Starmer snub ignites Streeting ‘coup’ plot on King’s Speech day

0:02The Telegraph.

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1:24Where Streeting is poised to resign after a humiliatingly short meeting with the Prime Minister.

1:30Camilla: It should have been Keir Starmer's big day. We're here in Parliament for the King's speech, but instead his premiership is in total chaos. Amid stormy weather, we'll also speak to one of Streeting's closest allies who tells his friend, back off. Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Camilla Tomini. And me, Tim Stanley.

2:00Camilla: Tim, we're in College Green. We're braving the elements. Five minutes ago it was hailing, now it's sunshine. I thought it was snowing at one point, but it was actually pollen coming down. It's pollen, which I now have got embedded under my contact lenses, which is pleasant. And we had this extraordinary meeting between Starmer and Streeting this morning, which didn't really go as well as streeting might have hoped. So he was in for, we counted, 16 minutes. And you and I know because we're in and out of number 10 all the time. I'm always being thrown out. Always being thrown out. But what happens is you go in, then you have to hand your phone in and they put it in this kind of like antique cubbyhole thing.

2:38Camilla: And then you've invariably got to wait outside the office. Possibly climb the stairs. Possibly. Which the older you get, the longer that takes. And there's more prime ministerial portraits by the minute up those stairs. So it's probably 10 minutes tops that he got alone with the prime minister. I don't think he was offered a cuppa. Now, when you're in a situation like this, Keir Stummer's got to dissuade West Streeting from resigning and running against him. Don't you take that moment to put your arm around him and say, listen, son, you're a young man. You've got a long future in politics. I'm not going anywhere.

3:09But if you stick with me and you're loyal, I promise I will support you. I will promote you at some point. Why not offer him a bigger job than health secretary? You can't say all that in 10 minutes. I suspect Keir Starmer refused to discuss the leadership at all and probably just kept bringing the subject back to the NHS or pens.

3:28Camilla: Well, possibly, but if Streeting had gone in there on the back of the promise that was made at the cabinet meeting this week... I will meet you individually to talk about this. Exactly, to discuss your individual concerns. I mean, when Streeting emerged, a little bit like after the cabinet meeting, he had a face like thunder. I mean, actually, he resembles sort of part Moomin, so it's quite hard for Wes to look angry. He usually looks quite kind of baby-faced. With cold, blue eyes. But he was not happy. No. And doesn't this speak to what Carl Turner said to us yesterday about the Prime Minister's inability to actually ingratiate himself with his own MPs?

4:02Camilla: Yeah. So you'd say put the arm around. I think he probably gave a very cold and procedural response to Streeting's pleas along these lines. I'm sorry but we must follow the process. You don't appear to have enough votes to trigger a leadership contest. I said that I would stand for the duration. I haven't been challenged officially by the rule book. Therefore I'm sorry Wes but sling your hook. I want to say something in defence of that which is it worked very well on Tuesday in the cabinet meeting when everyone turned up expecting they were going to have a six hour long cry-a-thon about the state of the leadership and instead he did exactly what you should do this is like a secondary school teacher move uh we are not going to discuss this i've got an agenda you haven't got the votes i will speak to you after class yes when it is convenient to me yes and that clearly through streeting and the others i think there's a part of streeting that imagined kia stammer was going to say you're amazing i'm terrible you're quite right you should do this let me just stand aside And so it's obvious that for 24 hours, Streeting was somewhat flawed by Starmer's approach.

5:13The problem is, how do you move it on?

5:15Camilla: Well, don't you think it's also funny that he says to Streeting, now I am going to give you some time in my diary. Yes. It's going to be slightly before the state opening of Parliament and the King's speech. On the most important day in our parliamentary calendar. So I've got, I don't know, like 16 minutes? Yes. That might be reduced to 10 because it's the busiest day of the year. But it's a put up or shut up move, isn't it? It's like John Major with the rebels back in the 1990s. He's effectively saying to him, you can keep your job or you can lose your job. Yes. And then if you think you've got the numbers to start a leadership campaign against me, which is what you need, 81 people, not just saying they're angry with Keir, but saying we are backing West Streeting, then come at me.

