Wes Streeting bottles it and Labour's left grabs the steering wheel

0:00Our country has voted decisively for change. This lack of trust can only be healed by actions, not words. I am clear that I have to do what's right for my country, Scotland. The distraction needs to end and the leadership in Downing Street has to change. I'm happy to be held to account for my messages. I'm also happy to be held to account for judgment. But what I won't ever tolerate is that kind of smear and innuendo. You have given us a clear mandate and we will use it to deliver change, to restore service and respect to politics, tread more lightly on your lives and unite our country. Welcome to this week's episode of The State of It, the podcast that promises to take you inside the room where it happens.

1:01I'm Stephen Swinford, the political editor at The Times. I'm Patrick McGuire, chief political commentator for The Times. And I'm Gabriel Pogrand, Whitehall editor at The Sunday Times. And look, just to kick off, there has been a lot happening. We sit here the morning after the night before, effectively, all slightly agog at what has just happened. Starmer has survived a full frontal attempt to remove him from office. Feels like he might be a bit stronger. So we're going to talk about two things today. We're going to talk about, one, what the hell just happened, and then two, where do we go from here and where does Starmer go from here?

1:37So let's start with what we've seen over the last kind of 72 hours, but crucially, this massive move by Anas Sarwar, the leader, Scottish Labour leader, to attempt to effectively defenestrate Starmer. He went for the king and missed. Yeah, he did. And Anas Sarwa spent the weekend on the phone to the most senior people in the Labour Party, Barkeer Starmer. He spoke to Angela Rayner. He spoke to Lucy Powell. He spoke to Andy Burnham. And in the words of one of his allies, he spoke to half the cabinet. Now, he didn't say to all of them, listen, on Monday, I'm going to give a press conference at which I call for the prime minister to resign.

2:15But at that point, all the senior leadership of the Labour Party was talking about was, what do we do about Keir Starmer and his number 10 operation? Is this sustainable? And Anas Sarwar reached the same conclusion that lots of them had privately by yesterday morning. No, it's not. And even after Morgan McSweeney's resignation on Sunday, again, that was the result of a weekend of anguish calls and conversations that began on Friday when the Prime Minister himself, some of his actual friends have told me, he was wobbling in quite a big way about his own future. But I don't think anybody, certainly not in Downing Street yesterday, imagined it would end here, with the Prime Minister looking the strongest he has for quite some time.

3:04Let's go inside number 10, and what happened in number 10 yesterday. So Anasawa rings up Keir Starmer, and I'd love to have been on the fly on the wall. I think he called it a difficult conversation. But he said to him, I'm going to do a press conference in about an hour, and I'm going to call for you to go. I think you've done damage to us. And there is good reason. Anasawa is not mad, right? He is a calculated politician, and he is seeing what is happening on the ground. They are facing decimation in Scotland in May. And he had reached the point where, well, there is an iceberg coming, I might as well be talking about the iceberg.

3:37But that then prompted an almighty scramble in number 10, as they tried to form a rearguard action. They had about an hour to pull this together. Yeah. And at the start of that hour, speaking to one of the people who was in, The war room that they hastily assembled around the cabinet table, they said, you know, at the start of that hour, we just thought it's over. It's finished. You know, that's how it felt yesterday morning. So, you know, people have been saying, oh, this was all a media confection. Actually, even in number 10, they thought, God, actually, maybe this is it. I spoke to somebody who was privy to some of the conversations between the PM and Matt Sweeney over the weekend.

4:16and they said that Starmer himself seemed to be in a bit of a tailspin. They also said, I thought this was quite interesting, that Starmer was sort of weirdly ambivalent, almost had no opinion on what McSweeney ought to do or not to do. McSweeney is his chief of staff, right? So he is the most powerful official. He's been with Starmer from day one and he went on Sunday and they had this agonising conversation, Gabriel, which you're going through there. That's right. So Sweeney had become of the view that there were too many arrows in his back. But I think that basically Starmer himself didn't have a specific view as to whether or not McSweeney ought to go.

