Keir Starmer's year from hell

0:03The Telegraph.

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0:23A year of Keir Starmer, Tim. It's the anniversary we both really wanted to mark. It's been 12 months of highs and lows, probably more of the lows, to be honest. Yeah, I think it's one of those roller coasters that gets stuck when you're upside down. Yes. So you're just there for 12 months going, please help me down. Or just screaming. Screaming in agony and wanting it all to be over. We're going to be discussing it all. We're going to be looking over the last 12 months and making an analysis of the current situation when it comes to the Prime Minister and indeed whether he's going to go the distance in office.

0:57Welcome to The Daily Tea. I'm Tim Stanley. And I'm Kamila Tomini.

1:11So Anthony Selden, who has written a biography of every modern prime minister, I think, since someone, gave an analysis on Sky News at the weekend of how well he thought Keir Starmer's first year had gone. Not in 100 years has anyone made such an inept start coming into the office of Prime Minister, the highest office in the country, with so little idea about what he's doing, why he's doing it, what story he's telling, what he's communicating and the people he needs around him, both inside Downing Street and in the other key positions. Some people pointed out that obviously Liz Truss might take that prize.

1:54But she almost doesn't count. She's become a footnote in history. But if you accept Liz Truss... The Lady Jane Grey. It is one of the worst openings that any Prime Minister has enjoyed. This Friday, July 4th, marks one year since Keir Starmer won a historic seat majority of 174. On the basis of a 33 % vote share. On the basis of a historically low vote share. If you voted Labour yesterday, we will carry the responsibility of your trust as we rebuild our country. But whether you voted Labour or not, in fact, especially if you did not, I say to you directly, my government will serve you. politics can be a force for good we will show that we've changed the Labour Party returned it to service and that is how we will govern country first party second Camilla how did you feel at that moment yeah I just uh horrified I think to be perfectly honest I didn't really like him much in opposition so I had predicted how much I would dislike him in office.

3:10I spent all those years at the Sunday Express watching him trying to reverse the referendum result. I didn't have much respect for him for propping up Jeremy Corbyn. I felt that he was kind of a professional class type of politician who I suspected was probably lacking in political conviction. Funnily enough, we both went to the same university, Leeds, and studied law. So I followed in his footsteps at university, but at the same time, and there are big banners of him and things up and clearly he's achieved a lot in his life and should be admired for being a former director of public prosecutions and indeed Labour leader.

3:48But you could see his ability to shapeshift. As soon as he recorded that leadership bid in 2020, which was literally so socialist in its undertones that it may as well have been directed by Ken Loach and starred Maxine Peake, and then as he got into power, started pivoting into this sort of poor impersonation of Tony Blair. As Nigel Farage described it, it was Blair without the flair. And so, without being too harsh, you know, I didn't have high expectations at the beginning of the premiership and a year in, my very low expectations have been met. It is worth remembering how many times he's been reinvented.

4:34He was a Corbynite, as you said. He did win the leadership of the Labour Party, promising to see through the Corbyn 2019 manifesto. He also rose to that position to be a leadership candidate off the back of being a staunch Europhile. So his transformation in the course of opposition and the election campaign into this pro-Brexit patriotic Labourite whose dad was a toolmaker, let's never forget that. Was he? Let's never forget that. But I was in Downing Street the day he was elected and I had a slightly different take on it. In fact, I congratulated his head of press there on the street and said, that's one of the best speeches I've heard outside number 10, because I thought he was trying to strike exactly the right tone.

5:16He spoke from the point of view of someone who knew they were elected on a low turnout, knew they had to bring the country back together. And he was trying to offer themselves as a sensible change in direction, this feeling that the Tories had really cocked it up in part because they were obsessed with themselves. And I will give Starmer credit for two things. One, I think he's genuinely patriotic. I don't think he is a weirdo type lefty who hates his country. No, I agree. He likes his country. And the second thing is, I think he has quite a good temperament. I trust that he will not panic in the event of an emergency.

5:47He knows where all the pens are. Is that sort of person? I don't think he's Gordon Brownist as well in kind of like blaming Sue for the Gillian Duffy moment. You know, this is all Sue's fault. I don't think he turns around and blames me. I was in watching not really the prime minister and his wife i was watching all the people around them yes one girl in press started crying she was like waiting for that moment for such a long time that it all overwhelmed her and then i just could see sue gray yes such a powerful figure at the time people gravitating towards her because she clearly had keir starmer's ear yeah of course that didn't last very long no none of this has lasted very long and that day on downing street has turned out to be the high point in his premiership in terms of polling.

