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Chapter 1: What prompted the recent cabinet resignations in the UK government?
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Chris, hello. Hi. In theory, I think I was meant to be talking to you from Makerfield, where you were going to be doing a focus group. I was due to be heading to Wigan and then on to Hindley, I think. Of course, because Makerfield is not a place. It's the name of the constituency.
Yeah, so I think it was Hindley we were going to be heading to, a community in the constituency, to record with the group More In Common, a focus group. I was just going to sit in the corner of the room and watch it. You weren't going to participate. I was not. No, but it's certainly not. But I wasn't going to ask questions either.
I was going to sit there with a sort of, I even wondered whether I could even like be seen to be taking notes because would that sort of interfere somehow? Because people might think I'm writing down something. A two-way screen or one-way screen is what you need. Exactly, exactly. Anyway, newscaster Joe Pike is there instead. Right.
And we will see and hear that focus group over the, on Friday night and then over the weekend. But yes, my trip to the by-election, my third trip it would have been, In the end, it didn't happen. And you did a much shorter trip because it is only a 10-minute walk from our office at Westminster to Number 10 Downing Street.
Yeah, so I got a call late last night offering an interview with the Prime Minister. I'd been asking for quite a while, given a splash of news about it. And they invited me in and it's a privilege of this job that I get to interview the prime minister and the senior politicians pretty frequently.
But what was different about this one was that the prime minister was really keen that he had space to develop an argument. So often when we do these interviews, you know, we'll be often on a trip with the prime minister and the political editors. So Beth Rigby at Sky and so on. Robert Peston at ITV and Andy Bell at 5 News, etc.
We've all got like six minutes each or whatever, because otherwise the prime minister would be doing these interviews for hours and end when he's trying to represent the UK on the international stage.
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Chapter 2: How did Keir Starmer respond to the criticisms about the Defence Investment Plan?
Humanity's next great voyage begins. We are in the midst of a rupture.
Nostalgia will not bring back the old order. Six-seven. Six-eight. 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.
Do we play music now or what do we do?
Hello, it's Adam in the Newscast Studio. And it is Chris at Westminster. And we're recording this episode at 22 minutes past two on Friday afternoon. And Chris did his interview with Keir Starmer mid-morning on Friday. So it's still pretty fresh. And Chris, I thought we could just talk through the interview, play some clips from it, and then gather our thoughts. Yeah.
But first of all, do you want to just say a bit of, I hate this word, context, but it is very important. What's the context? Well, you know, he lost his defence secretary yesterday, didn't he? And armed forces minister. And indeed his armed force minister as well.
And where the central critique of John Healey, the departing defence secretary, was to say that the plan that the prime minister was seeking to get the defence secretary, the government and the country to sign up to, risked not keeping the UK safe. And that is a...
I mean, you cannot say something more wounding, damaging, politically sharpening than that as a defence secretary when you're leaving office of a sitting prime minister. That is huge, irrespective of everything else about the prime minister's future and the elections and the by-election in May, all that stuff. It's huge. So I think he was acutely aware that that was the immediate context
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of the Defence Investment Plan for UK national security?
And the key thing in understanding the defence investment plan, RAU, is to recognise that the starting line for that row is next April. It's kind of going beyond that. And the accusation that we heard from critics yesterday, including John Healy, that the pace of increase from next April to the end of the decade is fast.
far, far too slow and therefore raises the credibility, a question around the credibility of whether from 2030 to 2035, you could then get to 3.5% of national income being spent on what seems core defence in that five-year window, particularly because...
It is, I think, reasonable to be more sceptical about spending commitments that are made a long time ahead rather than ones that are much more imminent.
And then on that crucial question of trade-offs and choices, him making the point about international aid, as you mentioned, and then secondly, and again, this goes into sort of Westminster machinations a bit, but I think it's important, him saying, look, it is difficult... to reopen conversations with cabinet colleagues about their own budgets after the point they've been signed off.
So when you have a spending review, it sets out those budgets and then cabinet ministers go along, go off to do their jobs, kind of knowing the kind of financial envelope that they're operating within. That has been unpicked. And he said to me, he'd got money out of every department, which is effectively going into the pot to be passed on to defence.
