael Duggar, for instance, who went into the Corbyn Shadow Cabinet, they resigned.

9:27Many of those other people resigned or they refused to serve in the first place. And, you know, people that I've been speaking to about him say one of his defining features is his great loyalty to different Labour leaders, something he now appears to totally have abandoned when it comes to Keir Starmer. But he did serve. He served in all of those cabinets and shadow cabinets across all of those different leaders, which I think is what contributes to this kind of idea of him as a political chameleon. You know, when he's in Manchester, you know, he's there in his Harrington jacket and his black jeans.

9:54When he's in Westminster, it's the Blairite suit and tie. If Corbyn's in, then he's on Corbyn's side. If Blair's in, then he's on Blair's side. And I think that will be one, if it does ever come to it, that will be one of the hurdles that he has to overcome. Because what does Burnhamism look like? What is the Burnham view?

10:09Camilla: Well, it's all things to all lefties. I dug out an old interview that Burnham gave to Pink News, which I think is an insight into the man. This is from 2015. Pink News said to him, You famously said that you are devoted to Everton, the Labour Party and the Catholic Church. There are times when the last two of those clash, Labour and the Catholic Church. And I'm sure the first sometimes. For example, on sex and relationship education, a flagship Labour policy. A lot of Catholic schools are militantly opposed, saying it would violate their religious freedom. Burnham said to the Pink News, they are wrong.

10:46The Catholic schools are wrong. Though I did say that, that he's devoted to Everton labor and the Catholic church, and the church did have a part in my upbringing, I am not a regular churchgoer, I have to admit, even if that might cause me difficulty at home in terms of my kids' schools. And this, I think, gives an insight into the many dimensions of Andy Burnham. There's the Andy Burnham who would say something as kind of culturally conservative, as I'm devoted to Everton, the Labour Party, and the Catholic Church. There's the Andy Burnham who would then go and contradict church teaching to the pink news to stress his social liberalism, that he's all in favour, for instance, of same-sex marriage.

11:30And then there's the Andy Burnham who reveals that he actually doesn't go to church, but his kids do go to faith schools.

11:39Camilla: So he's a very confused Catholic, I think we can conclude. I don't know what it is. I just feel with this guy, it's difficult to pin down exactly who he is and what he believes in. And my question to you, Tony, is, is he a fantasist? Because the first thing I said to you, Camilla, this morning was, has he got a book out? Why is he doing this? Why is he talking to you? Why is he talking to the New Statesman? Why is he talking to the BBC? It would require almost like a big bang level of coincidence for him to be able to get into Parliament and replace Starmer. So it's almost very unlikely it's going to happen.

12:16So why is he going around the country proposing himself as an alternative leader when it's so unlikely to happen? Well, I think he would say that he's got massive reservations about the way that the government's being run at the moment. He's got problems with the way that Number 10 is dealing with Labour MPs, the fact that on conscience issues, MPs on the welfare cuts, for instance, MPs are not allowed to vote against the government. They get thrown out for doing so. He's opposed to that. He thinks that the government doesn't have a good strategy for dealing with reform. He thinks they haven't been tough enough on education yet.

12:44He thinks they're not shouting enough about their transport policy, all this kind of thing. So he, I think, would probably say every time there's turmoil in the government, eyes turn to him because he's always been touted as a future Labour leader or someone who wants the job. That gives him a huge platform to make the argument that Labour needs to change. And he would say that's in the interests of the party. Yes.

13:07Camilla: I'm just thinking he's like basically Labour's Robert Jenrick, the other brown-eyed boy in politics who is nipping at the leader's heels the whole time. He says it's not about the leadership, it's about the plan. What is the plan for the economy? And I guess his argument is that what Labour is currently doing is imitating reform too much. losing its soul, losing its progressive identity and ruling out options that he favours, such as raising taxes or nationalising services. I think that's true. But I think when you look at what he is literally saying, he is talking about strategy. He frames all of his criticisms of the government in terms of strategy, not in terms of belief or ideology or their core view on what would make the country better.

