Has Starmer gone woke?

0:02There are a few things more terrifying when you're the director of communications in 10 Downing Street than seeing Stephen Swinford's number ring up on your phone. Questions he's going to put to you, and it always terrified me that he listens so carefully, one rogue word, and he would pick up on it and run with it. Brilliant operator, but glad I don't have to take his calls today to explain tax, nor indeed that by-election loss. So I wish Tim Allen, I think, very well when that call goes through. that was gito harry boris johnson's former director of communications on times radio and westminster can breathe a sigh of relief this week steve is away so is caroline mommy and daddy are on holiday for half term and so it's just patrick and i this week on the state of it hello and as producer ewan has said when the cats are away the mice come out to play this is like making a homemade bong and having 30 people over to your house except patrick and i are going to offer you 100 legal high grade political chit chat and what a menu we have for you this half term we're going to start with the aftermath of the care philly by-election we're going to tell you how labour high command intends to respond and on that theme we've got a proper scoop for you as well and then latterly we're going to ask a simple question is Keir Starmer woke well to address that I've got Patrick not here in the studio where I feel a little like Billy No Mates but on the other end of a zoom call and Patrick how are you yeah I'm beaming in from a ill-timed holiday but you know when you're as interested in British politics as we are every holiday is ill-timed so we're going to start with the aftermath of that carefully by-election which serves our interests to overstate the implications of these things but by-elections are sort of rare events in that they enable us to examine the state of things without saying that what last week revealed was more than a snapshot as a snapshot it was pretty painful for the Labour Party I mean Patrick correct me if I'm wrong there are essentially two narratives which seem contradictory but can be true at once possibly are true at once one is that this seat going to plied labor falling by double digits in its vote share losing a seat that it's held since its creation is bad news and a data point which illustrates the party's ongoing decline in what were previously its fiefdoms in industrial england in Wales.

2:48The other point is that in this era in which electorates are more sophisticated, more online, there's ample evidence of tactical voting among people who in this instance piled behind Plaid, but who principally, it seemed, were determined to lock Farage out. So there's sort of something for everybody and cause for optimism and also a fair amount of soul searching in number 10. Well, David Lammy, now, of course, Deputy Prime Minister as well as everything else, sort of somewhat bafflingly told the PLP, which is the weekly meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, great news, everyone. You know, the Kefili result wasn't great, admittedly, but it does prove that people are willing to vote for a progressive party to stop reform.

3:35Now, obviously, it might not always be us. And in this instance, it was plied, but it's good news because reform are going to lose because of this new electoral dynamic. Now, you just have to think about Kefili or look up Kefili brackets UK Parliament constituency or Welsh Parliament constituency on Wikipedia and look at the page for two minutes to consider what a strange argument that is, right? Because if you're thinking, you know, tactical voting was a thing in Kefili, you would think, why wouldn't people vote tactically for the Labour Party? Because the Labour Party, last time this was contested, won it with 46 % of the vote.

4:12Plaid were not really in contention. What it shows is just how unpopular the Labour Party is in Wales, first and foremost. And there's no way to put a positive gloss on that via tactical voting, because next May, there are going to be assembly elections in Wales. And look, Labour won a percentage of the vote, 12 % of the vote, 13 % of the vote. Under the new proportional system in wales they could be if that's replicated across the country they they might not win a single seat or they'll win low single digit seats in wales so you know that that that's not really good news for the labor party in the welsh specific context in a sort of broader uk context that actually tells you something that is just as worrying which is if it is progressives versus reform, then Blythe, the Greens, the SNP, et cetera, et cetera, parties that aren't the Labour Party might be the ones who progressives are willing to mobilize behind to defeat reform.

5:22And for reform, yes, they lost, but they won 36 % of the vote. Let's not do reform spin for them. They lost and they wanted to win. and I think a lot of the people on that campaign expected to win. I spent a day in Caffili with Farage about two and a half weeks ago and the conversation he was having with reforms officials in Wales was if we turn out 10 ,000, 11 ,000 people on the day, we should be able to do it. Now, they did turn out 12 ,000 people on the day. The problem is Plaid turned out several thousand more. It's the problem for reform. And if actually you are finding that high turnout elections, this is 50 % turnout in a Welsh Parliament by-election.

6:06It's quite impressive. And reform's expectation was, okay, turnout is higher than we expect. We're turning out people who don't usually vote. Actually, it turned out that Plaid were turning out people who wouldn't have voted, but were really motivated to give Farage kicking and send Farage home, which indeed they did on the Thursday night. Everything in British politics now is about how the left, the liberal left of British politics, responds to that electoral dynamic. How does it turn more people out? What are the messages it uses? How does it motivate its voters to vote against them? So these are all massive questions for Labour in particular to respond to.

