Starmer refuses to go: Crazy? Or courageous?

0:00Miss satisfying breads and pastas and want to add protein without going overboard on calories? Stacked sandwiches, fully loaded bagels, noodles built for serious sauce. Hero Bread delivers up to 19 grams of protein. Think bagels and elbow noodles with nearly twice the protein of national bestsellers but less than half the calories. Plus, you can get up to 32 grams of fiber per serving, a bonus when you're trying to stay full and fueled. So whether you're grilling burgers, building a serious sandwich, or digging into pasta, you're getting real flavor with a smarter protein-to-calorie balance. Hero makes loaves, buns, tortillas, bagels, and noodles with 5 to 19 grams of protein per serving that all go the distance.

0:39Shop now at Hero.co. Use code IHART for 10 % off. That's H-E-R-O dot C-O. All figures per serving. See nutrition info on Hero.co. 39 % and 61 % fewer calories than regular plain bagels and noodles, respectively. Calorie content has been reduced from 270 to 130 and 200 to 80 calories per serving for plain bagels and noodles, respectively. Data accurate as of 2-20-26.

1:27Lewis Goodall:A lot of the people who have called on him to go are basically Wes's people. Streeting has pulled the lever. Now or never, is he going to go for it? What happens now? The tone, it feels, has shifted even throughout the morning. I mean, I also think... I think Darren James had a really different... Wes Streeting! Wes Streeting, did you call on Starmer to resign? Lisa Nandy! And here we have Lisa Nandy. West Streeting is being asked for comment. West Streeting has said nothing for days. So is West Streeting at the centre of whatever movement is currently going on? And is the Prime Minister waiting for him to challenge?

2:11Lewis Goodall:Prime Minister told his Cabinet colleagues this morning, in no uncertain terms, that he is going nowhere. Has Keir Starmer faced down his critics? Welcome to the News Agents.

2:27Lewis Goodall:The News Agents. It's Maitlis. It's Lewis. And we're recording this at about two o 'clock in the afternoon. So by definition... Fools that we are. It turns out podcast isn't absolutely ideal for rolling news. Nonetheless, a lot of that has happened since we were last with you. And doubtless a lot is going to happen next as well. So where we are as of right now is that the Prime Minister, The thing that we've really learned since we last spoke to you was that there was a strong possibility that the prime minister would respond to the 80 or so MPs who have called on him at some point, not all saying right now, but at some point to go to set out a timetable who say they no longer have confidence in him.

3:09Lewis Goodall:It was entirely possible and credible that he would have gone to cabinet this morning and said, I've listened to the parliamentary party. Here's my timetable. I'm not going right now, but maybe by party conference. We now know that the Prime Minister is not doing that. He has basically said to his cabinet and his party, if you want me out of the door, I will be doing so, kicking and screaming to the last. He says he will not step down and that no leadership contest has been triggered. We understand from this cabinet meeting that the Prime Minister basically said, started the meeting by saying that he was aware of some of the disquiet, but this was a very serious meeting about substance including what is going on with the Iran war, cost pressures and so on and that if anybody had a problem or wanted to say something to him about his leadership they could do so after the meeting.

4:01Lewis Goodall:We then understand that the Prime Minister scarpered pretty quickly and it was very clear that if anyone did have a problem they weren't able to speak to him after cabinet. After that time Jess Phillips the safeguarding minister, very widely respected inside the Labour Party, became the second minister to resign, talking about catastrophic mistakes made by the government that followed or followed on from another minister early in the morning. And Jess Phillips' letter was particularly devastating, I think, because it set out in detail, not so much the ideological problems with the prime minister, but something you hear again and again, which is that the prime minister doesn't have an ideology to begin with, which is impeding the government.

4:39She said, you talk about the need for an argument,

4:42Lewis Goodall:but you didn't make one. The desire not to have an argument means we rarely have an argument, leaving opportunities for progress stalled and delayed. And in that, I can tell you, she's speaking for a lot of Labour MPs. Look, I think the Jess Phillips letter changes this conversation and this whole scenario more than possibly anything else in the last 24 hours. And we'll come on to analysing a little bit more what she says and the force of her words. But just to go back to that moment, really, that I think surprised many in Keir Starmer's own party and cabinet, this defiance by the Prime Minister himself, which either looks incredibly ballsy or it looks really tineered.