13:54But when you look at his policy suggestions, they are completely opposed to what the government is doing. It's not just a question of what kind of political messaging do you use? What issues do you target the most in the media? What order do you announce things in? It's not actually a question of that. He is proposing putting up income tax, something that the government has said that they will never do and that they've said in their manifesto they were never going to do something Rachel Reeves is very opposed to. And he's talking about a wholesale electoral reform, which the Labour Party doesn't agree with.

14:22And Keir Starmer certainly doesn't agree with. He won't go this far because it makes it a personal criticism of Starmer. And at every point in the interview, I challenge him to say something about Starmer himself and he won't do it. He will only talk about the Labour Party and the way the government is running. But you look at his policy suggestions, they are a fundamental challenge to not just the strategy, but the beliefs of the government and the way that this government is operating.

14:43Camilla: There is a reformish offer, isn't there? What's he saying about the lower rate of tax? Because we've got Nigel Farage having come out and said he wants to take anyone earning under 20 grand a year out of income tax altogether. And then Burnham's revived a Gordon Brown idea that Brown actually had to abandon. Yes, he thinks that we should reintroduce the 10p rate, which is a lower rate of tax for people on the bottom rung. I mean, obviously that would be popular with low earners. There is a reason why Gordon Brown abandoned it, actually. Gordon Brown, obviously a great campaigner on child poverty, that's his main thing, and he's still hammering the government today on that.

15:17He thought that a lower rate of income tax at the bottom end would bring more people out of poverty, tried it out for a while and concluded that actually it didn't work. Now Burnham wants to bring it back. So whether or not that is a picture of former voters, I don't know. I suspect Burnham would say that it's a matter of social justice and equality and targeting the rich and their big homes in London, the South East, rather than normal people who are earning minimum wage.

15:38Camilla: I wonder whether the Labour Party purposefully avoided Manchester as the party conference venue precisely because of this man. We're going to Liverpool this weekend. We're up at the Tories, which is in Manchester. I would not be surprised at all, knowing the man's growing ambitions, that Burnham doesn't turn up weirdly at the Conservative Party conference. Well, I can tell you now, Daily Tea exclusive, that he is going to Conservative Party conference because he told me yesterday. Tony Diver, scoop getter extraordinaire. He is doing a panel for the Centre for Social Justice, which is, of course, the big project of Serene Duncan Smith, friend of the podcast.

16:16Well, and Labour will love that because we've also quoted Number 10 insiders as describing him as they said Andy Burnham, if elected, would be Labour's Liz Truss. Yes, that's correct, isn't it?

16:28Camilla: So opponents to Burnham are slagging him off saying he's Labour's Liz Truss because he will crash the economy. Yes. Because he's made some comments about we can't keep on kowtowing to the markets. To the bond market, yes. And the markets have said, well, sorry, we do kind of control, you know, response to economic policy. Unfortunately, if you want to borrow tens of billions of pounds every year, you do actually have to listen to the people that you're borrowing from. You really do, Tony. That's how it works. Well, there's lots, lots more to come on this story, I'm sure. Tony Diver, well done for your headline grabbing.

16:58Camilla: He set the agenda this morning, Tony Diver has. He has. And we love to see it on The Telegraph. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Coming up, the Conservatives want Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer's right-hand man to be investigated by the police. Why?

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17:58Camilla: Here's another embarrassing resignation in the pipeline for Keir Starmer. His chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, is under scrutiny over reports he failed to declare£740 ,000 in gifts to his campaign group Labour Together. Those donations were made between 2017 and 2020. And in 2021, the group was fined for breaking electoral law more than 20 times, including for not declaring donations. Joining us is the chairman of the Tory party, Kevin Hollingrake. You are going great guns on this story, aren't you, Kevin? You are absolutely going for the jugular. You're saying he should be investigated by the police.

18:43Camilla: Can you make your case, please? Well, this is important. I mean, the whole of politics in terms of donations is regulated to make sure everything's transparent. And Keir Starmer, opposition, and indeed when he entered office, said everything would be open, transparent, of course. Now, donations are key to that. And what we've seen in this organisation, Labour Together, which is kind of a sister organisation to the Labour Party, has been accumulating huge amounts of money,£740 ,000, and not declaring those donations. It's as simple as that. What we found out subsequently, that kind of failure to declare was kind of argued a way that was just an admin error.

