499. Is It Game Over for Starmer?

Thanks for listening to The Rest is Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts, and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to the rest ispolitics.com. That's the rest is politics.com. This episode is brought to you by Fuse Energy. Most EV owners are overpaying without realizing it. They're either charging at the wrong time or on the wrong tariff. A smart EV charger changes that by aligning how you charge with how electricity is priced.

Fuse sets you up with a smart charger linked to an EV tariff. So your car charges overnight automatically when electricity is at its cheapest. That can mean as little as sixteen pence per kilowatt hour compared to twenty four pence or more on a standard tariff. You don't manage it manually. Fuse does that for you with everything visible in the app. Fuse will install it in one visit, then take care of the tariff and smart charging,

So the car is ready when you are. With the right setup, EV driving can cost under three P per mile. Getting the electric car was the big decision. A smart EV charger is the easy one. Visit fuseenergy.com slash.

Welcome to the Rest is Politics with me Alistair Campbell. And with me Rory Stewart. And we're going to do we're doing this as a live, but this will also go to go out as this week's main episode because to be absolutely frank, things are moving pretty quick Quickly within the Keir Starmer world. Many of you will have seen the monologue I did last night upon the resignation of Morgan McSweeney.

Kirstarmer's chief of staff and longtime senior aide. We've heard this morning that my former deputy, a long, long time ago, Tim Allen, who went in a few months ago to try to improve communications as communications director. He's also gone this morning. Keir Starmer's going to be talking to the PLP this evening as the Parliamentary Labour Party, all the MPs and peers. And I suspect they will probably take some persuading that this show can be got back on the road.

I think it can, but I can see why an awful lot of people are very, very, very jumpy. And we've had Kemi Badnock, the Conservative leader out this morning, saying that Keir Starmer should go. So we're recording on a morning where If you walk into the news agent. most of the headlines in the papers are all repeating the same line, which is variations on Forty eight hours to save his premiership. Can Keir Starmer hang on? Is this the final death blow?

Dead man walking, days numbered. The Daily Mail, for example, how long can Starmer hang on? The Express are Starmer's days numbered? And they all echo the same stuff. Can we start maybe with that, uh, framing? What's going on there? Do you take that seriously? Uh is this Westminster bubble speak with journalists just endlessly?

quoting anonymous sources and trying to manufacture a crisis. I mean, how how would you react if all those papers arrived on your desk? Well it's definitely that, but it is also very, very serious. And sometimes it does take a a sort of tipping point. And the Mandelson

Epstein relationship and the appointment and all the debate about who vetted and who didn't vet and who recommended and who didn't. has sort of come at a point where Keirstalmer was already quite weak because of all sorts of mishaps that have happened, this by election coming up and the Ferrari whether Andy Burnham, the mayor of Manchester

should be allowed to stand. And you have you see and you've got a lot of very, very angry Labour MPs who just feel the government has not been operating the way that it that it should. And of course, just on the media point, as I said in my my monologue, they can only do one volume and it has to be louder and louder and louder.

And of course we've had several years where part of the game and I hate the the way it is by so many of our journalists seen as a game, part of the game of political media is to keep going, try and create a turn a sort of problem into a scandal, a scandal into a crisis and then get a scalp. That's the sort of game.

The question is whether that's the right thing for the country and for the and for the Labour government. And it was interesting, I mentioned Kemi Badenok. I mean, I thought her I heard her interview on the radio this morning and she was very, very strong, and I do think she as a performer, as a politician, has got a lot stronger in recent weeks.

But I think where she was weak is on this idea that, you know, are we going to become like Italy, where you just keep changing your prime minister every time anything goes really wrong wrong or if there's a scandal? And I think the question on this is I guess in the end it is down to the MPs and the Cabinet to decide what they think is the best way forward. And right now, again, sorry to repeat what I said last night, but it's sort of it all did come from the heart.

I'm not convinced right now. I've got my complaints about Keir Starmer. I've had a lot of complaints about Morgan McSweeney. and and about the government as a whole. But I think if Labour was suddenly to sort of lurch now into a leadership contest, without any clear sign of where that would end, I think it could make things even worse. So the where I think we are is the Gears Dharma who

Is not Tony Blair, he's not Barack Obama, is not Bill Clinton, but in a very, very difficult set of circumstances he's he's kind of he's got some of the skills that you need to be the Prime Minister. He lacks others, no doubt about that. But I just worry that right now, even though as you say, the media debate is this furori, the the debate within the party and the PLP is this sort of at this level of intensity.

I think there are pu people within the country just gonna think this is just this is weird and then ask the question, are we actually becoming ungovernable?

But you I mean what do you think? Do you think he's kind of are you with the sort of headlines that he's basically had it? Well let let's maybe w circle back to that by just touching briefly on the substance which we're gonna have to get into more deeply. So The Mandelson appointment is very, very damaging because it's not just a lapse of judgment. appointing as your ambassador to Washington somebody who was tied in financially and in intelligence terms to an international criminal network.

Number one. Number two, Starmer's record as Prime Minister has been very disappointing. We've talked about his net popularity rating, which is catastrophically low. the complete absence of a proper growth narrative, these incredible tactical mistakes on things like Winter Fuel, where he does something in U turns and comes back and he's and then we've got the whole question of a very unhappy

Labour Party in in Parliament. The question is, with that backdrop, First see, is this just like a I don't know, a banderia in the in the in the in the bull in the Spanish ring that it's not necessarily on its own the thing that brings him down because of course on its own, as you've pointed out

there's an incredible irony if if Starmer was brought down by uh Epstein when Trump was a a good friend of Epstein's and, you know, had private parties from at Marilago and all this, and Starmer, as far as one knows, never met Epstein, right? Um, so that w would be very odd. But the only reason one could understand it is in the context of all the other

mishaps and this just being being the final thing. So I I don't know, and I I think because it's quite difficult getting rid of a Labour leader, I mean you said it's about the MPs and the Cabinet. Of course it is, but we also saw with Jeremy Corbyn that that wasn't enough to get rid of him, even when the majority of MPs turned against him. If the leader wants to just dig their heels in and stay, they can. I it it comes down to the very odd question of psychology. I mean in the end

Liz Trust chose to resign. Boris J Johnson, Theresa May, they chose to go. No, in in Johnson's case it had become catastrophic'cause the whole cabinet basically was derived, fifty six ministers had resigned, but But in the end the Prime Minister has to choose to go. And I think on that, I th I think that people do sort of talk about his his thick skin and his resilience and and what have you. I think he has had a you know a few dark nights of the soul in recent days.