5:57Camilla: Or is it going to unfold like this? He doesn't have the numbers, but he's got nearly enough numbers. he then is due to do a speech tomorrow as health secretary but if he resigns before that he can't because he's no longer health secretary but then maybe he either resigns before the speech resigns in the speech but then that could look cravenly self-interested if it's about waiting lists and people's health yes but whatever he's doing is to get the numbers up yeah but to also try and create a domino effect with other cabinet ministers going after him. Yes, the sun's just gone in, so we should prepare for a blizzard.

6:35West Streeting's record on the substance is mixed. And what he has done to the NHS has irritated some on the left who have been rather hysterical in their reaction to what he's done and said.

6:46Camilla: They think he's trying to privatise it in some way. Exactly, and the medical unions don't like him. No, of course not, because he keeps on refusing to give them 20-plus pay rises in a cost of living crisis. So what is his constituency of support within the party? And again, I know some people think I've gone a bit mad, because I'm not speaking in defence of Starmer, but I'm just acknowledging that I think elements of his personality have played to his advantage at this moment. And think about, take a step back from partisan politics, what is at stake here? The governability of Britain. Yes. Can a man elected with a historic majority survive one parliament in power?

7:25during a time in which there is, by the way, technically no recession and we're not at war. OK, Ukraine, Iran, but you know what I mean. Hang on a minute.

7:32Camilla: These guilt yields, though, Tim, it's quite significant that borrowing costs are higher now than they were under Liz Truss. And his argument would be that it's Labour chaos which is doing that. The markets are reacting to what's going on within the party. I agree with what you're saying to an extent, but he does need to take vicarious responsibility for the multiple failings of this government. Yeah, and I keep coming back to when I speak to Labour people, look, this is not just about his personal style. It's about your policies. It's things like the national insurance rise, OK, that screwed the economy at the beginning.

8:02But my point is, we've had year after year, prime minister after prime minister. This one came in with the people have said twice to Boris Johnson and to Keir Starmer, here's a massive historic majority. Work with it. Boris failed. Liz failed. Rishi failed. Can this man survive four or five years? I think that's what's going through his head.

8:21Camilla: Basically, he should continue in office because the alternative is to be too flaky and we've had too much flakiness. How do we look in the eyes of the rest of the world right now? I can tell you from the foreign press, we look mad. We look mediocre, yes. A country that was once regarded as a beacon of relative openness, prosperity and stability right now looks like a political basket case. So he is fighting for his own political career, of course. But to some extent, he's actually fighting for the governability of Britain and for the reputation of this country abroad. I spoke to somebody close to Boris Johnson earlier who posed the question, can anyone actually be prime minister anymore?

9:00Camilla: Is this country governable? Can you survive the 24-hour news cycle? Yeah. And what's causing is, is it, I mean, I think it's the traumas of Ukraine, Covid, Brexit, austerity. It's all of those things. Nick Miller said events, dear boy. You've got one job. Well, that is true. And we've had prime ministers who've faced worse situations, who have clung on longer. But it does feel as though something's gone wrong with the system since about 2015, 2016. I don't know what happened. I don't know what happened at that time. What could it be? Silly people voted for something. The last stable government we had that saw through a programme in very difficult economic, social and political circumstances was a coalition.

9:43Not one party. So I would put it to you that the problem is with the Conservative Party and the Labour Party.

9:49Camilla: We've got, you know what they are, they're the horse poo sweepers. Of course, because the street, we should come on to the King's Speech. The street outside of Parliament is lined with a kind of sand so that the horses can walk on it. But of course they also poop on it. They poop everywhere. So the streets are then very quickly cleaned up afterwards. Before we get on to the King's Speech, which you were inside the Houses of Parliament to witness, and it should be noted today these unions turning against Starmer. That's significant. That is significant but of course they'll always back a lefty.

