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Chapter 1: What prompted the recent essays from Labour politicians?
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Hengitä syvään ja anna lakeudelta puhaltavan hyvän tuulen karistaa huolet hartiltasi. Avaa ovi harmonian maailmaan, jossa arki jää kauas taakse. Tule nauttimaan pohjalaisesta vieraanvaraisuudesta Härmänkylpylän uuteen Paanu Relax Spa-han. Härmänkylpylä, siellä missä paras on priimaa ja syrän on paikallansa. Härmänkylpylä.fi
Joe Pike.
Laura Koonsberg.
How nice to be with you on this very hot day.
Very hot day. Just the sort of weather for an essay crisis.
Or just the kind of day to stay inside and read tens of thousands of words written by politicians.
Which is what students do and school kids do all the time. That's when the exam season is, I suppose.
I suppose that's right. Studying in the park. Well, we have all and everybody in the political world has been doing quite a lot of studying this week. Because not one, not two, but three politicians decided that the best way to communicate with the world at large was to write some very long pieces of texts. I haven't seen that for a while.
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Chapter 2: How does Keir Starmer's Substack response differ from Tony Blair's essay?
Who's Prunella Scales in this? Tony Blair, Andy Burnham or Keir Starmer?
I think maybe Wes, who knows? I mean, I thought the line I loved in the prime minister's riposte was where he went on about, you know, obviously Tony Blair, Labour's great election winner and quotes, it usually pays to listen to him.
Oh, quills at dawn. So why did you think that they have all done this? Because it is unusual, as Joe and I were saying. And, you know, would you ever have said, ah, I know what we need now to really get things back on track, Prime Minister. Sit down at a keyboard and type out 5000 words or whatever it is.
Well, I mean, it's fair to say that this isn't the first Substack. They launched the Prime Minister's Substack some while ago. And I actually think it's a really good idea in the same way that, you know, I was working with the new media unit during my time in government and we were sitting the Prime Minister down with creators so that he was speaking to,
And I think this is one of my favourite pieces of comms while I was in there. And I can say this because I had very little to do with it. When Universal Studios announced multi-billion pound investment in Bedford, in amongst all of the traditional media we did, the prime minister spent 10 minutes chatting to a guy who reviews roller coasters on TikTok.
And that is going to get you to a whole audience you would never capture through government channels or traditional media. But what Substack does is it allows you to talk to the kind of politics-heavy community. So you've got the people who are politics-like. You can reach through the kind of social media piece.
They don't follow all the kind of ins and outs in Westminster in the way that the three of us rather sadly do. But you then have the party activists, MPs, ministers, people who are interested in politics who will seek out something like this. And this was very much made for people who are politics heavy.
So what's he trying to say then?
He's trying to say, I'm not going anywhere. I mean, that's the number one message that you have to take from this. You know, he does admit some mistakes. And he also, very interestingly, you know, does say that the government has asked a lot of the business community in the form of the employers' nicks rise. But he goes on to mount a defence of his government and
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Chapter 3: What was the context of James Lyons' time in Downing Street?
I think it's because of the existential challenges he painted in terms of geopolitical changes, but also technological change around AI, he believes is so serious and so massive that you need somebody to make long-term serious choices and decisions.
But I wonder also if really what we've seen is, James, as you say, a bit of a howl of pain from some of Labour's past greats that this government has not got a track record of using a once in a generation enormous majority well. You know, only governments with enormous majorities, arguably.
can do big hard things and you can hear it from Tony Blair very clearly I think you could hear it from Alan Milburn slightly less clearly that there's a deep frustration that this government didn't come in and as the government did in 1997 came in and very quickly did some big, bold, radical things. Love them or hate them, that did happen in 1997.
And this government is still in the position on all sorts of things, whether it's young people, whether it's social care, doing reviews, looking at policies, thinking about policies, welfare, not having a reform of that in the King's speech. And I just wonder, James, as a keen observer of the Labour Party,
where do you think that level of frustration with Keir Starmer's government is sort of sitting on a frustration-o-meter, you know, out of 10?
Sorry, with who? With the public or with... Within the party. Oh, right. The sort of travelling Wilburys who popped up over the last few weeks. It's fairly high.
It's like a stone still on tour.
Some of the old stages, although I have to say, you know, Tony Blair's, I think, almost twice the age that Tom Pesce was when they got together. You know, I... Clearly, one of the problems for the government is there's a huge amount of frustration within its own ranks, right? People within cabinet, ministers, MPs, and party activists. So, yeah, I think it's pretty high.
And the problem presumably as well for Keir Starmer, if we take a step back, he can write his long response to Tony Blair and take those sort of subtle swipes at Blair and others. But Tony Blair is the longest serving Labour Prime Minister in history. And all the signs so far are that Keir Starmer is going to be the shortest serving Labour Prime Minister in history.
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Chapter 4: What strategic communications challenges did Starmer face?
This is also just, it's a huge story and it's a huge issue. And not least because she was one of the most powerful people in the country once. for years and years and years. And she's also somebody who many people really looked up to and admired Nicola Sturgeon and her political career ended in a very painful way.
There are also other people who have always found Nicola Sturgeon someone that they cannot get on with. And so she was hugely admired by many fellow politicians. I mean, even during the Brexit years around Europe, you know, she was seen as a really talented politician, without question, one of the most talented politicians of her generation.
So that's one of the reasons why this story has become so huge. But it is a real mashup of the political and the deeply personal. And she talks about all of the aspects of what's happened in our interview that will be across the BBC tomorrow.
I'm excited to watch, listen, all of it.
Will we be reunited tomorrow?
Yes.
Excellent. Well, enjoy the rest of your Saturday. Thank you, newscasters, for being with us this afternoon. And we will look forward to speaking to you tomorrow.
Let's get to the football, Laura. Quick.
Newscast. Newscast from the BBC.
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