Where does Labour's centre of gravity lie?
Coffee House Shots
The Spectator
4.4 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 30 March 2026
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Patrick Maguire, chief political writer at The Times, sits down with Tim Shipman for a reflection on Labour's odd year so far. From potential leadership challengers, like Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner, to cabinet heavyweights, like Yvette Cooper and Ed Miliband – where does power in this Labour government really lie? What does Keir Starmer's interview style and response to the Iran war reveal about him? And what are the implications of the local elections in just over a month – in what could be a historically disastrous night for the Party.
Produced by Megan McElroy and Patrick Gibbons.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, The Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Tim Shipman, |
| 0:09.8 | the police clad of The Spectator, and I am delighted to be joined today by Patrick McGuire, |
| 0:14.3 | the chief political commentator of The Times. The man who inherited my mantle for writing |
| 0:18.1 | deeply long books about the intrigue and insider goings on in |
| 0:23.1 | politics. And I think it's fair to say, we both discovered that writing about the deep strategy |
| 0:28.2 | of governments when they don't have any is problematic. Welcome, Patrick. Hello, Tim. We are in |
| 0:33.8 | recess. It's one of those funny days and weeks. We've got the start of the Labour Party local election launched today, and both of us are sitting here, which probably means that may not be the most significant event of the week. The war's continuing. We're going to try and look back a little bit and cast our minds forward. This has been quite an odd year. I bet when you started to sit down and write about Starma, you weren't expecting it quite to pan out like this. And even at the turn of the year, |
| 0:58.0 | we weren't expecting a major war. No, exactly. I mean, the first column, I wrote a column on New Year's |
| 1:03.2 | Day for the Times this year. And the headline was, don't be surprised if Starma survives the year. |
| 1:08.3 | And at the time, I couldn't quite decide whether I really believe that |
| 1:13.2 | or whether I was just being, as you know, Tim Connoisse, |
| 1:16.0 | occasionally have to be contrarian in the arguments they put forward. |
| 1:19.5 | I think we were both 55, 45, 45 that he probably stays, |
| 1:23.5 | based on the kind of sort of historic ineptitude of the Labour Party, |
| 1:27.7 | removing its leaders. |
| 1:28.9 | Well, exactly. |
| 1:29.4 | And a slightly stronger position, perhaps, than he had a couple of months before that. |
| 1:34.8 | Yeah. |
| 1:35.5 | But the way the sort of first two or three months the year unfolded, |
| 1:39.2 | particularly February, when the Madison files blow up, |
| 1:43.6 | when Morgan McSweeney goes, at that point, it seemed |
| 1:47.6 | obvious that this thing was over, and in a philosophical sense, it is completely over, but it's clear... |
... |
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