4:57And then, as Patrick said, Starmer himself was sort of acknowledging the big question mark over his own future. But I think that it's worth just casting our minds back a little bit to Hartlepool and what happened after the by-election, which Labour lost there in May 2021, which was Starmer does have these wobbles he came into parliament after that particular event saying he was going to go then once he's resolved what he wants to do he can be quite bullish quite single-minded I think it was self-evident that by yesterday uh you know didn't matter what Anasawa was going to say about him that conversation was obviously difficult but I think he was of the view he wasn't going anywhere and I think we probably should just say as well that the politics of who then came out and defended Starmer are fascinating too because there is this ongoing discrepancy between how ministers discuss the PM and his fortunes in private and in public.

5:51I think it's worth reflecting that this was a move born of desperation, that prime ministers only ask their cabinets to rally around them and send supportive messages when they are looking over the precipice. And I've reported on previous prime ministers, I remember when Boris Johnson did it and it didn't work they got some ministers out and then there were mass resignations at this time it actually worked and it actually paid off the entire cabinet message in support we had i think more than 100 labor mps who were all basically saying yeah we were told we don't have to choice but to do this the ministers in particular and even if we don't particularly agree with it we're doing it as a performative show of loyalty yeah and that works one of anasawa's allies one of the people who discussed his plans with him over the weekend, likened all of those tweets to confessional videos extracted under torture, which gave me a laugh on a very busy day.

6:43But yeah, as you say, look, you know it's serious when Sir Alan Campbell, lately chief whip, currently leader of the House of Commons, one of the most taciturn, grumpy people in British politics, hadn't tweeted since May 2025, you know, the least digitally savvy member of the cabinet. His bio is literally on X. I am currently the member of Parliament for Tynemouth, which gives me a lot of joy when I see that. But yeah, even he was, you know, told to find his Twitter password and tweet his support. And, you know, as one of his government colleagues said to me, it is a new low for the government when Alan Campbell is having to tweet his support for the prime minister.

7:25But on the flip side, it's a sign that if Number 10's objective now is survival, the departure of Morgan Sweeney does not mean it can't organise. So I think as an object lesson for a disoriented Downing Street that they could still do a political operation. I think yesterday in terms of the morale in there has been really, really important. The idea that a new leadership in Downey Street could lead on this sort of thing, but also that they could still pull a team of loyal spance, special advisors from across government together, get them in a room and get them to fix a problem. There were lots of people on Sunday night who said the next crisis, Starmer is finished because Morgan McSweeney won't be there giving him advice.

8:10Operationally, at least, yesterday was as good as it ever has been, if not better for Downey Street. Let's talk about the psychodrama, because this is yesterday was one of those proper days of psychodrama, because not content. So they had the support of the cabinet. Starmer had the support of MPs. We then got a succession of briefings that this was all really about West Street. And Anas Sawa was West Street's outrider and West bottled it. He took a shot at the prime minister he missed and he was the real villain of the piece. And those briefings were pretty vitriolic. Yeah, they were really, really aggressive.

8:45It was, you know, Wes is using an ass as an outrider. He's absolutely effing bottled it, as one minister said. I couldn't work out whether that was in condemnation or disappointment. Look, Wes Street has lots of critics. Many of them, to whom I spoke yesterday, were not surprised that he hasn't seized the moment. But in Cabinet, I think, as well as contempt, there was widespread bewilderment. You know, that golden hour, and this is a PG Woodhouse phrase, you know there are golden hours in one's life that one has to seize uh it's from peace smith in the city a great novel i recommend to you all but you know you've got to seize these golden hours west streeting literally had a golden hour he let it pass him by and the briefings got more heavy when he released his whatsapps with peter mandelton and i think there were a lot of eyes on him on west streeting at the parliamentary labour party meeting last night which was almost like a sort a revivalist rally in its 37-second standing ovation for the Prime Minister, MPs in tears, round of applause for Morgan McSweeney.

9:53But more than one MP pointed out that they looked at Wes Street during that round of applause and his hands were completely still. He did not clap, which predictably then gets back to hacks like us who say, Wes is so sour, Wes is so bitter, he's played us really badly. Yeah, ashen face was a phrase more than one person used. Can I just give listeners an insight into what happened yesterday with Wes? So we obviously heard all these rumours, all these briefings against him. And we went to his spokesman for comment. Do you have anything to say on that? We all went a bit quiet for a bit. And then we just got back this extraordinary spokesman comment, which said...