And we know that he had those in in the past when Labour lost the b in opposition, lost the by election in Hartlepool. Um and he you know, we all know he seriously thought about whether he could do this, whether he was ever going to be able to lead the Labour Party into government. And of course he did that with this landslide. And and I think what was disappointed so many of the MPs. And don't forget a lot of these people, as you know, they

They don't know that much about politics. They've never really been through all the tough times that you have to go through in politics. They're new MPs who came in this wave. A landslide. Oh God, we've got a landslide we can now do so much. And I think one of the things that that they have found difficult, I don't think they've felt terribly respected by number ten.

I think that the well and and perhaps this this might be a point to talk about the the specific issue that sort of created this fr frenzy last night about Morgan McSweeney. Kirstarmer clearly owes him a lot in terms of Kirstarmer. He's been the he's been a lawyer, he's been the director of public prosecutions, he decides to become an MP relatively late in life. and he he h hires this guy, Morgan McSweeney, who gets to know Morgan McSweeney, who I guess he sees as having political

skills on the organizational and the campaign side that maybe he feels he doesn't have. My understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, is that McSweeney did four things for Starmer. He's credited with helping him win the leadership in the first place. He's credited with having purged the left from the party. He's credited

with having designed the election strategy and finally with having run number ten, is that right? Well, credited is a very interesting word. Um I think I I one of the points I was I was going to make is that I do remember we said at the time when the book about The Labour campaign was published called Get In. Yeah. Um and and I said at the time, I think this is a really damaging book for Keir Starmer.

Because it gives the it gives the impression that He's what we used to call and I remember we used to sometimes refer to to candidates as legal necessities. And it it's like, you know, it's almost like he's been put in there, but actually it's these guys over here, and particularly Morgan, who are running the show. That is terrible for a leader. And so when you say credited, who's giving the credit? Even today I notice on the on the radio and the television I notice

allies of Morgan McSweeney say this was a terrible decision. Can you interpret that for me? I mean I I most of us don't understand what the hell that means. Um when Media says allies and Morgan McSweeney says that's a terrible position. What what sort of person? I'm not asking you to name names.

What kind of person has the journalist talked to and has Morgan encouraged him to say it? And what's going on when that story happens? Well, it's not impossible that it's Morgan McSweeney. Gotcha. It's not impossible that it is people who work for Morgan McSweeney who will feel very, very sad and unhappy and, you know, hacked off that he's this person that to th who they feel has been so central as as a a f if you like, being pushed out as a sacrificial lamb.

But there's there's another one. Every time you listen to the news at the moment, it says um the BBC, ITV, Sky News, We understand that Peter Mandelson does not think he has committed a a crime and da da da. That is the same thing. That's code for Mandelson himself, probably.

Yeah. Saying it off the record. Yeah. Correct. Correct. Or certainly somebody that the media knows is close enough to be able to to be to be authoritative. And so Patrick Maguire, one of the authors of that book, has a big piece in the Times today. Which essentially is saying, posing the question that ooh, well, we're not sure that Keir Starmer can actually cross the road without Morgan Massween. It's almost like that. Now that is a construct that has been developed over time.

And look, I think Morgan Massweeney does have an a an awful lot of talent, an awful lot of skill. I I I'd You know, I don't think it's a secret. I didn't think it was necessarily that those skills lend themselves to being the chief of staff of a G seven economy. So you know, you you would say that you'd meet with um Pierce Summer on Hampstead Heath.

and you'd talk to him and presumably you you would talk about Morgan McSweeney. You you haven't on this podcast openly come out and called for McSweeney to step down, I presume because you've got

you you know, you have discrete conversations with Starmer which you don't want to share. But if you were making those arguments, what would you have been saying? Well, no, uh but also I have discrete conversations with Tim Allen with Jonathan Powell, with Morgan McSweeney, with and I and I think as I said last night, I think that I hope that our listeners

Uh we are one is. It's the same for you if you're talking to people in different governments that we're talking about and you actually know things that I might ask you and you just you have to finesse it. I would have said and I have said this in the past, I think If your strategy is not working, then that ultimately is down to you, the leader. You have to have absolute clarity about what you're trying to do. But if the person who is

credited is identified as the main strategist and the strategy's not working, that is a real problem. Alistair to be really blunt, if I were to read your diaries in ten years' time, y you've basically been sitting there for months. saying Morgan McSweeney should go. This is not good. I have been saying for months that I think there is a fundamental problem inside that operation. It's not just about Morgan McSweeney, it's about

I think the big thing is about and we've said this so many times, do we really know what the what Tony Blair used to call the big picture is? What is the compelling narrative? That Keir Starmer is telling the country about who he is, what he's trying to do, and how that's going to benefit the country. We get snatches of it.

I thought one of the strongest points that again, Kemi Baden made this morning is, you know, we've had resets and missions that weren't mi were missions, then they're not. So that's a problem. And that's a problem for the operation as well. You have to have Somebody in there who is driving that. So I would have certainly said that. I'd have said, I'd also have said, I think that look when I was doing the job that I did. I had a lot of attention to the

But partly that's because my job was to talk to the media all the time. I may have done it I think I did do it pretty well, but I may have overplayed my hand a few times, but but I I was never there. wanting people to think that I was running the whole show. In fact, that that was I knew was a terrible negative for Tony Blair.

And and by the way, let me just I I I I sent you a uh uh a photograph this morning when I was listening to all this stuff about oh well, Keir Starmer's bound to flounder without Morgan McSweeney, you can't tie shoelaces without him, etcetera. And I sent you the front cover of Private Eye from the the week that I resigned in two thousand and whatever it was. And it was a collection of photographs, and the one that I thought was most relevant to this.

was a picture of David Frost, legendary BBC interviewer, interviewing Tony Blair, and David Frost says, How will you manage without him? And you've got a smiling Tony Blair with a completely blank speech bubble as if he won't be able to say anything without And that of course turned out not to be true. Totally untrue. The Sun I can remember the somebody reminded me this morning, the Sun headline was Blair Loses His Brain.