6:36And today, I find this extraordinary. Of all the prime ministers since Margaret Thatcher, at this point in their leadership, only Gordon Brown has polled worse in approval ratings than Keir Starmer. And you've got to remember, to defend Gordon, there was the credit crunch. Yes. Well, there was the great gold giveaway as well. He did. But in terms of his premiership, he had good reason to be polling so badly. In In that time, the polls have completely turned around. Labour is now polling in some places third place, not just second. He's being beaten by Nigel Farage, which just seemed impossible from the point of view of the general election.

7:14He has had to sack or let go or say goodbye to some key advisers. You mentioned Sue Gray. He's been hit by the scandal of Lord Ali, which almost immediately tarnished that squeaky clean image he tried to bring into the office. This was Clothesgate. On that clothes gate, it's interesting because he gave that interview to Tom Baldwin in The Observer at the weekend that was much tasted because of him expressing regret over the island of strangers speech about mass migration, which to me seemed really weaselish. Then he was making out in this interview that he and his advisers didn't know it would seem a bit Enoch Powell Rivers of Bludgish.

7:52And it's like anyone with a rudimentary understanding of British political speeches over history will have recognised the connotations of island of strangers. Notwithstanding that. And he sort of started complaining about the Lord Ali coverage. Oh, well, no rules were broken. He made that point, very loyally point. Oh, they're going for my wife. Yeah. No laws were broken. Nothing illegal happened. This was all a storm in a teacup and, oh, my poor wife. And I do get the whole my poor wife argument. I was at the Spectator event last night about living with a politician and Sarah Vine was there with Michael Gove, Rachel Johnson, Hugo Swire, and there were other political wives in the audience.

8:31And we were thinking about Rishi Sunak's wife being much maligned because of her non-don status and all the rest of it. I mean, sometimes wives are unfairly fair game. Having said that, why doesn't he still understand how the optics looked so bad to be freeloading while at the same time presenting yourself as a man of public service? Yes. He was seeming to be self-serving and therefore it was in complete contradiction to who he was trying to portray himself as. That was the problem there. Living it up in the hospitality box at Arsenal, getting free suits and spectacles. Also, he was independently wealthy before he took on this role.

9:12Yes. Why do you need someone to buy your clothes for you? I'll never understand that. They're all your specs. Just go to Oxfam. And also, when in opposition, they had made great play, not just of Partygate, but also of Boris Johnson's marriage with Carrie Johnson. Yes. They had talked about the wallpapering, which it turned out didn't exist in Number 10. They had talked about the infamous domestic row that Carrie and Boris had had. So they were very happy to play this super clean, aren't the Tories rotten card. And the problem is, if you live by the sword, you die by the sword. And the moment you enter government, suddenly the spotlight's on you.

9:49And if we see any amount of dirt, then we're all going to leap on it because you've set the standards so very high. He also used his own son as a human shield in that. Because remember the use of the Covent Garden flat owned by Lord Ali. And then Keir Starmer says, oh, well, my son was revising his GCSEs there. Yes. Funny enough, I shall let you into a little secret. Because when that was all happening, I interviewed Boris Johnson for GB News. And he said to me, gosh, you've got to be careful with all that. He said, you will note that I never mention my children. And obviously there were many jokes about how many he actually has.

10:24He's got about three more now than he had then. And that was only last year, but whatever. And he was saying, goodness me, you'll note that I never, ever, ever discussed it. because as soon as you mention them, they then become targets. I know. It's not right, but it is true. He expressed absolute kind of shock and horror that Starmer had made his son an excuse. He said it was a very dangerous thing for a prime minister to do. Yeah, I'm convinced Boris is trying to solve our birth rate problem. Single-handedly. Single-handedly, so there's an awful turn of phrase. But those interviews over the weekend have also teased out some other interesting insights into Keir's character, other.