5:31And I think, yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people will be saying, I didn't know he had it in him to stick it out. Now, I don't think that Starmer can be unaware, frankly, of those 80 voices that are saying go or go now or set out a timetable. But I think there are two things going on. One is 80 sounds like a huge number until you put it in the context of his majority, which is what, 400 odd, 403. and you're looking at him saying, well, that's 20%, but look, maybe I owe the 80, something else. There is 80 % of my parliamentary party that is not doing that. And I think there is a certain logic to what he's doing, which is to say, show me the challenger, because I don't see the challenger right now.

6:23If you want to challenge me, then put a challenger in front of me and I will fight that person. But at the moment, there are 80 people in his party who are saying versions of we don't think you're good enough. We don't think you will last. We don't want you to fight the next election. And we think you should go. But what they're not all saying is, here's the alternative. Here's the person that we all support. And here's the date we want you to go. And I think that level of chaos and confusion and sort of, you know, mixed messaging in a way is giving Keir Starmer for now the courage or the stubbornness to say, I'm just not moving.

7:08And I guess that is where Starmer really has a point, right? Because, you know, there is a Labour Party which is frankly looking balkanised without him. There are factions that want to pull towards Andy Burnham. There are factions that want to see a sort of Raina Burnham car. There are factions that think where streeting should go and should go now. And he's the sort of, you know, more to the right of the party, somebody who could act much more quickly because he's in Parliament. And actually, what you suddenly understand about Starmer is it's not what he stood for ideologically. It's the fact that he was the sticking plaster to the party.

7:48He got the party into a position where it was elected because anyone could paint what they thought he might represent on top of him. He glued it together. He held it together. And as soon as the Stama plaster is ripped off, what you actually see is under the stone all the various directions the Labour Party could now pull in.

8:06Lewis Goodall:Yeah, I think this is that we said yesterday that this is very unusual for the Labour Party. historically speaking it is you know the Labour Party does doesn't usually remove its leaders or even try remove its leaders from with with kind of direct challenge and and you're absolutely right Emily I think the defining characteristic at the moment it's very clear what Starmer is doing he's basically saying in particular to Wes Streeting because everyone knows that a lot of the people who have called on him to go so far or have or who have resigned not all are basically Wes's people And so the suspicion within the cabinet, it's more than the suspicion really, is that this is basically part of a...

8:46Lewis Goodall:Streeting has pulled the lever. We were saying yesterday, it's now or never. Is he going to go for it? He is going for it up to a point. He's getting his people to resign bit by bit, to inflict maximum damage, to do that and to try and remove the Prime Minister and have a contest before Burnham can get back into Parliament. He's clearly decided to make that decision. What Starmer has clearly decided to do today is to say, OK, you're doing that. Well, face me down, face me down. And he's challenging Streeting to challenge him to basically go over the top himself, something that clearly Streeting would prefer not to do.

9:19Lewis Goodall:He'd rather inflict on Starmer death by a thousand cuts via all of these resignations. Streeting therefore has got a decision to make this afternoon and my understanding is that when I said that ministers including Streeting try to get a meeting with Starmer immediately after Cabinet my understanding as of now at about 2 o 'clock is that various different ministers are securing meetings and have insisted on going to see the Prime Minister this afternoon so Keir Starmer did not want to have that conversation first thing this morning but one way or another it is being imposed upon him and i would just say this like there's a lot of um and i kind of understand it to some extent there's a lot of like criticism particularly online about the media on days like today which is like is this all a sort of frothy westminster media concoction and don't get me wrong i'm the first one to have some criticisms about the way you know the media the lobby cover politics and sometimes i get the kind of like excitement soap opera thing can be a bit trying but the media has not created this story if we're zooming back now and Jess Phillips summed it up if we're just zooming back for a second and asking why is the Prime Minister in this position it's not fundamentally because the media have decided to try and get him out the reason the Prime Minister's in this position and the Jess Phillips letter summed it up very well is that lots of his own colleagues from cabinet level down have concluded that he is not capable of doing this job and what is unusual about this as a kind of putsch is that normally if this were to occur in any governing party it would kind of be factional there would be a clear faction that was trying to displace another faction that's not the case in this case for two reasons one is that keir starman never really had a faction really he was always a kind of curiously a factional politician it was one of the it's one of his problems right now he doesn't have that many defenders he had some as we saw outside of the cabinet this morning but he doesn't have that many but secondly what you hear and i've heard this so much over the last six months, 12 months, 18 months, from SPADs and ministers and MPs from across the factions of the Labour Party, they just say, we never hear anything from Keir, we don't know what he wants us to do, we don't know where he wants to lead us, and that, if you're asking me exactly to sum up or distill why we've ended up in this situation, it is because of that is the sense of complete rudderlessness from across the factions and a sense that Starmer politically doesn't have the chops to lead them out of this situation.