6:42How do you grapple with the fact that that sort of 35 % of voters who are backing reform seem to be an immovable force in British politics? And at the bare minimum, you've got to beat that number. You've got to motivate progressives to back you. I think that's the game we're in now. And at Labour HQ, there's going to be a new man in charge of winning it, which is something we picked up in a flurry of activity before we recorded the podcast this morning. And Gabriel, this is your scoop. So who is the man handed this hospital pass of winning Labour elections in this era of fractious multi-party politics that they've so consistently been losing?

7:26Well, you know, just to lift the veil for a moment, obviously, our podcast parents are richly sourced in Labour land. And we thought we couldn't disappoint today. So as you say, we were furiously WhatsAppping and calling people this morning for any disclosure that might constitute a capital S scoop. And we've learned that Spencer Livermore, a man very well known to Labour watchers, he was Gordon Brown's director of strategy. He ran Ed Miliband's 2015 election campaign. And he's now a minister in the Treasury, but very much held in the highest esteem by Morgan McSweeney. He became very close to him at the last election.

8:01He's being brought in as Labour's national campaign coordinator, which in non-Labour land vocabulary means that he will be the leader of Labour's national election campaigns come next May and will be responsible for coordinating strategy with Downing Street. So you know what does this mean? Well in straightforward terms this role was last held by Pat McFadden before that Shabana Mahmood. It is a role occupied by people who personify the politics of this project and are trusted by both Starmer and his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney is in and of itself evidence that Labour recognises the scale of the challenge it faces in May.

8:47Patrick was just outlining the stupidity for want of a subtler word of Labour being too comforted by the fact the reform lost last week. There's another thing I'd say as well in terms of what it means politically which is where Streeting has himself made the comparison to the Hartlepool by-election last week he said that the care filly would be its own equivalent of that significant defeat suffered by labor in may 2021 which starmer uses a pretext to go harder and faster and sharpen his political direction west streeting says you know by that same token starmer is going to learn from this he's going to use it as you know fire in his belly to intensify his political project and his desire to solve immigration and restore public services.

9:36I think if we are just to pan back to that moment, May 2021, where Starmer came within inches of resigning, I mean, Patrick and I both very vividly remember the debate running within the Labour leader's office at the time. There are some people who were advocates of the Rainbow Coalition Kumbaya philosophy. People used that defeat to make the case for Starmer to bring Corbyn in back from the cold, to do something to demonstrate his desire for unity and to create a sort of broad church within the Labour Party, you know, say things to bring the soft left back in and essentially to sort of end this purge of the part of the political project's adversaries.

10:22And you had Morgan McSweeney, who, you know, adopted the diametric opposite to that. he was saying change Labour, change Britain, let's engage in performative conflict, let's pursue the people that have left the Labour Party over the course of the last few elections and cease to prioritise what makes the parliamentary Labour Party feel good about itself. Well I suppose in Labour land you know the more that changes the more that stays the same and it does feel without being too reductive Patrick that there are some analogies in that after carefully there are though saying that the result shows the only viable course is to unite the left unite the progressive vote make starmer less unpalatable to people on our progressive flank and then there are those in and around number 10 whose core conviction remains that the path to number 10 last time was paved through places and people that labor had lost in particular tory to labor switches and we can't just ignore the fact as you outlined that reform now is on 30 percent uh you know consistently and we talked about carefully but is ahead of labor party in national polls and we can't just turn inwards and go to our comfort zone of milibandism and soft leftism if we are to reckon with the political situation in front of us and after the break we'll be back to discuss whether Starmer has gone woke.

11:53This is the key strategic debate, and it'll be very interesting to see where Spencer Livermore lands, because obviously he worked for Gordon Brown, actually working for Gordon Brown, most famous for not delivering an election in the autumn of 2007 when Gordon Brown could have won it. There was a memo from Spencer Livermore gathering dust on Gordon Brown's desk, and it wasn't discovered until it was too late, sadly. and the rest is history. And obviously, Ed Miliband's 2015 campaign, actually, you know, in the lifetime of that campaign, quite a lively campaign. Ed Miliband's numbers went up. Those numbers went up.

