Summary
Today, the week that the words flew - after Tony Blair wrote an essay saying Labour was "playing with fire" over the UK’s future and Starmer hit back in a Substack article.
Laura and Joe are joined by James Lyons, the former Director of Communications to Keir Starmer, to discuss his time in Downing Street, the essays and articles published by leading Labour figures this week and what could happen following next month’s by-election.
A full list of candidates and loads more information about the Makerfield by-election is available here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgrp1z8n4w2o
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Newscast brings you daily analysis of the latest political news stories from the BBC.
The presenter was Laura Kuenssberg and Joe Pike. It was made by Jon Bithrey with Chloe Scannapieco and Justine Lang. The social producer was Sophie Millward. The technical producer was Jonathan Greer. The assistant editor is Chris Gray. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:06.0 | Joe Pike. |
| 0:07.3 | Lord Coonsberg. |
| 0:08.3 | How nice to be with you on this very hot day. |
| 0:10.3 | Very hot day. Just the sort of weather for an essay crisis. |
| 0:14.0 | Well, just the kind of day to stay inside and read tens of thousands of words written by politicians. |
| 0:18.9 | Which is what students do and school kids do all the time. |
| 0:21.0 | That's when the exam season is, I suppose. |
| 0:23.1 | I suppose that's right. |
| 0:24.0 | Studying in the park. |
| 0:25.2 | Well, we have all and everybody in the political world |
| 0:27.6 | has been doing quite a lot of studying this week |
| 0:30.1 | because not one, not two, but three politicians |
| 0:34.1 | decided that the best way to communicate with the world at large was to write some very long pieces of texts. |
| 0:42.5 | I haven't seen that for a while. |
| 0:44.0 | No. Tony Blair, I think, wanted on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning to provoke a debate, and I think he certainly succeeded. |
| 0:50.8 | Certainly what he's done. Lots of discussion of Tony Blair's essay this week with Adam. |
| 0:55.9 | Lots of discussion too of Andy Burnham's repost to Tony Blair in the newspapers as well. |
| 1:02.2 | But we're going to talk today about weirdly one of the maybe under-discussed of all of these essays, |
| 1:07.9 | the essay from the current Prime Minister who joined in with his substack. |
| 1:12.7 | And to do that, we'll be talking to one of his former directors of communications |
| 1:15.7 | as Kier Starrmar tries to fight back. |
... |
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