10:27On the record. On the record, which said while Wes was giving a supportive interview to Sky News at this point of the prime minister, Number 10 was briefing against him. This is the problem. And so it very quickly became a story about Wes Streeting accusing Number 10 of smearing him, of fabricating claims that he was orchestrating in an attempt to remove the prime minister. And that was obviously a product of internal fury. And that doesn't feel particularly sustainable to me because it is, I think, about the fourth or fifth time that West Streeting has gone over the top and directly attacked number 10.

11:07And we've done many front pages on it. We've done many podcasts on it. But that tension is getting pretty unbearable, I think. I also think it's super interesting. We were just talking about this before going on, the readiness with which Streeting pulls the lever marked lash out at number 10 for briefing against him. and up until this point you could say well by number 10 that is just synecdoche even morgan mcsweeney and he is going up against the man who he was once allied with but with that with him gone and the number 10 operation in flux you do wonder what does that actually mean who is he actually referring to in this instance um you know i don't think he would you could possibly say that he's referring to starman maybe it's just like this amorphous idea that everybody in there is out to get him.

11:50Yeah, and as another minister said to me last night, as the dust was settling, and I think, you know, Labour MPs were maybe on their third or fourth point, they said, Wes is not behaving like someone who doesn't want to precipitate a challenge to the Prime Minister. You know, another phrase used to me in recent hours has been, he's acting like someone who is trying to commit suicide by cop, which refers to when, you know, people try and goad the police into shooting them. And the political equivalent of that is like he's almost baiting number 10 into a confrontation from which he can emerge as the wrong party.

12:24Now, who knows? That's what ministers looking at the past 12 hours are sort of saying. Some of them, by the way, would quite like to see West Street to become Prime Minister. But given the situation the Prime Minister is now in, how straightforward a play that is, whether West Street is too isolated to do that, they're live questions. And I think actually increasing numbers of the parliamentary Labour Party have decided that for now at least they are settled. Cabinet ministers, let's just be clear about this, some cabinet ministers, and we've put this on the front page, they want Starmer to sack Street.

12:58Yes. They think he is completely out of control and out of line and there are extraordinary briefings to that effect. I think the question is, does Starmer actually have the strength to do anything about it? And I don't think he does. There is talk of a reshuffle after May, but removing Streeting would be, you know, adding to this extraordinary psychodrama. So we're in this weird kind of holding position where this is going to keep happening. There will keep being briefings. It's not like the situation is going to suddenly improve dramatically for Labour and its political fortunes. So this tension is unresolved and will go on.

13:33Yeah, and of course, Number 10 are going to slap where he's streating about because he's made it quite clear that he wants the Prime Minister's job. You know, a briefing from number 10 does not necessarily mean that the Prime Minister's Director of Communications has sat down and said, can someone please send Gabriel Pogrand a nasty text about West Street saying, it's much more likely that one of any of us will have called up people working inside number 10 for their thoughts on something. And, you know, over the course of the conversation, these things are said or texts are sent in frustration or anger.

14:06So, you know, So even if it's not coordinated, of course there's going to be hostility to West Streeting in Number 10 because look at the past week, fortnight, month, however long. Yeah, and possibly a sort of less remarks upon detail as well of the correspondence he proactively released with Mandelson. So this is the WhatsApp messages. He released all of his WhatsApp messages with Lord Mandelson to show he had nothing to hide. and to get ahead of enforced disclosure because of a vote which took place in the House of Commons last week. By the way, we should say that The Sun has now reported that cabinet ministers have been told, actually, don't release this stuff proactively.

14:45It has to be part of a managed process. But Streeting, possibly in order to clean out his own stable and sort of get ahead of it, published or gave journalists the full transcript of his correspondence with Mandelson yesterday. day and one of the things that emerged within it was that he was speaking to manison when manison was u.s ambassador about the government's stance on israel palestine and it was sort of interesting like one of the things that most infuriates his colleagues around the cabinet table is the extent to which he strays from his brief and uh you know appears to believe that his remit extends far beyond the world of the department of health and social care but i thought that was some sort of quite telling evidence there that he was kicking the tires on the government's position on israel of Palestine talking about, you know, the most likely path to a two-state solution where the US administration was on this stuff.