12:35Labour's overall numbers went down. So it'll be very interesting to see where Spencer Livermore lands on this big strategic question. I don't think anyone who sat through budget meetings with Spencer Livermore in the Treasury would necessarily say he's a Milibandite, as the Labour right popularly understand that term. This is the big, big question that's facing the Labour Party. Now, how does the Labour Party win this? This is the sort of essay question Spencer Livermore is going to have to answer, and that we've been talking about Morgan McSweeney. But still, let's mention the old Irish joke about asking for directions in the middle of the countryside.

13:08You know, you wouldn't start from here. And it's a real, real nightmare trying to work out what the right course of action is. It's clear, as you mentioned, that in Downing Street, Keir Starmer feels like part of the answer is just speaking from the heart and using the R word, which he did again this week when Sarah Pochin, the reform MP for Runcorn and Helsby, appeared on talk TV and said the sight of black and Asian people on television adverts drove her mad. Now, she subsequently apologized for that and was saying she was making a point about DEI in the advertising industry. But Nigel Farage was absolutely furious about those comments.

13:54And you see that, you see why, rather, from Keir Star's response, which was to come out again and say reform were racist. Wes Streeting, who's been very assertive in adopting some of these positions and some of this language himself, trying to audition to be a standard bearer for an alliance of Blairites and the soft left, perhaps, coming out and using the racist word as well. Now, is this the answer? Is this the answer to Labour's woes, to Labour's electoral woes? Is it all about pointing at reform and saying, these guys are nasty, these guys are weird, these guys are a dark, malign force in British politics?

14:34And you might not like us, but we're willing to call a spade a spade. Keir Starmer also did this with Katie Lam, who gave an interview to our colleague Josh Glancy on the Sunday Times last week. rising Tory star Katie Lamb was talking about deporting people who already have indefinite leave to remain. Keir Starmer again using very morally unambiguous, unequivocal language to basically condemn comments by Tory and reformed politicians as racist. Indeed, he looked very emotional as he spoke about Katie Lamb's stuff. So we keep hearing the Prime Minister, who in the pass would have equivocated. He would have triangulated.

15:13He would have been very, very cautious about using some of the words he's used to describe Tory and reform politicians and their policy positions recently, speaking with that kind of moral clarity, condemning very easily, using the word racist. Now, Labour politicians in particular, particularly on immigration, have run a million miles from that sort of language and style of communicating in the past but this is kia starmer's meat and bread and this seems to be by accident or design i think it's now by design even if it was initially an accident labor's new strategy when the history of this period is written and uh we might end up attempting to produce a reasonable first draft i think that a lot of people will say a seminal moment inside Downing Street was when Starmer distanced himself from his previous assertion that Britain risked becoming an island of strangers.

16:15We spoke to people in Downing Street about this before, and they've said that it was sort of so extraordinary and so rare that a prime minister would disavow something they had themselves said. But also it demonstrated to the extent to which Starmer is just naturally not comfortable using that kind of vocabulary. In this instance, it happened to have echoes of Enoch Powell, but Starmer is never in his comfort position talking about the risks of multiculturalism, the extent to which Britain doesn't resemble its prior self. Now, what in strategic terms did that pronouncement amount to? Well, essentially it was an example of Keir being Keir you know you get the feeling we get to get the fact of this period of history is that has been a coming together of a candidate and a machine an individual a person in Keir Starmer and then a politics and a tradition a tendency in McSweeney and his blue labor adjacent philosophy well this was that sort of alliance even for a moment coming asunder and the question then was will kia lean into being kia more and conference was a fascinating flashpoint because he used his pulpit as a moment to address the public and the party membership directly in order to describe reform as policies on indefinitely to remain as racist and uh you know he made homilies to progressive diverse britain we've used this phrase before the country of cutting the oranges at half time that was his shining city on a hill country people you know getting on piling in together slaps on the back being nice solidarity and he essentially contrasted that with the dark and as you outline patrick sort of morally unacceptable position advanced by reform and it seems now like we're getting more of that here the way he got on the front for condemning poach and i should say the sort of commentary on political world reacted pretty ambivalently to his attempt to characterize indefinite performance policy indefinitely to remain as racist not least because it bears such resemblance to the sort of spirit and up to a point the letter of Shaban and Mahmood's own position.

18:43But it's fascinating to see him pressing the R button again. And it does pose a question which we were reflecting on earlier. And here we ought to credit Sam Coates, who is better than anybody pre-empting where conversation in Westminster is going to turn and observing the undercurrent. And he was saying, well, is there any universe in which the number 10 operation stays as is and Morgan McSweeney stays in the current role of Chief of Staff, if Starmer's attempt to resolve the strategic challenge posed by reform is to consistently accuse it of racist. I just want to mention one point before handing over to Patrick, which is Maurice Glassman, the Labour peer, who is sort of architect of Blue Labour, was so appalled by Starmer's description of Farage's policy that he personally spoke to Farage and apologised and said that it was dishonourable and a betrayal of the noble traditions of the Labour movement to have said that.

