Why Starmer failed - and what Burnham needs to get right

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0:42When you look at the level of abuse that myself and other MPs, particularly women, particularly women of colour, designed to hound you out of politics, to not express what you really think on an issue, it's corrosive because I worry about what that means for our democracy. We have lost Joe Cox, Sir David Amess, now Anne Whittacombe. The odds aren't great for us MPs. You know, when I speak at schools and I'm talking to that young black girl, why would they go into politics knowing what I've just shared with you? On the day that Andy Burnham takes over the reins from Keir Starmer and Westminster is still reeling from the shocking murder of Anne Whittacombe, we speak to Justice Minister, rising star and friend of Keir Starmer, Sarah Sackman.

1:29Welcome to the News Agents.

1:35The News Agents. we're joined in the studio now by sarah sackman the minister of state for courts and legal services the mp for golders green and finchley or finchley and golders green and so it's very good to have you with us and we've had too few mps from the 24 intake on these friday episodes so we're going to come to your life in politics and all of that and your brief i wanted to start with the commons on Wednesday because it was pretty emotional in there as the House of Commons, not just Labour MPs, but the House of Commons bade farewell to a Prime Minister, your friend Keir Starmer. It was deeply moving, John.

2:18And I thought, I must say, and I said this to her, I thought Kemi Badenok was pretty classy as well. It was a coming together, a real moment when Keir in his final PMQs was able to reflect on what his legacy has been, transforming the Labour Party into an electoral force again, leaving a strong domestic record on tackling child poverty, on getting house building going, investing in our NHS, getting those waiting lists down. And I think restoring the UK's reputation on the global stage. And you heard that in the tributes paid by MPs. I thought the other thing that was really remarkable is the way that he referenced people in the gallery who had really driven his politics.

3:03You know, he made this point that when you're in politics, who do you have in your mind's eye? And victims of domestic violence, people who'd lost their children to stabbings and the way that we had combated that through our reforms. It really gave a sense of the man who I think has shown a huge amount of decency and has led our country to a place where he leaves it in a much better place than he found it. Sarah, there's an obvious follow up question to this. What you just described is, so why is he going? I think that Keir recognised the point that he resigned, that notwithstanding all of that, he had become very unpopular.

3:42The local election results were dire. And I think specifically the threat of reform and the idea of this Labour government, for all its good work, becoming the handmaidens for reform is one that neither Keir nor the Parliamentary Labour Party could countenance. And so what we're looking at now is a new prime minister who will take us into the next election, whenever that comes, to lead us and to take the fight to reform to the populist left and the populist right. You've been very close to Keir. I think you are near neighbours and have known each other for years and years and years. And your background is in the law just as his is.

4:24Do you think he's been dealt a rough hand by the Labour Party? I think Keir has done a remarkable job. I think, as I said, the way he transformed the Labour Party. That suggests you do think he's been dealt a rough hat. Well, I think he also came into office and faced huge challenges. I think the legacy of the previous government in terms of public services on their knees, an economy that had been buffeted by Covid, by Brexit, but dreadful decision making. And then look at the volatility, the global volatility he's had to deal with in government. I think it's been very, very tough. But look, we've got to acknowledge...

4:58Sure, but a lot of politicians face those things. I wonder whether there were things where either the Labour Party was unreasonable to him. Do you think they were? Do you think they were impatient? Do you think all those MPs that were kind of lavishing praise on him were the same people who'd knifed him? Look, I think that modern politics moves very fast. It comes at you fast. The way you've got to communicate in modern politics. The rise of reform in the Greens, to the extent that the two-party system, the traditional two-party system has been challenged, I think all of that dynamic has come at all of us, including Keir Starmer, very, very fast.

5:35And the truth is, when you look at those local election results, when you look at some of the missteps the government's made, we weren't always as quick to respond to that as we needed to be. Some of the political management was lacking. And I think the ability to not just have a vision and be getting on with delivery, which I think Keir Starmer really was, but the ability to tell a story about that that resonates with ordinary people's lives, I think some of that was wanting. And I think in the end, that's what informed Keir's decision to go. I'm interested in the way you're framing this, because you're saying where there are shortcomings, you're saying it was the government shortcomings and where there is praise, you're saying it was Keir.

6:12Weren't those Keir Starmer's shortcomings? I think some, look, no politician is perfect. Nobody is the complete package. I think what Keir was able to do was right for his time. I'm not sure anybody could have taken the Labour Party from its worst ever electoral defeat in 2019 to a landslide victory in 2024. Let's bank that. Let's bank that. Let's agree that was an incredible achievement by Keir Starmer to turn the party round. The period of government was marked by total lack of a narrative, preparation, even Morgan McSweeney says there was just not the preparation necessary, and some really maladroit political decisions like winter fuel allowance and the like.

