Has Starmer become the problem he promised to fix?

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0:33This is a Global Player original podcast. Here Starmer, not exactly denying the story, but then he kind of thought, jeez, I've just had two weeks of really crappy headlines for apologising. I'm not going to be doing apologising much more. I never turn on my staff and you should never turn on your staff. Starmer was a very different man six years ago. We're in government. Shit, mistakes happen. It's a kind of nightmare trying to keep all the plates spinning. I had 8 ,000 staff for five years as the director of public prosecutions. And I acted, I hope, in the right way with them, which is when they had victories, I celebrated on their behalf.

1:10I picked up awards on their behalves. And when they made mistakes, I carried the can. I never turn on my staff and you should never turn on your staff. Well, what a difference six years makes. That was Keir Starmer in 2020. In 2026, it all looks like it's been a bit of a bloodbath. Four comms directors, two chiefs of staff, two cabinet secretaries and one top civil servant. Is it still everyone else's fault? Welcome to The News Agents.

1:51The News Agents. It's John. It's Maitlis. And at Prime Minister's questions today, huge amount of anticipation that this could be the final act in which Keir Starmer is brought down by Kemi Baden-Ock in a kind of grand ritual bloodletting in the House of Commons. It didn't quite work out like that because Kemi Baden-Ock tried to be loyally. But how do you outlaw a lawyer? And so Keir Starmer probably came away from the Prime Minister's questions today feeling on a slightly firmer footing than he had done yesterday after Ollie Robbins took issue with so much of what the Prime Minister had said.

2:39Yeah, first out of the traps, almost before the real debate, the real Prime Minister's questions had started, came a Conservative MP who stood up and went to the heart of really the big question that hung over Olly Robbins' testimony yesterday. He asked about, drumroll, Matthew Doyle. Can the Prime Minister deny that Downing Street considered appointing Matthew Doyle to a diplomatic position? Prime Minister. Mr Speaker, Matthew Doyle worked for many years in public service. For me as Prime Minister and other ministers, when people leave roles in any organisation, they're often conversations about other roles they want to apply for.

3:21But nothing came of this. So there you have Keir Starmer not exactly denying the story, which is something that everyone has been trying to get to the bottom of since, you know, Ollie Robbins kind of dropped that bombshell, that kind of hand grenade into his evidence. Oh, yeah. No, it wasn't just Mandelson. There was, you know, this guy, Matthew Doyle, who the number 10 was trying to get into an ambassador's position. And it is extraordinary that there is somebody who has had no diplomatic experience, no particular past in diplomacy. And yet Starmer wants to get him out of number 10. And so maybe we can find him a Kushti nice ambassadorship somewhere else.

4:03And I think that this question of what Starmer was doing about Matthew Doyle, we still haven't really got to the bottom of. And you've just listened to Pat McFadden, the pension secretary on Sky News this morning with Sophie Ridge. And boy, is he evasive. I just wanted to start with something that we learned yesterday. Ollie Robbins claimed that Number 10 pushed for an ambassadorship for Matthew Doyle, former Director of Communications, now suspended Labour peer. Is that true? It's the first I'd heard of it yesterday. I don't know what conversations took place between Number 10 and the Foreign Office about that, but it didn't come to anything and I don't think Matthew had the experience to become an ambassador.

4:54So I don't know what, you know, if he was about to leave number 10, what conversations were taking place? I mean, you know you're doing the interview today. You must have asked them. Did it happen? Well, I don't know. The implication is that it was Keir Starmer, right, that he asked, he was like, right, let's get this guy a nice poster. Look, it's not unusual if someone's leaving to say, what do you want to do next? Quite what he was asked, what he wanted to do next, I don't know. I'm really sorry. Normally, I'm quite forgiving when people say, I don't know. In this situation, when it was this time, well, yesterday morning, you must have asked the question.

5:34Or if you didn't ask the question, it's because you wanted to come in here and say, I'm really sorry, I don't know. I don't accept that. I always try to prepare. So what did you do? Did you ask number 10 what happened? The important point for me is no appointment was made. No, sorry, this is an important point for me. Did you ask number 10 what happened? So I'm told no appointment was made. That's the right decision. We know no appointment was made. Did you ask number 10 if it is true that Keir Starmer asked for an ambassadorship for Matthew Doyle? Did you ask the question? I don't think he would have been right for such a post.