Did you manage to secure cuts from every member of your cabinet in their respective departments to help pay for defence?
Yes, everybody is contributing to this. Every single one? It's very important that they do. What I'm not doing is taking out day-to-day spending because I'm not prepared to cut our public services, but every department is contributing to this. It is a collective effort, if you like, towards a really important priority of the government.
And that is why I say the first uplift was a decision to cut overseas development aid, a hard-edged decision. The second is the one taken by me in recent weeks, which is to do that reallocation within the government departments outside of a spending review. And that has been done. That is the decision.
And the defence investment plan will now be published before NATO, as I've always said, and I've been discussing with the new defence secretary and the chief defence staff this morning.
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Chapter 4: How does Keir Starmer justify cuts to international aid for defence spending?
cabinet ministers. We've heard, because it's been reported, that one or two of them pushed back quite vociferously. And he's got a certain amount of money out of it. He's talked about the whole question of cutting money from international aid. You might remember in that essay writing competition that was going on during half term a few weeks ago, Tony Blair talked about
in his view, you know, the damage that that causes. And it might not be a popular argument for many to crank it back up again, but that it would be a useful thing. So the Prime Minister can point to these, you know, the difficult decisions with his colleagues, the difficult trade-offs, say, with international aid, but he then still confronts the reality that as far as...
John Healy's concerned, Al-Qaeda's concerned, plenty of people who've served in the military are concerned. It's not touching the sides in terms of the money that they think defence needs. And then we will find out when the defence investment plan is ever published. And his commitment is to do it before the NATO summit in Ankara in a couple of weeks' time.
Everyone's sort of thinking it might be next week, but I suspect that might be a bit soon if they're having to find a way of re-presenting it so it doesn't sound Like it's the thing that John Healey rejected. Completely. I mean, on the timing. So as you say, they're sticking to the same public deadline.
Dan Jarvis, the new defense secretary, will go to a NATO defense minister's meeting next Thursday. He has to decide and the government has to decide. Are they just going to press on with it and publish it? Or is there scope for some sort of rewriting?
But the thing is, it's not really rewriting because, okay, there might be some arguments to go on about what's in it in terms of what the money is being spent on. The critique is principally one of, is there enough money? And if there is an acknowledgement that that's not the case, then the process gets infinitely more complicated.
The twist, of course, is that in the next three weeks, there is that by-election in Makerfield. And what happens after that is... Well, things could change quite a lot in the next three weeks.
Also, when the dip, as I'm now calling it, does land, the defence investment plan, John Healey's allies have given us a very good yardstick to sort of judge it by, basically saying, if we get to a point where defence spending as a share of GDP, so the national economy overall, by 2030 is 2.68% as a result of this defence investment plan, John Healey's allies have made it very clear that's not good enough.
So as soon as it hits... hits our inboxes, we'll be working out if that's what it is or if it's more than 2.68%. Yeah, and again, as I think we said on an earlier edition of Newscast, we are still in quite an asymmetric conversation around all of this because there is a spectacular amount of chit-chat, including from you and I, about something we've not seen yet, the Defence Investment Plan.
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Chapter 5: What challenges does Starmer face regarding leadership within the Labour Party?
Absolutely. and it's about making the right decisions. The decisions to increase defence to 2.6% by 2027, and now to add to that, with Defence Investment Plan, they're the right decisions for this country. And that's why I've taken them.
A, he is sort of almost challenging West Streeting and Andy Burnham there. And B, he actually sounds... actually quite almost jocular about it. Like, he sounds confident. Yeah, he does. He really does. Perhaps the most confident in the interview on that particular topic, or that theme, if you like, effectively saying... look, you've not done the job. This is really difficult.
It's easy to chuck ideas in from the sidelines. Oh, and by the way, if you were doing the job, much of the fundamentals would be exactly... All of the fundamentals would be exactly the same. So, yeah, I think he...
clearly sees a frustration, not just in the political predicament that he's in, which you would if you were him, but I think he sees, there's an element of him suggesting a certain shallowness to some of the critiques that come his way. And also the critiques have kept on coming from those potential challengers.
I just noticed Wes Streeting's social media, which is very active all the time, is particularly active this afternoon, and he's saying two things. One, how come if there's not enough money for defence, the government has today announced £4.5 billion to spend on walking and cycling over the next five years?