6:55And look, the last time I was on your programme, we were talking about the decision to appoint Peter Mandelson, a dreadful error, which I think unfortunately marred Keir's reputation because, Because Keir's utterly decent, utterly upright and incorruptible. And yet that appointment, like some of the other decisions, I think harmed him. But what I would say is this, and this goes to the heart of politics. On our manifesto in 2024, the manifesto which led to a landslide victory, which led to record swings in seats like mine, it said one word, and that was change. And part of the problem was that people in this country, as expressed through their anger at the ballot box in the local elections, were not feeling that change fast enough.

7:38There was an impatience on the part of the public for the delivery of that change. And all too often, it felt transactional. It felt a little bit incremental, even though I know from working in government how many tough decisions Keir and the government, the cabinet were having to take to stabilise the country. I think people wanted to feel and still want to feel that change further and faster. And to hear about it, you know, one of the things we've seen is great things going on in government. And as you say, sometimes a narrative lacking. So take, for example, the brilliant progress on clean energy.

8:13Few people have heard about it. NHS waiting lists coming down. Few people, I think when asked, I think there was some polling done, could say what this Labour government was about. and what a terrible shame when we are delivering so much for the country. I just want to, we'll come to all those points. I just want to dwell a little bit on the personality of Keir Starmer because you say utterly incorruptible, man of integrity, decency, all the rest of it. And I would push back a little bit on that and say that actually the whole Peter Mandelson episode, which you raised, showed a very different side of Keir Starmer, that he wanted to blame other people and not take responsibility for himself.

8:51This could have been dealt with so much more adroitly if the government had said, yeah, this was entirely down to me. And instead, other people had to carry the can for it. I think in politics, ultimately, the buck stops with the person at the top and you have to take responsibility for how things have worked out. But the other thing I would say to this wider point about the media landscape. I want to talk about the personality of Keir Starmer. Sure, sure, sure. But I'll come to this, John, because I think one of the things is that I think for the man in the street, they never really got to know Keir Starmer and the person that I know.

9:34Well, maybe they did. the intelligence. No, no, no, no. Because I think that so much of the communication and the modern communication, the demands of how we communicate in modern politics, talking directly, talking with authenticity, sometimes being a bit rough around the edges. In some ways, Keir Starmer, with all his decency, diligence, occasionally felt like a politician from a slightly different era, such that People saw Sir Keir Starmer. They didn't see somebody who in some ways was a British meritocracy success story. Someone who came from a background where no one in his family had been to university.

10:14His achievements were his own. But I don't think that the British public ever really got to know that. But I'll go back to the sacking of Peter Mandelson and the way the government responded afterwards. The way that Keir Starmer booted out Ollie Robbins as the permanent undersecretary of the Foreign Office, I have heard from so many people inside Number 10 in government in Westminster thought it was disgraceful. That Ollie Robbins had been doing Keir Starmer's bidding to the best of his ability. that Keir Starmer had ignored the advice that there should be enhanced vetting on Peter Mandelson before the appointment was announced and Keir Starmer chose to ignore it.

10:59And then he fires the guy who was trying to deliver what Keir Starmer wanted. Didn't you think it was rather tasteless? You know what I thought was really tasteless? And in a way in this exchange exemplifies where I think the decision making went so wrong is that basically people turned a blind eye to Mandelson's relationship with Epstein. The victim of Epstein's crimes should have been paramount in those considerations. That should have been the human consideration when making a decision like that. So you're saying that Starmer should never have appointed him? And I think he came to acknowledge that.

11:33I'm sure when he looks back on it, he'll see it as one of the biggest errors of his premiership. Because if he'd had in his mind's eye... That decision to sack Ollie Robbins, look to the world as though everyone else can take responsibility but me? I'm clear. They should. That was a dreadful mistake. They should have been thinking about Epstein's victims. And ultimately, the man at the top, the person at the top, has to take accountability for that. And I think in the end, Kirsten Amahat has. You talked just one other thing about something you've said, which I think is really interesting. You see this warm, kind, thoughtful, whatever person.

12:12You know, maybe Keir Starmer is authentic. You know, I'm not saying that there's a fakeness to Keir Starmer. I think he's authentic. And I think the authenticity is such that the British people just didn't like him. I think that, look, we are living in times where people are impatient, agitating for change. And I totally get why. You know, people have been hit in their pockets with the cost of living crisis. People feel a lack of despondency, that there's a lack of hope that Britain's best days are ahead of themselves. And I think one of the traps that Keir and the government fell into was acknowledging the scale of the disastrous inheritance that we came into moving into government was to say, this is all going to be really tough.

