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Newscast

The Downing Street Shake-Up

Newscast

BBC

Politics, News

4.46.4K Ratings

🗓️ 1 September 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today, as parliament returns Keir Starmer has reshuffled his Downing Street team once again.

What has prompted another change at Number 10? What does this mean for Rachel Reeves as Chancellor? And, why are so many people talking about flags?

James and Chris are joined by 5 Live presenter Matt Chorley after he interviewed the Prime Minister, to discuss all this, plus, new changes to the asylum system.

You can now listen to Newscast on a smart speaker. If you want to listen, just say "Ask BBC Sounds to play Newscast”. It works on most smart speakers. You can join our Newscast online community here: https://tinyurl.com/newscastcommunityhere

Get in touch with Newscast by emailing [email protected] or send us a whatsapp on +44 0330 123 9480.

New episodes released every day. If you're in the UK, for more News and Current Affairs podcasts from the BBC, listen on BBC Sounds: https://bit.ly/3ENLcS1 Newscast brings you daily analysis of the latest political news stories from the BBC. It was presented by Adam Fleming. It was made by Jack Maclaren with Shiler Mahmoudi. The social producers were Gabriel Purcell-Davis. The technical producer was Stephen Bailey. 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.

0:04.9

Chris, you're back.

0:06.6

Hello, I thought I ought to turn up for work.

0:09.1

Well, you know, you get to have the summer off or some of it.

0:11.7

I don't suppose you were off every single day of the summer.

0:13.9

Well, there's the smattering of news here and there.

0:16.0

But, you know, now the political term at Westminster and at Hollywood

0:19.7

and in a few other places is kind of cranking back into life.

0:22.7

I thought I better crack back into professional life with them and yeah, here we go.

0:27.8

And what are your thoughts after the summer on where we stand then, in brief, with politics?

0:33.3

Well, in brief, politics, one year after a general election in which a government wins by a mile,

0:38.1

ought to be about the moment of maximum sort of boredom, really, to be really blunt about it, least interest.

0:44.2

Because there's no longer the novelty of a new government.

0:46.7

The parties that have lost have done what they needed to do in the first instance after that defeat.

0:51.6

And the next general election is still a million years away. And yet,

0:56.7

actually, politics feels very live. It feels like there's a lot of jeopardy about. You can feel and

1:03.6

smell the pressure the government knows it's under and its lack of popularity. And similarly, the rise

1:10.2

and rise of reform UK.

1:13.4

And I think in essence where we've been today,

1:16.5

on this sort of first day back Monday of the new political term,

1:20.4

kind of gets to the crux of that, really.

1:22.5

Yeah.

...

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