6:05I think it's right that no appointment was made. I don't know what conversations were held with Matthew. Did you ask the question? What question? Did you ask number 10 if it's true Keir Starmer asked for an ambassadorship for Matthew Doyle? Did you ask that question? I don't think Keir Starmer would have asked for this. I don't know what conversation. Did you ask the question? It's a really simple, you know the answer to that question. Did you ask the question? I have not asked if Keir Starmer asked this. OK. It's a really uncomfortable listen, really uncomfortable watch that because what Pat McFadden and indeed what Keir Starmer fall back on is the fact that he wasn't given the job.

6:45Exactly. And that is a ridiculous excuse. The fact that what they asked for didn't quite come off. As it happens, Matthew Doyle went into the House of Lords. So, you know, presumably there will be a certain amount of discomfort, has been a certain amount of discomfort around that whole appointment too. But the fact that Pat McFadden, who is really one of the old timers of Labour, one of the closest loyalists to Keir Starmer, not one of those whose names appears to be in the ring, you know, as a putative leader in any shape or form. The fact that he can't even find his way to saying whether he approached Keir Starmer to ask that or whether he left it.

7:33He's all he's doing is just avoiding it. And it's and it's and it's kind of cringe. It's the ignorance is bliss strategy, isn't it? I don't you know, I mean, in the end, he more says, no, I didn't. I didn't check with Downing Street. And that is kind of unforgivable because surely, you know, that's one of the first questions that any interviewer is going to ask well the reason you choose ignorance obviously is because you don't want to have to say what you know exactly so you say oh i i only heard about this yesterday it's news to me i mean i didn't really know and i i don't know any more about it and you think no no i'm sorry that doesn't wash and the fact of the matter is it looks that the only reason that nothing came of it was because of sir ollie robin in saying, I'm sorry, if we're making cuts, we're not going to appoint another politician to an ambassadorial role when there are plenty of well-qualified people within the Foreign Office and it is normal for them to be the ones who get appointed to ambassadorial roles.

8:34And so, no, I'm afraid I'm uncomfortable with this. It ain't going to happen. That's why Matthew Doyle is not now a serving ambassador somewhere around the world. And as we found out last night, never even knew this conversation was going on around him. And Kemi Badenok decides that she is going to press the matter home. She raises the question, not just of Matthew Doyle and the putative ambassadorial role, but in how it looks. From a woman to a guy looking in on that cosy little club. This is a joke. He says a member of the House of Lords, does he mean people like Matthew Doyle? I'm amazed, I'm amazed.

9:17I am amazed at the level of chuntering from Labour MPs. He promised them probity. What he's given them is cronyism and an old boys club where Matthew Doyle is being proposed as an ambassador. Ridiculous. It's ridiculous. Mr Speaker, we all heard Sir Ollie Robbins' testimony yesterday. The head of the Foreign Office was sacked for the Prime Minister's own failings. His backbenchers know that is not fair. Even his most loyal cabinet members won't defend it. The Prime Minister did not follow the process the Cabinet Secretary set out in November 2024. He knows he did not follow due process, yet he told the House he had.

10:07Mr Speaker, I cannot accuse the Prime Minister of deliberately misleading the House, But everyone can see what has happened here. This was not due process. Everyone knows the price of misleading the House. Will the Prime Minister finally take responsibility and go? Mr Speaker, let's be absolutely clear. Before Mandelson took up his post, UKSV recommended with red flags that clearance should be denied and there was high concern. that that was not brought to my attention or the attention of the Foreign Secretary at the time or subsequently is a very serious error of judgment. And anyone in my position would have lost confidence in the former Permanent Secretary.

10:57But, Mr Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition claimed on Friday that Mandelson could not have been cleared against security advice. She was wrong about that. She said that Ministers must have been told. She was wrong about that. She claimed there was deliberate dishonesty. She was wrong about that. Wrong, wrong, wrong. She rushed to judgment as she always did, just like the Iran war. And it's fair to say, and we have been really critical of Keir Starmer and his role in the firing of Ollie Robbins on this podcast. But it's also true that Kemi Badenok did come out of the traps very fast on Friday to say that essentially Keir Starmer was lying and Olly Robbins evidence yesterday does not prove that.

