Keir Starmer's fight with "reckless" striking doctors. And Labour's Zack Polanski problem

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0:39Welcome to The State of It, the podcast where we lift the veil and take you inside the corridors of power. It is recess at the moment, so the corridors of power are slightly less busy than they might ordinarily be. and so too is the studio but we have a once in a generation event here before us today in the form of two Sunday Times journalists who are in work and being quite productive on a Tuesday and I'm very fortunate today to be joined by our new deputy political editor Lara Spirit. How are you Lara? Hi Gabriel, I'm well, how are you? I'm very well, you're quite a seasoned broadcaster but this is your very first episode of Flagship Politics Podcast.

1:24It is my first time in this wonderful studio yeah and i've gone from being a great fan when i was in washington of listening to all of you every week to sitting here so it's great in this week's edition we've got scoop after scoop we've got an exclusive on the government's negotiations with the bma we've got some words from the green party leader on his attempts to cannibalize the labor party and then lara spirit has some insight on shabana mahoud's negotiations with the french on stopping the boat so big news big revelations at every turn but we'll start with the BMA. Starmer thinks that the NHS and with some justification is one of the unalloyed successes of this administration which makes the prospect of more resident doctor junior doctor to the rest of us strikes a bit of a fly in the ointment and Starmer has today on the front page of the Times accused the BMA of acting recklessly by refusing to accept what would amount to a 7 % increase in pay they want, full pay restoration, taking their pay packets back to what they were about 20 years ago.

2:35Now, Starmer's and Streeting have together been pretty, they've sort of upped the ante in terms of what they're saying, which is that in 48 hours, if the BMA does not agree, the current offer, the government is going to take off the table a thousand jobs for junior doctors to get specialist training posts so we had a bit of a power hour before coming on we were just hitting the phones and speaking to our sources and people in team street in were saying that part of the reason why the weekend's talks did not yield a decisive breakthrough was the bma itself being on strike Like the BMA represents doctors, but it itself has a workforce.

3:20They're affiliated with the GMB union and they're on strike right now. So apparently that sort of deepened the existing communications issues between streeting and the department. But I think the thing I wanted to ask for your thoughts on, Lara, I think the thing which is quite significant is the way that Starmer is himself putting himself front and centre of this. In some ways, you might say he doesn't need to do that, not least with a negotiation whose outcome is uncertain. Why would Simon want to do that? What does he serve to gain and what could he sort of help mitigate in the event it doesn't go according to plan?

3:52Yeah, well, I think on a basic level, it's an issue of such fundamental importance for number 10. They do need to fix this. We had, of course, that event last week with West Streeting touting higher satisfaction levels among the public with the NHS. They're really, really cautious of the fact that waiting lists, general satisfaction with the health service and the fact they gave it a massive injection of cash are a massive part of whether or not they're going to be able to convince the electorate to go with them again and a big part of what they want to achieve in this current term so i think for starmer not to be involved in this would almost especially to some in the labor party i think in circumstances where they would not perhaps be able to resolve this in time before the 48 hour deadline if starmer had not intervened you could imagine them saying this is in keeping with some of our graver reservations about starmer that he's not up for a fight that he's not happy to get involved when things get very contentious and he's not decisive and i think it echoes really what we saw with Rishi Sunak under previous this long long running now Doctor Strike but at number 10 were very very involved in that and they saw it as a massive part of their responsibility as well and have done for a long time so I think it'd be very hard to see him not taking any position in in this then again it obviously does set him up for being partially more exposed to this if it goes wrong and particularly to be even more popular than perhaps he otherwise is with the public if indeed the doctors do manage to kind of win the public argument on this I think what we've seen in polling consistently is actually that the public show a lot more sympathy for example with striking nurses than they do with striking doctors so I'm sure that number 10 internally will have poured over the numbers of just how many people are in support of doctors in circumstances where at the moment you know they've had pay rises totaling I think more nearly 30 percent over the last three years or so I think they'll want to make that case more forcefully to the public it'll be interesting to see how their language changes in 48 hours if indeed they don't manage to make any progress on this yeah absolutely I guess the question of Stammer's own personal fortunes as the government's wider success, there's streetings, leadership prospects.

