Q&A: Pro-Palestine demos, Starmer's future, and Kemi's irrelevance

20:36Lewis Goodall:So, for example, you know, Farage has specialised for many years now, and particularly recently, in, much like quite a lot of the radical right, in portraying, you know, Britain as lawless, or whether it was saying that Britain is becoming like North Korea, or whether it's saying, like last year, you know, Muslims do not share British values. Whole areas of our towns and cities unrecognisable as being English. I remember during the Brexit campaign, Him accusing Theresa May of an act of appeasement, saying that the deal that she had signed was the sort of deal that you'd get if you'd surrendered to another country in an act of war.

21:13Lewis Goodall:You know, these are big, grand, often dark types of political rhetoric. Now, I'm not saying he's right or wrong to say any of these things. I think quite a few of those things in all sorts of ways are factually wrong. But I think that if you engage and indulge in that sort of politics, and as I say, if you are a politician who paints in primary colours, then you can't complain when someone paints in primary colours about you. look the last general election campaign rishi sunak absolutely screws up by coming back early

21:48Jon Sopel:from the d-day commemorations in normandy and he faced a huge amount of political you know it was disrespectful to the service men and women it was a decision that was put in his diary he didn't really pay enough attention to it he was so preoccupied by fighting an election campaign it was wrong on every single level. But Nigel Farage said it was because he didn't understand our culture.

22:11Lewis Goodall:Really? Our culture? Yeah, and Sunak could have turned around and said, you are putting me at risk by saying something like that. Or Theresa May could have turned around and said, when you accuse me of an act of surrender, you're putting me at risk from like a far right nutcase or whatever it happens to me. So you just want me, like any of these things, unless you are highly calibrated and highly cautious about everything you say politically, which Nigel Farage, whether you love him or you loathe him, he has not been, he is not, and I guarantee he will not be, in which case you really can't turn around and start complaining when others start to have the same approach about you, which is what Starmer did this week, rightly or wrongly.

22:54Jon Sopel:We'll be back after the break, and are Keir Starmer's days numbered?

23:03Jon Sopel:Hello, I'm Mark Urban bringing an emergency episode of the Crisis Room podcast to you in response to the Manchester terror attack. We'll be discussing with co-host Amber Rudd, who was Home Secretary during the Manchester bombing and other terror attacks, how exactly an incident like this will be dealt with from here on.

23:23Lewis Goodall:There are two elements there, aren't there, that the security services will be looking into. Are they part of a network where we can expect follow ups that are planned or is it going to inspire other people to do a similar thing? And I think that what I was told at the time in 2017 was one of the reasons there were so many, only a few that got through, although it felt like, you know, we were under attack for a while in 2017, was because the success of some of those attacks meant that other

23:52Jon Sopel:people were indeed inspired to go forward as well. And that was not just in the UK, but also internationally, particularly in other European capitals. So it was absolutely a series that took place. So that is another important thing that the politicians will be thinking about how they do now. And that is what also the counterterrorism police will be doing, is they will be going in tougher right at the moment to make sure that anybody they've been watching is not actually trying to follow suit and do something like this. So join me, Amber Rad and Mark Polimeropoulos, our other co-host, for everything you need to know about the Manchester terror attack.

24:28Jon Sopel:You can download our podcast on Global Player or all the other places where you normally go for your pods.

24:39Jon Sopel:The News Agents. So Ben Miller on Twitter has got in touch with a very simple and short question. do you think Keir Starmer's days are numbered?

24:51Lewis Goodall:I think that Starmer bought himself some time at Labour Party conference but I don't think he bought himself much time and I think that partly because of the way that he bought himself some time at Labour Party conference i.e. what did Starmer achieve this week? He managed to enhance his position internally within Labour Party he went into that week looking very fragile internally you know Burnham was circling we discussed before about how we didn't necessarily think he was actually a big threat because he's outside parliament But nonetheless, you had loads and loads of questions. Labour Party seemed quite disputatious, not united.

25:20Actually, end of the week, feeling quite good about itself because of the way that Starmer had taken it to Farage personally.

