Absolute Scenes in Labour HQ: It's Not Ideal Trawlers

The Trawl

Jemma Forte & Marina Purkiss

News, Politics, Government

4.7 • 867 Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2026

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Marina and Jemma wade through the chaos engulfing Labour after the bruising local election results, cabinet resignations, media pile-ons and growing calls for Starmer to go. Is this sensible political pressure… or another self-destructive Westminster psychodrama?

They discuss:

whether Labour is repeating the Tories’ revolving-door mistakes
Andy Burnham, Wes Streeting and possible leadership contenders
why Reform’s rise is terrifying so many voters
the role of the press in shaping public opinion
whether Starmer has fundamentally misunderstood his own voter base
and why Brexit continues to haunt literally everything

Plus: Alastair Campbell delivers the speech Starmer probably wishes he’d given, Marina nearly collapses from sniffing, and the pair remain - as ever - gloriously uncertain about absolutely everything.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You want me to call all of the people who might be thinking of challenging you and telling them
0:03.4	that you've got everything under control. It's just, I find that quite hard to believe, Keir,
0:07.4	because you are crying quite a lot again.
0:26.4	Hello, and welcome to The Trawl, the podcast powered by screenshots, memes, despair,
0:30.8	and at times when Gemma is on script duty, Silla Blast. Well, I'm Marina Perkis.
0:43.7	And I'm Gemma Forte, and in today's episode, we are going to have a look at what is happening
0:50.3	with Labour. It's just sort of, I don't know, it's all kicking off, isn't it? It's all
0:54.0	imploding. And it does remind me of the years that we endured with the Tory party. And look, trawlers, I need you to know that if you're coming over here for some concrete answers in terms of what should happen, you're going to be taken off your headphones, sorely disappointed. Let's start with that caveat. I've got no bloody idea.
1:12.1	I don't think people ever come to the trawl for concrete answers. Oh, really? Okay. It's good for me to
1:17.2	find that out. Do you? Yeah. No. No. Yeah. I just think it's mainly so frustrating the political
1:26.6	landscape at the moment because I don't think there
1:28.8	is an obvious way to turn. And I think there are millions of people who are just like,
1:33.9	enough of this bullshit. It was council elections. Move on. We're in the middle of a war.
1:40.0	He's fine. What's the alternative? Do not have a revolving door. Do not fuck up our economy by
1:46.5	pissing about with all of this. And then there are other people who were just like, he has to go at
1:51.0	some point in their opinion. He's got to go at some point. So it might as well be now. They're all
1:56.1	on maneuvers. All I can honestly tell you that I really, really care about is not handing Farage the keys to
2:05.6	number 10. And I don't know what the best thing to do is with regard to that. I don't know.
2:10.8	I think there's been a huge shift in the last couple of decades where we now, we just tear apart our leaders.
2:19.4	It's like football managers.
2:20.9	Yeah.
2:21.4	It's like that.
	...

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