15:33And of course, connecting that to his own electoral fortunes in Ilford North, where he said he felt he would be toast. But the readiness with which he communicates on topics well beyond his station, I think, is one of the reasons why yesterday, there are quite a few members of the cabinet who probably felt, I want West Streeting not to be Prime Minister today more than I want Keir Starmer to go today. Those messages were extraordinary on any normal day. I mean, he basically said, there is no clear reason why people should vote for Labour. There is no growth plan. Hello, Rachel Reeves, my friend over there in the Treasury, and set out a very strong position on Israel.

16:08So we're going to head to the interval, but we need to look, answer the question, what comes next? Where do we go from here? So we will be tackling that question when we come back. Welcome back to the state of it. And look, we're going to kick off with where do we go from here? Keir Starmer feels like he's in a stronger position, is now much more likely he gets through till May. And that's partly because nobody was ready yesterday to move. And Lorena wasn't ready, clearly West Streeting wasn't ready. And Gabriel, you've had a message, a quite blunt message to that effect. Yes, nicely profane. I think pithy and quite fair summary of where we are from a minister.

16:46He said to me yesterday, I see no path for Keir to recover. So the only serious questions are, can Andy get into Parliament? Can Shabana be popular with Labour people who decide the next PM? Can Angela clear her name? If the answer is no, no, no, we're fucked. Even if no, no, yes, we're also fucked. Basically, we're fucked. So that was the rather lively verdict of a minister of the crown. And one which I think speaks to the sort of weird funk that we're going to be in now which does have sort of echoes of Theresa May and the last couple of years of her premiership which is everybody agrees that Starmer's project looked finished politically and yet there are all sorts of game theory issues that mean it's not that clear who is going to go and when when it would be right for different candidates to go and also what happens if in May the events get in the way of the leadership aspirations of some of the aforementioned four?

17:43So I'll tell you one thing that definitely is happening. I was delighted to see Ed Miliband on the broadcast round this morning because he made a lot of news. He did this particular series of interventions where he said that this is all about class now. This is about taking the country back from rich and powerful people and it kind of abroad. It reminded me, I had flashbacks to when he was Labour leader back when I joined lobby in 2013. It was the kind of speech he would have given back then. But it certainly isn't a speech that I've heard from Keir Starmer. Keir Starmer talks about working people.

18:14He talks about that kind of thing. But this was a very clear kind of class warfare based argument. And a move to the left feels like one of the things Starmer is going to have to do. Yeah, just before we recorded this, I got a phone call from a prominent MP on the soft left, sort of unsolicited offering their review of what the PM said last night. And they said that is the ultimate test. You know, when the prime minister talks about changing the way number 10 does things and Ed Miliband is talking about a broader reset, not just getting rid of Morgan McSweeney and Peter Mandelson, but a way, a sort of cultural shift and a policy shift.

18:52Now, the proof the pudding, one of his MP colleagues, still quite sceptical that this is going to work, said to me. We've heard a lot from Keir Starmer and Lucy Powell and others about a more collaborative way of working, about a broad church bringing people into the tent, bringing the party back together. But they just don't know whether it's authentic. They hear the Prime Minister say this and think, well, we've heard you occupy so many different positions before. are we now in a situation where it is Ed Miliband's wing of the party, the soft left, who are going to be seeking to impose a new politics on the Prime Minister in the same way that Morgan McSweeney arguably did, which was, here's the thing you need to say and do to win.

19:33Here's the thing you need to survive to the end of this week and beyond and beyond. And maybe that's just the strategic decision the Prime Minister has made. It may well be the more electorally sensible one, given that it might unite or reunite bits of the left block of the British electorate. But it's a gamble, but it's clear, you know, Ed Miliband going on the broadcast round this morning and talking in the terms that he did was a vision of the immediate future for the Labour Party, which is Miliband, Lucy Powell and others holding a lot of sway over the direction of travel. You know, Morgan McSweeney's departure opens up a lot of possibility in that respect.