25:27Lewis Goodall:And he tickled the Labour Party's tummy in all kinds of ways, telling it what it wanted to hear, not least on the accusation of racism and so on. And he made it partly because he, I think, had so little else to say about the state of politics right now or what he's going to do in the future. he made it to basically set up the political litmus test to come which is our task where the stakes couldn't be higher his words is to defeat Farage problem with that as an approach it's fine and it tickled the Labour Party tummy in Liverpool and got him out of a bit of a tight spot so it's a good tactical win strategically I think it was disastrous because I think that he's basically there is a contest as he well knows that it's coming up in May in Wales in the Senate elections and to a lesser extent in Holyrood and in English councils, where, in all likelihood, Farage will win.

26:12Lewis Goodall:And Farage could do very well. In fact, Labour could have a catastrophic performance to reform in Wales. And therefore, his opponents within the Labour Party will be able to say, but Prime Minister, you're the one who said the primary political contest of our age was between us and reform. And if we can't win it, the result will be catastrophic. So by your own logic, you failed. And should you not move aside for somebody else? So I think he has a tactical win this week, but I think he has a strategic mistake.

26:38Jon Sopel:In answer to the question, potentially, yes. I mean, potentially his days are numbered because I think that you've got the budget in eight weeks time. If that goes badly, all the questions.

26:49Lewis Goodall:Which he did nothing to prepare the way for, by the way.

26:51Jon Sopel:So, you know, they talked about kind of strong headwinds facing the global economy. Now, I don't think that's enough of a preparation for what may be a really tough budget. Really tough. people thinking crikey i'm a lot worse off now and a lot of unhappiness as a result of it you've got that coming up you know late november and then you've got as you say lewis the you know elections in wales particularly in may the deputy leadership contest before that which again they lose to the yeah yes because that is being seen as a proxy battle of you know do we want to give a yellow card to kia starmer that's the party and i you know there were an awful lot of people in Liverpool this week who were kind of talking about their stuff quite openly which is remarkable because if you look at Labour Party history one there haven't been a huge number of prime ministers and no one has ever been ousted like that I mean Wilson stood down in 76 of his own volition and Callaghan took over but you know the ousting of a sitting prime minister it's something that the Tories have done and they did again and again it's not something that Labour have done Does it solve any problems to kick out your prime minister and bring in another one?

27:59Jon Sopel:I'm not so sure.

28:00Lewis Goodall:I had always been a bit sceptical about the idea of Labour moving on him. For two reasons. One, for the historic reasons you say, John. But also, secondly, because as ever with the Labour Party, everything is ultimately decided by faction. There'll be a big contingent of the Labour Party who would fear that if Starmer were removed, what would replace him? Would it make an opening for the left or the soft left or whoever it happened to be? But with Angela Rayner gone and, you know, Burnham's not in Parliament, is that a risk that elements of the Labour Party might be willing to have? Maybe the result of the deputy leadership contest will be important in that because it will certainly, assuming Lucy Powell wins, that will certainly give an indication of where Labour Party opinion is at and the kind of right of the Labour Party, who are still sort of rallying at least to some extent around Starmer, will fear what might happen.

28:46Lewis Goodall:So I think that is still there. But the other bit about the history, I think, is no longer as germane as it used to be. because you're absolutely right. So many people, I was amazed at Liverpool just how many people were openly talking about this. And someone put it to me, I said to them, yeah, but when the push comes down to it, Labour's gutless, right? And he's like, yeah, this person says to me, yeah, to some extent, but you've got to remember two things. One, the victory was so wide and yet so shallow. There are so many Labour MPs with tiny, tiny majorities. They feel at this point they may have nothing to lose.

29:20Lewis Goodall:Many as well who didn't even expect to be in. And so you've got to remember the extent to which and the fact that, you know, he was never beloved. He never really had a faction of his own to begin with anyway. He's sort of been adopted by one and discarded by the other. So you put those two things together and maybe history isn't quite as good as a guide for the Labour Party. Oh, and the other thing, which is that as well, Labour MPs this time and Starmer again has augmented this sense is like they're not just afraid of the Tories coming back. They're not just afraid of the pendulum swinging against them again.

