Q&A: The case for Keir, 2026 elections, and is Britain ungovernable?

20:00Jon Sopel:It goes on and on. Bitcoin. Crypto. It just goes on.

20:05Lewis Goodall:Yeah, I mean, think about just the impact, you know, one House committee, admittedly on a very, very high profile subject in the form of Jeffrey Epstein, has had on world news throughout the course of the year. And, you know, U.S. House committees, they sound boring and tedious, but they can because they have this extraordinary power under the U.S. Constitution. And that's why Trump, as I say, has been gerrymandering. Of course, I'm most looking forward to, Josh. I'm sure you will be. Oh, come on, come on. Well, we've got the Cook Islands general election coming up. Oh, I knew it. I was thinking the Solomon Islands must be doing an election.

20:34Lewis Goodall:Cook Islands coming up. Big rematch, I think, between the Cook Islands party, imaginatively named, and the Democratic Party. And, of course, Cook Islands United, who probably beat them 3-2. Yeah, beat them 3-2. Do you want to have a little bit of trivia, John? The Cook Islands party, which, of course, you'll be aware, emerged victorious in the 2022 Cook Islands general election, winning 12 seats plus two. They got 44 % of the vote. How many votes do you think that was? Oh, 44 % of the vote on the Cook Islands. 2 ,742. Oh, you've just lost out on a free deployment to the Cook Islands, which I'm surprised, frankly, you have not already pitched for at some point over the course of this year.

21:10Lewis Goodall:No, it's 3 ,890. So the Cook Islands party will obviously be doing their best nationalist nationalist party, of course. They'll be looking to try and defend as many of those.

21:19Jon Sopel:You know how there's that description of journalists as wide, shallow pools who know a little bit about a huge number of subjects. And as soon as you said the Cook Islands, I thought Cook Islands. I know absolutely sod all about anything to do with the Cook Islands.

21:32Lewis Goodall:Well, if you're listening from the Cook Islands, do send John a note with some interesting tidbits. And who knows, some stories that he may or may not be able to cover from the Cook Islands through the course of 2026. We'll be back just after this.

21:48Jon Sopel:News you can trust and the conversations that matter.

21:51Lewis Goodall:With award-winning journalists at the heart of the stories from the UK and around the world. Breaking news here in Edinburgh.

21:57Jon Sopel:I'm Simon Marks. My American Week is next. Reporting from the heart of Cardiff. Discover how today's story affects your life. Listen on our free Global Player app or the new LBC app. LBC, leading Britain's conversation.

22:17Jon Sopel:The News Agents. Let's have this voice note from Paul in Cambridge. Hello. My question is a simple one. Has Britain become ungovernable? has the rise of rage-baiting social media algorithms coupled with what is probably a genuine seemingly inexorable national decline ensured that no government will ever command the support of the majority of the electorate again have we essentially moved into a post-governance era i'd be fascinated to know your thoughts many thanks so i kind of think that obviously governing has become immensely more difficult because I think you've alluded to it Paul in your question about some of the toxic currents that are there that make it so difficult to govern but I still think that there is respect for law and order in this country it's not an anarcho state where you can't get anything done and I still think that there is a process by which laws are being made I agree with you.

23:23Jon Sopel:I think governing has become immeasurably more difficult. And I think the level of cynicism and the lack of trust that we have in politics and politicians. And that's not just new to Keir Starmer. It was there during the Johnson years, made worse during the Johnson years. You know, arguably goes back to 2008 and the financial crash and people feeling that, God, politics is not working for me. so I think it's got a long history and I do think it's getting worse but I'm not ready for the Council of Despair yet

23:55Lewis Goodall:yeah I think it's a really intriguing question and I think one that we should grapple with more because particularly the way that we do journalism in this country and anywhere really it's natural that we get distracted by the sort of day to day there's a sort of strain of thought which is like god our politicians are just so useless why are they so useless and we just go from personality to personality and we hope we'll just get new personalities in different departments or in different bits of government and we'll think, oh, well, that'll solve it. And yet it doesn't. And I think we have had too many, quote-unquote, failed prime ministers now to just sort of go, God, these were just really useless people, right?

24:29Lewis Goodall:Or we've had so many sort of, quote-unquote, useless ministers who just go, right, this was supposed to be about the quality of our politicians. Something must have happened, either with the British state itself or with finding itself incapable of dealing with the problems that we've got for whatever reason, and perhaps something more systemic. And I do think that there are systemic factors at work here. It's quite interesting. When Boris Johnson resigned, he basically said a sort of quite throwaway remark, but I think he probably is right. If we're just thinking about the personal authority of prime ministers and the fact that so few of them seem to have much authority over their parties anymore is a problem in a parliamentary system.