So the point is, and this is a g a point I was trying to make last night, is ultimately we have so much focus in this kind of soap opera political world on advisors. And sometimes like Cummings, they generated that for themselves. Peter, when he was an advisor, was a little bit like this. They want it to be about them.

And ultimately it is about the politicians. The politicians have to show that they have it. And so I think when Keir Starmer goes in to see the parliamentary Labour Party tonight, What they're gonna want is nothing. uh you know, oh I ballsed up on this and I wish I'd done that and Tim Allen's gone, but I'll replace him with this. They want to know that he's got it within him to understand the scale of the crisis facing him.

and to get out of it and ultimately to d to direct a better government. And I I th I was talking to one of the cabinet ministers last night who is I would still still very, very supportive of Kiev, doesn't want him to go. And who said, if Keir plays this right, it could be liberating for him, but it has to be based on the fact that every time the public see him from now on, they think they're seeing him

his values, his approach to politics, and he's not just somebody who's being pushed out there to read a script. So that's the kind of thing you you'd get a flavor of that. I think the reason I'm a bit gloomy if I if I'm gonna play my role of being a bit of a critic of Labour. If he hasn't done it yet, I can't see that he's gonna be able to do it because

I've been bewildered, like you have, by these this endless changes. You know, it was about growth and then it wasn't about growth, was probably one of the most dramatic ones, but yeah, all these sort of different missions and objectives. And what's completely bewildering about that is it's as though he had decided before the election, this is what he believed, this is what he wanted to do.

And then a few months after the election he was like, Okay, no, no, now I've really thought about it. I was I was wrong there. Actually this is what I believe and this is what I want to do. Now I can imagine that happening once, maybe, if you're a very inexperienced prime minister, you might think Listen, I've been doing this job for five, six months and I was naive and actually this is the biggest you

But the fact is he's done that a third time, a fourth time, and that's really weird. I mean, being Primus has got to be the most difficult job in the world. But if I think about my own life as a prisons minister, I can recognise that when I came in I thought the problem was drugs. And then six months on, I thought, actually, look, this thing is about violence. It's got to be about safer prosperity. And the system could somehow handle that. If I was very clear

We want prisons that are safe for prisoners, prison office families, and that's what we're gonna do for the next year. Everyone can get behind

If you change it again, people are gonna begin thinking, what are you at? And and the the advantage of I'll finish my pompous lecture, but I guess the advantage of Margaret Thatcher, for example, was that every junior minister knew what Thatcher thought about the world and it wasn't very difficult for them to answer the question, or any civil servant to answer the question, what would Mrs. Thatcher be doing in this situation?

And I can't see how Starmer's gonna get there because presumably you've been talking to him on a Hampstead Heath, Tim Allen's been sitting with him, Morgan McSweeney's been sitting with him, Mandelson's been sitting with him. And goodness knows who else have been going and trying to help him do this again and again and again and again. And and many of you actually have spent years of

outside government learning how to do this with political leaders all over the world. I mean you're very practice now. It's probably half a dozen of you who are very, very pract Blair probably does it with him too. Very practice at how you sit down with a political leader and say, okay Who are you? What do you want? What's it going to deliver for the country? And if you haven't managed to do it yet, I cannot

believe that he's going to be able to find that for the PLP in the future. The concept and the issue that you're speaking to, which is something that I do talk to other leaders around the world about is the importance of this thing that I call the reputational currency bank. How much currency do you have in your reputational bank? So if you think about somebody like Peter Mandelson,

So there's Peter, very tricky character. We've had all sorts of ups and downs, but pretty effective in lots of different ways when we were coming through opposition into government. He sort of agitates to get a senior job, he gets into the cabinet. He you know, we have his first resignation, okay? And off he goes into the wilderness for a little bit, but he's got enough currency in the reputational bank. Tony brings him back. He then goes off to the

And he does something stupid again and he resigns again. And he goes off and licks his wounds and rebuilds and he's still got a bit currency in the bank and he goes off to be a commissioner in Europe.

And then Gordon Brown, no friend of his No fan o'r hyn sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n Yn yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw.

Now, with care, what you're saying is that he had the reputation of being a good DPP. He had the reputation of coming to politics fairly late and seeming to know how to do politics. He was a pretty effective spokesman in really difficult times for Labour on Brexit.

not always get into the position I'd like him to, but, you know, remember remember when we interviewed my Michel Barnier, he said, As soon as I met Keir Starmer, I thought this guy could be prime minister. So he's got reputation building. He then wins an election.

He wins an election and you don't get more reputational currency in British politics or any politics. Look at the Japanese Prime Minister today. Her reputational currency's gone soaring because she's just won a landslide. Kia won a landslide. And what you're saying is that since then

I would argue there's been lots of good things he's said, lots of good things he's done. There is progress that's being made. I think the country is on many levels better than it was. But there have been you mentioned some of them, but you know, winter fuel, the farmers um some of the scandals that you know Two child benefit. Two child benefit, the U-turns, the the sort of playing around in Europe. So I think that where I would say he's at is that the reserves are running low.

Um he to to to refill that currency, reputational bank, he has got to give the PLP, starting today, the sense he knows how to get a grip. And

You know, we sh we shall see, we shall see. And then I add in the second question which I alluded to last night. That for a political party and uh of course this it may just be that we're going through one of these weird periods of history where both the milit main political parties that we've all taken for granted Royal Lives are sort of really in existential peril. But

He's got the by election coming up, which is obviously going to be very, very difficult, made more difficult by what's gone in recent days. We've got the local elections, the Scottish elections, the Welsh elections, which is gonna look may the seventh gonna look really they look really, really difficult.

So he's got all these things coming up. We've got the economy not quite motoring. And I think that goes to the heart of what you said. I've got to say one thing I would do if I were him, I would come out straight away And actually say, we did talk about growth. We should have stuck with that. Here's the growth strategy. Here it is.