11:03He's a very private man. His idea of relaxing is to get a mate round, drink a beer and watch Arsenal. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, this is one of the ironies is he's probably one of the most normal people who's been prime minister because most of them are psychopaths and crooks. He is one of the few that I think genuinely is quite ordinary. But he's failed to make a connection between his ordinariness and the public. It comes across instead as being aloof and distant and out of touch. But you say he's ordinary. He's kind of Islington ordinary. Yeah. But he's not. I give you an example because you said earlier, you know, Nigel Farage has overtaken him, particularly in many Red Wall seats and reform had that great result at the local election.

11:47So absolutely the working man that might have switched from Labour to Boris Johnson in 2019 now is pivoting towards Farage. Never will that be more in evidence than in a seat like Bassett Law. And I do distinctly remember Lord Mann, the former MP for Bassett Law. I asked him, who was the least popular politician you ever took up to the working man's club in Bassett Law? And he said it was Keir Starmer for two reasons. First of all, he didn't wear a suit and tie and it went down really badly. Just wore black like Johnny Cash. I don't know, there's a shirt, no tie. That's what he does. And I kind of thought, well, what's wrong with that?

12:22And John said, well, no, people expect elected politicians to be in a suit and tie, in Basset Law. Yes. And second of all, they just felt that, you know, he was too brill-creamed. Yeah. There was something way too slick about him. They looked at this Islington lawyer, this Londoner, and said to themselves, what does he know about my life? Yeah, yeah. And again, another irony there is one thing that genuinely motivates this government is its own sense of class war. I don't think it actually reflects the reality of that. Rachel Reeves is always saying, I went to a comprehensive as if she was sent down the pits at the age of eight.

13:01And likewise with Keir, it's all about my dad was a toolmaker. But his class war is a very old fashioned one. Remember, he's in his 60s. And his idea of poverty, if you think about it, his father was an employed, skilled member of the working class who owned his own house. Oh, by the way, I think. Which nowadays no one can do. No. In East Surrey. There have been some suggestions that Mr. Starmer Senior may have been in quite a senior role in that factory. Right. But either way, the Starmers enjoyed a standard of living, which nowadays most graduates with a politics degree from Exeter University will never dream of.

13:39So on the one hand, there's something very old fashioned about him and almost nostalgic. He's nostalgic for a time in Britain when politics was kinder and gentler and more sensible. But he's unable to communicate that to the people. And who's he being beaten by? He's being beaten by what he regards as a fake man of the people, Nigel Farage. Let's think back to Southport. Yes. Because it all started OK-ish, didn't it? Yeah. I mean, as you say, it was a fairly solid speech on the steps of Downing Street. Yeah. Then we had the appalling tragedy that occurred in Southport at the Taylor Swift-themed dance class where three young girls were brutally murdered by Axel Rudicabana.

14:25His handling of all that was not good, Tim. No, it's the moment when his approval rating starts to fall. And remember, this is just about three and a half weeks after he'd been elected. He went to visit Southport, right thing to do. He laid a wreath, right thing to do. He got heckled. How many more children have gone down our streets, Prime Minister? How many more children? How many more children, Prime Minister? Are we going to do something? Time to change, Stormer. Come on, it's needed. How many more children? Is it mine next? You've got your photos, off you go. Make a real change, Prime Minister.

15:08Make a real change! Our children! Go away! Now, I don't want to blame him for how he was received. But the fact that he was received so badly, I think, is significant. It suggests a level of popular distrust in all politicians. But evidently, there was also no magic around Keir. People didn't see him showing up and think, this is who we want to see. But also the fact that he laid the wreath and left and failed to address those people, failed to allay their fears, said something about him. You think of the great politicians of our generation, Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, they'd have been right in that crown with their arms around people.

15:50Yes. And he didn't seem to have that. Instead, everything he did in the wake of the Southport attacks, you could call technically correct, politically tone deaf. So the police were infamously reluctant to comment upon the ethnicity of the killer. We discovered that Starmer knew that Ruda Cabana, the killer, had been referred to prevent but didn't like to talk about it in case it prejudiced the trial, which smacked to some members of the public like a cover-up. He appeared at times to reserve his greatest anger for the people who then rioted. Who were far right, he claimed. Who were far right, and he also called them thugs, and indeed may well have been true.