25:04Lewis Goodall:He said, I just, they all need to get off Twitter and they all need to get off WhatsApp. And I think there is some truth to that, right? Which is that particularly the WhatsAppification of politics and parliament, You can overdo this stuff, but I think it does add to a certain level of fever within British politics, both on the journalistic side and the relationship we have with politicians and with each other. I mean, you know, between the years of what, say, 1979 and 2010, we had four prime ministers. That seems, even just between 1979 and 1997, this huge long period of conservative domination, we had two prime ministers, just Thatcher and Major.

25:44Lewis Goodall:That feels difficult to reckon with. I don't think it would be impossible. But I think changes in technology mean that political time have basically sped up. It's like dog years now. That's one of the reasons when we're talking about the Starmer government, sometimes feel like we're talking about a government that's been in for four or five or six or seven years. It's only been in for 18 months, but so much now takes place. There are so many events which take place and the speed of politics is so fast that I think that politics itself, the speed of politics has accelerated, which means that it is difficult to govern.

26:13Jon Sopel:I suppose if you were to take a deterministic argument about it and say, was the Labour rebellion over welfare reform set to happen irrespective of what Keir Starmer did because the Labour Party has become ungovernable? I'd say no, it didn't have to happen like that. I think there were things that the Labour government could have done that number 10 could have been much more adroit in selling the policy and preparing the ground for it. So I don't think it was inherently, you know, because we've become ungovernable that the policy failed. I think it failed because Keir Starmer didn't handle the whole selling of that policy particularly well.

26:53Jon Sopel:And therefore, is governing more difficult? Yes. Is it impossible? No. And I just think that, you know, if the whip's office had been kind of really doing well, you've still got the power as the prime minister to hire and fire ministers, which keeps a certain number of people on board because they're ambitious and therefore they want preferment or they want to be sent on interesting fact finding trips to the Cook Islands or wherever it happens. Can't wait. See you in 2026. Yeah, or wherever it happens to be. So the power of patronage is still enormous on the part of the prime minister. It's just that I don't think the operation of this particular government has been that good in dealing with the things that can upend you.

27:35Jon Sopel:I fully accept it's become more difficult, but I don't think it's inherent that it's impossible.

27:40Lewis Goodall:I think there are clearly structural factors at work which make governing harder than it used to, although it's always been hard. If you've been sat here with Jim Callaghan or Clement Attlee or Ramsey MacDonald, and by the way, I really wish I were, then, you know, they would tell you governing is really, really, really difficult. Every prime minister finds that. I think it's true to say partly things are just referred to technology, speed of events, the expectation on the modern state and modern government to have answers about everything and to have it now. Now, people's own, the electorate's own patience with the pace of political change makes things harder.

28:12Lewis Goodall:The economic situation is difficult because we're now a country with 100 percent of debt to GDP, which we haven't been for a long time, which puts constraints on the choices that are available to you as a government. Parliaments and parties have become more disputatious, more rebellious. People often say they like that, but the net consequence is it actually makes it harder to govern in our parliamentary system. All of that is going on. I also think we have had, in general, fewer people of quality go into politics and more buffoons, for various reasons, go into politics. I think the quality of our MPs probably has come down a bit.

28:45Lewis Goodall:You can overdo it, but I think that's true. I think what it means is two things can be true at once, which is to say that it is not all the fault of individuals within the system. But I think there are real systemic factors which lead to the appearance of ungovernability in our politics. Add into that, foreign policy and geopolitical events are really difficult as well, by the way. But I think what it means is, is that the individuals, because of those systemic problems, have to be even better. Your leadership has to be world class almost at any given moment at any given time. And we probably haven't had that.

29:13Lewis Goodall:So the systemic problems have got harder. The individuals have got worse. But in terms of the fundamental governability of Britain, as you say, John, there are other countries in the world you could point to and say that structurally speaking, they have got bigger problems structurally than we have. The United States, with all of its disagreements in terms of the difference between federal and local, the polarisation that has taken place there makes it very, very difficult to govern. The sort of legitimacy of the state in many ways in America is under question in a way that it isn't in Britain.

29:38Lewis Goodall:France, we see the problems of the Fifth Republic, with Parliament that can't deliver a majority for anything, that relationship with the president, the unions and so on. Britain has got its problems, particularly around devolution in Scotland in the long term, what happens there. But actually, I think one of the disappointments about Starmer has been that for the first time, And we had a government with a big majority, which on paper you would think would be able to govern as it saw fit and have the strength of that system. And they haven't been able to do so. But I don't think structurally you could easily have a government and a prime minister.

