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Chapter 1: What was the atmosphere like at Castfest?
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This was when we brought together lots of the BBC News podcasts at the BBC's historic Maida Vale studios and it was great fun and thank you to everyone who came along and made it such a good day. What you're going to hear now is the question and answer session that me, Henry and Chris did with some of the newscasters who were there. Newscast. Newscast from the BBC.
Humanity's next great voyage begins.
We are in the midst of a rupture.
Nostalgia will not bring back the old order. Six seven. Yeah. It's supposed to be me as a doctor. Daddy has also a special connotation.
Ooh la la. Thinking about it like a panto helped.
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Chapter 2: What questions did the audience ask the Newscast team?
You can already see Keir Starmer experimenting with how the government communicates with voters, hosting influencers... He's got a sub-stack, hasn't he, the Prime Minister? Although now you mention it, I'm not sure it's been... I'm not sure it's been much recently, yeah. I mean, I think this is an interesting question.
Sorry, Rohit, we're straying quite far from your original question, but I think this is an interesting question about these new methods of communication for politicians. It only really works if it feels authentically them, and I'm not sure... substack or influencers is necessarily Keir Starmer's natural habit.
He's a very experienced public figure long before his time in politics, but often in the form of giving interviews to people like Chris and Adam, rather than necessarily setting down his thoughts at length in a substack. We have a question from Sophie D. Hello, Sophie, if you're here. Oh, there you are, Sophie. Hi, Chris.
I was wondering, the other day you mentioned that Starmer might be saved from a leadership election because the Labour Party might not like the look of having a leadership race while they're in office. But don't you think it could be equally detrimental for them not to stand up against a leader who has arguably lost a lot of confidence amongst voters as well?
And in your question, you get to the exact dilemma, the horn of the dilemma that the Labour Party faces right now. And it's been wrestling with greater and lesser degrees of sort of volume, if you like, for months now. And it's come back with the imminence of the elections and the whole row around Lord Mandelson. What do you do as a political party when you're in government?
And of course, the Conservatives went through these exact dilemmas themselves. What do you do when you're in government? You look at the opinion polls and indeed, and let's see how it comes in the next couple of weeks, but potentially the voting evidence that suggests that your party is unpopular and your leader is more so.
But the route to an alternative is fraught with danger, that the danger as a party that you are going to go through a leadership race whilst in office, which your critics will label as dangerous. self-indulgent and navel-gazing. It's going to serve a prime minister who didn't themselves win a mandate at a general election.
And that's before the dilemma, if you are a Labour MP, that you might not get the person you want anyway. And or there are various reasons why the person you do want isn't available or can't run or has a problem, blah, blah, blah. So what do you do? And of course, that is a dilemma for any one individual, but political parties are tribes.
They are collections of individuals with overlapping instincts, but also views that can vary. So how does the collective movement when it's confronted by exactly this dilemma, particularly when it's plunged into a situation, as looks likely in a couple of weeks, of the emotional reality of defeats in various directions and how, as individuals, at a human level... Do they respond to that?
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Chapter 3: Which politicians would make an interesting podcast duo?
Good question. I think what's so interesting is that actually in the past few months in Parliament they have become really relevant again in a way that in the first nine months or so of Kemi Badenoch's leadership they weren't managing. So we've talked a lot today and over the last few days about Peter Mandelson.
I think there's a strong case that Peter Mandelson got sacked when he did because Kemi Badenoch had a stormer at PMQs. We talk a lot about how irrelevant Prime Minister's questions and sort of certain archaic formats in Parliament are to what happens in the country and I think often that's right. This was an example of where it really wasn't because she exposed over six questions
that Sir Keir Starmer's position of having full confidence in Peter Mandelson was unsustainable. By the end of the session, it felt inevitable that he would be sacked, and by the next morning, he had been.
And then we're also talking about this humble address, which is the mechanism by which the government is having to publish various documents, and it's the mechanism by which these documents about Peter Mandelson's security clearance were upturned. Well, again, that was a Conservative parliamentary gambit. But, as your question alludes... it doesn't seem to be shifting the dial in public.
I mean, this is the most successful political party in the Western world, it's usually called. And it doesn't feel like it right now. I mean, I think two things would have to happen. One is that Reform UK would have to lose quite a substantial amount of support, because clearly a lot of that comes from former Conservative voters.