5:41You can't conceive of any of them without this going according to plan. And I will say as well that one thing that Labour administrations tend to find out is that in the end, one thing that people associate with the Labour Party is public services and the NHS. And Starmer, like Blair, his sort of central pitch in opposition was that I'm making Labour less Labour and I'm, you know, trying to take a baseball bat to some of our self-mythology and some of the things that you associate with Labour. But as it transpires a couple of years into this government, the one thing that they now know, they kind of have to build a fortress around, is the NHS, just as Corbyn, having had all sorts of full-fat socialism within the manifesto, ended up realising people listen to us on the NHS and they actually think we'll protect it.

6:32Blair too, you know, again, not a man always so sympathetic with Labour tradition but a lot of people in and around the government now will talk about the fact that sometimes it hasn't featured so much in their own self-narrative that satisfaction within the health service did increase during those years and Stalin was trying to own that and as you say he'll kind of live or die by the success of it now we're going to turn to another trade union forward slash Labour Party matter but Laura can you just tell us what happened over the weekend in the Green Party because for reasons that I must say were slightly beyond my wit until you were telling me earlier the Greens had a big event but it's not an event that our noble profession had much penetration of so why was that and what did or didn't happen at this event well I want you to set that up before we get onto the trade union component of this discussion sure so I think this was an important story over the weekend which was that the Green Party had their spring conference they had it online so something like a thousand activists attended these kind of training sessions but also votes uh online why was it online a lot of why it was online it's been suggested is is is partly environmental reasons that it's obviously uh energy intensive to get lots of activists in the same place perhaps for the weekend uh it was held online obviously one of the appeals of that might be that it's technologically more simple and and efficient to be able to get people to vote on motions for example of which there are many the Green Party proudly a very democratic party that listens to its members and is responsive to their concerns to many that is to a fault and this weekend I think was an example of why some of those reservations might perhaps be ever so slightly well founded we had of course that very controversial motion Zionism is racism that was mooted to be voted on this weekend in the end it wasn't there was a huge procedural wrangling from what we can make out from the reports of those that were there which ended up with that vote being delayed we we could see it at a later date but the other votes seem to descend into a huge amount of acrimony and bitterness among the activists who eat your heart out your party i mean exactly they don't have they don't have monopoly on dysfunction exactly that is now a very contested space so um that was that's kind of the backdrop i think to some of the uh green party concerns obviously uh you know the manifesto is something that is built by the membership it's one of the reasons why many people often think it has some slightly contradictory claims sometimes and why they often struggle with this accusation of coherence, but it does definitely mean that at events like this, members do have a great deal of say.

9:01At the moment, it's obviously a much more topical conversation because of the success of the Green Party in the Gorton and Denton by-election last month, and of course because of the surging membership of the Green Party since that success. So they are being taken as more of a serious electoral force. That's not a secret. That's been a well-known feature of recent months. But events like this, I think, do tell us something about the internal workings of the party and I think probably do deserve perhaps more of our attention. Yes I think you were saying that there's some insinuation that Mossad or Zionist entities may have brought to bear on the digital voting system.