30:07Lewis Goodall:Not easily, but you could have a government and a prime minister who could govern. And this one just appears not to be able to do so. Yeah, I heard Tony Blair the other day framing it in a rather similar way to you.

30:18Jon Sopel:Not the same way. He used his starting point, 2010, and he held this up. he's held up a smartphone and he said the invention of the smartphone and suddenly you know access to whatsapp access to social media meant that suddenly you've had six prime ministers since 2010 in the 15 intervening years whereas you know look at the sort of stability that you had before that and he says that you know exactly that i suppose the point that you're making that you just look at what's happened to our politics since the smartphone came along and you suddenly see the chaos that it has brought and the difficulty that it has led to in terms of governing well it's probably no surprise that as we've entered the kind of attention deficit era of our lives culturally

31:03Lewis Goodall:that that would feed into politics no surprise that as our own attention spans have lessened yeah that suddenly within politics the churn has increased and we've seen that in other places as as well, particularly in a system like ours, which is parliamentary rather than presidential. So you can't say, you know, that that's a definite sort of cause of it. But I think that it's clear technology is having a factor. But as I say, I think you could compete with that. I think you could beat it. But I just think you need even better leadership, even better quality of political vision than you did even in the past where it was essential.

31:33Jon Sopel:I wonder how the Thatchers or the Blairs, you know, master politicians who commanded, you know, had their flaws, but they were pretty effective political leaders in their own ways would have managed in the social media age i think

31:46Lewis Goodall:it's very interesting i obviously it's so hard to know but i think also you can look at a slightly different argument right and you can say in a way and i do think that blair and thatcher because they're the ones that we talk about as the most commanding the sort of titanic political figures right of the certainly the maybe even certainly election winners certainly big election winners but certainly since the 1970s you know they they dominated politics they were both colossus like in their in their period they defined their eras in so many ways you could make an argument to say that, you know, that is the unusual thing.

32:12Lewis Goodall:We were quite unusual in Britain having two clearly, whatever you think about them personally, exceptional political leaders who dominated politics in their own ways, in the ways that they did. Some of that was contingent and some of it was clearly down to them and the sort of people they were. That's quite unusual. If you go back to the period before, you do have more of a churn of prime ministers. You do have prime ministers. I think the average prime minister since the war has lasted for, I think this might have been before the trust period, so she might bring down the average, but let's exclude her.

32:40Lewis Goodall:I think it's three years and 11 months or three years and 10 months. You know, this is not, it's not unusual to have reasonably, in the grand sweep of British political history, to have a churn of prime ministers, to have no one who dominates. I think we're slightly conditioned by the Thatcher, Blair examples of thinking that's the normal. And actually, in British historical terms, it's not the normal. Right, another question now from Urza. I hope I'm saying this correctly. Bajkoli, you've all asked some of the toughest questions on television. when was the last time you were truly caught off guard by an answer oh that's good it's a great

33:11Jon Sopel:question but we were discussing it before we started the record and we were both scratching our heads thinking well when was that because it's so rare that politicians say something you think bloody hell i can't believe they've just said that i mean i suppose i had a slight sense of that when we interviewed uh lammy in his office at the justice department we had kind of tried to war game the interview and we thought he would close down any questions relating to closer relations with the european union and he didn't really close it down he kind of went there the question customs union that is not currently um would you welcome our policy that's not currently where we are but you can see countries like turkey with a customs union seemingly benefiting and seeing growth in their economy um uh and and again that's self-evident yeah and it is those

34:10Lewis Goodall:moments when politicians commit news in a way that maybe you don't necessarily expect them to to do and then that is the moment you have to be on the ball with it right and sometimes like one of the challenges is even making sure you're listening to hear it because sometimes you go back to an interview and you realise a politician has committed news or said something and you you weren't quite again you're already thinking about your next question because you're almost anticipating in your own head that they're just going to say what you think they're going to say and obviously that's the last thing you want to do right because then you've missed the moment although sometimes it can have the other effect as well because sometimes they might say something and then you go back almost asking them to reaffirm it so you've got it even cleaner or crisper and to really hammer it home and then they'll say no i don't mean it like that or something like that and therefore you undermine the story so it's kind of those little tricks

34:53Jon Sopel:The moments are few and far between. From when I first started in political journalism, Hesseltine walking out of Cabinet and there was one crew in Downing Street. There was an ITV crew. It wasn't a BBC crew. It was an ITV crew. And the political producer then came over to the BBC, a woman called Joy Johnson. And she was there in Downing Street and suddenly Hesseltine walks over to the Cabinet and says, I've just resigned from Cabinet. I'll be making a fuller statement later on. I thought, bloody hell, no one expected that. You know, sure, there'd been a row going on within the cabinet over the sale of Westland helicopters and all the rest of it.