20:11Morgan McSweeney. That might have been disemboweled, right? Right. Morgan McSweeney, Tim Allen, the Director of Communications, plus Chris Wormle, the Cabinet Secretary, the most powerful official in the land, is about to get replaced, we think, by Antonio Romeo. A moment in history, the first female Cabinet Secretary. There is a change here, a big change. The guy at the top hasn't changed, but everything else has changed. Yes, exactly. And the politics can now change because the two political people you mentioned there are by the standards of the Labour Party, reasonably right wing. Paul Ovenden the Prime Minister's Director of Political Strategy obviously went in September but the centre of gravity number 10 over since Paul Ovenden left until Morgan McSweeney leaving it's just one long journey towards the soft left and Morgan McSweeney's departure opens up a realm of possibility I mean in our book Gabriel one of the chapters is called Let's All Be Friends because that was Morgan McSweeney's private and withering description of Keir Starmer's political instincts to a small audience of people who actually included Lord Maddelson you know it was let's all be friends you know why can't the Labour Party just get along not understanding that people like Morgan Sweeney had a moral and political critique of the people with whom Keir Starmer thought they could just get along but that seems to just get along-ism is actually now the order of the day.

21:29And I should say as well that Angela Rayner is I think a really interesting case study and why Starmer's transition to the soft left could pay dividends, you know, if not indefinitely, then at least for a good few months. So Rainer is a good example of somebody who lacks that thing, or at least in the past has lacked that thing, which people say every leader needs, which is just that insatiable desire to get the top job. And, you know, people say Boris Johnson just omitted it. In 2019, Anza Rayner ended up resolving that she didn't want the job. There are a lot of people out there who are spoken of as future leadership candidates, but may actually end up being placated with a more transactional relationship with Starmer, who, Sean of Mitswini, is happier to give them what they want on matters of specific policy.

22:18Rayner, in her statement yesterday, referred to the workers' rights bill. I reported a couple of weeks ago that number 10 had kicked into the long grass bill of hers on cladding what if now she says well actually the price of my abiding loyalty is yeah we revisit some of those things but i think that is why this molten moment in number 10 is so fascinating because there's just so much that can now be rewritten and all the rules um which you know people thought had irreversibly transformed the labour party as patrick mentioned it might be that this government has not yet changed the party still less the country which weirdly can play into starmer's hands and that he can say well there's stuff up for grabs guys and you're not guaranteed to get any of this if we're treating as prime minister tomorrow if we were being uncharitable the soft left of the labor party angela rayner lucy powell ed milliband and others and ed milliband in particular actually all of those people would at this point now we've got an outbreak of performative loyalty and love for Stolmer would deny this, but they have the opportunity to put the Prime Minister on a different branch of the DLR, basically.

23:21That's a good way of thinking about it. But it was said of one of Morgan McSweeney's acolytes, Dunei Gabriel, the Prime Minister thinks he's driving the train. He's not driving the train. We've sat him at the front of the DLR. The DLR being the driverless Docklands-like railway. It has a number of branches. You can go to Canary Wharf, you can go to Lewisham, you can go to Woolwich if you want. Morgan McSweeney had him on one line, maybe Ed Miliband and Angela Rayner and Louise Haig and the soft left of the Labour Party are going to be sending him I don't know to the DLR control room yeah exactly they'll all be sat there and they'll be deciding to send him somewhere Morgment Sweeney Neville is to take him so this morning number 10 is feeling pretty pleased they're pretty certain that at least till May the Prime Minister is safe I would like to just briefly occupy the role of the Grinch so I'm going to say that they might think it's fine but actually one the polls are still absolutely appalling he remains hugely unpopular and Labour is heading for towards a by-election defeat and it's also more broadly heading towards a terrible set of results in May and two that much worse is to come on Mandelson if you thought last week was bad dear listener if you thought that that was tricky what is coming down the track is really really damaging so I will set that out both in the immediate term which is at some point, possibly this week, Lord Mandelson will be interviewed under caution by the police.

