‘Worse than the worst of Boris Johnson’ – are Labour turning on Starmer?
Coffee House Shots
The Spectator
4.4 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 23 April 2026
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Somewhere in the documents surrounding Peter Mandelson’s ambassadorial appointment, the Spectator's political editor Tim Shipman reveals, is a text Keir Starmer sent the night before the announcement. ‘You’ll be brilliant in challenging circumstances,’ he told the Prince of Darkness. ‘And after many years of our discussions, we get to work together side by side. I really look forward to that.’
The message was leaked after a week in which the Prime Minister’s relationship with senior civil servants has collapsed. Tim says Starmer’s ‘apparent incomprehension of the very process he advocates has led officials to conclude he is no better than the predecessor he most deplores – Boris Johnson’. Has Starmer become the very thing he sought to destroy?
Tim Shipman joins Oscar Edmondson and James Heale to discuss.
Produced by Oscar Edmondson 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 Oscar Henson, |
| 0:09.8 | I'm joined today by Tim Schittman and James Heel. Now, the Manelson Rourg continues, and Tim, |
| 0:13.9 | you've written an excellent coverpiece for the magazine about the irony of Kirstama and about how he's |
| 0:18.8 | become the very thing he swore to destroy. |
| 0:21.6 | I must congratulate you first for being, I think, the first cover piece, which includes the word |
| 0:25.3 | shit weasel in it. Can you set some light on that? This has been a much commented on word. I've |
| 0:30.6 | been contacted by former ministers, special advisors, all saying, this is a great word, and we must |
| 0:35.4 | seek to use it more in our daily lives. |
| 0:41.0 | This is a description of the Prime Minister, I'm afraid. |
| 0:46.3 | I think the full quote is something along the lines of, hopefully these events will put to the sort, |
| 0:48.6 | the idea that this is a decent and honourable man. |
| 0:52.0 | He is a shipweasel who blames everybody else for his own mistakes. |
| 0:55.7 | And that is the view of people at the centre of government. |
| 1:03.6 | And this has been one of the more sort of interesting, surprising, eye-opening weeks of my 25 years covering British politics. Having covered four or five failing Conservative Prime Ministers in a great deal of depth, |
| 1:09.7 | I thought I'd seen virtually every appalling thing |
| 1:12.7 | that various human beings can say about others, |
| 1:14.9 | but this has almost topped it. |
| 1:16.5 | And what has prompted it is the defenestration of Sir Oliver Robbins |
| 1:21.0 | by the Prime Minister, |
| 1:22.6 | apparently without giving him the chance to even respond on the telephone. |
| 1:26.8 | And the view of officialdom of the civil service |
| 1:30.5 | is that this has finally exposed to Starma for who he really is, |
... |
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