10:21Camilla: The unions want somebody who keeps them in clover, who comes out with workers' rights bills that make it impossible to sack anyone, that comes out with renters' rights bills that makes it impossible for anyone to boot anyone out of their property. So frankly, that conglomeration of unions, which includes Unite and the GMB, two of the UK's most significant unions, saying to the prime ministers, enough's enough. I mean, that's as predictable as Jeremy Corbyn today banging on about genocide once again as we have the legislative agenda behind us. But I'm not sure if it's historically typical, because in the past, unions have behaved like the adults in the room and have tended to force the Labour Party to come back together.

11:06And having the working class element of the Labour coalition has usually kept the party on the straight and narrow. I think it's significant that unions are increasingly not regarding themselves as part of a project to keep a Labour government in power, but rather as a pressure group outside of government, always pushing the government to go further and further, even to the point of destroying its leadership.

11:29Camilla: Also, how funny would it be if the unions try and overthrow Stama and get either of the alternatives? Wes Streeting, who's got no truck with unions at all, or Ed Miliband that wants to end all work in the North Sea. Net zero. And therefore put many people who support the GMB and Unite and others out of business. Yes. So they have it. So we're here for the King's speech. I have had a shade. Yes, thank God. I've put on a tie, especially with little foxhounds on it. You're wearing what I like to call your dairy milk outfit. You're like a little chocolate in your brown suit. Thank you. And I took my seat in the press gallery of the Lords to watch it.

12:10First thing I noticed before it began, low attendance. I'd say about a third of the benches were empty. What do we... And that was peers who don't appear to have been showing up. Why do we think that is? Why do we think that is? I mean, I checked with colleagues on the balcony and they all agreed they'd never seen attendance this low. And there are two obvious reasons. One is no one can be sure that this king's speech is really the program of a government that's going to last.

12:40Camilla: No. But secondly, they have kicked out the hereditaries. And there may be some protest of people just not attending. Wow. Or it could be that with hereditories gone, the House of Lords loses some of its snob value. Yes. Because one reason why people used to come to these events, you'll know this as a royal reporter, is you don't go in order to meet some ex-minister who has been kicked up into the Lords or a donor or Floella Benjamin, who is a lord. Floella Benjamin is a lord. Deservedly so. She's a legend. Deservedly so. She's a legend. You don't go there to meet Flo. You go there to meet Baroness Trumpington Esquire IV, whose great-great-grandfather was at Agincourt.

13:21And if the tops ain't there anymore, I think a lot of people are going to stop going. Yeah.

13:25Camilla: Also, we love a bit of ermine. I mean, we were just gawping as the carriages were coming in and out. And even though I've covered these sorts of events literally for the last 25 years, it's still quite special to see stagecoaches and kings and queens and diadems and crowns. Men dressed as playing cards. The carriage, I just saw the carriage carrying away someone holding a hat on a stick. It's like real life Beauty and the Beast being my guest. When I was leaving the house, I had to go through a back exit. And I happened to leave at the same time as the Page Boys. and I suddenly found myself surrounded by all these sort of 11-year-olds.

14:00Camilla: You must have felt like Princess Diana in 1981. It was just so funny. It's like something from a different world. We've got a blizzard going on now, Tim. It's windy. But the problem with the House of Lords is our constitution is really not a pure democracy. It's designed to have guaranteed representation. This is hail. It's full hail. Guaranteed representation for the church and the nobility. and if you strip out the nobility, there's a risk that what's left looks a bit silly. Why are we still doing ermine and wigs? Why are there still people dressed in black in mourning for Queen Anne? Why are we still doing this podcast?

14:37Camilla: We're going to soldier on because it's the Telegraph way. There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad outfits. And we are here with our microphones and we're soldiering on. Like Starmer, we are going to keep buggering on in a Churchillian manner. not that I want to equate the Prime Minister with Churchill by the way don't write in I don't think there's any equivalence there whatsoever was there anything in the King's speech I mean I was just glossing over it all because I was concentrating on streeting which by the way the palace was worried about so the palace apparently said to Starmer yesterday don't you humiliate the King with all of your internal politics yes but actually I'm afraid it has overshadowed the when the King a slightly croaky voice but heavens he's done a lot of work recently when the king opened by talking about Britain being in a volatile world there were some titters in the press gallery because of course he could be referring to the Labour Party Also when Black Rod knocked on the door of the Commons didn't somebody shout not now Andy?