And but make it a huge thing for the country. And also the other thing, this is for the Labour Party, because a lot of these MPs, who as I say, don't really know what tough times are like in terms of You know, just what politics is like. I think that they need to know that If the coun if Labour is going to win again, it's got to face up to the tough things that need to need to be done. Otherwise we just morph into a sort of soft left mushroom.

that isn't going to make the change. It's just gonna make people f people feel better about being a losing Labour party again. Just to try to work out um what happens now. So let's say people feel and definitely some of my friends who are still in Parliament feel.

that they don't want a leadership election. Uh, they think that um both West Streeting and Angela Rainer, who are the main contenders, would be too divisive Some of them are now a bit regretting that Andy Burnham didn't come in as an option, but the options they've got they feel would be a little bit too divisive, one too left wing, one two right wing. They're worried that uh Angela Rayner, because of the problems that she had with her tax and mortgage payments,

It's not an ideal time for her at a moment of scandal, and it's not an ideal time for West Streeting, who's seen as very much being part of the sort of Morgan McSweeney Mandelson universe. So I suppose the best case scenario for them might be Starmer remains in place, but then he really gives space to the

secretaries of state doing radical and impressive things. So I I'm on I'm more on the right of this argument. So I would like to see West Streeting really unleashed to do brave, difficult reforms to the NHS. I'd like to see Peter Kyle, as Business Secretary, completely rethinking how to get growth to get rid of regulation, get rid of red tape, get entrepreneurship going, get businesses growing. make Britain really grow. I'd like to see the Chancellor

be braver and tougher on getting public spending under control. I think if you got even those three things going. Maybe, you know, I might like to see someone like Al Kahn's in a more senior position bringing a bit of charisma and shape and energy. to the Labour project and and maybe you might think at some point of bringing back a voice like Angela Rayner to push on with planning and housing. And you do it under summer, but you do it not maybe this is too romantic.

Not in the way that McSweeney did, which was very central controlling. We control the narrative, we're a campaigning machine, we can barely be bothered to speak to a lot of these ministers half the time. But actually go for a first amongst equals model and really get behind these people. We can argue about some of the specifics that you talk about, but as a general approach, I totally agree with that. And that probably doesn't mean at some point if he does get through this period.

that he does have to think about, you know, a pretty s a a reshuffle that is more significant than the last one where it was huge fuss and in the end only one person and one person left and she became deputy leader of the Labour Party, Lucy Powell.

Um and I and I think this point about, you know, some of the stuff I talked about last night that the sense of all the way that politics is talked about in the media, the way that the short termism in our politics, the sort of th the the kind of levels of of dissonance in our public debate, the the way that social media and the media more generally just is All about rage, what have you. I think he's got to whoever's prime minister in a modern age has got to take that on.

Takaichi. She be I'm afraid this is one of the lessons from how Trump came back. You've got to fight all the time for what you actually believe in. Instead of thinking you can play a bit of way, well let's go this way on that policy, this way on that, a bit of left, a bit of right. You know, let's keep the reformed people happy, but let's you know, let's let's also lean over here. It doesn't work like that anymore. You've got to be absolutely clear about your core.

And I think that's what the MPs want to see. They'll say, right, look, you've been elected thank thanks to you and the changes you made in the Labour in opposition, a lot of us are now MPs. We want to see it. And that's without that, you just limp on from I said last night, you know, the the the the worst thing, the thing that really depresses me, is that when somebody says to me, Oh, it's just looking like the last lot now, it's hard to argue against that. when you go from one

bad thing to the next. Well, let's take a very short live break and then I think as we come back, let's look at uh the bigger questions around Epstein, Madison and also Epstein in the US. Now, just a quick pause in the podcast to mention our sponsor, NordVPN. We are in February, and that is the month when the year stops being theoretical. Good intentions turn into systems, accounts, passwords, payments.

And life starts running through logins again, almost without pause. And it feels completely normal and it's also exhausting. So there you are, whacking on all this sensitive information day after day, simply as part of your everyday life. NordVPN works quietly in the background, protects your data as you get on with life online. It adds privacy.

without asking for constant attention, encrypting what you do and keeping your location private. And we can't begin to tell you how much danger there is if you start having sensitive information and passwords and locations out there. and privacy, as provided by NordVPN, tends to work best when it's built in. One NordVPN account covers up to ten devices, or you can install it on your router and protect your entire

Home network in one go. To get the best discount on your NordVPN plan, go to Nordvpn.com slash restuspolitics. You'll get four extra months free on the two-year plan, plus a 30-day money-back guarantee. The links in the episode description. This episode is brought to you by Woop. Woopee. If politics teaches you anything, it's that the danger comes when you only focus on the headline.

and miss what's really driving the outcomes underneath. And listen, I'm wearing the whoop now, okay, so I actually use this device. Shoshana particularly really loves it. Um she works hard every day. She really wants to know uh what her resonance have on how far she can push in a training session.

And what it tells you basically when you wake up in the morning is what your resilience is and how high you can push it. So yesterday, for example, it said to me, Listen, you had massive resilience. You didn't push yourself hard enough in your training session, you could have done much more.

So it's giving you personalized insights so you can build routines that last and add more life to your years. So if you want better to understand how you can feel and live at your best for years to come, head to join.whoop. You can even sign up for a free thirty day trial so you can try Whoop risk free and start your year with a bit of momentum. Hello everybody and

The Book Club, a new podcast from Goalhanger. Hosted by me, Dominic Sambrook. And me, Tabitha Cyrus. As some of you may know, I have been Dominic's producer on The Rest is history and we even did a mini series last year about all And since we enjoyed that so much, we have decided to roll it out as its own show. So it'll be coming out every Tuesday. We'll be doing a

Book each time and digging into all the stories behind them. And we are going to be talking about the historical contexts behind some of the greatest and most famous books of all time. We're going to be digging into the remarkable people behind them, the unexpected stories behind the stories, and also unraveling the plot of each book a bit and delving into the depths of the

Now you don't have to have read the books to listen to the show, but we hope that by the end of each episode you will be able to pretend to people that you've read them. That is the key thing. And either way, whether you read them or not, we hope that you'll learn lots of fascinating facts, you'll do lots of great stories.