29:50Lewis Goodall:They're afraid of the whole board being swept away and the duopoly the Labour Tory duopoly which has governed British politics for a century may be being swept away and that fear changes the calculus it potentially makes Labour MPs less risk averse than they would have been before because they think that it's not just a case of having to save the government in their heads or at least quite a lot of their heads it's about saving British democracy.

30:13Jon Sopel:Yeah I just interesting you recounting the conversation you had with the sort of you know Labour figure I spoke to a Labour MP from Scotland who previously before the election had come into Parliament for the first time previously worked in the voluntary sector doesn't think he's going to save his seat at the next election you think I'm going to vote for welfare reform cuts yeah exactly think I'm going to do that when I'm probably going to have to get a job back in the voluntary sector after this election you must be freaking joking and so there's no sense of them feeling, OK, right, we're all in this together.

30:45Jon Sopel:I just don't think that loyalty is there towards him. And I think that could be, you know, potentially very dangerous.

30:52Lewis Goodall:So Sarah on X has a question. Nice to have a vaguely nice comment on X these days. Or just a question, I mean, rather than the... Just abuse. With the Conservative Party conference starting on Monday, oh, actually, well, Sunday, I suppose it would be, I was wondering if you can remember a time when the Tory party felt so irrelevant. Should I do that in one word? I think you can, John. No, no.

31:14Jon Sopel:I mean, you know, I guess the first Tory party conference I went to was in 1989, I think it was. Thatcher was still the prime minister. And even after 97, when Blair has won a landslide election, the Tories still thought they had this pomp. And I mean, they've been eviscerated, but they still felt like they were a big political party. They had been the party of government through most of the 20th century. You know, there was only one leader of the Conservative Party in the 20th century who never became prime minister. And you think, God, this is the party of government, the natural party of government, even after Blair and Brown being in power for those 11 years.

31:56Jon Sopel:And yet today, the Conservative Party looks lost, bewildered, a rump that is going nowhere.

32:04Lewis Goodall:Although maybe going somewhere, i.e. to even greater relevance. Yeah, I mean, I find it difficult to kind of compute as well. I mean, I always felt in the run-up to the election, I remember us talking about, and there were a lot of questions when we were doing things like this about, you know, might the Tory party become extinct? I remember saying and certainly writing and thinking at the time, like, I can see they're going to do really badly, which they did. But sort of in my bones, I just sort of felt like it's a Tory party, right? They've got deep roots. they are basically the party of the state historically in Britain.

32:34Lewis Goodall:You know, they're in power far more often than anybody else. They've written off so many times, you know, at the start of mass democracy, you'd have thought it was going to be the Conservative Party, which disintegrated. Instead, it was the party which came to dominate, you know, all of those sorts of things. But I sort of now, and indeed it was sort of borne out because, of course, they didn't die. They got 120 seats, worst result ever, but still, you know, still a presence in Parliament. I don't think that now. Like, I don't feel it feels as if, you know, even since the election, which, as I say, was their worst defeat by far ever, they have continued to decline both in terms of the sentiment of the public, but also in terms of their own coherence and their own relevance.

33:12Lewis Goodall:And obviously, Farage is, you know, the sort of primary motivator of that. But clearly, you know, Kemi Badenok, who has now been leader for a year or so, just under a year, you know, has clearly it's always going to be so difficult for a leader of the opposition when they've just been ejected from government, let alone a defeat like that. William Hague, you know, said in retrospect about his period after 97, you know, someone had to do the night shift. And, you know, she is having, you know, I mean, and she has got a hell of a night shift right now. But I still do think that she is she has been doing things and saying things and acting in such a way that she doesn't help herself.

33:48Lewis Goodall:I mean, you know, this is a woman who, of course, famously said that she never makes mistakes and she never has to go back on what she says and correct it because she she never makes mistakes. I mean, tell that to Northern Ireland. She's an interviewer of the BBC Northern Ireland in the last day or so. This is what she said about how Northern Ireland voted in the Brexit referendum campaign.

