The inside story of how Labour is dealing with Iran
Coffee House Shots
The Spectator
4.4 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 19 June 2025
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, our new political editor Tim Shipman takes the helm and, in his cover piece, gives us the inside track on how Labour is dealing with Iran, Donald Trump and the prospect of escalating war in the Middle East.
He writes that this could be the moment when all of Keir Starmer’s chickens come home to roost: his well-curated international image is at risk of crumbling as global crises present greater challenges; his hands are tied by legal advice from the controversial Lord Hermer; the Chagos Islands are being drawn into the US’s retaliation plans; and there remains the looming threat of backbench rebellion over Labour’s national security strategy. Tim is joined by James Heale and Lucy Dunn to discuss what may be Starmer’s biggest test yet.
Produced by Oscar Edmondson and Natasha Feroze.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | As a coffee out shots listener, you will be all too familiar with the headlines that have dominated the news cycle in the past month. |
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| 0:45.6 | Hello and welcome to coffee house shots. I'm Lucy Dunn and today I'm joined by Tim Shipman and James |
| 0:50.1 | Hill. In this week's Spectator magazine, Tim has given us the inside track on how the Labour government is dealing with Iran, Donald Trump and the prospect of escalating conflict in the Middle East. |
| 0:59.0 | Tim, it's your first cover piece for the spectator, so it's an exciting time and there's been a litany of scoops. |
| 1:05.0 | So I think, you know, let's just jump right in from, you know, chronologicallyologically when Kirstarmer found out about Israel's |
| 1:11.3 | assault on Iran. Can you tell us about what the process was like, you know, in private |
| 1:15.1 | as well as what we saw in public? Yeah, I mean, I think they had a decent inkling of what was |
| 1:21.3 | coming. They had done a wargaming exercise that the Foreign Office led last Monday, four days before it happened. |
| 1:31.7 | And I've got people inside saying they'd been expecting Israel to do something more aggressive against Iran since probably since December. |
| 1:38.0 | So they've been looking around wondering what to do. |
| 1:41.0 | But, you know, when push came to shove, we weren't really involved in any of it. |
| 1:44.5 | Back in October, when there were, you know, Iran was sending 200 missiles towards Israel. |
| 1:49.5 | The RAF was involved in helping to try and shoot down some of those. |
| 1:53.8 | This time around, that's not the case. And there's lots and lots of reasons for that. |
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