11:44And so Kemi Badenock has had to row back slightly from where she was. I'm told that and I know that senior Tories think the same and people that have been quite close to her over this, that she went too fast on Friday. The other thing that someone else has said to her about, you know, how she handled Starmer is go for a leg shot. Don't go for the kill shot. You know, just keep him wounded. Just keep him wounded and bleeding and kind of walking through the forest slowly and lamely. Don't kill him off because we don't want a new prime minister. I think that's so interesting. And I think this goes to the heart of actually what went wrong for her today when we thought it would all be the injuries on his side.

12:29Because he does manage to thread the needle. Now, admittedly, there is a bit of a whole zigzag going on. You've got to follow it quite closely. But he maintains his line, which was the vetting process was done thoroughly. In other words, he didn't mislead Parliament. That the reason he fired Ollie Robbins was not because of the vetting process, but simply because he was not told about the red flags. And so you have got somebody who is still in the job because technically nothing they have said has been proved to be an outright lie to the commons or to the public. So it kind of holds together. I mean, there are also questions.

13:13Just. That's my point. Just. So I think the questions I would still have, and some of this goes back to the Robbins testimony, is we talked about the traffic light form where it was clear that the vetting provider, the vetting service, had put this big red tick in the box. The big red tick means danger, you know, basically do not give him clearance. Ollie Robbins said he didn't see that form. So who is the form for? If it's not for the person making the decision and it's not for the prime minister, who sees the form? Now, this morning, I've asked that question to about three people, you know, in or around the vetting procedure in the civil service.

13:51And I haven't yet had an answer. But there is that, you know, if you look closely, there is a gap between why did they put the red box and not tell him? Why did he say he'd never seen the piece of paper in which they are clearly saying red means danger? and so I guess that also helps Keir Starmer a little bit say well it was kind of weird if you step back it was weird I didn't know about that whole situation and she has gone too far because she as you would say went straight for the jugular instead of the leg yeah she just accused him of being a liar so so I think that you know unanswered questions I think there are two for me that if I was had Keir Starmer in the studio now which I think is unlikely he's going to be here anytime time soon but number one why did you ignore the advice of simon case to get vetting done beforehand she didn't really go which she didn't really go after and two was it you who said to the foreign office get matthew doyle an ambassadorial role because again i think it's from the horse's mouth yeah i you you you want to know that so i think that in a sense what we've got to now is a bit of a stalemate that you know starmer as you say emily has threaded the needle in a very zigzaggy way and it just about holds together as an explanation the more interesting part is what it says about Keir Starmer's character and the fact that you know going back to that what you said at the very top of the podcast about the number of cabinet secretaries that have gone the number of press secretaries that have gone the number of chiefs of staff that have gone that mistakes everyone else carries the can and the only thing that attaches to him is a bit of an opinion poll blip, but he doesn't take much responsibility.

15:35I was told a really interesting story about how after Keir Starmer had made the island of strangers speech. These rules become even more important. Without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together. So when you have an immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse, that encourages some businesses to bring in lower paid workers rather than invest in our young people, or simply one that is sold by politicians to the British people on an entirely false premise, then you're not championing growth, you're not championing justice, or however else people defend the status quo.

16:24you're actually contributing to the forces that are slowly pulling our country apart so yes i believe in this i believe we need to reduce immigration significantly but then he kind of thought geez i've just had two weeks of really crappy headlines for apologizing i'm not going to be doing apologizing much more and so his first instinct is to blame someone else and you know So on a Thursday night, Thursday afternoon, Pippa Skrira gets the story about the failed vetting. That evening, Ollie Robbins fired straight out the Foreign Office. I mean, it does look like it's a, you know, a summary execution.

17:04Look, I think you've said something that we should sort of dwell on a little bit, actually, which is the difficulty of the political apology in actually making the story go away. because there is a certain hypocrisy. And I think it comes from the press. It comes from us. It comes from the public. You know, we're always braying for apologies, right? We're always braying for an apology to clear the air, to allow things to move on, to get closure. And then, I mean, if you look at Nick Clegg all those years ago over tuition fees, he did not make things better with that apology. He just became the centre of so much hatred, particularly amongst the young, understandably, for what he then did and for how he'd apologised and for basically saying, yeah, you know, actually I caved in to my master's, the Tories.

17:54And I don't think he ever recovered from that. And I don't want that to be the narrative, but I can see how Starmer was a very different man six years ago. I mean, you can see it in his face. When he stood up and said as Director of Public Prosecutions, I had 8 ,000 members of staff and I carried the can. You know, there's a sort of Robin Williams. You know, there's a sort of, you know, Captain, my captain. There's a sort of heroism to this sort of fresh face. The dead poet society who's sort of fresh faced and wants to be not just the leader, but the sort of the inspiration for his team. And I guess you could say, Jesus, is that what power does to you?

