Nish Kumar

On Friday, as we're talking at the moment, it's emerged that Labour Together paid a PR firm £30,000 to investigate you and several journalists that had been looking into its funding.

Were you surprised when you found this out?

I understand the political trajectory of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

I understand the evolution of people who joined the Labour Party in the 1980s, see them get beat repeatedly through, you know, the foot leadership, through the Kinnock leadership.

And then, you know, like with Bill Clinton, with the Democrats in the States, adapt this version of third way social democracy, right?

But what I don't understand is,

What is the political trajectory of Morgan McSweeney, Steve Reid and Shabana Mahmood if their uniting principle is hating the left?

Because as much as Blair and Brown had antipathy towards the left wing of the Labour Party because they felt that it made them unelectable, in government they showed evidence of wanting to improve the lives of working class people in this country.

Well, it might be the perfect example.

Depending on the answer, you might get the exact perfect example.

So then I think you answered Coco's question, essentially, in the answer to that question, which is removing McSweeney does not in any way defang Labour Together or the Blue Labour movement because they're already embedded.

I can't believe how many times we've had to use the phrase consorting with a known paedophile in this fucking podcast.

We all saw the photo.

If you had access to the internet, Zahra Sultana tweeted that photo the week of the announcement.

Is it possible?

How is it possible that Keir Starmer didn't know?

A year before the election, the FT, I think it's Jim Pickard at the FT, has run the story that Mandelson had kept his ties to Jeffrey Epstein after his conviction.

I believe it was also, I don't know if it was to his face, but I believe Jim Pickard was told by Mandelson to fuck off when he raised this.

Yeah.

And also, listen, the JP Morgan connection really matters.