16:32Nonetheless, again, it felt like an imbalance. I'm going to do everything by the book when it comes to the prosecution, but I'm going to speak my mind when it comes to the rioters. His government then swept in and locked people up, although crucially not fast or decisively enough to stop the riots from happening in the first place. So it was really a clean-up operation rather than a preventative one. At the same time as the government, in order to deal with overcrowding in prison, was letting career criminals out. The judges then handed out very long sentences to people who have found guilty of rioting or inciting riot or inciting things on Twitter, of which the most famous case has become Lucy Connolly, who got 31 months for tweeting that she would like to see asylum seeker hotels burnt down.

17:20A tweet she took down and regretted, etc., etc. First offence, etc. Meanwhile, today, the police have dropped an investigation into kneecap, the rap group who said, kill Tory MPs. And up hammers. and up Hezbollah. Right. And we have yet to see what will happen to Bob Villain who at the Glastonbury Festival led a chant of death, death to the IDF. So the big takeaway from Southport was not what he wanted, which was this government is about law and order and the fair and equal prosecution, the justice system. And I'm a lawyer. And I'm a lawyer. In a position to know. Which is the kind of thing he projected throughout the election.

18:00You're getting Mr. Sensible is back. The adults are back in the room. What we took away from it instead was the phrase two-tier Kier, which I think is going to hang around him right through to the next election. Who coined two-tier Kier? Was it a kind of social media thing? I mean, we had Farage calling him Blair without the flair, which was clever. Because we've got two different kind of nicknames now. We've got two-tier Kier and conversely never-here Kier. And I think we need to see his domestic failings in the context of his international successes. Yes. Because he, like his best mate, the Attorney General, Lord Hermer, are very much seen as globalists.

18:44Starmer has been called two-tier, not just because of the example you've just given, but also because he seems to favour international law over domestic law. Yes. In many different areas. And so I take your point about patriotism, but it's kind of a strange sort of patriotism wrapped up in kind of hermerisms like, for instance, let's give away the Chagos Islands. Let's defend IRA terrorists because they have a right to have a lawyer. Let's regard intervention in Iran as potentially a breach of international law. That seems to be on a different plane to kind of like the thinking of the silent majority of this country.

19:23So then there's this disconnect. And yes, he has had some wins on the international stage. His handling of President Zelensky in the aftermath of the Oval Office debacle with Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, I think was admirable. His managing of the relationship with Trump, using actually the king as, pardon the pun, the Trump card and rolling out the red carpet for the state visit in a bid to ameliorate this massive ego across the pond has been quite skilful. I think he undermined that somewhat. And it was accidental, wasn't it, when he was scrapping around on the floor, picking up the pieces of paper from the trade deal, which has now become a kind of meme.

20:01I don't see him in the same way as people saw Tony Blair as George W. Bush's poodle, because, of course, he hasn't full-throatedly supported the US. He's been rather ambivalent about whether it was right for the US to try and destroy all of Iran's nuclear capabilities. As he's been ambivalent on Israel as well. As he's been ambivalent on Israel. So there's some wins as an international statesman, but then it's created that nickname, Never Hear Keir. And when the government U-turned on welfare reform, and we'll come up to policy in a moment, His explanation was, I wasn't paying attention enough to the backbench rebellion because I was in NATO.

20:39Yes. Well, that was the same with Island of Strangers. I wasn't paying attention because I'd been in Ukraine for three days. Right. And this sort of thing really winds up the backbenchers because they feel, are you focused more on international policy or on the business of social reform back home? This is a man who in an interview famously, when asked, do you prefer parliament or Davos, said, I prefer Davos. Wow. Now, I think that's insane. Yes. But it does speak to his whole attitude. He regards Parliament as a pointless talking shop. He regards Davos as something where great men come together and get things done.

21:12And again, I think there's something patriotic about that in the sense that he wants to put Britain back on the global stage. He wants it to be a crucial partner. But whereas you and I might define patriotism in the sense of being on the international stage in order to get the best deal for Britain, he defines it as being on the international stage so that the rest of the world applauds what you're doing. And that's what he's done with things like Chagos, where extraordinarily he's not just handed the islands over to Mauritius, but he's actually paid for them to take them off our hands. He's renegotiated Brexit with the EU in such a way that gives large access to our fishing waters to the Europeans.

21:54So in everything he does, he's happy to give things away. He's happy to see Britain lose out because what he's buying is Keir Starmer being on the global stage, shaking hands with people and looking like he is a serious player. I mean, this is Chamberlain versus Churchill. There's nothing Churchillian about his behaviour. He has been a surrenderist. Yeah, except in the case of Ukraine. But that's because in that case, the international opinion is on the side of Ukraine, or at least Western opinion is. One reason why he's not taken a very strong position in the case of Israel and Hamas is because it's not so clear what the global community thinks.