19:47Now, Glassman and McSweeney are not the same thing, but their politics are closely related and they share an underlying critique of the effect of globalisation and mass migration on the country. How long can the man whose existence and political story has been about disavowing the sort of third sector, lanyard class, progressive tendency within Labour. How long does he stay if his own boss is constantly oxygenating the idea that you can win against reform on a basis, to coin a phrase there, a basket of deplorables and racists? It's a really, really interesting question, isn't it? because it exposes so much that is unsettled about this government, about this prime minister and about the direction it wants to take.

20:40I think the key point you made there, Gabriel, was you have the prime minister and increasingly cabinet ministers coming out and using the R word, saying reform a racist. This thing they've said is racist. Their policy on X is racist. While at the same time, so much of the government's bandwidth, particularly the home office's bandwidth, is spent in service of the same politics. Well, not the same politics, but acknowledging that actually reforms policy positions are reflections of deep public discontent with the way the immigration system in particular is working. So we're speaking in the week where there's a new flurry of activity in government.

21:20This was reported in The Times by our colleague Matt Dathan, where Shibana Mahmood is furious at the use of hotels. Keir Starmer wants them all shut in a year and they want to house asylum seekers on disused military bases. Now, if Nigel Farage came out and said that tomorrow, what do you expect Keir Starmer would say about it? You know, Nigel Farage saying, let's put migrants in camps on RAF bases. I think actually the gut reaction of lots of the PLP would be to say it has quite dark historical connotations. Now, that's actually the stated policy of the government, right? So there's this growing gap between the sort of aesthetics of what the government wants to talk about and the reality of its policy, which I think is just storing up loads of problems to start with, particularly of Labour's electoral policy now is let's try and motivate progressives behind us.

22:12actually if you're a sort of progressive who's annoyed at the Labour Party for not being progressive enough and you you're not an idiot right Keir Starmer coming out and saying that's racist if you are a sort of high-ish the mid information progressive voter you know you have a Zach Polanski TikTok in which the leader of the Green Party says you know refugees welcome uh you know I hate billionaires etc or you you're aware of what the government has been doing on a range of other issues apart from using the word racist a lot. So that's a big live question. It's pretty incoherent strategically. And yeah, this does raise the question that you've just raised.

22:50And it's one of the most delicious in Labour Party politics. What does this mean for Morgan McSweeney and what we might call McSweeneyism? Now, having written one of the histories of this period, Gabriel, you and I know that you always lose money betting on a breach between Keir Star and Morgan McSweeney because Keir Starmer has only ever done this, which is to say thought about leading the Labour Party, led the Labour Party and been Prime Minister with Morgan McSweeney at his side. What is Morgan McSweeney in this age of politics? Because it's clear that the electoral system or the electoral dynamics have maybe moved on from the 2021 to 2024 landscape.

23:32It's a different kettle of fish. It's not about beating the Tories. It's about beating reform. you know yes it's not necessarily incompatible to say look we'll sound progressive but deliver on the issues that are driving reform support it's a big big if but it does make you ask what what is morgan mcsweeney doing inside number 10 what what does his job look like now and that's a conversation we've been having with people isn't it and and you know someone used a brilliant metaphor or analogy to describe where morgan mcsweeney fits in uh which i'll let you explain because it's actually quite beautiful and moving it was a really astute piece of political analysis from our source who said that the way starmer thinks about politics is is akin to a machine when you get all the cogs turning then it just works and there are lots of cogs there are there's policy there's communications there's structure and configuration of white hall and then there's politics itself now i thought that was so revealing because the fact that politics is just one of the many cogs in the swiss watch rather than the device itself well that tells you something you know starman has always subcontracted politics to mcsweeney what does that mean when you're in government when all of government and governance has to be suffused with politics in order for the public to understand what it is that your argument is and what it is that you're trying to do um i spoke to somebody earlier i should say and i put this question to them and i mentioned the fact that if you look at the original political team within downing street it has to a large part disintegrated paul ovenden mc swede's right-hand man was director of strategy he's recently left, Steph Driver, Director of Communications, she's gone to, I don't want to speak too much about names which are of greater interest in Westminster than they might be outside at the postcode of SW1, but Megan McCann, a very highly rated political operative who was in McSweeney's team, I've just learned is on her way to the whip's office to form a kind of beefed up political presence there and i said well what does that show about the direction of travel within downing street where does that leave morgan and i might just get out my phone because i transcribed it as this person said it was really interesting response they said that morgan is our last line of defense they didn't rule out the idea that there could be an orderly transition in and around may at some point next year could morgan go back to labour party headquarters to prepare for the next general election which is what he did in 2021 left parliament in order to go to labour hq but they said that it is nonsense to say that he's going to walk out and they repeated an idea which has been put to us more than once which is that it's a contradiction in terms to say he would leave he he is this project made flesh um and and almost enjoys parity of esteem in the eyes of Labour MPs and cabinet ministers to Starmer in terms of the political direction of this government, for him to leave now, for him to sort of wave the white flag when there are those who would recast this political project as opposition to Farage and racism, misunderstand this man's life's work.