34:06Jon Sopel:Last time I checked, Northern Ireland did vote to leave. Northern Ireland didn't vote to leave. Northern Ireland voted to remain. Scotland voted to remain. So did Northern Ireland. Yes, Scotland voted to remain. A lot of people in Northern Ireland voted to remain. You're right. But Wales and England voted to leave. Overall, we had 52 % of people voting to leave. The United Kingdom voted to leave.

34:29Lewis Goodall:Not that sure of her facts. No. And the other thing is, I mean, I suspect the Tory party, you know, obviously, it's going to be meeting in Manchester. from Sunday, she said, I think in another interview, and she's quite straight talking, so fair play to her in a way, but she said she described the Tory party right now as a distressed asset, you know, sort of financial, commercial term. And I don't know if that was very wise. In a sense, I don't know if the Tory party would like that very much. I think that kind of it has the feel to me of a little bit of the kind of like Theresa May nasty party thing, the sort of thing that kind of might become a bit of an albatross around her neck that the Tory party doesn't like and didn't like.

35:06Lewis Goodall:In a way, she's the victim not only of Farage's success, but also of Labour strategy as well, in the sense that Starmer is the one. And again, I don't know how wise this is for Labour long term, but Starmer made a decision a while ago to basically start talking about reform as the main opposition. He is almost encouraging conservative voters or centre-right voters to coalesce around reform. We've discussed before about whether that's very wise or not. It's a cliche time, we don't know. You know, I can see why Starmer's done it, but I think it's fraught with risks. But either way, she's caught and they're caught in that pincer between the two.

35:37Lewis Goodall:And it is nightmarish.

35:38Jon Sopel:I suppose all I would say is a sort of, you know, having said, I've never known a moment where the Tories are so irrelevant. I would go back, you know, twice in my lifetime when the Labour Party has been told it's finished. And 81, you know, the formation of the STP, the Gang of Four, etc, etc. And there were an awful lot of very sage commentators saying Labour Party is finished. It can't recover from this. It's over. and then again you know when corbyn became the leader and you know after 2019 and the defeat of and people saying the labour party's finished and so you never really know in politics you can't see that far into the future but i have never known a time when the tory party has felt so irrelevant

36:19Lewis Goodall:they still have their best hope and this is what's actually difficult for badenark is that you know obviously their best hope is that labour continues to have its own problems obviously any opposition party wants that from a government but also that you know reform actually act upon their tremendous capacity to implode because if they do then there still is only really sort of one game in town right for the centre right for the right-wing vote in britain which has been the historically speaking since the start of mass democracy in this country that has been their great asset that you know the right-wing vote in britain historically has not been split and the centre-left vote if you want to say that broadly constituted has been between the Liberal Party, like Lib Dems, and the Labour Party.

37:01Lewis Goodall:If they do end up dying, what an extraordinary tale for historians to write about, that this is a story which sort of starts in the late 90s with the, in the early 90s, with the sort of start of Euroscepticism. Farage comes in, and you have Tory leader after Tory leader after Tory leader, who basically move in all sorts of ways closer and closer to Farage's positions. Farage from the outside remakes the Conservative Party, and in the end he swallows them whole.

37:26Jon Sopel:And we've now got a question from John S, who's sitting about six feet away from Lewis Goodall. So this is my question to you. I've seen you popping up on various radio stations over the past 24 hours to promote your new podcast, coining it. What the hell is it? Well, with an introduction like that. Well, that's the treatment I got with Strangeland.

37:50Lewis Goodall:You know what it is, John? It's what our editor calls your little vanity project. and again with such collegiate support on the news agency we are a band of brothers. I know, I know so this is a new podcast series, limited series I've been working on here at Global and it has been, it's basically telling the story of, I mean this is an extraordinary tale really, of a Blackpool Bitcoin millionaire and it's a story that basically goes back to the start of the kind of crypto revolution, the thing that's sort of interested me about it is that it's both kind of a sort of true crime story which is really interesting and as we know do very very well on podcasts, but also it's really, really political because it basically tells the story of this guy's quite an odd guy who was sort of living in a bedsit in Blackpool, not very well on benefits, no life, no prospects, whatever.