22:33Because the United Nations and the courts are rather down on Israel. And I would suggest it's more cynical than that. It's interesting how Starmer, because of this inherent decency, everything is seen through the prism of him trying to do an honourable job in Britain's interests. When at the end of the day, as we've seen with the U-turns, this is all out of political expediency as well. We can't be too pro-Israel because we don't want to lose Muslim votes. It's as cynical as that. We want to crack down on benefits, but no, actually, in the face of a fairly anodyne bill and a mild Labour rebellion, we're completely going to pivot and do something different.

23:15Oh, we need to make the tough choices because Britain is broken by the Tories. There's a 22 billion black hole and only Labour can fix it. So I'm afraid we are going to have to take away your winter fuel allowance. Oh, no, actually, it's not polling very well on the doorstep. So we're going to U-turn on that as well. It's not grand ideology Coming up next we're going to analyse the impact Rachel Reeves' budget has had on Keir Starmer's premiership and discuss who, shock horror, could replace him if it all continues to get even worse

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24:15We've covered Southport and the foreign stuff, but the other key thing that happened, of course, was the autumn statement of last year. And that's when we finally got to find out what they were going to do on economic policy. Now, Labour was vague during the election. They said there will be tough times ahead, but we will act in a fair and decent way. And they had certain pledges they were going to stick to. But as soon as they got in, Rachel Reeves discovered... A£22 billion hole in the public finances now. Not in the future, but now. £22 billion of spending this year that was covered up by the party opposite.

24:53Labour had always said it would be difficult, but£22 billion, the public didn't buy it. And they didn't buy it in part because at the same time as it said it needed to find those savings, it also raised taxes by almost double that and it borrowed more and it did some cuts and it spent massively on public sector pay. Yes, pay rises. Hasn't averted the strikes though, has it? It has not. And the thing with the public sector is no matter how much money you give them, They'll always say, I think I'm entitled to a little bit more. Yes. And the public, by the way, was getting increasingly frustrated.

25:30I know this whole idea that because they have union paymasters, that anybody who is remotely left leaning will sympathise with the idea of giving doctors, nurses and teachers more money. Yeah. I'm just not sure that's true post-COVID. And when ordinary people are dealing with the cost of living crisis still, it's all very well that inflation has technically and mathematically come down. Prices don't seem to have come down in the supermarkets. Prices don't seem to have come down when it comes to paying our energy bills, although, let's be honest, no one's had the heating on this week. And prices haven't seemed to come down when it comes to just everyday thinking.

26:06Get a workman in, get some plumbing done. Oh, suddenly everything's£800 plus VAT. Everything is so expensive. Also, by the way, I think what Labour haven't quite realised is that the public does keep the receipts. So when Rachel Reeves said in 2021, when Rishi Sunak was flirting with an increase to national insurance contributions by employers, that it was a, quote, jobs tax. People do remember that. When, a few years later, she does exactly that and pretends it isn't a jobs tax and keeps on wanging on about the fact that they haven't taxed working people because they haven't increased their own individual NIs along with income tax and VAT, people go, no, I'm sorry, Rachel from accounts, but we've done the maths on this and you have actually taxed working people indirectly.

27:00They can see it very clearly. And it doesn't matter how many times Keir Starmer or the Chancellor or anyone else in government insists that the economic calamity that we're still dealing with is all as a result of the war in Ukraine or the war in the Middle East or Donald Trump. The public aren't stupid and they say, no, I think it's probably down to your budget. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. You can't say growth, growth, growth and then raise taxes on business. It just doesn't work. And some of the taxes have been cruel and had real world impact for people. So the increase in inheritance tax of farmers. Farmers then hit the streets and protested because they said this is going to destroy our businesses and our inheritance.

27:41Forcing people to pay VAT on their education. Something I believe no other country in the world does. New Zealand flirted with it and then I believe got rid of it. Meant that people had to pull their kids out of school. This is nasty, petty stuff. And non-dance as well, to be honest, because all of those three calculations, I think it's been largely proven, were made on the basis of quite dodgy maths. In the case of the farmers tax, it was suggested that it would only affect 77 farmers or something. This would not have an impact. And then, of course, you speak to the farmers themselves and a number of different aspects haven't been factored in.