15:36Camilla: Apparently and by the way Wes Streeting did not take his seat on the front bench but instead stood at the back next to the speaker like a naughty schoolboy He doesn't always take his seat on the front bench I wouldn't read too much into that, but he had to join the parade of people walking towards the House of Lords. Keir, of course, walks with Kemi Badenock. She seemed to be doing most of the talking. I noticed that. But I think that's the case of any individual who finds themselves stuck in a lift with Keir Starmer. And West Streeting was paired by James Cleverley, and you can just imagine that James was loving that.

16:09Camilla: Well, we saw James earlier in PCH, didn't we? Portcullis House, when I was having some porridge at the beginning of the day. and cleverly was absolutely reveling in the whole thing because from a Tory perspective this is like Christmas come early you know all of the talk about the Tory psychodrama and frankly the Labour Party by comparison right now is making the Conservatives look like a nest of singing birds yes honestly they are so divided we've now got blue Labour versus red Labour we've got the Prime Minister in peril and all the rest of it yes and we've got a king forced to use phrases like building roads at pace and talking about the agency of women and girls.

16:50Oh, come on. We were, golly, Britain would just be so miserable about its monarchy. He did a great job. It looked beautiful. But on occasions like this, the monarchy really is the lipstick on the pig of the democratic system, isn't it?

17:05Camilla: Building roads at pace. We can't even fix roads at pace. Right. I had to phone my county council this morning because of some overrunning roadworks that are wreaking havoc with my school run, Tim. So the public will look at this and just go, this is absolute nonsense. I was just relieved that the king didn't say, and my government will be absolutely clear. He cannot adopt Starmer-esque lexicon. Now, let's move on to the debate that happened afterwards. Normally, it's meant to be very polite and quite lighthearted. As part of the great tradition, it always opens with a couple of joke speeches. which this year contains some, well, rather good humour.

17:45Camilla: Given this opportunity to be the first ever Muslim to propose the loyal address in this chamber... ..and, of course, seeing the meltdown of the far-right online... ..and the most beautiful... This was Kemi Badenock having a right-old go at the Prime Minister. Everyone is trying to pretend it's all right. It's not all right. In the past 48 hours, nearly 100 Labour MPs have called for the Prime Minister to resign. Four ministers have quit. It is clear his authority has gone, and that he will not be able to deliver what little there is in this King speech. This is a government less than two years in office, which has already run out of ideas and run out of road.

18:35Scrapping NHS England, something the Prime Minister announced 14 months ago. But then I suppose the Health Secretary has been a bit distracted lately, hasn't he? Yeah, hasn't he? He's chanting now, why don't you just do your job? Do your job. Even worse, Mr Speaker, even worse, Mr Speaker, is what isn't in the gracious speech. There's no point in him giving me dirty looks. We all know what he's been up to. We all know, we all know. I do feel sorry for the poor Labour MPs who will now be subjected to months of peacocking by leadership candidates while the country is not being governed. I have some advice for whichever of them eventually takes over.

19:21Getting to number 10 is not an award for being in a game show. This is not strictly come dancing. And despite appearances, it's not traitors either. Here's the Prime Minister trying to laugh it all off. Brilliantly proposed by my honourable friend, the member for Bradford West. CHEERING Members across the House will have read her remarkable new book. Her list of endorsements is truly impressive, reaching well over 100 members. At last, Mr Speaker, a list that we can all get behind. LAUGHTER LAUGHTER And Mr Speaker. Let me also thank the leader of the opposition for the usual warm and generous nature of her contribution.

20:12LAUGHTER CHEERING

20:19In difficult days, her input is always a ray of sunshine. LAUGHTER I particularly am getting tips from her on how to win friends. This is from the party, Mr Speaker, who previously called us orcs and goons. But, Mr Speaker, I am a gooner, and so, as usual, she is less than half right. But we do have one thing in common. Our parties both had tough results in the local elections last week. The difference is, she hasn't noticed. Tories, of course, are having a whale of a time. And so the starting gun for the later leadership contest has been fired. So let's have a look at the runners and riders.