19:23What we have seen now is email correspondence between Labour Together's solicitors and Labour Together and Morgan McSweeney saying, actually, we'll explain it away as admin error. It's not really. You were told twice in 2017, in November 2017, by the Electoral Commission and December 2017, you must declare these donations. He did not. Can you explain to us who Morgan McSweeney is, how close he is to the Prime Minister, why he matters so much? He's his Chief of Staff and he's somebody that was very anti-Jeremy Corbyn and set about unseating Jeremy Corbyn, pushing him to the side and bringing in Keir Starmer.

20:03There was this big plan for Morgan McSweeney to do that. And he's very much seen as the central figure in the Labour Party, not just in terms of Keir Starmer's chief of staff, which he now is. So he ran this organisation, Labour, together with the principal aim of getting rid of Jeremy Corbyn and bringing in somebody he felt was more electable. this was usefully Keir Starmer. And so he's been there alongside Keir Starmer all the way. And what is McSweeney's explanation for this? Well, his explanation to the Electoral Commission was it's just an admin error and they're fined him£14 ,000 because it was an admin error.

20:40But the correspondence now clearly shows this is a way to simply sweep this under the carpet.

20:46Camilla: Why is it embarrassing to have the donations? because Keir Starmer is serving under Jeremy Corbyn while at the same time a movement is growing to try and oust Jeremy Corbyn and install Starmer as his replacement. Well, there are many things, yes, partially that, but there are many things that are embarrassing to many of the Labour members. Who are you getting the money from? These wealthy donors. Jeremy Corbyn is seen by many as this wonderful left-wing figure and then been seated by a more centre-ground, more Blairite kind of person. I never bought that myself. Keir Starmer himself is a self-avowed socialist.

21:22But some of these donors were embarrassing. It was much easier for Labour Together to simply pretend they didn't exist. They were told very clearly, and people can see it on my Twitter feed, very clearly by Electoral Commission, you must declare these donations. They did not.

21:37Camilla: Just to balance out this conversation, both the Electoral Commission and indeed a spokesman for Labour Together has said, look, this was investigated. The investigations were concluded back in 2021. There's nothing further to see here. A Labour source has told The Telegraph, in fact, in our reporting of all this, this was thoroughly investigated years ago and action was taken. The Tories can sling mud, Kevin, all they like. It doesn't change the facts here. So what are you saying has changed? The emails subsequently, which reveal that even though McSweeney was told to declare the donations, that 740 ,000 figure, that he actually took the decision not to.

22:15Camilla: Is that what you're saying? It's quite clear. Again, this is on my Twitter feed. People can pick it up. The solicitor, he says in this email to Morgan McSweeney, there's no easy way to explain how Labour Together finds itself in this situation. And they asked a series of questions to Morgan McSweeney, and he said, basically, if you can't give answers to these questions, if you can't substantively answer these questions, I pose, then perhaps best to simply base our case as admin error. The Federal Commission took that at face value, didn't have access to this email I'm talking about now. And so the Federal Commission said, OK, it was admin error.

22:57We'll put it down and that will fine you£14 ,000. So this is not just the fact that they've concealed the donations. They've also covered up then the reasons why these donations were not declared. And is that for McSweeney a resignation issue or something more, do you think? Well, potentially it's a criminal offence. If you conceal donations, there's legislation that covers that. This is potentially a crime. If you deliberately conceal donations, it is a crime.

23:23Camilla: OK, so look, the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday have done a lot of work on this. We're obviously featuring it on the Daily Tea today. What astonishes me, Kevin, is you're making really serious allegations. They do require some probing, I would suggest, and they certainly require some journalistic discussion. And yet, when I look at X, you're doing very heavy lifting on this. Fair play to you. You're being an opposition politician. That's what you should be doing. You should be scrutinising government. You should be scrutinising the prime minister. You should be scrutinising his advisors. We then get the likes of other Tory MPs sort of on social media today going on about swan eating and Tylenol stroke paracetamol.

