Starmer's mess
The Politics Show
The New Statesman
4.2 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 11 September 2025
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Following the disarray caused by Angela Rayner’s resignation and the sacking of Peter Mandelson, Keir Starmer’s latest reset is a mess.
His newly reshuffled cabinet appears to be largely a response to the very real threat of Nigel Farage. It seems, to his critics, that the Prime Minister is drawn to Reform’s magnetic force to the right.
But what does this mean for the direction of our country and its governing party?
Anoosh Chakelian is joined by Andrew Marr and George Eaton.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The New Statesman. |
| 0:06.0 | Following the disarray caused by Angela Rainer's resignation and Peter Mandelson sacking, |
| 0:11.0 | Keir Stama's latest reset is in a mess. |
| 0:14.0 | His newly reshuffled cabinet appears to be largely a response to the very real threat of Nigel Farage. |
| 0:19.0 | It seems to his critics that the Prime Minister is drawn to reform's magnetic force to the very real threat of Nigel Farage. It seems to his critics that the Prime Minister |
| 0:21.4 | is drawn to reform's magnetic force to the right. But what does this mean for the direction of our |
| 0:26.7 | country and its governing party? I'm Anous Chiquelian and this is the New Statesman podcast and I'm |
| 0:31.9 | joined today in the studio by my colleagues Andrew Maher and George Eaton, who have been covering |
| 0:36.2 | this reshaping of the party closely. |
| 0:38.5 | And Andrew, you've written the cover story this week titled The Fight Back. |
| 0:42.2 | But just before we came on to record, we heard the news that Peter Mantelson, the American ambassador, |
| 0:47.7 | has been sacked over details about his friendship with Geoffrey Epstein. |
| 0:51.6 | So what took Stama so long to get rid of him, do you think? |
| 0:54.8 | Good question. I assume that Peter Mandelson was saying to Stama, look, as you know, Donald Trump |
| 1:02.7 | has had his problems as well with Jeffrey Epstein and he feels it very strongly. And I do feel |
| 1:07.9 | Kear that if you got rid of me, if you got rid of me, Donald might regard |
| 1:12.9 | that as a hostile act. I'd be very careful just before the visit to do that. So I think that |
| 1:18.9 | was probably the argument. I praise, I, I'm crazy, obviously I wasn't there at the time. |
| 1:23.0 | But it's like we've been in the room. I think, I think, you know, all of us, when we saw the most recent email exchanges and that toe-curling, you know, a peon of praise to Jeffrey Epstein after he had been got, after he had been done, and the suggestion that you should be fighting very hard for early release, all of |
| 1:45.2 | that. I think we thought then it was completely over. I spoke to quite a lot of senior |
| 1:49.9 | Labour Party people one way or another last night and they all said he's finished, he's over, |
| 1:54.2 | it's toast. So it took it took Kirstama overnight. That's not the fastest he's been. It is |
... |
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