Intriguing, because I think as a health secretary, Wes Streeting probably would have welcomed that, because that...
gets more activity into people's lives which is potentially good for the nhs and then the other thing he's talking about is well the prime minister said to you chris that defense is his number one priority recently number one priority was economic growth so have we now got two number one priorities which is a criticism that starmer's faced before i've had too many priorities
And I noticed that the final four words of the West Streeting critique, there's quite a few, isn't there, posts here, but it says, make choices, decide, lead, which I think is a pithy way of saying that the Prime Minister hasn't done any of those things and that West Streeting, he argues, would were he the Prime Minister, which gets us back into this kind of shadow leadership contest, which has been underway for the best part of the month now.
And of course, if Andy Burnham was to enter that leadership contest, first of all, he'd have to win the Makerfield by-election, which is in a week's time. He'd have to beat Robert Kenyon of Reform UK and the many other candidates who are standing in that by-election.
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Chapter 6: How does Starmer's leadership style affect his political standing?
It's just that if you are a political leader, the minute you publicly acknowledge some sort of potential limitation... There's things you've got to say to be able to keep going. Completely. And the minute you imply a situation where you are entertaining the idea of you leaving, either voluntarily or otherwise, that instantly is weakening. However, so let's unpick a couple of things here.
Firstly, in doing what he is doing and doing it as repeatedly as he has done it, he is putting the barrier to entry, the bar that any potential toppler has to clear as high as it'll go.
He is emphasising over and over again, including in circumstances in which he has been in, frankly, trickier and trickier waters, that if another MP comes along and says, I've got 81 MPs, which is the clearance threshold for triggering a leadership contest, the Prime Minister is saying, well, firstly, he's saying he won't, you know, there'll be no suggestion of him just walking away.
No coronation. Exactly. But in that scenario... He would stand, including, as I put to him, a scenario where there is only one other contender. In other words, a scenario where if he chose not to stand as leader of the party, he would be automatically on the ballot paper unless he chose not to be.
If he chose not to stand, then there would be a coronation of a new prime minister and it would all happen very quickly. And I was really intrigued to ask him about this, Adam, because I've been interviewing the prime minister frequently for the last four or five years. And the thing he always comes back to is he hates the kind of soap opera of politics.
And he hates the idea that there's been this kind of perma-chaos in politics. And, of course, in that scenario where he had a choice as to whether or not to stand and in so doing would determine whether or not there was a contest, clearly there's an alternative scenario where there is more than one challenger to Keir Starmer. In other words, a contest is guaranteed.
But in that scenario, he could choose to avoid a contest where arguably you'd be choosing to avoid the kind of rupture, chaos, whatever, of what would then follow. The counter argument, of course, is that the Labour Party and the wider country would get a greater sense of what the wannabes were standing for. I'm just trying to think of historical precedents.
So Margaret Thatcher fought the leadership challenge. Well, there was a leadership challenge before that. That was the stalking horse one that was never going to win. But then she fought the leadership challenge and only pulled out after the first round of votes showed that she hadn't won convincingly enough to stay in office.
Now, of course, this is a different process for the Labour leadership contest, but... Yes. She fought. She didn't say, oh, you're challenging me, I'll go. No, no, completely. And of course, that points, obviously, as you say, the sort of contest rules are different and it's a different generation and all of that.
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Chapter 7: What are the potential consequences of the upcoming Makerfield by-election?
There's parallels, but her situation was more perilous. Mainly only a couple of days difference, but it was more perilous. And I thought, you know what? That is absolutely the question to repeat, because even though there is a standard answer, let's see how he responds to it. Well, yeah, because he didn't give the standard answer.
No, he didn't. Let's listen. And you will lead Labour into the next general election? Well, that's what I want to do. I recognise that, you know, I've got to turn things around. We had a very bad set of elections. It wasn't quite a yes, though. So you're acknowledging the jeopardy, right? I've been... always clear that that's what I want to do.
But look, I recognise that given where we are, I need to turn that around. And that's what I intend to do.