And maybe Tabby The Odd Laugh. We will be looking at thrilling gothic bodice rippers like Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein, as well as iconic stories like The Great Gatsby or Little Women. And then also some more modern stuff. So Game of Thrones, normal people, the Hunger Games, Hamlet. All manner of exciting stories. So please join us on our journey into all things books wherever you get your podcasts. Just search for the Book Club every Tuesday, and hopefully we will see you there.

Let's um come back into Epstein. I've I've been thinking a lot about him. I've been reading books about him, watching documentaries about him, and there is the horrifying side, which has been done so powerfully in Julie Brown's book and in the

documentaries which are available which people can watch, which is persistent rape of underage girls. I think thirty six at least women came out against them for rape. Uh People seeing these planes arriving on this island, girls who've been raped trying to escape by swimming across the Caribbean, other women describing being in hospital vomiting for two weeks over that horror.

And then there's the schizophrenic other side, which touches on it, but is a window into a much bigger world and which is a world that I think we need to keep focused on, which is the world of influence, power connections networks, which goes a long way beyond sex trafficking. And the reason that I want to say that is not to minimize his horrible, devastating crimes, but to understand that if we just see him as an individual example of evil.

uh we're missing a much bigger thing that's coming out of the story, which is the way that political corruption works. So one one thing I I noticed, um thinking about it and reading about it, is firstly how many of the people we've interviewed on leading are people who saw him regularly. Um so uh Bill Clinton twenty six trips. on Epstein's private plane. I'm just going through people we've interviewed on leading. George Mitchell. uh accused by Virginia Jeffrey of rape. Uh we've had

I'm just trying to trying to go through all the different people. Uh Reid Hoffman has featured a great deal in this. Uh we didn't interview Larry Summers, but I was pushing you to interview Larry Summers. He was very much caught up in this whole thing. And and I c I could keep going, I'm being a bit daft because I can't quite remember them all having set it all up.

The point that I'm trying to make is that we weren't setting out to interview a group of um people adjacent to Jeffrey Epstein. Clearly what we were doing is working our way through a lot of these prominent academic tech bros, uh political figures and Epstein knew them all. And he um he he did something which is a little bit different to the way that networking works in Britain.

Networking in Britain, I guess if you're um lobbying or you're someone who enjoys knowing people, a lot of it might be about politics and finance. But this is about politics, it's about finance, but it's also about

universities and it's about philanthropy. And the university and philanthropy bit is also very important because he laundered his reputation by being this kind of great intellectual who would host people like Stephen Hawkins and He was a senior fellow at Harvard and he set up his own centre at Harvard, and also he's giving money to all these philanthropic things and his connection with Bill Gates seems to be that he's

claim to advise Gates on his philanthropic giving and that's true for the head of one of the hedgehogs. Bill Gates is another one he's another one we interviewed, isn't he? Um we should we should it's probably worth saying, Rory, if if I can go into sort of moderate uh B B C mode for a couple of seconds that

just because your name is in the files doesn't mean that you're necessarily guilty of a of a of a crime. But you know, you you mentioned um the stent of the tentacles. I'll just give you a a tiny example of this. So

As you know, I'm about later today to start recording our next mini series, which is going to be about the Arctic. And I discovered in my research that the guy who put the idea of going of Trump going after Greenland was a guy called Ronald Lauder, who is the sole heir to the Estee Lauder fortune. And he's in the Epstein Files. And I just I just thought it's like everywhere you look

of these sort of big powerful people. They're just they're just in there somewhere. Here's one more that interested me. Um so there's a man called Joe Staley who ended up as the CEO of

Barclays. But it's a very interesting example of the way that somebody like Epstein operates, which is that he's not just networking, he's also mentoring people and trying to position them. So he he develops these these sort of mentees who he's guiding. In this particular case, he first comes across him when uh this man is the head of JP Morgan uh private wealth and he introduces him

To what Joe Stately later says is three of the five richest men in the world. Epstein does that introduction for him. Then he makes sure that Joe Stately can meet Peter Mandelson at Davos.

Now Peter Mandelson denies this, but it appears that Joe Staley is introduced by Epstein to Mandelson at Davos. They shake hands. This is january twenty ten when Mandelson's still the business secretary. Subsequent to that, that allows Staley to to take a stake in the Royal Bank of Scotland, which is then owned by the British Government. One point four billion. No. That's a decision that's made by the British government. To what extent does Mandelson have influence over that bit of

Fast forward. He then uh hires a man called Osborne, not George Osborne, but a lobbyist called Ian Osborne. to try to get his friend Joe Sadie made CEO of Barclays, which again is partly controlled by the British government'cause the government had nationalised these things. He fails the first time round. He then positions Staley in a big hedge fund. And then he gets him in to be the head of Barclays second time round in twenty fifteen.

At the same time, it appears from disclosures that Sadie, who's now been disbarred from any financial conduct, he can't be in banking anymore. uh sleeps with a woman in Epstein's apartment in New York, the one you visited, despite being married with two kids. Um but the reason I'm telling the story is that that is a story that yes touches on Mandelson, yes touches on the British Government, but it's a story of more than ten, twelve years.

Of Mandelson having this person who he's trying to put to so he actually set up something called Project Jez.

To get this guy in. I mean, uh how much of the of the files have you actually read? I mean, I've I've sort of dipped in and out and I I I've After a while you start to feel kind of repelled and sickened by the whole thing and it's it's it but the more you look so I I sa I saw a thing last night which I just i this goes to the the issue of the DOJ, the Department of Justice and how they're handling this.

Because so A lot of the the the really bad stuff is stuff that is said to Epstein by people whose names are redacted. I saw one last night where the name is redacted of somebody saying to Epstein, Looking forward to meeting you, I think it was in Italy, and then sort of talking about how he was gonna get these young girls together

Basic I mean children we're talking about. And joking about, you know, they're not very small, one of them looks a bit weird, but I think you're gonna like them and all this sort of stuff. And the piece I mentioned that Amelia Gentleman wrote, I really do recommend people put it in the newsletter. Sleazy and up to sort of terrible things. It's the sort of it's the joking about it and it's the incessance of it.

that I just think I I I I'd like to think I don't know any people like that because you say we've interviewed some of them. Can I come into that on that? So I was talking to Shoshana about this yesterday and she was talking about her complete horror of the sort of exchanges that people have. But a lot of it um I'm afraid is stuff that men are doing a lot.

without um admitting it to themselves or to certainly to their partners. I I think that Sometimes I'm reading this stuff and what you're seeing is um awkward, geeky professors who are flattered to have become friends with this apparently good looking, wealthy, powerful man. And they're showing off by making offensive comments about women just as they could in another mode make racist comments, make anti Semitic comments, make homophobic comments. I I m and I I I split without overdoing this.

