Will Starmer's body count prove fatal for his premiership?
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 28 April 2026
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Morgan McSweeney was called before MPs to explain HIS version of how Mandelson was hired: was he just finding a great job for a mate? Why hadn’t he responded to all the red flag warnings? Was due process really followed? And had he put Starmer in a position where the PM wasn’t told the whole truth?
Later, Tom Baldwin - Starmer’s friend and biographer- on how, and whether, the PM can survive, and whether the high body count of sacked staff speaks to a wider malaise in his Downing Street.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK commercial banking, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:10.2 | This is a global player original podcast. There is a mutual loading between Stama and Mandelson. |
| 0:16.2 | It is absolutely also true that McSweeney and Manelson had a very, very close relationship. |
| 0:20.6 | He was basically finding a job for his mate. |
| 0:23.8 | Sama wanted to keep Mandelson at arm's length. |
| 0:26.2 | They'd all seen the diligence that came back in December saying, |
| 0:29.7 | warning, warning, this guy is a risk, with their red flags waved. |
| 0:35.8 | When you strip all of this away, this story is about something really constitutionally important, |
| 0:40.3 | which is whether the Prime Minister tells the House of Commons the truth. |
| 0:43.3 | The nature of the relationship that I understood he had with Epstein was not a close friendship. |
| 0:48.3 | How I understood it at the time was a passing acquaintance that he regretted having and that he apologised for what has emerged |
| 0:57.0 | since then was way, way, way worse than I had expected at the time. And it was when I saw the |
| 1:05.6 | pictures, when I saw the blueboard questions in September 2025, I have to say it was like a knife through my soul. |
| 1:13.7 | That is Morgan McSweeney, the former Chief of Staff to Kirstama, and the man who until now has |
| 1:19.7 | lived in the shadows, explaining why he got it so very badly wrong to support Peter Mandelson |
| 1:26.9 | as Britain's ambassador to Washington. |
| 1:29.8 | He's been called before a parliamentary committee to explain whether it was him that pushed |
| 1:35.7 | that appointment through to get Peter Mandelson the job that he longed for. Welcome to the |
| 1:42.0 | newsagents. the Newsagents. |
| 1:48.5 | The Newsagents. |
| 1:52.2 | It's John. It's Maitless. |
| 1:53.0 | It's Lewis. |
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