Has Keir Starmer performed his final U-turn?

0:02This is a global production. Andy Burnham's first day in the Commons today, really, since becoming Prime Minister, he was setting the stage for, here's my cabinet, 9.30, here's my announcement, 3.30. That's what we thought would be the political focus of the day. And Keir Starmer is now kind of walking in the opposite direction, waving as he goes. It was astonishing when Keir Starmer was in effect ousted as Prime Minister. He probably feels bitter and resentful and furious at the coup that was led by people he thought he could trust in politics. It was the moment when I saw that video of Burnham landing in Ukraine and managing to borrow the soldier's guitar and start strumming along at the Smith song, where the Starmer just thought, oh, fuck it.

0:52Like, he could even play the Smith song. Andy Burnham has handled politics with an agility, an adroitness, a personability. From what you've seen so far, there is no way that Keir Starmer, I don't think, could have done what Andy Burnham has done these past two months. And, you know, of course, we're right to say, caveat it with difficulties ahead, but it's been pretty bloody good so far. And you're going to stay as an MP? I'm going to stay as an MP. Until the next election? Yes. Less than two months ago, Keir Starmer told our colleague Henry Zeffman that he was definitely going to stay as an MP.

1:32Today all that changed. You might say his final act as an MP is a U-turn. But it gives Andy Burnham a very tricky little by-election to fight in Hoban and St Pancras, where the Greens will fancy their chances. Is this Keir Starmer's parting present to the new Prime Minister? Welcome to The News Agents.

2:00The News Agents. It's John. It's Maitlis. She's back! Well, well, well. I have to say, I did not expect to be back, just as Keir Starmer announced he was off. We were sitting, having a chat this morning, thinking, what are we going to do today? Because Andy Burnham doesn't speak in the Commons at half past three. That's too late for us when we're recording at lunchtime. And what we're going to do. And then Keir Starmer manages to upstage Andy Burnham and grabs the headlines, which is probably the first time that Starmer has ever managed that when it's come to his dealings with Andy Burnham. But the news breaking this morning is that Keir Starmer is going to stand down from his seat in North London with more or less immediate effect, which means a by-election which may be Zach Polanski will fancy it seeing as the Greens did pretty well there in local council elections.

2:54Yeah we've been having a little discussion about whether this is a cheeky little move or a helpful getting out of the way move and I think we're veering towards the former aren't we? I mean it is there is something of the kind of tell me why I don't like Mondays like everyone is back to school everyone is coming in like even Farage is back in the Commons today, where he sort of regains the mantle of MP after winning that sort of fever dream Clacton by-election. Andy Burnham's first day in the Commons today, really, since becoming Prime Minister, still hasn't done PMQs, that's tomorrow. So he was setting the stage for, here's my cabinet, 9.30, here's my announcement, 3.30.

3:40That's what we thought would be the political focus of the day, everyone coming back. And Keir Starmer is now kind of walking in the opposite direction, waving as he goes. Essentially, I'm out of here. It's your problem. Deal with it. And as you say, now essentially sort of seizing, at least for now, the headline high ground. And we haven't really, I mean, I've been listening to you guys. I don't think you've mentioned Starmer really for about two months. Well, it was astonishing when Keir Starmer was in effect ousted as prime minister. The waters covered him over so quickly. You know, it was like the sandcastle that was on the beach and it was one wave and it was gone.

4:28And that's what it felt like. And so there is a part of me that thinks, you know, can you blame Starmer? what a miserable time it would be on the back benches, watching Andy Burnham doing all his stuff. If he says anything that's in any way critical, it will kind of a microscope will be put on him. But he probably feels bitter and resentful and furious at the coup that was led by people he thought he could trust in politics. And it was brutal and it was efficient. And, you know, he doesn't want to be prime minister. On the other hand, I do think there's something about, well, if I can't be prime minister, I'm just going home.

5:06And there is an element of that about announcing so fast that you are standing down because your train set has been taken away from you. And, you know, I'm going to upset it all if I can't play. Look, I think if you want to be charitable, you could look at it the other way, which is Burnham's coming in. Starmer hasn't done anything to disturb the waves in the last two months of summer. He's let him get on with it. He knows that once the Commons restarts, he's either going to be there or else he's not going to be there. And either way, that presents a kind of, you know, sort of a counter focus for the cameras or for the journalists or for our commentary.

