28/02/2026
The Week in Westminster
BBC
4.0 • 258 Ratings
🗓️ 28 February 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sonia Sodha discusses the Greens' by-election win in the Greater Manchester seat of Gorton and Denton and where this leaves Sir Keir Starmer with the Bassetlaw MP Jo White, who chairs the Red Wall caucus and Andrew Fisher, who was a senior adviser to Jeremy Corbyn when he was Labour leader and is now a columnist for the i newspaper.
To assess reforms for children with special educational needs and disabilities, Sonia is joined by Sir Nick Gibb, a former Conservative MP and a long-serving schools minister and the Labour MP Jess Asato who is on the Education Select Committee and has a child with special educational needs..
Sonia discusses the appointment of Antonia Romeo to the top job of Cabinet Secretary with Helen MacNamara, who spent 15 years in senior civil service roles and was deputy Cabinet Secretary during the pandemic.
And the Lib Dem Cabinet Office spokeswoman Lisa Smart and Professor Robert Hazell from the Constitution Unit at UCL discuss whether this week's parliamentary debate on the appointment of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor as a trade envoy in 2001 spells the end for the long-standing convention that MPs must not criticise members of the royal family in the Commons chamber.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Sonia Soda with The Week in Westminster. |
| 0:09.2 | The polls had suggested a three-horse race with reform and labour very much in contention. |
| 0:15.7 | But the Green Party rounded off the week with a stunning victory in the Greater Manchester seat of Gorton and Denton, |
| 0:22.4 | their first ever by-election whim. |
| 0:24.5 | So I hereby declare that Hannah Catherine Spencer is duly elected, member of Parliament for the Gorton and Denton constituency. |
| 0:33.7 | The Green candidate bagged more than 40% of the vote, leaving a dejected Labour Party in third place in a previously very safe seat. |
| 0:43.2 | A plumber by trade, Hannah Spencer apologised to customers for having to cancel planned jobs to take up her seat as an MP. |
| 0:51.7 | And amid opponents claims that the Greens had run a sectarian campaign, |
| 0:56.4 | she pledged to stand up for Muslim voters as well as white working class communities. |
| 1:01.3 | Talk to anyone here and they will tell you, the people who work hard but can't put food on |
| 1:06.7 | the table, can't get their kids' school uniforms, Can't put their heating on. Can't live off the |
| 1:12.4 | pension they worked hard to save for. Can't even begin to dream about ever having a holiday, ever. |
| 1:20.2 | Because life has changed. Instead of working for a nice life, we're working to line the pockets of |
| 1:26.2 | billionaires. We are being bled dry. |
| 1:29.2 | And I don't think it's extreme or radical to think working hard should get you a nice life. |
| 1:35.0 | To discuss the questions raised for Labour's embattled leadership, |
| 1:38.9 | I brought together the Bassett Law MP, Joe White, |
| 1:42.1 | who chairs the Red War Caucus representing the party's traditional |
| 1:45.4 | heartlands in the North and Midlands, an Andrew Fisher, who was a senior advisor to Jeremy Corbyn when |
| 1:51.3 | he was Labour leader and is now a columnist for the eye newspaper. I began by asking Joe what |
| 1:57.2 | she made of the result. Very disappointed prior to to polling day, I had confidence. I thought |
| 2:03.0 | that people were going to vote Labor. And then on polling day, I saw the shift. When the result |
... |
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