9:33There was a lapse in the digital voting system it was reported by some of those there and different suggestions as to why or not that may have. As to whose hidden hand may have been involved but I think what you allude to there is a kind of the central dynamic within the party right now which is is the Green Party a Green party or is it principally a radical left democratic socialist progressive party and zach polanski is unambiguous about the fact that he does fall into the latter camp and one way in which he has conveyed that through action as well as word is the fact that at the moment he is trying to court some of the trade unions with whom labor remains locked in a long-standing fairly loveless marriage a super interesting reporting over the weekend about the fact that polansky's greens have had to varying degrees of formality discussions with unions which are not presently affiliated with labor as well as those who are but i just think it's super it's a massive massive question because there's never been a time where the leadership of those unions has been more up for grabs anyway on the theme of us being unusually hyperactive on a tuesday we did actually ask zach polanski what's going on over here and i guess we were curious when we as to whether he was trying to peel away affiliated unions or embrace those that already don't have a formal link financially or otherwise to the party and twitch polanski told the state of it that at the moment it's largely about working with union members to get their unions to disaffiliate from Labour especially after they've watered down their workers rights commitments and I don't know whether it's cricket to say this bit out loud too but we then got what I was saying in brackets very happy to be on the record on that so that is what Zach Polanski is happy to commit to public record what does that actually mean in terms of the direction of the Greens and what they're doing and also what could it mean for the Labour Party it is quite audacious in some respects from Zach Polanski to say actually that could be my turf but it's also interesting in that message to you that he cited workers rights watering down of workers rights provisions that's something that I think hasn't got a huge amount of attention in recent weeks but will certainly be among the big issues that unions will be talking about you can imagine with Polanski and with the Greens and clearly there's an ambition there to go even larger so I think it will be really fascinating to see if they do that it will force a conversation inside number 10 about the extent to which they want to have this fight really I think to the extent to which they want to say actually we we embrace these unions we stand for and which they do say often but we stand for the workers Starmer I think one of his real characteristics is often that he doesn't want to have a fight he doesn't want to create a me and them in his dealings but whether or not this forces that I think will be really interesting yeah and I guess also there's something to be said as well for the sort of psychology of the parliamentary Labour Party which is you know obviously trade unions play a less significant role in public life than they might once upon have done but they are omnipresent within Labour itself in terms of MPs own stories so many of them have worked within the trade union movement Angela Rayner being probably the most salient example right now but also a lot of them will tell you like their own story of how they became an MP related to an endorsement they receive in unison or how you know the unite political secretary helped them get a leg up in their selection process and Labour MPs are already disposed towards thinking about the threat to the left more than they are the threat from reform because that's their culture that's the world that's the people they know socially and get whatsapps from and I think you have polanski actively trying to drive a wedge between the unions and the labour party i think that's a fight that starmer kind of as you say probably has to engage in but also one which has quite a significance for for people who ultimately will decide on his future yeah i mean we discussed this uh in our reporting over the weekend about the defense investment plan which is of course this long-awaited multi-billion pound plan to try and fund britain's defense industry at a time of course at the moment of war people in the treasury saying that it's like trying to pin a tail on a moving donkey at the moment clearly it's a big problem for them but one of the most interesting things that came out of that reporting was talking to mps about why they were pushing so hard um pushing number 10 over a few weekends ago not to cut the foreign aid budget further to try and provide funding for this something that you revealed a couple of weeks ago and one of those reasons that they cited again and again was the green party we're really worried about the threat of the Green Party.

14:21We've seen it. It's been, this is now all of our fears have been realised in Gorton and Denton. And worse, this is something that we need to be taking massively seriously. I think it's important to say that's not a universal position held by the PLP. You know, I was also speaking to MPs who are really concerned about the fact that this investment plan hasn't been fully funded yet. And also, frankly, really quite annoyed with some of their colleagues about what they see as an inability to focus on the real priority at a time of war, which in their view should be providing Britain's defence forces, its armed forces, what they need, rather than perhaps the foreign aid budget, which they think, some of them, comes from the background, the career background, the professional background of the Parliamentary Labour Party, of whom 70 of the new MPs, so of the new 257 or 70, 70 who worked in the charitable sector before they joined.

15:07And some of these MPs say, look, it would be probably a lot more helpful if we had more MPs who had a defence background, a business background, a finance background, and that is skewing the priorities of the PLP at a time where we need to find this. And I do wonder if that's analogous in some way to the current way the PLP perceives the green threat, which is that a lot of them will be more will be facing that kind of conversation a lot more. And it seemed to me having these conversations that that was certainly something that was front of their minds at the moment, the Green Party, perhaps what I would say more so than other political concerns.