18:37That suddenly you're in this position. You're never going to get it again. And all you're doing, the fingernails are out and you're just clinging on for dear life. Yeah. And of course, you know, you can go down that route and, you know, never complain, never explain, never apologise. Which was the Boris Johnson. Yeah. But also the person that par excellence who does that is Donald Trump. You know, he never apologises for anything. You just be shameless about it. You carry out the firing. Tough. I'm a tough boss. And this is what happens. But that is not how Keir Starmer presented himself. And that is why it was kind of relevant to play that clip at the top of the podcast, because he was going to say, I'll be the one who carries the can.

19:15You've discovered in Downing Street, it does you no good to carry the can. And so you're always looking for someone else to blame. And I just think that, you know, you compare it to Blair when he was Prime Minister. And Blair was Prime Minister for 10 years. He had one chief of staff that whole time. He had two press secretaries in 10 years, Alistair Campbell and David Hill. He just, you know, he wasn't getting through cabinet secretaries. and I think it does show something about the brittleness of Keir Starmer's personality that when something goes wrong he doesn't say okay yeah of course look we're in government shit mistakes happen it's a kind of nightmare trying to keep all the plates spinning he looks for a scalp and I think that that you know more than whether there was evidence that he deliberately misled the house that is what sticks from this whole episode and it's really bad for him I mean And funnily enough, even in the Island of Strangers example that you gave, he did say he made a mistake, but then he actually blamed his speechwriter and said, oh, I didn't read the copy.

20:18Now, how lucky are you that you have a speechwriter? Is it so much to ask that you read what they wrote first? Right. So, yeah, I guess that is the thing that is that kind of sticks in the crawl, because as Kemi Badenock points out, it was about the probity. wasn't it? It was about a kind of spring clean, a cleansing of politics. And I think it's quite hard to make the argument that Boris Johnson wasn't a pretty malign influence on politics and on virtually everyone he touched. And people knew that. They said, he's a rogue, he's a wrong one, but you know, he's our wrong one. He'll get it done.

21:02He'll get the thing. You know, he'll push it forward and he'll sort of make everyone feel good about Britain along the way. And the point about Starmer was that he said, I'm serious. I'm going to come to you with some home truths about the state of our economy. But, you know, just trust me on this one. I will clean up politics and I will get it done. And that is the disappointing thing, right? That That is the character. That's the point that you just don't want your leaders to be blamers. Exactly. We knew that Johnson was a cad and a bounder, to use very Johnsonian language about him. We thought Keir Starmer would be a straight shooter, maybe a little bit dull, but absolutely correct and proper.

21:48We said dull is fine. We said forensic is good. Actually, clearly not that forensic. Yeah. And also we thought that, you know what, saying that these problems are complicated and they'll take time to get right. That's so much better than a populist message that Johnson had with his oven ready deals and that everything was going to be instant and fabulous. All good. But he's fallen short on the standards that he set himself. And that is why I think this episode is so damaging for Starmer.

22:23from a range of trusted voices and award-winning journalists good morning i'm nick ferrari it's time to get to your calls find out the latest news and hear every side of the story there is also a judgment i made that was wrong i should not have appointed peter mandelson and i apologize again to the victims of the pedophile jeffrey epstein who were clearly failed by my decision The pendulum has become turbocharged over the last few days, swinging hither and thither with gay abandon. So where is it now regarding the Prime Minister? Listen on our free Global Player app or the LBC app. LBC, leading Britain's conversation.

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23:38so today was the day when the ceasefire fragile ceasefire was due to end between Iran and the United States and Israel and yesterday Donald Trump was promising that the US military was raring to go and was ready to start bombing again and then oops a climb down Donald Trump suddenly says yep uh ceasefire will go on for an indeterminate time on the back of what nothing and you kind of think god who has blinked first here is it Iran or is it the United States of America it's quite clearly the United States of America and the fig leaf the fig leaf that Donald Trump has given himself is that, well, the Pakistani prime minister and the Pakistanis integral to the negotiations asked me to.