5:47Like, oh, what's he saying? If Starmer doesn't attend, is he, you know, is he having a little knock? If he does attend, is he trying to hold? Is he trying to get everyone's attention? If he resigns after Burnham's been in the job a month just before, you know, party conference, is that is that even more sort of injurious? And so I suppose in a way you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. But I wouldn't have thought, we were just sort of calculating looking back, I wouldn't have thought that the one former prime minister still to be in the Commons, essentially a week from now, would be Rishi Sunak.

6:27Everyone else has left or moved to the Lords or Paula's Trust, RIP, failed to win back her seat. And so I guess that it is something none of us could imagine how you carry on being the ex-leader, right? You just, unless you go to the Lords, unless you actually, you know, go and do something sort of, you start your, you know, look at Blair. Blair started his own sort of, you know, the Blair industrial complex essentially, you know, sort of down the road advising every government about everything that they were doing wrong in a, I think he would, he hopes, helpful way. Gordon Brown taken his own charitable work and sort of gone off and done that.

7:08I mean, we think we know, we understand that Starmer wanted to stay very connected to the international stage. He got very warm welcomes at the end from Macron. He got the Medal of Honor. He got very warm sort of salutations from Zelensky in Ukraine. I mean, I do wonder, it was the moment when I saw that video of Burnham landing in Ukraine and managing to borrow the soldier's guitar and start strumming along at the Smith song, where the starman just thought, oh, fuck it. Like, he can even play the Smith song in Ukraine. Like, what's left for me now? You know, is that the moment at which he sort of goes, I think, you know, I've got to get out of here and I've got to sort of forge my own path?

8:00No, I know for a fact that over recent weeks, Starmer has been speaking to people, talking about what comes next, thinking about wanting an international role and getting away from Westminster. I mean, you know, I gather he's told friends that the job he really wants is to be NATO Secretary General. I cannot see that in a month of Sundays, given the outsized role that Donald Trump will play in deciding who the next secretary general is. And given the fact that Starmer, you know, fell out so badly with Trump over what happened in Iran, given the fact that defence spending in the UK, permission to use US bases, you know, it goes on and on and on.

8:39I just cannot see that as a possibility for Starmer. But he has been looking around. He has been talking to people. He has been seeking counsel of, you know, some of the staff that he's worked with about what he could do next, because he clearly doesn't want to stay in politics at Westminster. And as you say, Emily, totally understandable, having kind of had it all stripped away from you. But Keir Starmer was the guy who made the big point about I'm only here in public service. That's the only thing that has ever motivated me. and now he's saying well you know if i can't if i can't have top job i don't want any job and you couldn't you say the same i think well i don't know but i think that keir starmer you know keir starmer used to taunt uh rishi and you talk about rishi sunak rishi sunak loses an election everyone thought he'll be buggering off to california for some big tech job not a bit of it he's absolutely rolled his sleeves turns out that was nick clegg in the end he's the lib dem leader.

9:37Yeah, exactly. So I think that for Keir Starmer to go like this does cut against the grain of some of the way he has sought to present himself. And I think that's true of part of his premiership as well, where he sought to present himself as this sort of decent, honourable leader. And he fired people at a moment's notice without much loyalty to them. And the whole kind of Ollie Robbins thing and his firing from the head of the Foreign Office, I thought, showed a man who wanted to blame everyone else but himself. And now that he's kind of, he thinks, you know, screw it. Now, maybe he needs to earn money, which is something else I've heard, that he doesn't have any personal wealth.

10:16He's got to find a job that will pay him, that can keep him, you know, I'm sure he'll sign a book deal or whatever it will be. But I suspect he's thinking, I've got to secure my future. I also think it's okay. I mean, we are very sort of puritanical about these people in public life. I think it is okay to say he was, you know, director of public prosecutions for what, you know, a decade. He did his public service there. He came in, changed the Labour Party, got elected, landslide, blah, blah, blah, delivered, you know, 400 MPs for the Labour Party. And then, yeah, got told that he wasn't up to the job, got kicked out.

10:54I guess a little bit of you saying, why am I pushing to stay in public service if that's been the message I've received? I think I would understand that. I think if a lot of people have basically said, thanks for everything, but yeah, you're shit, you know, you'd sort of be thinking, well, what's wrong with starting again? What's wrong with starting to think about money and family and the future? And I mean, it's interesting in the statement, we haven't heard from him yet. Again, it's so different, isn't it, in style. We are now used to seeing vertical content from Andy Burnham in a pub, you know, three seconds later.