11:50Yeah, and Jess Phillips' letter really made that case very starkly. I'll read you one line. She says, The desire not to have an argument means we rarely make an argument. Labour governments come around rarely. I know you care deeply, but deeds, not words, are what matter. Which I think speaks to that exact point. In other words, the Jess Phillips' style of governing, really, or of campaigning has been tell people what you feel, show them your passion, show them you care, show them where it really hurts and then do something about it. And back to the sticking plaster position, Starmer basically sort of wants things to be calm, you know, sort of, I mean, this is the point of incrementalism, isn't it?

12:36You won't see me moving, you know, and people have said, we don't see you moving and we don't see any choice. Look, I think to the factualism point, this is where it gets really interesting because West Streeting, you know, as you've described, is in a sort of, he's in a choose-your-own-adventure children's book now, right? Where it's... Go to page 56. Go to page 56. Do you launch your bid to be Prime Minister? Go to page 56, but you might lose your job forever and be out of government? Game over. Or do you show your loyalty? Turn to page 37, but risk ceding ground to Andy Burnham. You can see that for West Streeting, everything is resting on it.

13:12And he wants to be the loyal sort of foot soldier, the person who steps up rather than the person who wields the knife. But just last night, Alex Wickham from Bloomberg was reporting this kind of threat, essentially, on the part of what he calls the soft left, that if Wes Streeting did trigger a leadership context, he would not be safe. And this is the text or the email he got sent. If Wes thinks he can pull off some kind of stitch up to avoid a fair process that will have no legitimacy, even if he briefly ends up in office, we would challenge him at the first opportunity. He'd be lucky to outlast a lettuce.

13:52So it's all very well saying that Starmer doesn't represent a factionalism. But make no mistake, as soon as Starmer is not in the picture, yes, the gloves are off and it looks really ugly. And actually, it's quite depressing, actually. As soon as you stand back, you realise that you are in a place where there is the potential for the party to absolutely pull themselves apart by the roots. And I think that also explains why Starmer is looking out now and saying they are readying the Mao. They are getting the prince's carriage ready. They are getting Black Rod and all the kind of, you know, pomp and circumstance ready for my speech tomorrow.

14:37The king will deliver my policy priorities to Parliament. How ridiculous would it look if I actually allowed this chaos to sort of, you know, upend what I was actually trying to get done? And so I think there is something in Starmer's position for now, which is I cannot afford to become part of the psychodrama that I got elected to stop. It's as simple as that. Do not make me part of the chaos of whatever this party wants to do. I will not play that game.

15:08Lewis Goodall:Yeah. Yes. Although I suppose the less charitable interpretation, of course, is that, you know, Starmer is the Labour Boris Johnson in this situation. You know, I mean, he's decided and it's a lot like that day when Boris Johnson had all these MPs and ministers resigning and he was in front of the select committee and it was all happening. And he said, you know, well, they may hate me, but I don't care. And he has got a very substantial part of his parliamentary party now. And we know, look, if it's 80, we all know that privately there's going to be far more. there are I know for a fact that there are you know cabinet ministers again from across the factions who are as we speak literally doing everything they can to persuade the prime minister to resign or if not to force him out of office and ultimately Keir Starmer is a guy who who did say you know um country before party and he might have convinced himself and I can understand how he might have convinced himself this but he may have convinced himself that he's the stability But the truth is his colleagues believe that he is the instability, that his lack of politics, his lack of direction, his lack of momentum, his lack of ability, in their view, to do the job is what is causing the lack of authority for Labour to govern.