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17:16We mentioned at the outset that we're on recess right now. And I think when we go back, we are then in the world of weeks and not months until the local elections, which everybody agrees are going to be make or break for Keir Starmer. Now, Starmer's team have long thought that the path to victory, not just this next round of elections, but long term, is aggressive focus on the cost of living on one hand, and at least having a story to tell or reducing the salience of boats on the other. We've talked a lot about the cost of living on this podcast over the last few weeks. We've not really talked about what Shabana Mahmood is doing over at the Home Office.

18:02Laura, you have some insight on what is going on there. Yeah, so we know that negotiations are going to the wire between the French and British negotiators over this beach patrol deal, which was signed by Rishi Sunak and President Macron. You remember in 2023,£475 million three-year deal, which centred on patrolling of the beaches, using new and innovative technology to try and tackle illegal migration at a source and to try and drive down the numbers of those making the dangerous crossing across the channel. Now, a big part of that original deal was the construction of a new migrant detention centre in Dunkirk.

18:40And although that has kind of begun construction, it is mired in kind of a big planning route has been. It's been much delayed. And the Brits, Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, speaking to those close to her in recent days and today would say that actually the detention centre is a really important part of this, as is, of course, the necessity of getting this deal, getting this deal done quickly and being able to show people that we can work with the French to drive down crossings using new and innovative ways. Now, at the moment, we're looking at just a few hours now, so midnight tonight, where if that deal is not reached, it will lapse.

19:16That's the deadline. However, you know, we're told that we can expect something later on by way of avoiding a possible cliff edge. So one of the big concerns over recent days is, look, if you're not able to actually get some form of renewal for this deal, because there are big outstanding questions. For example, there's a question on whether or not the French will agree to a payment by results model. Also, Mahmood, I think, keenly aware of the fact that actually there are they have stopped about 40 ,000 people to their mind crossing the channel since the election that would otherwise have done so if they had not had a deal like this in place and were not working with the French.

19:48But still, it's not brilliant value for money necessarily in circumstances where interceptions by the French have dropped in recent months. They were higher at the beginning after the deal was signed and they have dropped and they want to be in a position where they can say, actually, you know, we've got some incentives for the French to work really hard here. and we want to get the British taxpayer value for money and Downing Street have said that value for money is kind of going to be at the heart of what they want out of this deal. But the key thing, of course, will be midnight tonight. If they don't manage to get progress on this and it seems to be that there are a number of outstanding questions, what then happens?

20:22Is the northern coast of France going to be policed in the same way and is there going to be a risk of more people making this dangerous crossing? Well, I think we can expect something from the Home Office later today about what might happen. And I think you would imagine that there would be a reassurance to the public that actually there will be measures in place, that it's not going to be strictly a kind of cliff edge where all of this goes out of the water. They're working on an assumption that hopefully they will be able to make progress in this space. And it will be really interesting to see.

20:47I mean, one of the things over the weekend that became very clear was that this detention centre was becoming more of an issue. So did you not say that the Home Office sources that were reminding you that when Rishi Sunak kind of inked his deals with the French, the notion that they would build this centre was like front and centre of the government's communication? Yeah, I look back over the original press release that was released by the British government under Rishi Sunak. And the detention centre was a really big part of this. You know, it was going to be a big way of deterring people from making this crossing, but also to give increased capacity to those who are seeking to tackle this question of illegal migration on the French shores.

21:29And it's now been three, you know, nearly three years. And that detention centre has not yet fully materialised. Now, we know that they've started construction, but it hasn't been completed. and the British government has obviously been giving quite a significant amount of money on the understanding that that would be completed. So I think it's unsurprising that that's emerged as one of the key things as well as, as we say, a more kind of coherent sense of value for money from their deal that will allow Mahmood to go to the public and say, look, I've driven a harder bargain here. I think that there were strong merits in the previous deal that was signed by Rishi Sunak.

