Downstream: Mandelson & the Perverted Fantasies of New Labour Liberalism w/ Maurice Glasman
Novara Media
Novara Media
4.8 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 16 February 2026
⏱️ 95 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Just a week ago, the architect of Starmer’s rise to power, Morgan McSweeney, resigned over his connections to Peter Mandelson, after further proof of Mandelson’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein emerged in the newest batch of files released by the US Department of Justice.
According to this week’s guest, this scandal isn’t an anomaly, but an inevitable outgrowth of the New Labour politics that have shaped Britain since Tony Blair took office in 1994.
Maurice Glasman is a Labour peer and founder of Blue Labour, a campaign group that unites culturally conservative values with left-wing economic policies. He sat down with Ash to talk about meeting Steve Bannon, Tottenham Hotspur, and what Marx got wrong.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Tell me if you've heard this one before. |
| 0:09.3 | Two Marxists, both spur supporters from North London, walk into a podcast studio. |
| 0:14.4 | And all they can talk about is all the things they disagree on. |
| 0:19.3 | Morris Glassman, Baron, academic, blue labour evangelist, wants to be the man who supplies the Labour |
| 0:26.3 | party with its ideology. Disgusted by Peter Mandelson and what he sees as his prostration |
| 0:33.2 | before Big Capital, Glassman wants to see a return to strong community ties, strong morals, |
| 0:39.6 | and even strong religion. A materialist who believes in the sacred, God help me. We talk about |
| 0:45.6 | Morgan McSweeney, Steve Bannon, and whether Jeffrey Epstein ended up killing the globalist |
| 0:51.9 | liberal agenda, even if he didn't necessarily kill himself. |
| 0:56.0 | I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I did. |
| 0:59.0 | Lord Glassman, welcome to Downstream. |
| 1:01.0 | Great to be here, Ash. |
| 1:02.0 | I've been really excited to talk to you because whenever I read your writing, I'm never sure how much I agree with you, and I'm never sure how much I'm on the complete opposite side to you. |
| 1:11.6 | Welcome to the club. |
| 1:13.6 | It's been a big week for the Labour Party. We're talking on Thursday. This is going to come out on Sunday. |
| 1:20.6 | Morgan McSweeney resigned on Sunday. You've got an ongoing crisis for Kirstama regarding Mandelson, other staffers as well. |
| 1:32.4 | How do you rate his chances of being the person to lead Labour into the next election? |
| 1:38.0 | Into the next election, 50-50, but staying for the next year, I would put money on that there's an ideological void ash we need to talk about this I mean |
| 1:51.3 | it's not it's absolutely not the case that any of the alternative candidates have any kind of |
| 1:57.2 | understanding of contemporary reality or a vision for direction and where we should go. |
| 2:05.1 | Reality is closing in. |
| 2:07.7 | And above all, um... |
... |
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