28:18You then look at the VAT thing. Oh, nobody will leave private school because they're all rich enough to afford it. And by the way, these schools have got oodles of money in reserves, so everything's going to be fine. And then the IFS and others say, no, actually, it's going to probably prompt an exodus of around 20 ,000 to 40 ,000 students. That then overwhelms the state sector. Into the state sector, yes. And we had a similar suggestion with non-DOMs. Oh, no, we won't have a millionaire's exodus. And then they've been plagued ever since by the famous claim that a millionaire is leaving the UK every 45 minutes.

28:53Why is it always 45 minutes? 45 minutes to, wasn't it WMD? Yes, that's right. So, again, all of that's backfired. And then you get rumours of, oh, she's toying with some kind of U-turn. She will change the tapering on the farmer's tax. She might scrap the non-don crackdown. To be fair, the only thing they're sticking with is the private school fee VAT hike. Yes. And that's despite a number of independents actually closing down. And by the way, as the opposition have pointed out, Laura Trott, Shadow Education Secretary, we now have fewer teachers employed now than we did when Labour took power.

29:29So that's 6 ,500 more teachers that Bridget Philipson, the Education Secretary, promised, haven't actually materialised. Yeah, yeah. So where is the government investing? investing. The government is spending money on infrastructure. Fine. It also says it's spending money on defense, matching the NATO's goal of eventually hitting 5%. And this, again, is the problem, is smoke and mirrors, because that sounds pretty impressive. But when you find out that 3.5 % of it is supposedly actual military spend, and the other 1.5 % of it is security spending, which Labour defines as broadly as including things like spending on the NHS and rural broadband.

30:12Right. Yeah. You realise that, again, it's not what it sounds like. They're making claims that they're not backing up with real money. Also, don't forget that that guarantee of spending turned into an ambition. Right. Do you remember? So the Defence Secretary John Healy said there was a certainty around reaching 3%. And then again, with things looking rather shaky in the economy and presumably the Treasury going, no, no, no, don't say that. Yeah. That certainty is now turned into an ambition. Yes. Again, the public looks at that and goes, well, are you going to spend 3 % or aren't you? Yeah. And they can't answer that question.

30:50And put yourself in the shoes of, because the context of this whole discussion is the welfare rebellion, the shoes of a little backbench Labour MP. They're all called Josh or Sam. who was elected by accident for a constituency Labour has never won a year ago. They know they're never going to win again. They're possibly going to lose their seat to reform, which really hurts. Because Keir has only appointed his mates to government, they can see they're never going to have a ministerial job. So they find themselves on the green benches and apart from access to the canteen where the food ain't great or the subsidised bars, which are kind of hot and sweaty at this time, you didn't really want to be in them, they've realised that there's absolutely no point to what they're doing.

31:39Right. There is no point to them. And if you are a Labour MP, you are usually only ever qualified in life to be a Labour MP. These are not normally people who can just leave and go back to running a business or... Or they haven't run a business in the first place. Right. There are quite a few of them teaching schools. But my point is, backbenchers are now asking themselves, who is this man who's running this? What is the point? What am I here to do? And what they find themselves doing is raising defense spending, buying more nuclear bombs, or at least planes that could theoretically carry nuclear bombs, while at the same time being asked to cut welfare.

32:19And that is the point at which people start saying, no, if you're just using me as voting fodder, I'm not going to put up with it. I may just as well take a stand or have a bit of fun and push back against the leadership. And that, I suspect, is why you're starting to see a rise in the numbers of MPs rebelling. But do we think his leadership is in jeopardy? So this is the big interesting question is, has this been a turning point? And certainly some journalists have been quoted as saying, I have spoken to someone who says we don't believe he can last the full parliament. If that were the case, there are plenty of other people who would like the job and seem to be permanently auditioning for it.

32:57They just, you know, they just sit by the phone waiting for your programme to call. Who are you referring to? Well, Angela Rayner. She won't come on my programme, but go on. Oh, will she not? No. We're streeting. He will. He will. Enthusiastically. So there are plenty of people, and of course, Bridget Phillipson would also. Believe it or not, Bridget Phillipson really fancies her chances of being the next leader. To be fair, she will also come on my programme. I'd like to come on In the Flesh to have some bants over private school fees. So there are people who are certainly calculating and positioning themselves in the eventuality of Starmer stepping down.