16:19Lewis Goodall:Now, you're absolutely right to say, Emily, that, of course, you take rid of him, you open a Pandora's box. Who knows what happens? And there's inter-Nissan warfare. I mean, I saw John MacDonald tweeting today. I call for time for serious discussion, no precipitous coup and fully democratic process. Instead, Wes Streeting has launched a coup for fear of a democratic process whilst candidates are blocked. Handing leadership to Mandelson's protégé is a gift to reform. Like this could be rabid and rancid. And Wes actually hasn't opened his mouth. No, not yet. That's the funny thing. He is the missing voice in all this.

16:50You know, he's barely been seen. He hasn't had his meeting with Starmer. You know, he's the man who, as far as we know, everyone is expecting to act, expecting to hear from. and who knows by the time you're listening to this, maybe that will have changed. But so far as we're recording at 20 past two, we've heard nothing.

17:06Lewis Goodall:We've heard nothing. We've heard nothing. I mean, who we did hear from, of course, was quite an extraordinary scene at the end of Cabinet first thing this morning. And this so rarely happens. I mean, people will know, you know, Cabinet ministers going into Cabinet, coming out of Cabinet, they get, you know, hollered at by our colleagues who are sort of standing there and asking them questions and they normally never answer, or if they do answer, it's always just a short one word, you know, a statement of loyalty or whatever. They walk past without stopping. They walk past without stopping. They don't go over to the huddle.

17:37Lewis Goodall:Are you supporting the Prime Minister? Very much. Thumbs up. Environment Secretary? Absolutely. But this time, after Cabinet, a selection of different Cabinet ministers, including, of course, the Prime Minister. If the Prime Minister has a Nadine Doris, I think we can say, it is Steve Reid and the Housing Secretary. and he came out following with a series of his colleagues, very unusually after Cabinet, going to speak to you directly in a short series of interviews, speak to the press and give their view about what just happened in Cabinet. Highly unusual. Listen to this. The Prime Minister has my full support.

18:12The Labour Party has a process for triggering a leadership election. That has not happened. So we all intend to get on with our jobs

18:20Lewis Goodall:and that's what I'm going to do. So that's Steve Reid and he was followed by Pat McFadden, He's followed by the science secretary, Liz Kendall. He's founded by the leader of the House of Lords, Jenny Chapman. All stalwart allies, including actually intriguingly as well, Peter Kyle as well, the business secretary who came out, who's quite a close ally, actually, of West Street. He surprised people by coming out about the prime minister. Here he is. And what did everyone say when Keir Starmer said a leadership race had not been triggered? Well, it's the fact. We've had a very purposeful cabinet meeting talking about the big issues facing our economy and society.

18:54Nothing has been triggered. I'm about to go off to Brussels to continue working with Brussels to deepen the relationship, to benefit Britain. We are working hard on the big issues that are facing the country. And Kyr is showing really steadfast leadership. What all those comments after cabinet had in common was that they told us that the meeting in cabinet was not about the leadership context, not about the 80. It was about the war in Iran. It was about the cost of living. It was about energy. And as you've heard, they all want to get on with the job. And I think that speaks to two things. One, that Keir Starmer clearly opened that meeting by saying, right, we're not talking about that.

19:35We've got to get on and govern. And there is probably an imperative for those around the cabinet table not to look like they are part of a psychodrama. So, of course, they want to say, you know, in the interest of the country, I'm still going to Brussels. I'm still looking at this. I'm still trying to bring down the cost of living. We should say, you know, in parentheses that the guilt yields have already shot up to a 10 year high just on the back of this instability. So I think one of the lines that Starmer will have been pressing on all his colleagues was don't become the problem that this country doesn't need right now, which is more inflation, more instability, more raises in the cost of living.