11:32And there isn't the video. We haven't yet heard that statement. We have obviously got the statement he gave the BBC just two months ago where he said, I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to stay till the next election. But he did say in a sort of written press release that he wanted to continue his work on the international stage. I'm assuming that means defence, security, Ukraine, and also work with women and girls, violence against women and girls. Now, this is something that we assume he took very seriously as director of public prosecution. He worked quite determinedly on that. But it's also the thing, ironically, that obliquely, I guess, brought him down through the Peter Mandelson-Epstein affair.

12:18And so there is still this sort of sense of, well, is he trying to is he trying to rewrite that bit of the narrative? He doesn't want that to be the legacy. Oh, you know, you trusted the guy who was best mates with Epstein. What the fuck's going on there? And so he's actually saying this is something I've got to get back to. Maybe that does sit really deeply on him and maybe he's thinking he can't do that from within the commons. It's probably a bit binary, but there is that always that question about someone. Are they a winner or are they a loser? And with Keir Starmer, I know that he he told a friend of mine recently that he said, you know, I wanted to go into the law and I became head of the Crown Prosecution Service.

12:55I wanted to go into politics and I became the prime minister. So on all those metrics, you say, bloody hell, what a winner. what an astonishing achievement yeah but the pain of having been forced out i mean you know it was just a year ago literally a year ago that keir starmer one year into being prime minister was talking about phase two of the government what they were going to go on to achieve and here we are now talking about how the fact that he's standing down as an mp he's giving up on politics and you think there must be a bit of you that thinks loser failure i haven't i haven't done what I wanted to do.

13:32I haven't achieved what I thought I'd be able to achieve. I think you just put your finger on it. I think the fact that you have to talk about a reset a year ago was maybe the seeds of what has now happened, right? Which is whatever he thought he'd achieved in the first year, it was a year slightly dominated by winter fuel, you know, cut policies, by whether he'd been to Taylor Swift concert without paying for it, by what he was doing with his pairs of glasses and his wife's dresses and all the stuff that, you know, may have been totally peripheral and kind of ludicrous, but somehow took him away from the work that he wanted to do.

14:10So actually, last September was his way of going, right, I think we need to start again. And people who say out loud, I think we need to start again, I think have already admitted that they got off to a bad start, right? Yeah, I think that's true. I suppose we ought to talk a bit about the fact that there will be this by-election now in North London, in Hoban and St Pancras. Count Binface has already come out with a statement saying, bloody hell, on this planet, you can't get a moment's peace. You know, he's just recovering from fighting Clacton. He's now going to have to, you know, rediscover parts of North London.

14:45He probably didn't know that. He only does party leaders now. I mean, wouldn't sort of get out of bed for anything less. But if it's a party leader, I'll fight the by-election. Yeah. So, you know, the Green Party did pretty well in the council elections in May, where they came first or second in most of the wards, which make up the Holborn and St Pancras constituency. And Zach Polanski will be eyeing it. And the Green Party have issued a statement saying, you know, that there's no secret that Zach Polanski has always wanted to become a London MP. And so it would not surprise me if Polanski threw his hat in the ring and tried to recreate a Gorton and Denton where the Green Party obviously won that by-election and seeing if they could do it.

15:30We've got a statement from him and in that sort of slightly typical Polanski way, he actually told La Repubblica, the Italian paper, earlier this year that he would certainly be running in a future London by-election. And what he said at the time was, I live in Hackney, so if it's somewhere around Hackney, Stoke Newington, Hackney South, blah, blah, blah, then I would definitely run. After this announcement, Zach has said, or rather a Green Party official has said, Zach has always made it clear he'd like to be a London MP. London has been his home for over 20 years. I think that leaves you wriggle room.

16:09It's not saying I'm going for it. It's saying don't be surprised if I do, but he's probably weighing up the chances because it should be an easy labour hold. Like in a sort of normal world, that seat should be an easy labour hold, right? Yes. Is he your MP? Yeah. So that's where I live. I mean, I was really struck by how many, you know, this is so unscientific, but I was really struck at the time of the local council. Well, no, how many green posters there were up in people's windows all over the place. And, you know, it's got a very high percentage. It's a very mixed area. I mean, large amounts of public housing and tower blocks kind of, you know, around sort of Euston and St Pancras, all around that area.