27:07Yeah, definitely. And I think that is one of the crucial things to remember. This is his project, arguably to a much greater extent than Keir Starmer's in terms of the electoral strategy. Now, at a moment where all of that is up in the air, where the core tenants of McSweeneyism, i.e. what progressive voters are obsessed with, or certainly progressive activists, and what Labour MPs are obsessed with, are the sort of things you should try and block your ears to, you should try and ignore. Those things have never been more contested. But Meghan McCann, going to the whip's office is a prime example of that right you know this is a government that is now at a number 10 that's now having to start listening to Labour MPs moaning they're suddenly sort of consumed with existential dread over progressive voters and progressive activists turning to Zach Polanski turning to the nationalist parties in Wales and Scotland you know turning to Jeremy Corbyn right all of the things that they thought were settled and that they could ignore those questions have returned with a vengeance in labor hq by the way who's just arrived lucy powell you know we've been talking about spencer livermore another former aide to ed milliband lucy powell who was ed milliband's chief of staff for a period is now deputy leader of the labor party and has her own analysis that labor hasn't been progressive enough so do you think morgan sweeney is now going to say you know what fair enough i'll let lucy powell run labor hq all of my analysis turns out to be wrong.

28:40I'm just going to kick back and relax. I mean, look, I don't think Morgan McSweeney is going to do that. There's never been a greater sort of level of jeopardy about the direction of the Labour Party. And ultimately, it's for Morgan McSweeney to try and win this argument. Now, who knows? Maybe he will win the argument and actually it'll turn out to be an electoral disaster for the Labour Party. Maybe Keir Starmer will make clear over a course of decisions he takes in the run-up to May that actually he has come to a different analysis. Morgan McSweeney can do a bit of that politics, but he wants to do a very new woke brand of Starmerism as well and try to make them coexist, which I think, by the way, is what's happening right now as we were discussing with the gap between policy and communications increasingly on questions of immigration in particular.

29:34But what's interesting is that Morgan McSweeney has clearly alighted on Spencer Livermore, not for the first time and probably not for the last time as one of the people who can anchor Labour in something sensible or at least split the difference between these two positions. You know, when he was trying to get rid of Sue Gray or when people around Morgan Sweeney were trying to get rid of Sue Gray, and Morgan Sweeney wasn't yet ready to take on the role of chief of staff himself or accept that he was going to have to do that. Who did he tell aides? Who did he tell his colleagues that could be chief of staff, Takir Starmer?

30:07Spencer Livermore. Who was in all the meetings ahead of the 2024 election? Spencer Livermore. Who has been responsible for all the big fiscal decisions? Who's been at Rachel Reeves' side? who's been engaging with business in the Treasury, Spencer Livermore. So yes, his is a name we might not hear that often, but from opposition to government, from the budget to the elections in May, the two big political events of the coming months, Spencer Livermore is going to be at the heart of them, and his is a name I think we're going to be hearing much, much more of. We probably ought not to overstate the rigidity of McSweeney's politics as well, because if you were to speak to those close to him after last year's general election they were saying that you know this next six months is going to be an exercise in masochism we're going to make the plp learn the hard way how much labor's changed winter fuel payments welfare reforms and you know mitch sweeney was front and center that he was also intimately involved in the tactical and strategic retreat from both policies so has Starmer gone woke I think our combined wisdom is that for now he might have but will he be allowed to remain woke that might be the essential question of the political period following the budget which no doubt we will be discussing next week when we will have Caroline and Steve back Patrick and I will be here with you too we'll all be in the studio and I must end by thanking our superlative producer Ewan Daughtry and he as ever has made us look good behind the scenes we're very grateful to him very grateful to our listeners and we'll see you in a week