I also think there's a tendency t for everybody to imagine this is a a sort of strange isolated incident. I'm more worried that half of men are saying this stuff and it's just they don't happen to be recorded on emails. But if you overhear them in a bar um they're making inappropriate comments all the time. I'm not accusing them of raping minors, but I was thinking about I was wn watching The Wire, I watching Sopranos.

basically the entire narrative is men sitting in bars making homophobic, racist, sexist comments all the time. I guess what what that speaks to though is is how th this is why sometimes these big moments really matter. And how they're then taken forward. But if you take the Me Too movement, there has been, not least because of the way that Trump projects himself and the MAGA movement projects itself and the sort of anti woke right, there's been a backlash against that.

I hope that this actually will maybe regenerate some of that energy around the the Me Too movement. Look at George Floyd. I mean, you know, you if you think about the sort of the huge advances of when we we talk about apartheid, we talk about uh we we talk about sexism, racism, all the sort of isms that good people I think have tried to deal with. I think a lot of them are back out, the gene is back out of the bottle.

You know, w one of the things that really shocked me, you mentioned academics, was Name Chomsky, who's meant to be this sort of, you know, left wing intellectual hero. Yeah, great hero of the progressive left. Yeah. Correct. Consoling Epstein

And saying, you know, that oh well, you know, this c the way they've weaponized all this this stuff about violence, like abuse of women, like it sort of doesn't exist or it doesn't matter. And there too, again, this sort of weird fudging conflicts of interest that we don't understand. So

Chomsky is given, I think, two hundred and thirty thousand dollars, at least that's what was reported in the papers yesterday, by Epstein and Epstein also is funding Chomsky's children. The thing to remember though, I was thinking about this last night, you mentioned uh racism and homophobia. I dun I can't remember w when it was and whether you would have been a kind of watch a television watcher at the time, but you know, till Death has due part, Alf Garnet.

Yeah. Um the BBC program, Sheree Blair's dad was one of the the stars in it alongside Warren Mitchell. And that was a program not that long ago historically where racism and homophobia was Openly part of what it was to make people laugh. So that says to me, This stuff can change.

But only if people decide they're going to make it change. And I think the only good thing that might come out of all this is that actually people do start to think, yeah, let's get back on the woke stuff. Let's get back on a bit of the me too stuff. It's also important to understand that yes

what it shows is that a lot of this is hypocritical. So Ben Rhodes, who does that that American uh podcast, wonderful podcast, Pod Save America, with with your friend Tommy Vita, wrote a very good substatic article pointing out that actually some of these figures literally were making speeches condemning violence against women and sounding very, very right on and progressive, and then they were getting on planes.

With Epstein straight after their speeches. So there's a huge element of hypocrisy. And that's something we're seeing all the time. I mean, we saw it in Davos where Larry Fink, who's the runs Davos now, turns up a few years ago in a tie decorated with sustainable development goal colours, committing his fund to tackling climate change and the environment, and now seems to be happily introducing Trump on stage and

backing off from that. Now I'm I'm not particularly saying he's a uh a uniquely bad person, actually he's representative of the entire American corporate class.

There's seventy five percent less reference to climate change and the environment in American corporate reports this year compared to last year. By the way, the CEO at Davos has been suspended over some of this stuff. So But I suppose what I was going to get onto is that the right will want to say, well that just shows the whole thing was nonsense anyway, and everybody who was making any remotely progressive comments was a hypocrite and therefore we should abandon it all and rip off the mask.

But of course, I think you and I would agree that actually, in a funny way, hypocrisy can be helpful. It can actually lead to better behaviour. That I I felt this when I was doing human rights in place like Indonesia, that yes, of course, a lot of talking about human rights was bullshit. But having the norms, being able to speak about it, actually led to real social change.

stopping people from making racist comments and sexist comments actually creates society that is ultimately a bit more tolerant. Then that's not what the right believes. The right believes that if you make people say politically correct things, it inevitably creates a backlash and makes things worse. I actually feel society's been improving. Interesting. Interesting. I mean I look the reason why I think a lot of people like me feel so

absolutely shattered by this. And it's a it's amazing talking to you know, I was talking to Neil Kinnock last night and talking to people in the cabinet. I was talking to different people of different generations. And I think what on the political level, you talk there about the right and the left.

What this does, because you now have a a kind of very well known progressive a politician like Peter Mandelson who's projected himself as a project progressive all his career, right at the heart of this stuff, that it just fuels that cynicism and fuels the populism. And it honestly what I find absolutely nauseating is to have some of these people whose attitudes we know about what they think about corruption, what they think about women, what they think about race.

able to project themselves, Oh, go, I'm not as bad as that. And it's so that's what I find so difficult to deal with on this. You you've talked about not sleeping well and I I I w I want to be even more bruiseful because I have just been uh looking again at the Derek Draper scandal. And one of the striking things there is so this is back in nineteen ninety eight, and this is a guy to call Derek Draper who knew Mandelson very well, I think actually one of Mandelson's aides.

who is boasting to clients that he can get inside information from the British government before it's published. So I'm very excited, said Draper, I'm now quoting from the research. Very excited. Why? Gordon Brown put the cap on total spending at two point seven five percent, not two point five percent like everyone expected, and we said so, we said so last week. He's given the correct number to his client, which is Salamon Smith Barney, the US investment banking giant.

And then he explains the one quarter percentage point difference may seem tiny, but in the hands of security traders and arbitragers, such information is gold dust. And then Draper says, you know, if you can act on this, you can make a fortune. The reason I'm troubled by that is I I just am beginning to wonder how long Mandelson's been at.