16:54But you've also got the very gentrified bits as well of, you know, well-to-do kind of areas. And so it's a very mixed area. But, you know, a high proportion of university graduates, which is where the Green Party does very well. Or do it. I mean, look, it's 11 ,500 majority, right? So it's not nothing. It's quite difficult to overturn unless a party is really on the rise. Now, I think if you go back to the Greens fortunes in sort of February, March with the Gorton and Denton, you'd be like that was peak Green. Yes. I think coming into what will probably be an October by-election, I don't think we're at peak green anymore, do you?

17:39I mean, it's hard to say at this stage, but I think that Labour would feel. And you sense there is momentum. You sense that Labour have got the wind in their sails at the moment and the Greens, much more so than even reform, have had a difficult summer and they don't seem to be getting their mojo back again. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? This is politics, you know. This is the showbiz of politics that you open an episode talking about Keir Starmer and how it's the first time you've mentioned him for, you know, two months since he stopped being prime minister. And within 10 minutes, we're now sort of just weighing up the chance of Greens versus Labour.

18:19And so I guess part of this whole story is what imprint Andy Burnham has left on the party already. And I was saying to the editor this morning, do you remember that year sort of 98, 99? We always like famously in journalism, we call it the sort of the year nothing actually happened. You know, 97 was the big year. Blair got elected. Diana tragically died. You know, Hong Kong was handed back. It was a big year. 2001 was 9-11. And there was that weird period at the very beginning of New Labour where it seemed like the news winds had died and nothing actually happened. And we're very early on in this.

19:02But actually, the stuff that Burnham has done so far is quite difficult to, I mean, it's quite difficult to sort of to find anywhere to start on that. Right. That's the most Emily Maitlis thing I've ever heard. you're already catastrophizing that we're not going to be able to fill the podcast for the next six months. Every time we have thought that our podcast is doomed because politics has got normal and sane now. Something that the news gods have been kind to us. I think that there is still so much for Burnham to do that will be tricky and difficult. I think the budget at the end of October, I think defence spending, I think how you square the...

19:40Of course. No, look, I'm not saying I'm not saying to quote he's the Messiah and I'm not saying this will be a breeze. I'm just saying it's curious how little, you know, sort of genuinely commentators have had to go on. For the past two months, they've kind of gone, oh, it's good now, but it's all going to come crashing down. Oh, it tastes good now, but we're going to have a sugar rush. Oh, I'm not sure about him. He sort of hasn't promised enough yet, but he hasn't not promised enough yet. And you're like, I think you're scraping the barrel a bit, right? And all I guess I'm saying is, I mean, this is a roundabout way of saying he has had a pretty good two months to the point where there has been very, I mean, yes, you can talk about the sentencing and that conundrum.

20:26And I think that is a big one coming at him and the prisons. That's a big one coming at him and the budget. That's a big one coming at him and how he squares defence. These are all big sort of macro issues to tackle. Right. And they go right to the heart of our security and our safety. and all the rest of it. But I think that where he's been really successful so far is in actually showing his workings. He sounded like a human being. He's managed to sort of take things on and say, yeah, this is quite tricky. You're right. And almost invite you in. I mean, we always use that phrase behind the curtain, right?

21:03He's kind of gone, yeah, Jesus, that is hard. Let me kind of go in and think about this. Even, you know, when you guys were talking about the tragic death of Jason Ardek, right? I was really sort of relieved that the first thing that Burnham said was not, you know, outrageous or terrible. He just kind of went, God, there's a lot going on here. And I don't want to jump to, you know, the wrong conclusion too quickly. And actually, that's a really great place, I think, for a politician, for a leader to be. It's sort of like, give me more information. I'm going to take more information. I'm not going to bristle and be really defensive about this.

