Keir Starmer: Britain’s passive Prime Minister?
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 13 March 2026
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Just over a year ago, Lewis spoke to Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire, co-authors of the authoritative account of Keir Starmer's rise to power 'Get In: The Inside Story of Labour under Starmer'.
Their book shone a light on the weird political inertia at the heart of the Starmer project, often lacking in instinct, allies, and any particular ideological belief. Morgan McSweeney was the driving force behind the operation that thrust him into Downing Street - his authority draining the second he picked his cabinet.
McSweeney is now gone. The Mandelson scandal still poses a potentially existential threat to Starmer's premiership. The UK has been sucked into a conflict Starmer did not want to fight. The local elections in two months' time look like they will be brutal.
Gabriel and Patrick have just released the updated paperback edition of their book. Does it take us any closer to understanding who is the real Keir Starmer?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:09.4 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:13.0 | Kirstama says that he takes responsibility for the Mandelson affair. |
| 0:17.1 | The buck stops with him. |
| 0:18.2 | But what if Kirstama was barely involved in the decision to appoint |
| 0:23.3 | him? That might strike you as unlikely. Surely a prime minister would take a direct personal interest |
| 0:29.3 | into who would occupy Britain's most important diplomatic post, especially when the job in hand |
| 0:34.9 | was to keep Donald Trump sweet, especially when the most likely |
| 0:39.6 | candidate for the job was a man who had occasionally made himself politically radioactive, |
| 0:45.2 | resigning from governments not just once, but twice. Especially again, if you knew that that |
| 0:51.2 | person had had links with one of the most egregious sex offenders to have ever lived. |
| 0:57.0 | A Prime Minister, you might think, might speak to that person directly just to clear a few things up. |
| 1:03.0 | In fact, Kirstama never ever did. |
| 1:07.0 | We now know this thanks to the reporting of Patrick McGuire and Gabriel Pogrand. |
| 1:11.7 | You might remember that last year we had them on the show to discuss their book, Get In, |
| 1:16.2 | the authoritative account of the rise of Kirstama and Morgan McSweeney. |
| 1:21.2 | Their project to transform the Labour Party and make Stama only the fourth man ever |
| 1:26.2 | to win a Labour majority in the House of Commons. |
| 1:29.8 | The new paperback edition of the book has just been published, which includes new reporting and |
| 1:34.7 | writing on the latest months of the Labour government. It includes a theory of how best to understand |
| 1:40.9 | Stama's premiership, still so young, yet at times which feels so age, |
| 1:46.2 | that the distinctive thing about the man is that he is the passive Prime Minister, |
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