35:27Jon Sopel:And, you know, relations with Europe and whether it should go to Sikorsky or whether it should go to someone else. You know, all of that was going on. But no one anticipated that Hesseltine would just walk out. And the real core, blimey, shocking moments happen very, very rarely indeed.

35:42Lewis Goodall:Yeah, I mean, I suppose the moments that it does happen is when, and again, something about which you have to be on your guard, right, is when politicians have a go at you, which sometimes they'll do and some do it more than others, right? Because then you have to, it becomes a slightly different exercise. It becomes more pugilistic and you have to kind of parry off what they're saying or they'll say, you don't really know this, do you, have you read this, whatever, you know? And you always, I'm always very conscious of that. That could happen at any moment. That's the moment of potential embarrassment.

36:09Lewis Goodall:And actually, if I were a politician, I probably shouldn't say this, I would do it more often, you know, because that's a, and it's a careful line. you don't want to be too aggressive because people don't like it. You can sound arrogant or conceited or you've got something to hide. But very often it can be quite effective, although you never know how it's going to go. Even worse, of course, when they decide to basically end the interview, which is when I was thinking about this is what I thought about. Galloway was the master of what we were just talking about in terms of being aggressive. He would routinely be aggressive.

36:36Lewis Goodall:So if you're going to interview Galloway, you kind of know you need to be prepared. I interviewed him on LBC last year and he'd basically done another interview where he said that he did not want his children to be taught that gay relationships are exactly the same and as normal as a mum and a dad and kids. And so I asked him about it, and this is what he said. Just to recap what you said there, I don't want my children to be taught that these things, i.e. gay relationships and heterosexual relationships, are equal because I don't believe them to be equal. We'll come back to the question of the other word you used, which is normality, but specifically on being equal.

37:07Lewis Goodall:Why aren't they equal?

37:08Jon Sopel:Lewis, we won't actually come back to it, because, first of all, that's not what this interview is about. you got this interview to talk about the election. Secondly, this is a clip.

37:16Lewis Goodall:You don't think that these are important remarks? Lewis, this is a clip of a clip.

37:20Jon Sopel:Lewis, this is a clip of a clip. It's an edited clip of an edited clip. No, it's not.

37:26Lewis Goodall:No, it's not an edited clip. No, it's not. It is a full 90 seconds of what you said.

37:32Jon Sopel:No, it isn't. You clipped out the point about the 97 genders. No, no, no.

37:39Lewis Goodall:That's a separate question. You chose... You clipped it out.

37:42Jon Sopel:Gender what? I don't think I don't know what I said. Gender what?

37:45Lewis Goodall:We just played what you said, Mr Galloway. We want to know.

37:48Jon Sopel:You clipped it out. Look, I'm not going to have a Barney with you because... I don't want a Barney.

37:52Lewis Goodall:I'm just trying to understand what you said.

37:53Jon Sopel:Look, I came on here to speak about the elections. Of course. Now you're ambushing me. It's not an ambush, Mr Galloway. With an edited clip. It's not an edited clip. It's an unedited clip. I've got a simple answer. Why aren't gay relationships equal to heterosexual relationships, Mr Galloway?

38:10Lewis Goodall:Listen to the whole thing tonight I've listened to the whole thing I've listened to the whole thing Why aren't Mr Galloway you're not No you're misleading my listeners in saying that You're misleading my listeners You're misleading my listeners in saying that Because we have not edited the clip That is a full 90 second exchange You did edit the clip You cut out the transgender bit The transgender bit is separate You are the one who chose to introduce Yes it is part of the longer two and a half minutes

38:38Jon Sopel:I'm going to hang up now because you fool me into thinking.

38:39Lewis Goodall:You don't want to explain yourself. It's not a fool. You're a politician. Oh, grow up, Mr Galloway. Come on.

38:44Jon Sopel:Or fool me thinking that your request that I come on and talk about the elections was genuine.

38:50Lewis Goodall:Of course it was genuine. Well, there you go. You heard it there. Mr Galloway refusing to.

38:56Jon Sopel:That is a great moment. I love you telling George Galloway to grow up.

39:00Lewis Goodall:Well, I mean, you know, I hate it. I don't know about you. My absolute bet noire is when politicians say that white is black. Well, A, that, first of all, it was not. I mean, obviously, I think Donald Trump has clearly been listening to that. And Galloway maybe should have taken some lessons. He'll probably sue me for$10 billion now, whatever it is. But, you know, yeah, that and just sort of mislead people about it. That's number one. But number two, also, when they come on and when they're a politician, it's fair enough with the sort of, you know, if someone's not a politician, you book them to come on about a particular subject and whatever.

