BREAKING: Labour Together MP Quits Seat For Andy Burnham

Welcome to Navarra Live, coming up tonight.We're truly in the banter timeline after former Labour Together head Josh Simons says he'll quit his parliamentary seat to make way for Andy Burnham in a by -election, where Street Thinker's resigned as Health Secretary, sticking the knife into Starmer as he leaves, and Luke Akerst pleads with MPs to leave Sir Keir alone.And Nadine Dorries is back on the airwaves and more chaotic than ever.I'm Helena, NoJusticeMTG on YouTube and Twitch, and I'm joined for Ladies Night on this extra special show with Dahlia Gabriel.It's an absolute pleasure to be joined with you on a pretty interesting show.tonight?

You know, I would say it was a pleasure to join you, Helena, but you've got me talking about Nadine Dorries, Wes Streeting and Luke Akhurst.So, you know, You better make it cute, because I don't want to spend too much of my time thinking about the three horsemen of the apocalypse, basically.But here I am.I guess that's my job in British politics.

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Very true.The hard right are indeed on the march, funded with billionaire backers.And if you'd like to support our new media for a different politics to fight back against the oligarchy, you can support at NovaraMedia .com forward slash support as always.Labour MP Josh Symons has announced his intention to resign from Parliament to let Andy Burnham return to the House of Commons.The former chair of Labour Together, an influential think tank that choreographed Keir Starmer's rise to power, announced it on Twitter just before we went live, saying this.

Today I am putting the people I represent and the country I love first and will be resigning as MP for Makefield.I am standing aside so that Andy Burnham can return to his home, fight to re -enter Parliament and if elected, drive change our country is crying out for.This has not been an easy decision.This is my family's home where only a few weeks ago doctors and nurses at Wigan Infirmary saved our newborn son's life.But we all must make choices and in recent days I find myself with a difficult one.Defend the status quo or step forward and act.

I have made my choice.It's a shocking vault fast from Simons.So wedded to the Starmer project he was forced to resign as a junior ministerial position earlier this year after having been found to have paid PR fees.Apco £30 ,000 to investigate multiple journalists who were themselves investigating the activities of Labour Together and their part in incubating Starmer's leadership.Joining us now is journalist Paul Holden, author of The Fraud, who is a central target of Simon's investigations into journalists.Paul, what's your immediate reaction to all of this news?

What the hell?I still can't quite make sense of it.This is a very strange political timeline, and I am sort of spinning it, but it's really not anything I could ever imagine happening.This is a very bizarre, unexpected twist, and I'm still trying to make sense of it.

I mean, like, you're kind of... first -hand experience here of the levels to which the Josh Simons went to to protect Keir Starmer and Starmerism as a political project and yet having been chair of Labour together, now think Labour I think that they've rebranded themselves to, he's now giving up that fight to essentially what it seems to be, it can only be, it doesn't explicitly say so, to allow Andy Burnham to challenge the figure that he worked so hard to get into number 10.Why do you think that might be?

I mean, I think there's a couple of things there.I mean, first of all, I think he's pretty explicit in this letter saying, you know, the choice for the future of where the country needs to go.He said, I think there's a line that says like, that is Andy.So he's obviously saying quite clearly that he's backing Andy Burnham.I mean, I think what we're seeing right now is basically the dissolution the pretty intense and profound dissolution of the Labour Together project, and all the people who were collaborating at one stage sort of falling to pieces and falling apart.Because I think the one thing that sort of been missed in this mad media cycle this week was that, you know, obviously Josh Simons is one of the first people who went over the top this past weekend, and he probably

a piece in the Times saying that Stalmer should resign, which is quite surprising.What was equally surprising was the absolutely vicious briefing that came back from No. 10 journalists about Josh Simons, basically saying that he disgraced himself.And this is, you know, his desperate attempt, I think, what was the phrasing?His desperate attempt to write himself an epilogue for a career that's already over.So it's plainly, like, real ugly briefing happening behind the scenes.I mean, I do think that this particular scandal, and there's, you know, I don't wanna make light of it, it's pretty bad, the stuff that was done, what Apco was hired to do, how invasive the investigation was, that's only sort of partially come out so far.

And it's hard to see how Josh Simon's career, or at least his short -term political career as an MP, could really recover from that story.I mean, I think one of the impacts of this whole process is that Labour Together has become a watchword, certainly on the left, as a sort of like a bogeyman, organization, certainly the way it's used now, it's almost like shorthand amongst left -wing MPs as like the sort of the heart of the rock of Starmarism.It explains Starmarism and explains why it's so unpopular.And you have to, I'm looking at this, I'm like how does Josh Simons come back from this?Maybe this was him accepting this was the end of the road for his political career, at least in the short term.And maybe there is something about him that sees a future in Andy Burnham, who knows?

Yeah, I mean, I wanted to ask, do you think that this is, there's something suspicious about the fact that this is the person that it seems like Burnham has been looking for?make an agreement with.Because obviously, you know, those of us who are progressive, there's always been a little bit of a question mark on Andy Burnham.You know, he self -defines as a socialist.He probably defines as being on the soft left.and yet it's someone whose project, as your reporting shows, is explicitly about destroying the left and the Labour Party.

Is there a reason— would be the one to sort of make an agreement to stand aside so that he can run?Should we be suspicious about the fact that that's the person that Andy Burnham is making an alliance with at this moment?

I don't know.I'm being honest, I actually just don't know at this point.It's very difficult to parse out.I mean, I do think— Even though I've said in the past that, you know, I think the only thing that could really save this particular Labour government in this parliamentary term is that they need a leader who's completely divorced.from the last 10 years of utter mad factional craziness, which has really made an absolutely toxified Labour Party.That's really the only thing that's going to save the Labour Party.

