Anand Menon

speaker

138 appearances 4 recordings 2 series first heard Nov 2025 last heard 14 Sep

Anand Menon’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.

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The Mike Hosking Breakfast · Anand Menon: Kings College Professor of European Politics on the growing number of Labour MPs calling for Keir Starmer's resignation · 11 May 2026 podcast

And the country, meanwhile, is watching this psychodrama without knowing who our prime minister is going to be in a few weeks' time.

So it's just deeply destructive and smacks of, I think, mainly a lack of decisiveness amongst Keir Starmer's putative successors, none of whom have been willing to stand up and say, I'm going to throw my hat in the ring.

No, because it wasn't that much of a mea culpa.

It was a diagnosis of the problems that he knew the country faced when he came to power in 2024.

And I think what people expected from him today was some sense of urgency and some indication of what was going to be done about them.

And we got none of that.

So I think, in a sense, it was a bit of a damp squib.

And I think the number 10 will look back at a weekend building up this speech as some turning point in the Starmer Premiership as a bit of a mistake.

Well, I mean, that is the case, that there are 402 of them and they can't find a challenger that they can agree on.

If Andy Burnham was in Parliament, it would be different, yes, because he is the one politician...

who has decent approval ratings.

I mean, we live in an age where basically our politicians compete not as to who is the most popular, but who's the least unpopular.

And he is the least unpopular at the moment.

So yes, it would make a difference.

But what's weird is now you have a bunch of MPs in parliament desperately trying to stall this process, not because they want Keir Starmer to stay, but they want to find enough time somehow to let Andy Burnham

run in a by-election, win the by-election, come back into Parliament and then stand as leader.

So it's a slightly surreal situation.

I'm pretty sure you'd lose it.

I think even before the local elections last week, there was a consensus amongst Labour MPs that Keir Starmer shouldn't lead them into the next election.

I think now there's a building consensus that he needs to go as soon as possible because I think their experience on the doorstep, plus Starmer's popularity ratings, and Starmer is now I think pretty much the most unpopular prime minister we've ever had, have convinced them that actually they need to have a change at the top.

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