39:28Lewis Goodall:When you're a politician at the time, he was the leader of a party. I don't know if he still is, but with the Workers' Party, you know, he'd been elected as an MP. I mean, you know, it's fair game for an interviewer to ask you about what they want to ask you about. Of course, you can give a heads up and say, and sometimes that's better because they'll have time to think about something. But ultimately, if you're a politician, you should be prepared to be asked about anything, particularly stuff you yourself have said. You can't then turn around in the middle of an interview and go, well, we agreed to do it about this topic.

39:59Lewis Goodall:We'd done that topic. And he'd said this a week before or whatever it was. and naturally I decided to ask him about it because guess what? He would have had gay constituents in his constituency who might not particularly have appreciated being told that their relationships are not as normal as a heterosexual relationship. Was there any comeback after that interview? No, I don't think so. I think that was it. You know what? I think it served us both well in our own ways. It was the first edition of the Sunday show and that got written up and he enjoyed having a go at me and that was it. There you are.

40:23Lewis Goodall:Win-win.

40:23Jon Sopel:All is not a zero-sum game. We will be back in a moment with a very important final question.

40:37Jon Sopel:the news agents so our final question really is a very important question to end this episode of the news agents on and i am as intrigued by the answer as all of you tony from glasgow thank you for your question i follow lewis on instagram thank you tony and it feels like every night he goes out for a fancy dinner. I wonder if he can cook himself a meal. I mean, let me just add Tony to the question. I wonder whether he ever pays for a meal because he's always putting photos and I wonder whether it's some dodgy deal. I pay for all my meals. Some dodgy deal. Oh, I had a wonderful meal at Joe's Cafe today.

41:20Jon Sopel:Pictures of the meal and all the rest of it. Come to Joe's Cafe.

41:23Lewis Goodall:Anyway, go on Lewis. No, I pay for all my meals. Are you going to the football again anytime soon? I pay for my... I've got a season to get. All right, well, this is going to get very early days, Keir Starmer, isn't it, very quickly? Because you've never had a meal out in your life, have you, John? No, I'm not posting endlessly pictures of how.

41:35Jon Sopel:Because you don't know how.

41:37Lewis Goodall:Until quite recently on Instagram, you were called John Le Savant for reasons no one understood. Right. Just answer the question, Lewis. Tony from Glasgow hasn't got all day. Look, I'm not one of life's great chefs. Fortunately, my wife has many, many talents, and she's a great cook. But, you know, the girl deserves an evening out now and again, doesn't she?

41:53Jon Sopel:The girl deserves an evening out now and again. She does. We just had you having a go at Galloway a moment ago. The girl deserves an evening out. She does. Oh, my God. The unreconstructed alpha male.

42:07Lewis Goodall:Again, I would say dodgy, dodgy territory once more. Louis Goodall. Do you want a few more facts about the Cook Islands? No. You do. Come on, you do.

42:16Jon Sopel:Just because you have spent the last half hour looking up obscure facts on the Cook Islands. Go on, then. Two more facts before we go.

42:23Lewis Goodall:Well, you know, once, can I tell you that Saturday the 4th of July, 1892, never took place on the Cook Islands. Because it went from the Gregorian calendar? No. The Gregorian calendar was well in place by 1892, John. What do you think it is? The Holy Roman Empire? Come on. But I'm close to the answer. No. They shifted on the international date line. They shift from being aligned with the Americas to Australasia in 1892. So they moved the international date line. So Saturday the 4th of July on the Cook Islands never took place. Another fact, there were no traffic lights on the Cook Islands. Rarotonga, which is the main island, has no traffic lights at all and until recently only had one roundabout, which locals still occasionally refer to as the roundabout.

43:04Lewis Goodall:So that's good, isn't it? Oh, and birthdays can be national events. Important birthdays, especially the 21st and 50th birthdays, often involve huge communal feasts where extended family and the entire island sometimes just turn up. We should do that.

43:17Jon Sopel:That is it from us, the newsagents. This episode was sponsored by the Cook Islands Tourism Board. Oh, you'd hate that. Where Lewis Goodall will be there.

43:24Lewis Goodall:I'll be having a lovely dinner there, won't I? Exactly.

43:26Jon Sopel:when we see the photos of Lewis eating supper in the Cook Islands we know what has happened we're off to Rarotonga baby we will see you on Christmas Day but in the meantime have a lovely run up to Christmas bye bye

43:39Lewis Goodall:bye bye

43:39Jon Sopel:this has been a Global Player original production