Who really runs the Labour Party?
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2025
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
‘ Like an HR manager, not a leader’. This is the description of Sir Keir Starmer from his closest and most influential aide, according to a new book by two Times journalists. It’s just one of the many insights uncovered by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund who lift the lid on the inner workings of the Labour Party and the power struggles behind the scenes.
If that’s what the prime minister’s people think of him, who’s really running the country?
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Guests:
- Patrick Maguire, columnist, The Times.
- Gabriel Pogrund, Whitehall Editor, The Sunday Times.
Host: Manveen Rana.
Producer: Edward Drummond.
For further insight - and more stories from behind the scenes, buy Get In The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer Times+ members get a 20% discount.
Clips: BBC, Labour Together, 5News, Channel 4 News.
Illustration: Russel Herneman, The Sunday Times.
Get in touch: thestory@thetimes.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From the Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. I'm Manvine Rana. |
| 0:10.2 | Let me take you back to last summer. In the early hours of July 5th, history was being made in Britain. |
| 0:20.2 | And we can now say, with certainty, that Labour have won the 2024 general election. |
| 0:26.3 | As I speak, they have gained 326 seats. It's now 327. The size of the majority is still to be determined |
| 0:36.5 | as the results continue to come in. |
| 0:38.8 | For what a moment this is for later. |
| 0:41.9 | And there is Sakhir Starrmer who will become Britain's 58th Prime Minister. |
| 0:51.3 | You campaigned for it, you fought for it, you voted for it, and now it has arrived. |
| 0:59.2 | Change begins now. |
| 1:05.1 | Kear Stama, the new Prime Minister, was beaming as he addressed the jubilant crowd. |
| 1:15.6 | But in private, just a few minutes earlier, it was a very different scene. |
| 1:26.6 | Well, it's half past three on the 5th of July, |
| 1:31.6 | and Kirstama has spent six weeks on the road |
| 1:35.8 | going from marginal constituency to marginal constituency, |
| 1:40.7 | jeeing up the faithful and campaigning in the country, |
| 1:43.7 | where Morgan McSweeney, who was then Labour's campaign director, the aid he had turned to many, many years before in the summer of 2019 to make him leader of the Labour Party, has been slaving away in Labour HQ for six weeks. |
| 2:00.1 | Morgan McSweeney rang him just after the exit poll as he was smoking a cigar on the balcony |
| 2:05.2 | of Labor HQ and said, congratulations, you're the next Prime Minister. |
| 2:09.9 | They finally reunited the tape where Labor's victory party is being held. |
| 2:13.9 | And they walk into a lift up to, I think it was the seventh floor where there was a big party in Stama's honour. |
| 2:22.6 | And the first thing they talk about is the scale of the majority. |
| 2:27.9 | And Morgan McSweeney says to Keir Stama, we're going to have a three-figure majority, |
... |
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