21:08We have the former Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Stafika, former Deputy Prime Minister, who has given up vaping. She's not here, she's given up vaping, but still hasn't paid her taxes. We have the health secretary who accidentally sent his takeover plans to number 10, almost as incompetent as leaving them on the photocopier.

21:32Of course, reform is in a difficult place right now because it's having to account for a£5 million donation from abroad.

21:42Camilla: Yes, Christopher Harborne, the crypto billionaire, has given this money to Farage. initially it was said to be for his campaign then they realized if that was the case they'd have to declare it because it would be need to be in the register of interest and not declaring it could be a potential breach of the code of conduct now they are being investigated by the parliamentary standards commissioner because even though they're trying to pass it off as security yes exactly and farad just said look this was for me before i even thought i was standing to protect me as a high profile individual for the rest of my life.

22:15Camilla: And the counter argument to that is, if you got that money within 12 months of becoming the MP for Clacton, then you had to retrospectively declare it anyway. And it should be pointed out that Harbourn's also given 12 million in general to reform. And there are concerns, well, will this actually start influencing their policy should they get into power on crypto? Yeah, exactly. I did Newsnight last night. You were very good on it. I was very kind, but I didn't have a chance to point out that we would normally be discussing a reformist£5 million, but instead it didn't come up at all in those 30 minutes, because instead we were discussing Labour's turmoil.

22:52Camilla: Well, that's interesting, because we've got the reform leader in a bit of a pickle. We've got Zach Polanski, the Green leader, in a bit of a pickle, because he's facing his own London Assembly investigation into the allegation that he hasn't paid council tax on his houseboat. Yes. And yet that's all being overshadowed. Precisely. There's thunder. There's thunder. I feel like singing Crowded Houses four seasons in one day. I wonder if that was the moment that Wes Streeting handed in his resignation letter. Possibly. So Labour no longer singing from the same hymn sheet. In fact, do they even belong to the same religion?

23:25Camilla: Well, coming up next, a message, a personal message to Wes Streeting from one of his closest Labour allies.

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24:56guys.

24:57Camilla: Luke Akehurst, the Labour MP for North Durham, thank you very much for joining us on The Daily Tea. Now, you have signed this letter in support of the Prime Minister. Aren't you actually just backing a lame duck? No, I don't think so. I think the Prime Minister is elected for a four or five year term. It's way too early to pass judgment on a PM after less than two years when they haven't implemented the whole of their legislative program. I'm not going to try and sugarcoat the election results on Thursday. 1 ,496 seat losses is record-breaking and we face a very unusual and extreme electoral position where we're being losing working class votes on our right to reform and losing urban votes on our left to the greens um but if you can go down this far in a couple of years you can also recover and some of the things that we've done uh that will make people's lives better haven't really started hitting home yet i mean i'll just give a very local example the government has put 20 million pounds in of pride in place money into the most deprived bit of my constituency not a penny of that actually gets spent until the spring of next year.

26:16So you can't really expect people, yeah, we've done something good, we've announced something good, but people aren't going to respond to that until they actually see their local area improve. But Luke, many voters are responding viscerally to the Prime Minister. He has approval ratings which are historically low. How do you account for that? Is that about him? I don't think it is. I don't think there's this magic wand that if we swapped him out for, I don't know, someone that was a really great communicator and hugely personally charismatic... Like Wes Streeting. Or Andy Burnham or any of them.

26:46I don't think that that is going to produce a sustainable improvement in polling because I think it's actually about the underlying problems that the country has got. The country... There's no point sort of getting into a blame game of, you know, was it the fault of the Tories or is some of it our fault or whatever. We have economic problems. We have huge public borrowing that has to be paid back. And every time the bond markets sneeze, that gets more expensive. And then we have huge spending demand pressures ranging from an aging population through to a welfare bill that sadly some of my colleagues weren't that gung-ho about sorting out.