22:02I think they accept that that was in the right ballpark, but that it could be improved. And I think that's what you're seeing at the moment and what they want from these. Yeah, and it is one of those instances where, you know, Shabana Mahmood's rhetoric kind of collides with the imponderably complicated reality of what is going on across the channel. I spoke to a number 10 source recently about migration and their view, which is pretty pessimistic. The fact that people see the effects of mass migration in their towns and cities and it's sort of so visible and indelible a fact of the way the country's worked for 20 years that people's antipathy or hostility towards the system and traditional politics is not going to abate just because you've read a statistic saying that of late migration has slowed but the other fact is just the kind of unique significance of channel crossings themselves as a very visual metaphor for being seen to have control and for that reason you know shabana mahmoud has to extract something out of the french or at least find a way to perpetuate this admittedly non-ideal agreement yeah i think i mean so our colleague matt dathan at the times obviously the great sage on these matters has written that um the british have rejected a request by the french to pay the staff at this new migrant detention centre.

23:28So it's clearly one of the key sticking points and something that they want to get progress on. But I think what you say is very interesting about the wider politics of migration, because in recent weeks, we've been speaking a lot more about changes that Shabana Mahmood wants to make to legal migration, specifically indefinite leave to remain, by doubling from five to 10 years the period from which you then become eligible. And that has proved a real lightning rod for criticism and indeed disunity among the parliamentary Labour Party. And that is something that when you talk to people in government, in the Home Office, they are much more worried about because even though you don't need a formal vote on these, they're just a rule change.

24:05And even though we are in the consultation and we don't yet fully know what these proposals will look like when they're in ink, there are still mutterings that they could force some kind of vote on this topic and that it could be in some way embarrassing for the government. I just mentioned it because it is the thing that is consuming quite a lot of the energy in the PLP and it's not really the boats, which among Labour MPs does seem to have fallen in salience, I would say. I don't know what you think, but when you speak to them, it does seem to be that these changes, which are really big that they're proposing via this consultation, are the thing that Labour MPs are most exercised about and not actually, in fact, what was the totemic issue, particularly under Rishi Sunak's time, which was these boats crossing.

24:42I guess the boats issue is just the latest example of how much geography right now is politics. Everything, it seems, domestically at the moment is defined by small straits of water. We are now in a world where the international is going to interact with the domestic in ways that are very immediate, very politically tangible. And we don't know how the public is going to respond to what's happened over the last month. And you can tell that the government's position at the moment on cost of living is crossing our fingers and hoping for the best. And that may well have to give way to something different if this war is any more protracted.

25:22Yeah, I mean, it's extraordinarily difficult for them to be able to say with any certainty what they're actually going to do at this point. And I think you're right, James Murray this morning, the minister on the broadcast round from the Treasury, very keen to basically set out that, yes, we will see a small cut in our bills. But of course, from July, we will therefore be exposed to possibly quite a significant amount of pain. Cornwall Insights have done a new piece of analysis today showing that they think bills have got up£288. pounds in july the government seem to think they've got time on their hands that they can do something more limited in and before the summer followed by something perhaps a bit bigger in the autumn if things get pretty terrible but while they're in this holding pattern uh it's not necessarily an easy communication setup for them because they're going on the radio basically every single day and they're having to say let's wait and see basically be grateful for what we've already done be great yeah energy build be grateful we've already done they also don't want to say use less energy and try and conserve more because they don't want to give rise to any possible suggestion or insinuation that there might well be some form of a shortage or some danger to consumers or rationing or any form at the moment the line is everything looks okay for now um then again is that going to change at some point you know you have some more seasoned advisors saying actually why not just level with people that actually things might well change uh the government basically are now in a position where minister after minister is saying we recognize there's a lot of uncertainty and And actually, that may not be massively reassuring for people who already perhaps don't fully trust the government to have their best interests at heart, which is, of course, a number of people.