33:32But having said that, I think we should be very cautious about this talk because the man is still on a historic majority. I was going to ask you who was the Tories' worst nightmare to lead Labour instead of Keir Starmer, but that's not a relevant question anymore. It should be who is reform's worst nightmare, don't you think? Yes. Who is it? Is it Rainer? And I'm not sure they think in those terms because they're on a kind of a crusade. I don't think they're making calculations like that. They don't care who's leading any party. They just believe they just need to stick to doing what they're doing and they will eventually win.

34:01And presumably Angela Rayner, because Angela Rayner is supposedly wildly popular in the Red Wall. I'm not quite sure why. Is she, though? I don't know where that comes from, but she certainly believes she is. She's not more wildly popular in the Red Wall than Nigel Farage, is she? I think from a journalist's point of view, I would love Angela Rayner to be Prime Minister of this country. I think she would be so good. I suppose she looks wildly popular in the Red Wall compared to Keir Starmer. Yes. I don't know if Wes Streeting is wildly popular in the Red Wall. No, and this is a key thing. if you poll Labour Party members, West Streeting is not really very popular at all.

34:36The Labour MPs who members like are Angela Rayner, but most of all Ed Miliband. Oh, Ed Miliband. And that's because Red Ed is the one person in this government who does seem to be doing things. And he is red. And he is red. There is no doubt in his redness or his greenness, yes. And because he has experience of government before, he's known which buttons to press and which levers to pull to get things done. So Ed does have experience. He does have achievements that he can point to. I tell you one group of people that seem to like Wes Streeting, and that's Tories. Yeah. Quiet love righties say, I wouldn't mind Wes Streeting.

35:12He's one of those people, isn't he? Yeah. You know, good media performer, has kind of flirted with the idea of quasi-privatisation of the NHS, even though he pretends he doesn't. But when Bob Villon, ridiculous person, said death, death to the IDF, what did Wes Streeting say when he was asked about it? Yes, he said that Israel needed to get its own house in order. And why did Wes Streeting say that? Because in Ilford North, he nearly lost his seat to Islamist candidates. Exactly. So even Wes Streeting has to keep an eye on what's going on in his constituency. I think actually a Wes Streeting leadership would be continuity starmer.

35:51I don't think it would be significantly different. Wouldn't all of them be continuity starmer? Yeah, Angela, I think would be a little bit more left wing. Ed would certainly be more left wing. But all this government is trying to do is manage decline. The fundamental problem with everything we've discussed, going right back to that election victory, is Labour was elected to change things. But the problem is, is the public put into government people drawn from the very class or blob that has run this country for the last 20 or 30 years. They were not changemakers. That election was a referendum on the Tories, who everyone hates.

36:29We understand that. Even the Tories have come to terms with that. It was a referendum against them. But, and we did warn this at the time, in order to punish the Tories, who at least understood that the country was badly run, we have elected with a massive majority the very establishment that was running the country down. And everything you now see in this government is the blob on steroids. It's everything that the blob has wanted to do, this government is now doing. That's not change. That's more of the same and worse. OK, so if Starmer one year, the movie, was being reviewed by us both at the cinema, how many stars out of five?

37:14Zero. But like a lot of millionaires, I would have got up and walked out. Would you? Would you have walked out halfway? Okay. You're giving it no stars. Okay. No, actually, I don't agree with... I can't think of anything I've agreed with that he's done. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I'd just like perhaps give him one star for having a go. Right. Right, for effort. You know, I do admire people that take on the job of running the country. I mean, it can't be easy, can it? Yeah, that is true. But I think if you're going to do it, you should be good at it. You should show some of the basic skills that you need to do this.

37:49And he lacks any of those fundamental skills. He's not a great speaker. He's not particularly charming. He has no philosophy. He brings nothing to the table of being prime minister. Liz was fun. While it lasted. While it lasted. What do you think? Get in touch. TheDailyTee at telegraph.co.uk or you can contact us via our socials. ex-Instagram and the ticky-tock at Daily Tea Podcast. We'd love to know what you think of Keir Starmer's first year. What's your analysis? The best responses will be addressed and read out on a future Daily Tea podcast. We will be back tomorrow at 5pm.

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