27:32and a need to extensively rearm because we've got the biggest military threat from Russia since the end of the Cold War. But a lot of our readers will agree with all of that, but there was no welfare reform in the King's speech. Well, no, actually, that's not true. I did say before the interview, I didn't want to get into the details of the King's speech because I'd actually stayed in the chamber because I have a walking stick and I didn't want to stand up at the back of the Lords. But the one bit that's stuck in my mind from a brief read-through of it is that all of the stuff that Pat McFadden and Alan Milburn are doing around people not in employment education and training, which is about trying to get young people, often with quite mild health or mental health or neurodivergent conditions, get them back into the workplace.

28:18That is definitely at the centre of it. So that's an agenda I'm very keen on. But the big Liz Kendall headed reforms from last year, they're gone and they've been watered down. Well, I don't know quantitatively whether this move would bring in more savings or not.

28:38Camilla: On streeting, and indeed the Prime Minister, we spoke to Karl Turner yesterday and he said, look, the Prime Minister is a very decent chap, but he's not a great man-manager. He doesn't show interest in Labour MPs in the tea room. We've now got this bizarre situation where the man who is challenging his premiership is invited into Downing Street, seems to have had a meeting with the Prime Minister without coffee. He's in and out in 16 minutes, five of which is probably spent going through security checks and handing his phone over. I mean, is Starmer just not very good at politics and managing politicians?

29:15Well, I would have hoped that actually a meeting at that kind of level, you would kind of know the resolution to it before you get in the room, that advisors to the two of them would have worked out a way forward. I like Wes, like I've known him for years and years and years. He was the generation after me in student politics. We're not a million miles apart ideologically. So I really don't want him to resign. I don't want him to trigger a leadership contest. I think that would set friend against friend within the party

29:54Camilla: But he's going to. I mean, it's heavily being briefed. He's about to resign. All I can say is that as someone that has done most of the strategising for the right of the party in a series of internal elections, it is not my reading of where Labour Party members are that Wes would be able to win under our current system of electing leaders. and I'm actually as someone that is in the PLP slightly sceptical about whether he whether he will reach the 81 nominations because I think he would have moved earlier he would have moved on Monday or he would have moved when Anasawa resigned I think it's a bit tenuous and involves you know mass ministerial resignations to to get to the 81 that you need to get on the ballot And my primary concern is that this provokes the left of the party, the soft left.

30:46And Ed Milband or someone runs as well in the absence of Andy Burnham being back in Parliament yet. And what we actually get is Wes sets a series of dominoes going that leads to a prime minister from the left who would have a policy agenda that would be anathema to the kind of people I need to win back from reform in a red wall area like North Durham. And all of the work that we've done to change the Labour Party over the last six years will go out the window. So if Wes is listening, don't do it. Pick up the phone. I'm happy to chat you through what I think he should do. And I think it would be an impetuous move and he's doing a great job as health secretary and should stay there.

31:32And we're all in a difficult situation. the party is in a difficult situation but has incurred those kind of losses and is where it is in the opinion polls we need to work together as a team to resolve that rather than thinking that it's the right time to change PM I mean the other thing that worries me is we would just come under immense pressure from the Tories and reform that this new leader Wes, Ed, Angela Andy Burnham in a few months it has no mandate and you have to call a snap general election and I don't think that's great. If that happened, would you lose your seat? I don't think I would actually.

32:09The most recent MRP, there were MRPs, so multiple regression polls or whatever that give seat predictions. A year ago, they had me sort of flatlining around 20%. They're now saying I'm in the low 30s and a reformer in the high 30s, which I think you could change around during the course of an election campaign. But if Ed Miliband were prime minister, would that be different?

32:35I don't think it would help me. It wouldn't help. I'm not sure it would be fatal. I don't think it would help me. I have some residual affection for Ed because I actually campaigned really hard for him when he ran for leader before in 2010, but he seems to have a policy agenda that is quite a long way to the left of that. And some of the very hardline approach that he has on how fast we need to do net zero and the uncompromisingness on that plays badly in industrial and post-industrial areas like mine because there's lots of people that work in in North Sea Industries or would like to work in North Sea Industries uh there's lots of people that work at Nissan in Sunderland and are worried about the the over rigorous application of the ZEV mandate um what about immigration because I've seen you saying that your party should not tacked to the left on.