That's what I want to do. And then your little comeback there of like, well, that just proves how much jeopardy you're in. And you're basically saying to him, that's you acknowledging what we all know. Well, if we unpick that, I mean, there's a danger of doing too much almost psychoanalysis here. But if we unpick that, That's pointing to two scenarios, isn't it? Or three scenarios.
One would be that he just stands down because circumstances mean that in the end that is the course of action he takes. Number two is that he fights a leadership election and loses. Number three is he fights a leadership election or there isn't a leadership election and for whatever reason he carries on but at some point before the general election he stands down.
And, yeah, as I say, who knows where we're going to end up. But I think the reason a question like that, I think, is always worth asking is that you arrive at variations on circumstances where answering with a straight yes has limited plausibility. And when I put it to Liz Truss, she tacitly acknowledged that that wasn't going to happen, even though she said yes. I think she resigned...
48 hours later, 72 hours later, or said she would soon be leaving. And yeah, the prime minister acknowledging the jeopardy. And that's the tightrope that they have to walk. You know, you don't want to look so otherworldly that you are giving the impression that you have no idea what is going on beyond the walls of the building that you're in, in terms of your predicament.
whilst at the same time not saying something that is instantly further undermining of the situation that you're in. But also is a bit different from a couple of weekends ago when Starmer did an interview where he said he wanted to lead for 10 years. And then lots of his critics said that shows you completely out of touch with the jeopardy you're in, to use the word that you used with him.
And actually, he's given a much more nuanced, kind of more humble human answer today. Yeah, I think that's right.
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Chapter 8: What is Keir Starmer's commitment to leading the Labour Party amid challenges?
So if you've got a long dog walk, actually not a long dog walk, 20 minutes is fine. Or you're milking the cows, as we were discussing the other day. It's a perfect soundtrack to milking the cows or taking the bins out a few times. It depends how long your driveway is. It takes 22 minutes to get there. Doing the hoovering or whatever. I would be delighted to be your company.
Did you discuss the football with him? I did, actually. I did, because we did a little thing for our TV piece where the two of us walked up the famous stairwell in Downing Street, passed all the pictures of previous prime ministers. And we actually did that after the interview.
And it's always a bit, despite all the hours I've spent on television, I always find that a bit sort of, I'm not a good actor. And you're walking up a stairwell. You're with the prime minister. You're in their house and you're being filmed. I mean, there's nothing remotely natural about that. And also, it's not the interview. You're just having a chat.
And so I mentioned, because he's going to the G7 summit in the south of France next week and I'm going along as part of the press pack, that the first England game is on the Wednesday night as we come back. But I was also mentioning that... you know, obviously the whole thing had just started and my son had started filling in his wall chart this morning and all that kind of thing.
And I know that he's a massive football fan. So yeah, we had a bit of a chat about the World Cup on the way up the stairs. Also, talking of next Wednesday, Newsnight asked if I could present next Wednesday. And I was like, yeah, sure. And then I checked my calendar. I was like, oh, yeah, England match. That's why they asked me. No one else wants to be working that night.
So it's just going to be you and me manning the ship. They found the Scots. And I thought you were going to tell me that Newsnight was on at three in the morning because of a football match, but... Oh, I haven't even checked that. Would I have checked that if I were you? Don't know if the England match is on BBC Two.
Oh, Chris, before you go, an update on our campaign to get some quotes for our poster for our Edinburgh shows. Oh, yes, yes. We're getting newscasters to say when and where and how they listen to newscast and then we'll put some of them on the poster instead of the critics saying, fabulous show. So someone says, I listen to newscasts with my earpods in while my boyfriend is watching the football.
So two podcasts a day for the World Cup, please. I was going to say that. I wonder if we see what's going to be the trade-off between newscasters who we spend less time in the company of because they're watching football matches at three o'clock in the morning versus, if you like, those escaping the wall-to-wall, what is it, 96 match or 108 match, whatever it is. 110, yeah.
we're an oasis of football free chat well apart from now yeah the point is you can listen to newscast whenever you want so it fills in the time very well and then talking of the World Cup we've revived supporter reporter where we're looking for a newscaster who lives or happens to be in right now one of the 48 countries at the World Cup Caroline says I heard you're looking for a person in each of the World Cup participant countries I live in Germany in a small village on the biggest bend in the Rhine I love meanders
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