Where's Draper getting this information from? How was he able to get a week in advance confidential government information out of Gordon Brown's inner circle and pass it on to investment banks?

Phew. I mean Derek's dead now, so can't ask him and I th I think I've if I remember at the time, it was a long time ago now, but if I remember at the time, that was like our first yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r And uh back to my reputational currency point, I think partly because we were still in that honeymoon period.

we were able to navigate it reasonably quickly. I think Derek got I can't remember what f what actually happened to him, but there was some sort of punishment. Um I I think that No l listen, I uh what you said to me there makes makes me think that on a lot of this stuff we just maybe weren't tough enough.

about dealing with stuff that we should have thought you can't say things like that. I mean we would have all of said that by the way. I'd have to look up my diaries to see what I said and thought at the time. But I you know,'cause the other thing I can't stand that that reveals and I hate speaking ill of the dead, but what that reveals is this

related to what you we've said about Peter's this showing off the rewards that there are only seventeen people of matter and I know them all. I mean that and in a way, this is a point Gordon Brown made the other day. He said there are sixty one lobbyists in the House of Lords.

Yeah. Well he's right. That is wrong. That's wrong. And but you know, how who put them there? Yeah, yeah. And I I I think the other thing f uh this is maybe me being pushing it too far, but we tend to think about um Thank you. Mandelson's appointment simply as an oversight that Starmer and McSweeney hadn't done their due diligence or something had gone wrong in the civil service vetting procedures or the intelligence agencies weren't doing their job.

also true in some way that Mandelson was given the job precisely because he was considered to be so well networked, because he In some ways, I mean, obviously he's not Epstein, but he also was a man who had an incredible Rhododeck. Knew all the heads of the banks and Could contact anyone you wanted. and mentored people and helped them and You know the Labour politicians believe he helped the

um McSweeney a great deal in planning the election strategy and working out which MPs got into which seats and how to deal with this. And by the way, and I and I think that's overstated as well, by the way. But anyway. Okay. But anyway, the whether it's a reward or whether it is actually that

all these systems partly rely on people who project themselves in that way. I mean y y the the connection I so this isn't just uh beating up labor. I mean remember David Cameron in the heart of this Greensill scandal. Yeah. Remember Boris Johnson? You know, with Lebedev, I mean what is Lebedev? Lebedev is a mini version of the same thing. You know, he's flying out as the foreign sector and there are girls and there's a

Lake Como and an island and Russian K G B and people getting the House of Lords. Or or remember that moment which I thought was very revealing, which is when Mandelson revealed a private conversation that had happened on a yacht with a Russian oligarch called Derapaska and George Osborne and Nat Rothschild. And that should have been a warning, yes, about George Osborne, but also about

Peter Mandelson and what on earth are they doing on a yacht with a Russian oligarch? And w what is this whole world that's been built up? And and and and and that that's, I'm afraid, why Some of the mega conspiracy theories are onto something. We've created a world that is very, very dependent.

on people with informal networks peddling influence. Remember George Osborne was also putting himself forward to be the ambassador in Washington. Yeah, but but r remember uh it's worth realising though th that

You say the MAGA people are onto something, but MAGA at the top is now completely run by these people. Completely run by the we now I mean Trump's cabinet is the wealthiest cabinet in world history. These are all massively wealthy people, many of whom are in this Epstein circle. many of whom are doing these, you know, essentially mixing public and private stuff, which is what Peter's being accused of in a way, by having access to information which he's giving to to other people.

Um look it's a it's a it's a mess and it is a tragedy. On the one hand, it's a maybe a good point about British democracy and British politics that this is at least being there is some sense of accountability going on here. But it's incredible that those in the States who have benefited far more, had much greater access than what's it's barely in there. I must read out something, Rory. While we've been talking, I had an email. This actually was on my list of things to raise.

Um but I just overlooked it both last night and today. But this email is from somebody called Baroness Smith of Gilmore, who is the widow of John Smith, who was the leader of the Labour Party before Tony Blair, and she said she'd listened to my heartfelt monologue last night. She says you're not alone. with your anger, anxiety and depression, but I do want to point out in the interest of myself, the girls and John's memory, that he alone excluded Peter from his time as leader, and that is true.

Although Jeremy Corbyn of course did as as well. And John, presumably she would say that John spotted there was something a bit dodgy. I I I mean I I think that's one of the odd things, which is how do these guys get carried back in

repeatedly, when presumably John Smith is thinking, Hmm, this isn't really what I want. I mean, whatever skills this guy's got, however much he c I mean, I don't really need this around. And it's very odd that Starmer it's partly Starmer's fault for setting up his whole administration on the basis that he was going to be much cleaner than the Tories and he was going to bring integrity back to government.

If that's your shtick, this seems like a bizarre to bring in Mandelson, given all that any w everyone knew about him and had always known about him. No, I c I can remember J John Smith who I mean I was a journalist when John was was leader, but uh uh he did have very, very strong views about about Peter. What Elizabeth makes the point, she she's she's saying that basically

John didn't need a kind of cardinal behind the scenes to sort of wield the power. Uh he knew what he wanted and he knew how to to get it sort of. Now, very different era, but it but it to be fair, that is true. He did not want Peter Mandelson as a close

uh advisor. I think the the other point, Rory, which maybe maybe just uh my final thought g take to take us back to back to the beginning, uh the other Rory, my son has just sent me a note says that the last time a British Prime Minister won a majority at a general election and went into the next general election

still serving as Prime Minister was in two thousand and one. Tony Blair. Well, so twenty five years it hasn't happened, which means that it's likely that some went. Um well let me just finish by saying that

I I was trying to work out why I felt uncomfortable talking about George Osborne. And the answer is, of course, he's a friend of mine, right? He's a he's somebody who I see socially. Um I

have been on holiday uh at the same time as him. I uh admire what he does at the British Museum and I just spent a lot of last week in the British Museum. I think he's funny, he's clever, and At the same time I'm uncomfortably trying to think what's going on with him being on boats with oligarchs, what's going on with a friendship with Peter Mandelson.