38:38Lewis Goodall:He's doing these silly little Bitcoin games online where he gets a fragment of a Bitcoin for completing a puzzle or whatever it happens to be. And long story short, he basically discovers, stumbles upon, alights upon a glitch in this website where he can basically make as many bitcoin as he wants for himself so he literally has a license to print money and the story is about what happens to him the fact that perhaps very unwisely he decides to tell all of his friends about it and this little real band of brothers go on this extraordinary crypto caper including to dubai and elsewhere cashing in on this and trying to protect what they've won but also it's really political the thing as i say that interest to me about it is, of course, because we know, we've talked about on the show before, how many people have made a lot of money from crypto, up to and including the President of the United States, in quite a dodgy way.

39:28Lewis Goodall:And most of the time, because it's unregulated and whatever, and the jurisdiction is shared between states, very few people are ever punished, or we don't ask too many questions about how they made it. But in these people's case, all of whom really poor, desperately poor, basically no life whatsoever, they basically feel like they've stumbled upon a massive lottery win and there's a sort of moral and political question as to they ended up getting punished without sort of spoiling the story entirely they ended up getting punished but very few other people do and whether you would do if you were in that situation whether you would do what they did which is keep pressing the button Fascinating

40:01Jon Sopel:Well that's Coining It which is available on the free Global Player app and wherever else you get your podcasts We'll be back in just a moment

40:13Jon Sopel:Stay across the latest news breaking stories and respected opinions by listening to LBC. From award-winning internationally respected journalists. Good morning, I'm Nick Ferrari. James O 'Brien on LBC.

40:26Lewis Goodall:Good afternoon, I'm Sheila Fogarty. Very good afternoon to you.

40:28Jon Sopel:Tom Swarbrick with you here.

40:29Lewis Goodall:Hello, this is Andrew Marr. Hello, you're listening to Sunday with me, Lewis Goodall. Find out what the story means for you.

40:36Jon Sopel:Listen on your radio on Global Player and our free LBC app.

40:40Lewis Goodall:LBC, leading Britain's conversation.

40:47Jon Sopel:The News Agents.

40:48Lewis Goodall:Well, it's been a very special day here at Global Towers and News Agents HQ, not least because of my special appearance with Chris Moyles. Which, obviously, go down in history. About coining it, which does sound like an ITV game show. I mean, let's be honest, I wish it were, but never mind, still available. But it's also a special day because we've had, in the building, one Taylor Swift, because, of course, she's releasing her new album. I don't think either of us are Swifties in a way that Emily Maitlis is, but this does give us an opportunity to take you back to 2009, when she was interviewed by a young-ish John Sopel.

41:27Jon Sopel:I love it here. The fans have been so amazing showing up, you know, wherever we go and bringing new presents and stuff like that. It's been so cool, and I especially love it because they all pronounce my name Tayla here. Oh, yes, okay. Oh, I'm used to hearing it. Tyler. That's how I'm used to hearing it. Oh, really? You know, when they're outside the radio stations chanting, they're like, Taylor. And it's so pretty. I saw it written down as country crossover, which sounds like a sport that you do in the Winter Olympics. But, I mean, you're not from sort of the deep south, which is where you think of the country music coming from.

42:04Jon Sopel:I actually grew up on a Christmas tree farm. So I got the brief the night before I was going to be doing that interview. I was presenting Breakfast TV with Louise Minchin. at the time. And I thought, oh, God, what's all this about? This is all nonsense. She's nobody. She'll be here today, gone tomorrow. Won't pay this much attention. Famous Sopel political instinct kicking it again. What instinct? What a great gun I've got, honestly. There we are.

42:23Lewis Goodall:Whatever happened to her? Whatever happened to John Sopel, for Christ's sake? Yeah, well, wasn't even the biggest interview on the global radio station this morning, was it? We'll be back on Monday. Bye. Bye-bye.

42:38Jon Sopel:This is a Global Player original podcast.