33:28So I would absolutely defend the proposals that Shibana Mahmood has put forward. It is a basic function of government that you have to be able to control the country's borders. That's not a left-right thing. It's like, yeah, you have to be able to police the streets. You have to be able to provide a military that can defend us. And you have to be able to know who is coming in and out of the country. You can then take decisions about, well, we need more of this kind of person because we're lacking particular skills or we just, in terms of demography, that we need more younger people or whatever.

34:09What you can't have is a lack of control of immigration because the public, particularly my constituents who I think up and down the country will just go, any government that loses, that is not in control of immigration isn't worthy of being a government. And actually that was a massive factor in the rejection of the Tories in 2024 was a sense that the combination of the Boris wave which was legal but on a far larger level than anyone had been led to believe it would be plus the small boats was toxic I think Shabana is dealing with both of those issues with net migration as a whole and with the small boats issue and anyone that thinks that moving away from that is a great idea.

34:57They're going to make it very difficult for MPs like me to hold our seats.

35:01Camilla: Luke Akers, frankly talking telegraphian common sense. I don't want to blot your copybook with the lefties, but Luke, are you sure you're in the right party? Well, I have a different idea of what it means to be a social democrat to some people to my left. I think my copybook is very blotted with them already. Thank you very much for joining us on The Daily Tea. Thank you.

35:31Listening to Luke, Camilla, it really brings home, this is mad. Madness. The whole thing is mad. And we're on the centre-right, so we think the Prime Minister is dreadful. We think he should go because we think all Labour MPs should go. But if you look at it from their point of view, someone like him, A mainstream, sane MP who knows what his voters want, knows that the real threat to him is reform, not the Green Party, and who's been part of this journey of changing Labour from Corbyn to Starmer, which, you know, OK, it's from mad to mundane, but it's a step in the right direction. It must be so frustrating for him to see his colleagues blowing that all up for a man we're streeting, who possibly doesn't even have the numbers among MPs or the membership.

36:17Camilla: Or indeed the country. No. Is the country suddenly going to turn around and go, oh, thank God, the health secretary's become the prime minister. Right, that changes everything. I'd much rather vote for him than Nigel Farage. And of course, we think the policies are wrong and the public agrees with us. This is not just about comms and style. This is about the winter fuel U-turn. This is about the welfare U-turn. This is about 200 ,000 plus people have entered the country illegally. People are angry about that stuff. Does Wes Streeting with his magic wand fix all of that? No. No. So from Luke's point of view, you might as well stick with Keir Starmer because the alternative is chaos with Ed Miliband.

36:58Camilla: Or Angela Rayner. Or Angela Rayner. Or frankly anyone else. Better the devil you know, Tim. Well, much more excitement to come tomorrow, Tim. Will Streeting actually resign? Will Andy Burnham find someone to stand aside for his chicken run? But you won't know because you'll be unconscious. I'll be unconscious. You'll be joined by Jacob Rees-Mogg tomorrow. I should explain, you're going to hospital. I am, just for a minor operation. You're not going to a party tonight. No, I'm not. No, I haven't been unconscious after parties for many years. Now I'm a teetotal. I love anaesthetic. I have got the best timed minor procedure of my life, which I can't move.

37:33I have always enjoyed them.

37:34Camilla: Actually, to be unconscious during this political hell is probably quite welcome. You wake up, you get a sandwich, you get a cup of tea, and you find you've got a new prime minister. All right, great stuff. So good luck with Jacob tomorrow. You'll be back 5pm.

38:34We'll be right back. insight. What a life. Do right by yourself and your business and search Xero for your free trial. Conditions apply. Do you keep hearing podcast ads like this one, for example, but always wonder how you actually get involved with them for your own brand or organization? Well, it's easier than you think. We're Acast and we give you the platform to do it all yourself. Browse thousands of popular podcasts, choose the shows that match your perfect audience, set your budget and launch. And if you want a hand, our podcast specialists are there to help you launch with confidence. This is podcast advertising without barriers.

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