21:40Let's just try and understand what's going on. And I think that has been quite a good pattern that he's set. Emily, look, you know, you're absolutely right. It's just two months since Andy Burnham took over. It is two months since Keir Starmer said he was going to stay for the rest of the parliament. And so inevitably, on a day when we hear that Keir Starmer is standing down, you compare. And the fact of the matter is that Andy Burnham has handled politics with an agility, an adroitness, a personability. And it's absolutely fair enough to say that we don't know whether this will last and this is the easy period and he hasn't had to face really tough decisions and there's you know an awful budget ahead and all the rest of it all true but from what you've seen so far there is no way that Keir Starmer I don't think could have done what Andy Burnham has done these past two months and you know of course we're right to say caveat it with difficulties ahead, but it's been pretty bloody good so far from Burnham.

22:42And we'll see whether it continues.

23:00Breaking news and our politics lead, a top civilian leader in the Department of Defence, is out. Sources telling CNN Army Secretary Dan Driscoll has submitted his resignation to President Trump. The news first reported by the Wall Street... So we know that Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War, wants things done his way. But six months into the Iran war and all sorts of other issues that have plagued the Pentagon, we heard yesterday that the Secretary of the Army, the most senior civilian figure in the army, who's a political appointee and is very close to J.D. Vance, has just said, you know what, I can't take it any longer.

23:41I can't deal with Hegseth, went and saw Donald Trump and said enough. And the question is, does Donald Trump side with Hegseth, who is very much in Donald Trump's image, or does he take this seriously as a real challenge to the way the Pentagon is being run on the way the war in Iran has been conducted. Yeah. Well, what we're learning from reporting in The Atlantic is that there was a White House meeting last week at which Dan Driscoll basically brought his concerns about Pete Hegseth directly to Trump. I guess that's a sign of just how bad things had got between the two of them, that he sort of goes straight to Trump and says, this is going on and I can't stand it anymore.

24:28And Trump apparently was quite surprised, according to The Atlantic. Driscoll told him how many generals and other top officers had been fired, pushed out or passed over for promotion under Hegseth. You'll remember that Hegseth is the guy who comes in and says, we don't like woke in the army. And whatever that meant to him, the result was he fired a lot of black generals. He fired a lot of women. He fired a lot of, we understand, gay or trans people from the military. He basically made it his job to clear out anyone who didn't sort of pass what he considered to be the alpha male, you know, literally the testosterone test, which is what they started offering.

25:13No, he literally told a whole gathering of generals who'd been brought in from around the world to get rid of their beards and get rid of their paunches and to do more press ups. And, you know, he called them all together to say, you're all a bit fat and I want men who have got rippling biceps if they're going to be generals in our army. Yeah. But the price is that an awful lot of people have gone. There is a severe shortage of munitions as a result of what's happened. And America is in a strategic mess right now over what is happening in the Iran war, which, you know, America has declared victory in so many times.

25:51But is the Strait of Hormuz open? No, no, it's not. It's still absolutely firmly shut. And so what is this victory? And I think that it's costing Donald Trump politically. J.D. Vance, the vice president, who, as we said, was close to Driscoll, was always an opponent of the Iran war. And you just sense that there is a certain amount of positioning going on here now about what the legacy of that bloody war is and what America has done in getting embroiled in it in the first place. But to your point, whose side is Trump going to take in this? Well, Driscoll went to him a week ago, if this reporting is correct, and said, I can't take this anymore.

26:33I'm about to leave. Clearly, nothing came from the president to stop him from going, which is why he's now resigned. And I guess what this does is it basically leaves the army now, but leaves the US military without a top civilian leader. and I think we've got 450 ,000 active duty soldiers around the globe, that's the American military, with fewer generals at any point in its recent history. And so you've basically got somebody saying, whatever the sort of individual politics of it, I don't believe that the people who are fighting this army are safe. I don't believe that the people who are coming to us you know as members of the military are safe because we actually haven't got enough we haven't got enough control we haven't got enough we haven't got enough leadership right and so essentially he says pete hexath has destroyed the military so there was a really interesting lecture uh given by the chairman of the joint chiefs um just the other day talking about what the role of the military is.

27:47And Dan Kane would say, look, what we should be focusing on is what the military can do, not what the military could or should do. The could or should is policy and that is determined by the president and the secretary of defence. What we as the military do is we tell them whether we can. Can we bomb them? Can we take out these targets? Can we do it? Which is a real sort of abdication of responsibility because any senior officer makes it their oath to uphold and protect the Constitution. And you look at what has happened since Donald Trump has become president with these sort of extrajudicial executions, if you like, with these targeting of drug boats off the coast of Venezuela, where boats are just being blown out of the water.