24:03Camilla: This isn't cutting through. Why isn't it cutting through? are the Tories as a whole, not criticising you, Mr Hollingrake, doing a good enough job here? Because this is really serious stuff. Sort of makes cake eating during the pandemic seem rather peripheral and piffling. So what are you actually saying here? Because if you're actually calling for McSweeney's resignation, by implication, you're questioning whether the Prime Minister is surely fit for office. I certainly do. I mean, on that latter point, I'll take the point about my colleagues in a second. But this then has very fundamental consequences for Keir Starmer because he was associated with this.

24:42Look at my Twitter feed. Again, this is Labour Together material, effectively saying they put Keir Starmer in office. That's what they are saying. And there's more material to come out yet. So there's more stuff over this weekend.

24:55Camilla: All right, Kevin, can you speak to our news desk about that? I'm very happy to. We're giving more stories to our rivals. Well, clearly we're working very hard behind the scenes and trying to find all the information here. More is coming out as we go. More people are bringing information to us and all this. So there will be more to come, but that's very serious for a prime minister when you're talking about hundreds of thousands of pounds of money. So in terms of my colleagues, many of my colleagues have retweeted this, have contacted me to say, you're doing a great job on this. Keep going. You know you've got many sites.

25:27I've got to say this is, we did a lot of work on Angela Rayner too, as The Telegraph did, and did a fantastic job in exposing her wrongdoing. That was a pretty clear-cut case, exactly. This is more complex, there's no doubt about it. And so in politics you have so many things to do at any one time. So it's probably not quite as retail as some of the other things we've done, being Mandelson or Angela Rayner, but all those things. I've got to commend my colleagues in central office who are doing a fantastic job on this. But also is the public and yourselves, much of the media is interested in this.

26:03Although strangely, the BBC is not right now. But I guess what people might say is, yes, the Tories are bringing this stuff to light. And that Kemi did a very good surgical job on Peter Mandelson of PMQs. We all remember that. It was a very admirable term. But the Tories don't seem to be benefiting. Why is it the Tories are landing these punches, but it's reform that benefits? Is it because voters are thinking, yeah, I'm not surprised Labour might be crooked, but you were too, and I'm not going to forget it? Well, listen, there's no doubt we start from a long way back. After the last election, after May elections, we've got an awful long way to go.

26:39So I understand why the public is not recognising all we've got to say right now or all our efforts right now, But we're focused on doing our job as the opposition. That's the most important thing we can do, just focusing on our day job. I believe when people see us taking this kind of role on and challenging the Prime Minister and his advisers, people will see that we're an effective opposition. That's what we've got to focus on, our day job, and I think that's what we're doing. Pat McFadden says you're just jealous that you're only attacking McSweeney because he's, quote, talented. Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?

27:10I mean, you know, but anyway, people can judge for themselves. I've got to say, if you look on the Twittersphere, and I'm not one of these kind of Twitter kind of, I don't get millions of followers on Twitter or anything, but my Twitter feed has been completely blown. It's been, so many people have followed this story. Tens of thousands of people. I think one of these tweets said they've got over a million views.

27:29Camilla: Kevin Hollerake's gone viral. I know, amazing. I mean, there were things you never hear. But the reality is the public is very interested in this. They do think if you look at the Twitter, oh, you'll get away with it again, Teflon, Starmer or whatever, but I don't think he can get away with this. Although to take this podcast full circle, Kevin, because earlier we were talking about the rise of Andy Burnham, haven't you got to be careful what you wish for? You defrenestrate McSweeney, it costs Starmer his job, and then you're facing a more effective opponent than the very unpopular Prime Minister.

28:00Maybe a more left-wing one as well. Well, that's the point. Selling your Tory constituents down the river. I mean, it's a tangled web, isn't it, politics? So the implications of whatever you do. But I really think listening to Andy Burnham the last few days and this civil war between Steve Reid and Andy Burnham, all this kind of stuff, when there are some really big issues going on in the world, like Russia buzzing Eastern Europe and that kind of stuff and this catastrophic second budget for Rachel Reeves this autumn, there's bigger things to worry about. But listening to Andy Burnham, putting council, whacking council tax up around the country, higher taxes, higher top-rate taxes.