W what is all this networking stuff? And I suppose what the only reason I'm reflecting on it, and reflecting on the fact that, you know, I also know. a lot of these people that appear in the Epstein Files. You know, I'm friends with Reid Hoffman, I'm I know Eric Schmidt reasonably well. I A lot of the finance people, tech people and particularly university people, I know Larry Sammits.

And and one of the problems I think is that when you know people and you're friends with them, there are natural instincts to try to avoid talking openly about it. So I'm I'm already anxious, you know, George is gonna listen to the podcast and think

what the hell is Rory doing kicking me on the podcast, which isn't really my intention. I'm just trying so let me try to put myself in the center of it. I'm I'm aware that instead of pointing the spotlight at others, I should be pointing the spotlight at myself. A lot of my life has benefited from contacts and connections. Uh in many, many ways. This podcast does. This podcast does, right? If I hadn't met you in uh Stephen Kinnock's garden.

Uh, I would not be doing a podcast. Um, I probably would never have become a Member of Parliament if I hadn't known somebody in the Conservative Party who push me forward when David Cameron was again me. I probably wouldn't have become a minister if I hadn't be known Cameron's chief of staff

I probably wouldn't become certain kinds of ministers if I hadn't been somebody who'd been in Afghanistan and knew generals. And certainly when I was running charities and Harvard centers, I was endlessly uh trying to see wealthy people in order to persuade them to support these charities and bail them out and uh taking personal favours and in in the case of the podcast now taking a job. I mean I don't want to keep

beating myself up, right? But it we live in a very, very networked, compromised world. So my solution. Very, very clear rules to make it absolutely clear. legally clear what the punishments are for taking gifts, jobs, emoluments, contracting contracts, lobbying after leaving government. I think that there are many, many good people in Parliament. I'm absolutely certain that Jeremy Corbyn is not tempted to play any of these kinds of games.

I'm not sort of trying to hold him up as the same. Ed Millerband, for example, and you know, was good on his expenses scandal. uh, I'm sure that my friend David Gork behaves well. But I think for the vast majority of people, when somebody is dangling the chance to be to get a hugely well paid job in an American tech company or

take a donation for a charity from an American billionaire or whatever it happens to be. Um, you need rules and and those rules need to be put in place now because we're gonna have this repeated again and again. And the only reason we know about it in this case is because three million emails were released. But I can absolutely guarantee that there are probably a thousand other people in the world who if you release three million of their emails could bring down another

20,000 people. Well, Roy, if it's any consolation to your th you're you're troubling yourself over your worries about your relationship with George Osborne. Uh what you described wasn't nearly as bad as austerity. Oh or or I thought you were about to say in a self reflective way, your relationship with Peter Mandelson going back over thirty years.

Well forty more than that. More than forty there. No, that's the other reason why this is so hard. I think I think pol I've written about politics and friendship for my column for the New World. I think it's I think it's hard. To know what a real friendship is and what a real friendship isn't and when it if a f if a a relationship actually is a friendship

When does the professional become the personal? When does the political become the personal? Should they mix? Do they mix? I mentioned Neil Kinneck. Neil Kinneck is a genuine close friend. Tony Blair is a genuine close friend. David Milibrand is a genuine close friend. I've got lots of them. But And I I just think sometimes we have to be honest with ourselves. This is what you're saying, really, that

In politics, in every relationship, there's always an element of transactionalism. There's always you know, what can I get out of him? What can I get out of her? What is she trying to get out of me? What are they trying to get out of each other? And that's I think what turns a lot of people off the whole damn thing. Um

Anyway, there you are. Well listen, good to talk, Jory. I'm I I I felt I needed to get it off my chest last night and I'm glad that I did, but it's been maybe more measured and considered today. We are going to be recording a normal question time and I think we should definitely talk about Sanai Takaichi, the Japanese Prime Minister, which there's also been a very interesting election in Portugal. And I'm very, very, very keen, Roy, to talk about the Winter Olympics because I'm

Joy, particularly seeing JD Vance getting booed. Look forward to that very much. And thank you all very much for listening. We've covered a lot of ground. We've covered uh Starmer's future uh and his leadership, we've covered Morgan McSweeney's. style of management. We've covered uh Manson Epstein, we've covered Epstein, we've covered the bigger issue of the way in which influence works in politics. I think it's not just money, influence, relationships, networks.

Uh we've tried to reflect a little bit on ourselves, probably not enough. Um I could probably do more of of thinking about this which you've done in your columns. Um but thank you all so much and and look forward to talking to you.

The Iliad. All of these great ancient epics depict a monumental collapse that destroys Interconnected Empires of And to understand the Bronze Age apocalypse that Homer wrote about 400 years after it happened, subscribe to Empire World History, a fellow goalhanger podcast where we are deep diving into the biggest imperial collapse in

Ancient history. To get a flavor of the series, here is a clip from our episode with none other than Stephen Fry. It is one of my favorite subjects, uh uh the story of the Greeks uh and the siege of Troy and Odysseus's return home, of course. I say Greeks, Homer called them the Achaeans, the Danaeans, the Argives. Um the word Greeks is a much later one, but it refers really to the Mycenaeans, a warrior aristocracy, essentially, uh obsessed with

Honor and reputation that would give them an eternal glory, a kleos, as they call it. It's the Kleos that's in the name of so many Greeks, you know, Cleopatra and uh all the Socrates. You know, all the all the Cles Heracles, um who's Hercules, you know, Hero's glory. She he was actually named Heracles because she hated him, because he was a love child of Zeus, and she never liked Zeus's love child, her husband, her errant husband. And so as a a an attempt to placate her.

Tiresias, the because he was born in Thebes, suggested that he change his name his as a baby, this was. to Heracles, the glory of Hero. But it didn't help much. It didn't help at all. And then Athena even p even put her on Hera's breast when Hera was asleep, because it would bond them if he suckled her milk. But she woke and saw it and

Tossed him away and her breast milk spread across the sky to form the Milky Way. I didn't know that story. Because galaxy, of course, is from the Greek for for milk, galactic as in lactic. Right. So the chocolate makers are right. Anyway, this is completely separate. Lovely though. Claire. Well, we really hope you enjoyed that clip to hear more on the Bronze Age Apocalypse and how it shaped the ancient Greek epics. Just subscribe to Empire wherever you get your podcast.