13:00We've got a big fiscal black hole to fill. We've got crumbling public services. This is going to get worse before it gets better. People in their politics do need to feel a sense of hope. It's not just about security. It's about the sense of opportunity that things are going to get better. And I think people not feeling that hope meant that Keir, as a prime minister, struggled to get a hearing in the way that he had done in the election. Let's talk about you. You've been active in the Labour Party for over a decade, started life as a barrister. You're a prominent Jewish Labour politician. Why did you decide to move from the law into politics and why Labour?

13:41Weren't there times under Jeremy Corbyn where you thought, I don't want to go anywhere near this party? I've always been driven by social justice. And I remember as a young lawyer, I volunteered at a place called Toynbee Hall, which has a huge tradition in our Labour Party. It's where the likes of Clem Atley learnt about the realities of poverty in the East End. And I remember really clearly as a young lawyer volunteering there, meeting a woman who had been evicted from her home. she was terrified. And when I came to look at what happened to her, it was clear that a mistake had been made, that she shouldn't have been evicted.

14:17And simply through using my legal skills, my education, my advocacy, I was able to not just rehouse her, but get her an apology, because it was the indignity of what had been done to her by the local authority in that case. And you asked me, well, why do you go into politics? Because in law, yes, you can fight for your client. Yes, you can win an individual case here and there. But if you want to fundamentally change the rules of the game so that they work fairly for all British people, then that's the stuff of politics, making the big political arguments to change the law so that it works for everybody.

14:57And fast forward 10 years and I've got the privilege of serving in a Labour government, a Labour government that this week passed the Hillsborough Law. That was all about taking the tragic experiences of those Hillsborough families and using that not just to give them the justice that they deserved over so many years, but to fundamentally rewire that relationship between ordinary people and the state by changing the law. It exemplifies exactly why I wanted to go into politics. And why the Labour Party? It's about equality. It's about fairness. Those are values that I was brought up with and there was going to be no other party that I would join.

15:39You've skirted around Jeremy Corbyn. Oh, Jeremy Corbyn, very simple. I understand Jewish members and people who left the party over Jeremy Corbyn. As part of the Jewish Labour movement of which I was a part, we decided to stay and fight for the soul of our party. And that's because our values, values of anti-racism as well as strong Labour values, are the ones that our party are about. I'm glad we did that because not only did we restore the Labour Party to being a place where Jewish people could feel safe, we actually helped to make the Labour Party electable again. Yeah. And you are the MP, as I said at the introduction for Finchley and Golders Green, a constituency with a significant Jewish population, probably the highest, I think, in the country, highest percentage of Jews.

16:32And yet we've also seen at the time that you've come into politics, the surge in anti-Semitism, the number of anti-Semitic attacks. People will probably remember your response to some of the things that have happened in your constituency, notably the stabbings and the attack on those ambulances in the constituency. What do you think about the rise of anti-Semitism in the UK? Indeed, the rise of kind of hostility and antagonism towards a number of minority groups with Muslims also suffering Islamophobic attacks. I represent, as you say, the largest Jewish community in the country, but I also represent an incredibly diverse community more widely.

17:14A large Muslim population, a large Greek Cypriot population, we have the largest Iranian population in the country. And the rise of hate crime, of xenophobia, of anti-Semitism, of anti-Muslim hate, this troubles me deeply. This is not who we are. I think I said to you when I was responding to those heinous attacks in Gold is Green, that an attack on Britain's Jews is an attack on Britain's values. And we need to be saying much more clearly what we are about as a nation, which is inclusive, where we celebrate our diversity. and yes we've got to offer protection to those minorities in our laws in physical security but if we are not tackling the root cause of that hate then we are failing ourselves and we're failing the britain that i know that i want to raise my children in and one of kirstama's last announcements has been this 250 million pounds uh towards helping protect jewish groups it's a lot of money I mean, do you think that will make the difference between feeling safe and feeling vulnerable?

18:25I think it's a huge step change. We talk in politics about politicians who express themselves in deeds, not just words. And I think this week, the quarter of a billion pounds towards security protection, more policing for the Jewish community, including a hub in my constituency of Golders Green, as well as the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist group sends a huge signal about how serious we are as a government about protecting not just Jewish people, but all minorities in this country. And we have to be serious about that. And it's right that we have been. Well, we'll be back with more from Sarah in just a moment.

19:04And we'll be talking this time about the physical safety, not of members of the public, but of the politicians themselves.

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19:56We started this interview talking about the emotional scenes in the Commons on Wednesday for Keir Starmer's last Prime Minister's questions. But I also thought there was that coming together of episodes, which was where the House of Commons showed a more decent face, but also reeling from the shock about the circumstances of the killing of Anne Whittacombe and another MP or ex-MP who had been killed, apparently, for their political beliefs. Do you worry about safety? Do you worry about what it means for you being a member of parliament? I mean, I think of your predecessor in the constituency who said, you know what, I'm standing down now because I've had enough.