24:34Oh, so if the Pakistani prime minister asks you to, you know, lengthen the ceasefire, you're fine with that. Well, it seems the answer is yes. We remember what happened last time the Pakistani prime minister asked something. We actually found that he'd been sent a draft email, which he copied and pasted wholesale. Look, I think if you break it down, if you look at it quite closely, Trump had three options, two of which weren't real options. So the first option is he threatens to bomb Iran, and he has to bomb Iran. He doesn't really want to bomb Iran, because bombing Iran takes you backwards, makes the Strait of Hormuz even further away, and actually means that Iran carries on bombing, if not you, then at least all your allies in the Gulf.

25:15So he doesn't really want to bomb Iran. The second thing he does is he sends J.D. Vance, right? But America is quite far from Pakistan. So by the time he's got J.D. Vance on a plane and the Iranians go, no, thanks, we're not turning up. That's humiliating. That's really embarrassing. J.D. Vance doesn't want to arrive in Pakistan. He doesn't want to be there seeming all keen and ready to go. And the Iranians kind of go, we're not quite there yet. So we can't really do that. So I guess with the limited time he had, he had to say, yes, there is going to be a ceasefire. So the trouble is that the Iranians don't really believe Trump when he says there's going to be a ceasefire because he said it before and he's normally got a bomb in his back pocket.

25:58Right. So so Iran sitting there going, well, OK, yeah, you're just playing for time now. You say there's going to be a ceasefire before you sort of pull back the catapult and fire us Again, and actually to that point, Iran has now attacked three ships in the Strait of Hormuz within the last few hours. The IRGC saying that they have attacked a Greek owned ship named Euphoria, stranded on the coast of Iran. Two of the ships seized and now they're being escorted to Iran. So, yeah, it looks like Iran isn't behaving as if it's a ceasefire. They don't trust America. And America is basically playing for time because it's run out of time and doesn't actually want to start bombing.

26:44It doesn't want to start bombing. It wants to get gas prices down as quickly as possible. When I say gas, I mean, you know, petrol at the pumps for Americans because Donald Trump is being hit really hard in popularity terms because of that. So he doesn't want to start bombing and he doesn't know what else to do. And so, you know, he's posted kind of eight hours ago. Iran is collapsing financially. They want the Strait of Hormuz opened immediately, starving for cash, losing five hundred million dollars a day, military and police complaining that they're not getting paid. S.O.S. You think, OK, yeah, but there's no evidence of that, Mr.

27:18Trump. They're Mr. President. There is no evidence because what is Iran doing? as you have just listed there, Emily, they're still firing on ships. I think Iran thinks that it's got America on the run here because they know that they have got patience and time on their side. And they also know that Donald Trump hasn't, that he wants a way out of this diplomatically as fast as humanly possible so that prices start to come down. The Strait of Hormuz fully reopens. And it looks like there is no negotiation. You know, J.D. Vance is not in Islamabad yet. Look, I think the days of us talking about foreign affairs versus domestic affairs are done.

28:00Because today, what do we learn? That inflation has gone up to 3.3 percent. It's started to climb. And this means that everything that is happening in Iran is actually directly being felt right here, right now. It's not sometime in the future anymore. It's with us already. So London is today hosting, I think, 30 different countries, military planners to try and work out how they get the Strait of Hormuz opened. And I think it's important to notice that this is about strategy. You know, it's not, as previously discussed, about military efforts. It's not about defence. It's not about offence. It's saying, let's get the best military minds here and let's try and work out the plan.

28:44Last week, we saw Starmer with Macron at the Elysee Palace in Paris. And it looks like the UK and France are still leading this mission, but they're trying to get a lot of other voices here. And they're basically saying, I mean, this is John Healy, the Defence Secretary, saying participants would try and translate diplomatic consensus into a joint plan to safeguard freedom of navigation. It's not really clear, though, whether they're trying to convince Iran or America at this point. Well, look, the one thing, look, it's great that people are coming together to talk about what happens, but this is not going to happen tomorrow.

29:23This is for when a ceasefire or a deal is agreed between Iran and America. And then, you know, Britain, I'm sure, will send forces, the French will send forces to the Strait Reformers to enforce the freedom of shipping if that is what has been agreed. But you need to get that agreement in place first. There was this whole long discussion we used to have about Donald Trump, whether, you know, the trouble is that journalists took him literally and not seriously, whereas the American public took him seriously, but not literally. and you've got to take Donald Trump seriously. It's neither. At the moment, Donald Trump is contradicting himself and tripping himself up on a daily basis over what he's saying.