26:51Trust in politics, as we know, is fairly low. And I think, as you suggest, are probably not going to thank ministers if they end up less poor than perhaps they otherwise would, but still poorer. I mean, that still doesn't end up being a kind of net win for them in circumstances where we've got this multi-party system and they may well have quite a lot of choice come future elections. Yeah, I think just the other thing which has clearly crept into their narrative and messaging is the fact that whatever does come, this government has been very clear that there will not be any rerun of the Liz Trust universal bailout.

27:23It will be much more targeted. They know that they've got inflation to think about. They've got the already heavily indebted state of the economy to contend with. So there's already they're trying to bake into the cake the expectation that if they do help anybody, it's going to be very targeted support for the people you expect Labour to back. Yeah, I think that's the message they want to land. I think it's interesting they talk about Liz Truss. It's completely unsurprising, given that that's a big part of Labour messaging and has been for basically the entire period since she left office. But I think it's also important to look at, and I wrote about this in our Sunday Times politics newsletter this weekend, the efforts that the Rishi Sunak government went to on this particular question, because they too, and for a longer period of time, poured over the details of how to support people following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

28:10And there are a number of quite instructive lessons from that, which is chiefly, it's extremely difficult to target people. Of course, you end up relying on existing benefits claimants, pensioners, for example. But even within that, as Dr. Tim Leunig, who designed the furlough scheme in the Treasury and has held basically many jobs in the Treasury, but also significantly an economic advisor to Rishi Sunak, he told us over the weekend, universal credit in particular is actually got a really significant pro-london bias given the higher living costs in london and it's not necessarily a perfect measure of doing this either and you do end up getting into a really difficult position where the treasury finds it very hard for example to say who are householders i mean it's fiendishly complicated to do that it sounds like a really simple thing it's not easy particularly for a number of working-age people some of which are very you know fluid um and they may end up in a position where uh they're looking at the rish sunak administration and they're saying actually we're going to end up doing some similar things to what they did.

29:03You know, you end up with some form of a universal rebate, perhaps, but you also end up doing a number of different targeted schemes with the various different benefit systems that exist. And that may not be a perfect system. And as James Nation, who was the deputy director in the Number 10 policy unit, told us over the weekend, especially the first of those rebates, the people would have to claim back. The public didn't thank them for that. And that ended up being quite difficult. So I do think if you're Rachel Reeves, you do have to guard against the risk that for months and months you promise target support to those who need it.

29:31Yes, you create a clifford which is the most important appreciated risk you know someone lives next door to you is paid an insignificant amount more than you and yet they and that you are eligible support and they're not and they may see that as egregiously unfair but also you have i think a less appreciated set of problems which just relates to the data the treasury holds and how they're able to use it and that i think will be a big issue if you are the treasury at the moment and you're rachel reeds and you're promising targeted support for those who need it and you end up in a position where just like Rishi Sunak it's actually very very hard to do that as effectively as you would like in circumstances where you just don't have the information you need to for people.

30:06Yes and I think that at the moment where we are we are in a little bit of a little bit of an unusual dynamic where the government is keeping its cards close to its chest. Now that's all we've got time for on this week's edition of The State of It. A big thank you to Molly Guinness, Ewan Daughtry and Harry Kitson and we will be back with Patrick and Steve in a week's time. Hello, listeners. Meet Lisa. Hey there. Lisa runs an online boutique specializing in sustainable fashion. With Acast, she found a whole new way to reach eco-conscious shoppers. Yep, I recorded a quick ad targeted listeners interested in fashion and sustainability using Acast's Audience Attributes targeting feature and set my budget.

30:48Before I knew it, people all over were hearing about my shop. Now that's a smart way to grow your business. Hey, Lisa, what's trending right now? Shopping sustainably and my sales, of course. Start reaching your ideal audience through podcast ads with Acast. Visit go.acast.com slash advertise to get started.