20:43I'll say two things, John. I worry about me and I worry about other MPs and I also worry about what this means for our democracy. When we have lost Joe Cox, Sir David Amess, now Anne Widdicombe, the odds aren't great for MPs. the fact that my predecessor, Mike Freer, was effectively hounded out of politics by the abuse, by the death threat. We should have been able to face each other at the ballot box. And yet we weren't. And of course, when you look at the level of abuse that myself and other MPs, particularly women, particularly women of colour, as a Jewish woman, I feel it, the threat is very real.

21:26And I worry... How does that manifest itself? I just want to make the second point, though, because I worry about what that means for our democracy. So Mike and I should have been able to face each other at the ballot box. But I also think about what it means for who comes into our politics. You know, when I speak at schools and I'm talking to that young black girl or that young Jewish boy and I'm saying politics matters, politics is exciting, it might be something that you want to get into. Can I, in all honesty, look them in the eye and say that that is a good and safe career path for them? I'm not sure after the events of recent times that that's an easy answer to give.

22:05when you look at the level of toxicity in our politics, when you look at the, I can't even repeat it on this show, some of the threats that, and it's not just particular to me, I know that so many colleagues right across the political divide get it, as I said, particularly people of colour, the death threats, the suggestions you're going to rape your children, designed to hound you out of politics, to not express what you really think on an issue. It's corrosive of our democracy, of the sorts of people that are going to get into it. It has a chilling effect on what people feel they can say. It also has a chilling effect on how we do our politics.

22:50I've absolutely adored being an MP these past two years, serving my community, the one that I grew up in, is the privilege of my life. And I'm the kind of person, like many MPs, that likes to roll up my sleeves. I do surgeries in supermarkets, on allotments, down the council estate. I go to community festivals. I want to be able to do that and be visible and accessible to people where they are, meet them where they're at, not be behind a glass screen or have a security guard with me constantly. But the reality is that for many MPs, We cannot do those things without security. And it undermines our ability to be the sorts of politicians that I think in today's day and age, where there is so much cynicism and distrust, we really do need to be and want to be.

23:34I've got two questions. One is about, you know, what do MPs personally need to do? What do you need to do in society? Let's deal with society first. Why do you think there is this toxicity and what can be done about it so that a member of parliament or a local councillor or an ex-MP can feel they can just express their views freely without the risk or the threat of violence being perpetrated against them? I mean, you've got to look at this in context. Political violence, attacks on politicians is not entirely new. It's not even just specific to this country. But I think there's no denying that the internet, social media, the keyboard warriors that have been themselves sucked into and radicalised online into more extremist views and feeling like behind the veil of anonymity can just, you know, threaten and hurl abuse.

24:28without any sanction, the failure of the tech platforms to deal with that robustly. And yes, I think there's a responsibility on our politicians too. So often the language we use, the incivility, people have to check their language. Of course, we want debate to be robust. We don't want anyone shying away from having a good argument, but we've got to be responsible about how we use language and make sure that we as politicians, as leaders, aren't fueling that fire. I wonder whether we're, you know, there's been a debate this week of the amount of security being given to Nigel Farage, and he's going to have a meeting, I think, with the committee that is in charge of kind of dealing with all these things.

25:14Are we going to end up in a situation where more or less every MP has a personal security detail? Ultimately, the decisions of what individual politicians need will be for the Home Office, for the police. But the reality is that is largely true. I don't think I'm alone in saying that if I attend a community event or have a surgery, a public surgery, I have security that is provided to me. All MPs carry and their staff carry personal alarms. That is the reality. Many people, I think many of your listeners may not realise that that is the case. That is in itself came in response to the murder of Sir David Amess.

25:55And I think I'm afraid it's a tragic reality of what we're living with. And I think we've really got to try so much harder because, you know, I'm not being sentimental when I say I think about that little black girl or that little Jewish boy that, you know, I speak to in their school. Why would they go into politics knowing what I've just shared with you? But the fact is that our democracy, that our public life and our debate and the issues that are before us is far too important to let the haters win. And that's why, yes, let's make sure there's proper security. Let's take the temperature of our debate and take responsibility as politicians for moderating that language and calling out those that incite violence.

26:41but let's also talk about why our democracy is so precious. Do your kids ever say, mum, can't you get a different job? Oh, they've definitely said that to me. They've definitely said that to me. They said, why are you so stressed, mum? Your job is so hard. Of course they say that. They're kids. But it's not deterring you. It's not making you think, I need to go into a quiet backwater. They also say to me, mummy, you're a role model. We're proud of what you do. when they see me on telly. They were a little bit less happy about the social media band for under-16s though. I got a little bit of stick for that.