28:36I don't think that's a popular message for lots of people that Labour are relying on now to vote for them. So whoever's in number 10, if it's Labour Prime Minister, we're going to make sure people understand the realities of voting Labour. There's a bit of a civil war among the Tories, though, isn't there? Not anymore. They're a nest of singing birds. As we speak, Rob Jenrick is probably tweeting a video of himself jogging up Mount Everest in the nude shouting about immigrants. It does feel like he's auditioning to be the Tory Andy Burnham. Well, Rob Jennings is a very talented guy, but Kemi Beardnock won the race to be our leader.

29:10And I think one most people can see in our party, we did many good things in 14 years, some things we didn't do so well, but one of the things we did not get right was constantly changing our leader. To change our leader now would be ridiculous, catastrophic. Kemi Beardnock, in my mind, is the strongest, toughest, most authentic person in politics. People will increasingly see that and increasingly move back to the Conservatives because we will sort the things people are worried about, such as borders and policing the streets, but we'll do it in a way where we balance the books and no other party will do that.

29:42Camilla: Well, with that image of mountain climbing Robert Jenrick in our minds, we will thank you, Kevin Hollingrich, for joining us on The Daily Tea. It's a pleasure. Thank you.

29:55Camilla: Kevin there has performed very well on behalf of his party, but I do question the wisdom of a lot of Tory MPs constantly taking the fight to Farage. So I made the reference to the swans earlier. This was Farage commenting on LBC with Nick Ferrari, Trump's claim about eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, that immigrants were eating cats and dogs. We all remember that moment. Ferrari had had a wager with Farage that that wasn't true. He then challenged Farage on it, and Farage then went into this diatribe about, well, actually, immigrants are eating carp out of rivers and grabbing swans out of parks and eating them.

30:29Camilla: And it's now engendered this debate with people coming up with videos from the RSPCA of people apparently cooking swans on stoves and all the rest of it. But my central point is this one. Why are Conservative MPs missing a great opportunity to just keep on hammering home this McSweeney-Starmer stuff? Instead, they're choosing the wrong enemy. They're having a go at Farage. Lots of their voters agree with Farage, even if he sometimes comes out with nutty statements. And therefore, just attack Labour day and night and stop wasting your time on reform. Well, what I want to know from Donald Trump is, will eating a swan give me autism?

31:04I think that's the next big question. What I think is beginning to happen, it feels like the tectonic plates are shifting a little bit. Mustn't read too much into polls. But there's a little bit of early evidence of the reform vote slipping a bit. And Labour, possibly even the Tories, rising a little bit. And we are about to enter two weeks of conference. Yes. And the narrative of those conferences is going to be very similar. Tories are going to be talking about, should we dump our leader?

31:34Camilla: Yes. Labour's going to be talking about, should we dump our leader? Yes. And as I suggested, Jenrick's kind of playing the Burnham role on his side. And you and I will have our eyes trained on these ambitious men. Of course. In the background. And they're both trying to tap into grassroots anger. And they're both suggesting, essentially, that their party should be more philosophically authentic. So it's really striking how, and one wonders if that will take some of the publicity away from reform at the time that reform keeps feeling that it needs to defend Donald Trump in a way that I feel it could just say that's for Donald to say and we're not going to comment.

32:10Camilla: You can disown some of what Donald Trump says and still appear to be right wing. I know, it's weird. Can we share some lovely feedback before we go from Rachel, who describes herself as a perpetually worried mum? Now, yesterday you made the point that when you were younger, you were very introverted and shy and you could look people in the eye and you could have been misdiagnosed as autistic and actually you grew out of it. And now, goodness me, you're broadcasting daily. I can look prime ministers in the eye. Indeed. And Rachel says this, I just wanted to send a quick message to thank Tim for his comments in Tuesday's podcast about his experience as an awkward youngster.

32:49Camilla: I hugely worry as my 17 year old son is as Tim described won't look people in the eye socially awkward and in his own world it's given me some comfort to know that this is something that you can grow out of and I wanted you to know that sharing your own personal experiences really can help those of us listening to you please keep it up that's very sweet thank you Rachel that's very kind I appreciate that we shall be back looking each other in the eye and whoever we're interviewing tomorrow at 5pm.