20:16And of course, you're right. You know, Keir Starmer is in this curious position where he is at once the author of his own terrible election results and the person who believes that he can solve things. And if there is a challenge, if somebody comes to him with a challenge of 81, whatever, people who support them, Keir Starmer is automatically on the ballot. and he has now told sources that he thinks he can win a leadership contest. So this is the unknown. You're saying there's 80 and maybe many more who privately agree with the 80 and Starmer is clearly thinking, well, there could be loads more who are loyal who don't want me to go for precisely these reasons.

20:57They think that I'm halfway through a term and yeah, it's all gone to shit because that's what happens in the midterms, but I need to be given the chance to stick at it. And there is one more theory, which we're going to talk about after the break, which is that he has come to some kind of arrangement in his own mind. But it's not now.

21:22From 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. So just as I take responsibility for the results, I also take responsibility for delivering the change that we promise for a stronger and fairer Britain that we must build. Now he's still toast. He's just wasting our time now. The words of two in a growing list of Labour MPs whose patience with the Prime Minister has run dry. Is there anything he said or can say to make you want him to stay? Listen on our free Global Player app or the LBC app.

21:58LBC. Leading Britain's conversation. Miss satisfying breads and pastas and want to add protein without going overboard on calories? Stacked sandwiches, fully loaded bagels, noodles built for serious sauce. Hero Bread delivers up to 19 grams of protein. Think bagels and elbow noodles with nearly twice the protein of national bestsellers, but less than half the calories. Plus, you can get up to 32 grams of fiber per serving, a bonus when you're trying to stay full and fueled. So whether you're grilling burgers, building a serious sandwich, or digging into pasta, you're getting real flavor with a smarter protein-to-calorie balance.

22:35Hero makes loaves, buns, tortillas, bagels, and noodles with 5 to 19 grams of protein per serving that all go the distance. Shop now at Hero.co. Use code IHART for 10 % off. That's H-E-R-O dot C-O. All figures per serving. See nutrition info on Hero.co. 39 % and 61 % fewer calories than regular plain bagels and noodles, respectively. Calorie content has been reduced from 270 to 130 and 200 to 80 calories per serving for plain bagels and noodles, respectively. Data accurate as of 2020-26.

23:09What I'm doing is setting out the response, the direction that we need to take, and the acknowledgement that in the world we live in now, we need a bigger response than 2024. It is a different world. And an acknowledgement that this isn't the first shock the country's been through with the Iran conflict. We've had plenty of those in the last 20 years. But every time, the government of the day has tried to get back to a status quo that doesn't work. And we're not going to do that this time. That is the urgent task facing our country. We were elected into office to change this country, to bring about the change that is needed.

23:48The frustration that has been spoken about is a frustration of at least 20 years, if not more. That is what we're charged with changing. That is what we will change. In relation to Andy Burnham, obviously, any future decision is for the NEC. Andy's doing a great job as mayor in Manchester. And I actually work really well with Andy. So that is Keir Starmer being asked a very direct question, which he is incapable, frankly, of answering directly. Correctly. The question is, will you let Andy Burnham fight another Labour seat or will you at the top of the NEC, the Labour Executive Committee, try and block it?

24:25And Keir Starmer notably cannot actually confront that elephant that is staring everyone in the room, which is Andy Burnham wants to come in and challenge you. And so he goes on this waffle of like, well, it's about the NEC. It's not about me. Well, you know, let's see what happens. I work very well with Burnham, which I think gets to the frustration that many in his party feel about him kind of taking you around the houses instead of answering something directly. But there is a lot hanging on what actually happens if Burnham finds a seat to fight. And it just so happens that this morning we learnt that Andy Burnham had taken a train from Manchester to Euston.

25:06Good luck. Yeah, exactly. Which is a 12 minutes over. We'll expect him in about two weeks then. Exactly. I think they actually saw him arrive, which suggests he probably left yesterday. I mean, presumably left yesterday before he saw that Keir was defiantly staying. But I wonder if there's a world in which there is a kind of an accommodation that Starmer realises that Andy Burnham could win a seat and thinks, well, I'm going to buy myself six months. I'm going to have a chat. I'm going to say, give me six months. Let me stay in the job. Let me work something out until conference or after conference.

25:40And then, you know, you do you.