How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
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Hi, this is Pod Save the UK. I'm Nish Kumar.
And I'm Coco Kahn. With just two weeks to go until the autumn budget, Labour is preparing to make some huge reforms. But how ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be in reshaping the UK? We're speaking to ITV's political editor, Anushka Astana, to find out.
And later, in the wake of the Tories' latest round of madness, we're joined by Liberal Democrat MP Josh Babarinde to discuss how the government can be held to account in the absence of a sane opposition.
One week on from the great big reset inside Number 10, suddenly it seems like there's a flurry of activity from the government. It's a nice change from the month of stasis, but with a lifeless opposition and a stonking majority, are we about to see some radical reforms?
To find out, we're joined by Deputy Political Editor of ITV News and author of Taken as Red, How Labour Won Big and the Tories Crashed the Party, Anoushka Asthana. Welcome to Pod Save the UK, Anoushka. It's great to have you here.
Thank you very much for having me.
The speed of which news is moving. I did think about that when I was reading the book. And just the point when you're talking about Sue Gravey appointed as Chief of Staff. And you're like, how much of that are you conscious of when you're writing a book about politics, particularly about British politics, I guess, post 2014 or 2015 onwards?
Yeah, it's really tricky. And what I had to do basically was make the book about everything up to that point. So really, it's a book about how they got to the election, how they won the election. I did then attempt to book a chapter on governing and I read it back. It's not that bad. I mean, I did argue that in theory, Sue Gray as chief of staff and Morgan McSweeney as chief advisor, as he was then. could be Keir Starmer's superpower because they had different skills, but also made clear that there were already tensions at the time. To be honest, there was already people moaning to me at the time about, for example, contracts across government, which was one of the things that really did for Sue Gray in a way. Yeah. But it was all played down. It wasn't her fault. So I didn't go wildly into it. But you know what? I've got a paper back. You're going to get the full first year in detail next year.
Sue Gray's resignation and the appointment of Morgan McSweeney, who was the Svengali largely credited with the election strategy. Pretty brutal action from Starmer. Pretty brutal in its kind of speed. But not as his first sort of brutal action as PM, because he obviously... withdrew the Labour whip from seven MPs for voting across the party lines on an amendment to the King's Speech. And in your book, one of the first things you talk about Keir Starmer is you talk about the capacity for compassion that he has, that people who have worked with him are very keen to stress. But then you move very quickly on to a different word, which is ruthlessness, an obsession with winning a streak of ruthlessness and a willingness to take on significant levels of political risk.
Are you feeling pretty good about that now, now the way that his prime ministership is playing out?
I mean, yes, although in a way, things went right for him previously when he was ruthless and things have gone very wrong for him since he became prime minister. But that thread of ruthlessness has been there throughout. And when things have gone wrong for him in the past, he is... quite brutal in a way. So politically brutal. And I do want to make that distinction because, you know, I spent time talking to one of his really good friends, Parvez Chabar, and he was like, Keir is the opposite of ruthless on a personal level. I mean, one person who used to work for him actually broke down crying when she was speaking to me because he'd been so kind to her when she'd lost a loved one. He was the first guy on Neil Kinnock's doorstep when he lost his wife. So there's a personal compassion, as I said. But politically, I mean, just look at what he did step by step. So he made a decision to support Jeremy Corbyn when it's very clear that he didn't support that project. in hindsight, in order to win over the leadership.
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