There's some evidence in polling that they are dipping a fair bit from where they were perhaps a year ago, but they're still ahead of the Conservatives, indeed ahead of every party in essentially every opinion poll by every pollster. That is not a position which sustains a Conservative Party in the medium, let alone the long term.
And then the Conservative Party needs to find ways to punch through into the public consciousness in ways that... stray beyond parliamentary process. You can kind of see one of the ways that Kemi Bade not wants to do it is that she thinks there is a sort of fiscal conservatism niche that the Conservatives can fill that other parties aren't really in.
So talking about less welfare spending, obviously the Labour Party had their brush with that and that went very badly for them. Talking about lower taxes, she said she wants to... abolish, I think, stamp duty. But, you know, finding ways for them to hit through, I think, is proving very complicated for her.
And in the end, in the course of this Parliament, unless there was a substantial shift in sentiment towards the Conservatives and reform, there'll be a big crunching question that the Conservatives will face, either before or after the general election, which is, what is their bottom line view on reform?
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Chapter 4: How can politicians leverage podcasting for their careers?
And actually, a senior Conservative said to me the other day, just to emphasise Henry's point, and this gives you an insight into the dilemmas that political leaders face, because these things are tricky trade-offs.
This person was attempting to mount an argument to me that says there are more sort of recent Conservative government ministers in prominent places in reform than there are in the Conservatives. Now, that is a stretch of an argument to make now, but it might not be if you did a reshuffle that brought on a lot of the
intake of conservatives around 2025 of their 120 odd who only arrived in parliament a couple of years ago and therefore can make a plausible case that they are that they can't be blamed for what the conservatives did in office for those who would seek to blame the conservatives for their governing record yeah because i was wondering who benefits most from that arrangement is it kemmy baden or david cameron and it's probably both that's why it's happening
Usually for those things to be sustainable, there has to be at least at the outset that as a plausible opener.
I always remember when David Cameron was appointed foreign secretary in that reshuffle, I'd actually been in Brussels for the weekend visiting some old mates and I was on the train coming home, having a little snooze after quite a late night and woke up to two young lads sat behind me going, Henry Zafman says David Cameron's the new foreign secretary. I didn't know that story actually.
Yeah.
So that's how I knew. I felt like I needed to be woken up when I was standing in Downing Street reporting on Suella Braverman being sacked and then this bloke gets out of a car about five metres away and I'm like... what? And I was live on telly, so yeah, and I think I did essentially say, what?
David Cameron, so I was sent to do what's known as the pool interview, so it's where one of the broadcasters goes in to do an interview on behalf of all of them, so that basically the politician doesn't have to answer the same questions half a dozen times from half a dozen different people.
And I was sent in to do the pool interview with David Cameron, who'd just been appointed Foreign Secretary, and I was reminded, and I told him of this, of this knack that he had developed in office as Prime Minister, which when he started as Foreign Secretary, he was a bit rusty on. So I'm gonna stand up to illustrate this.
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Chapter 5: What challenges does the Labour Party face in leadership?
But having you actually here is even better. And knowing that we have your support as well is great.
Because this isn't a normal job. Being willing to sit in a room without any windows on one of the nicest days of the year. That's so great. That's extraordinary. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening and thanks for coming. Thank you.
So that was me, Chris and Henry, attempting to answer some very, very good questions posed by newscasters. And you can post us a question anytime you like. You don't have to wait for a massive milestone podcasting event. You can WhatsApp us anytime on 0330 123 9480 or you can email us on newscast at bbc.co.uk. And we'll be back with a regular episode of Newscast very soon. Bye-bye.
newscast newscast from the BBC from one newscaster to another thank you so much for making it to the end of this episode you clearly do in the words of Chris Mason ooze stamina can I also gently encourage you to subscribe to us on BBC Sounds Tell everyone you know. And don't forget, you can email us anytime at newscast at bbc.co.uk.
Or, if you're that way inclined, send us a WhatsApp on plus 44 0330 123 9480. Be assured, I promise, we listen to everyone. Once upon a time, there was a pessimist, an optimist and a sadist. The pessimist was always afraid of the worst. The optimist wished for the best and thought of the worst. What about the sadist? Well, the sadist succeeded. The sadist succeeded.
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