24:41Now, that in itself isn't a problem. What the problem is, is what follows, because Scotland Yard will then allow the government to release the due diligence cabin office report that Keir Starmer saw before he decided to appoint the friend of a paedophile as our man in Washington. So that is going to be a very damaging moment. It will lay out in black and white what Keir Starmer knew. And it will also show that he only asked three questions of Lord Bandleson before waving that appointment through. So that is a moment of huge tension to come. And then much more broadly is this insane operation which is going on in the Cabinet Office, where they are trawling through hundreds of thousands of emails or private WhatsApps, you name it, to get them ready for publication.

25:25Because the government has, in a kind of moment of sheer madness last week because the political pressure got to them, They have agreed to publish everything that was sent to Mandelson unless there are exemptions on national security grounds or on international relations. Yeah, not even on grounds of irrelevance, which is interesting, right? It's remarkable. It is absolutely insane. They're just going to release everything. And that is a ticking bomb underneath the entire Labour Party. Wes Streeting has tried to get ahead of that by putting out his messages. But they are just the beginning. There are suggestions that Tim Allen's departure, who was a close friend of Mandelson, is directly linked to those messages.

25:59so that is going to be really damaging and destabilizing now it's going to take time for them to come out but there is a broad commitment to do so you've got the intelligence and security committee which is a body of mps and peers which is now charged with overseeing that process so the government doesn't actually have control over what is published and what isn't that decision is being taken by that committee and it's just um i've never seen anything like it in politics it will make the Epstein files look kind of relatively... Abbreviated. Marginal for British. It's the Mandelson files and the scale of it.

26:34I'm told that they are looking back at messages that go back to 2001, when Mandelson was still in government serving as Northern Ireland secretary. We are talking about, you know, 25 years plus of internal government messages and then all of the WhatsApp messages. I don't think people have really looked at how bad this could be. No, of course not. And as a cabinet minister said to me yesterday, this whole process could well end with new Labour on trial, a trial at court number one in the Old Bailey, quite possibly is where this is going to end with Peter Mandelson in the dark, Gordon Brown, Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair, and basically everybody else who served in that government probably coming to the witness stand at some point.

27:23I mean, it's just crazy. And that's one outcome, not to prejudge the outcome, of course, but that could well be where we are headed. And that is going to dominate or it's going to be in the background, even if Keir Starmer's miraculous recovery turns out to have been real. Yeah, I think it's actually, it's just important to draw upon a distinction. One is, it is tactically good news for Keir Starmer that the cabinet rallied around him yesterday and that he's lived, fought on and it'll no doubt plod on until May. Now, it's very different to Keir Starmer can somehow transform his premiership or his perception within the country.

28:06And I think the thing which is interesting, we were talking about Tim Allen a few moments ago. You know, what he told people in Number 10 amounted to the path for survival for Starmer was talking about the cost of living at all costs. But how can he possibly hope to have that dialogue with the nation when, as Patrick says, the entire Labour movement and Labour Party is going to be put on trial in possibly a short order? That is the point. It is not actually about Stomach. It is much more broad about that. It is about the entire Labour Party. We have not even had day one after the nuclear explosion yet.

28:42The nuclear explosion is still about to go off. We know it's coming. Everyone knows it's coming. But I don't think people have quite grappled with how significant it is. Those where streeting messages are damaging, you wait to see what is to come. And that's even before we get to talking about what these messages say about Donald Trump, about the special relationship. It has got profound political implications, as you say, Gabriel, for the entire Labour movement. Starmer might survive till May. He might be succeeded by Reina. Let's say she's going to have the same problem. Every conversation is going to be turning back to Mandelson.

29:15Our listeners are probably going to be sick of hearing the name Mandelson in five months' time. But I guarantee we will still be talking about it. Well, and as one Labour strategist close to number 10 and several members of the cabinet said to me yesterday, cabinet yesterday chose death by a thousand cuts because that's what the background hum of revelation after revelation from the disclosure process is going to mean. all of these cabinet ministers at one time or another will have to go out the morning after a release and say what do you think of this what do you think of that it's just going to it's likely to be a really slow and painful process of death by a thousand cuts now rather than one big bang well look i think that probably brings to the end this action-packed episode of the state of it thank you for joining us and yeah we we go on from here and thank you uh Molly Guinness and Ewan Daughtry for another wonderful episode