You also need somebody who's not been around for all this Mandelson stuff as well, who's totally divorced from the ridiculous sleaze that's accumulated over the last 10 years of these mad factional fights.And at the same time, it does, you know, it does make me think that, you know, obviously Burnham's going to take the chance with both hands, and this is a negotiated deal.It's not exactly the most, like, propitious start for him to basically be like, well, I'm getting my seat as a result of, you know, basically the long tail of, like, a pretty ugly political project that's been basically covered in scandal, has been associated with Mandelstam, has been associated with McSweeney.But I don't think that my current read is that there's not some deeper, profound Machiavelli.3D chess move, nine moves down the line.Actually, this is a stalking horse and five years later we found out that Andy Burnham is actually Nigel Farage in a face mask or something, right?

It's like, I don't think this is like a Scooby -Doo timeline.This is a mad timeline, actually.It's a Scooby -Doo timeline.I think it's much, probably much more simple, which is basically Josh Simons has just realized that, like, it's the end of the road for his parliamentary career.He's not going to be made a minister again in Parliament after this stuff.And this is a way that he bows out with, like, a degree of maybe some gratitude from the Labour Party.

I mean, that would make sense.

That would certainly make sense to me.It makes me wonder if there's something personal there, you know, a personal thing against, if some kind of promise was broken or there was some kind of slight where he's like, I want to end Kistama's career and Andy Burnham is the vehicle to getting that.I have no reason to know that.I have no inside information.But just my gossipy storytelling vibe is wondering that, you know.

Look, I think it's pretty clear, and I think for pretty solid and good reasons, that I'm not a fan of Josh Simons, and I'm certainly not a fan of them hiring, and later together hiring, a pretty despicable investigation, reporting these security services, and spreading incredibly defamatory, malicious material about me and my family.What I will say is I think that Josh Simons has caught the flak for it entirely.at this point and it doesn't fall on him entirely.

Okay so just a bit more on on Josh Simons himself and what's going to be coming up over the next few weeks ahead.Now Simons himself is the MP for Makefield in Wigan which will now hold a by -election to replace him in which it's alsobut certain that Burnham will be attempting to contest.Despite historically being an incredibly safe seat for Labour, to which Simons had previously been parachuted into by Labour HQ, at last week's local council elections, Labour lost every single seat they were defending to Reform UK.So Burnham must hope that his reputation in the area will be enough to overcome Labour's collapsing support in the North West.The question now is on how the NEC will react.

Will they allow Burnham to stand and will there be time for the by -election to be held before any potential leadership contest is finalised?One way he might shore up his chances is to cut a deal with the Greens.to not stand against him, and they're looking to extract as much leverage as possible.Sky News are reporting that the Greens are planning to pressure him into backing proportional representation should he become Prime Minister, and have warned that he will not walk the by -election.Now, Paul, I will say, I will say, we didn't potentially kind of look at there being any kind of Machiavellian stuff going on in the background here, but given how this seat is no longer safe, or there's a precious few safe seats left, for the Labour Party.Is there a potential that Josh Simons has resigned his seat for Burnham here because he thinks that he might lose the by -election, meaning that that would stop them being a procession of other by -elections for him to get in in a safer seat or one that he'd be more guaranteed to win?

Or am I reading too much into this?

Well, first of all, I think the first starting point is that Josh Simons, if he was the MP in 2029, would almost certainly lose the election.I mean, I don't think this stuff around him has done him any favors as local constituents, right?So there's a brutal reality that certainly if Starmer was still the leader or where Streeting was the leader, and he was an MP in 2029, that seat's not going to Labour.So maybe in his personal decision making, he's realized this is a tough seat.I mean, I think it's an interesting seat because this is like a real existential crisis.roll of the dice gamble for British politics in a sense, because what you've effectively done is that you now are going to be holding potentially the 2029 election in 2026, in the sense that what you are now testing is the theory that Burnham can somehow coalesce voters to the left, but also pull some voters from reform, or where the reform, where the Labour's brand is so defeated that Farage can defeat Burnham in this by -election.

So actually, in a sense, it's actually quite a useful thing for more progressive forces in the UK, because now we're testing it now.This is now a live test of this theory.And if Burnham wins, and if he wins by a large margin, then it sort of proves the thesis that there is a possibility that a Burnham -style figure can start recalibrating and reconstituting the Labour Party's voting coalition.And I sort of think, from a progressive point of view, I'd much rather find that out now than in 2029.So actually there's something quite useful in it, because we'll find out in six weeks time if they allow the by -election to happen, because of course there might be some shenanigans around that.The King's route might be what's held, but if it does happen, then we'll actually see now in the next six weeks whether the Labour Party is a viable political project to put up their best possible candidate, who's the most popular, most well -known around the country.

Can he defeat reform?And if he can't defeat reform in this by -election in six weeks, then there's a whole other political discussion to be having for sort of left liberal progressive forces in the UK.

Yeah I mean we've just been sent a tweet from Novara's own Michael Walker pointing out that Burnham would presumably prefer a Labour Green marginal, Greens more likely to lend their votes, Josh Simon's now officing a Labour reform seat, Simon's on the right, close to McSweeney,The thing as well is that if he did win, if he did stand in the Labour reform by -election in somewhere like Makefield, and he did lose, then it would also vindicate a strategy of going super hard into reform -lite politics or of going hard into anti -immigration sentiment, for example, because I know that people like Burnham are definitely, as we see, left of the current administration on that kind of stuff.What do you make of that?

I mean, it's a bit hard to know.I mean, my sense is that quite a lot of the people within the Labour Together project who were collaborated by Kirstie have all basically fallen to pieces.And what has been interesting is the Politico briefing that came out, I think it was yesterday or maybe earlier today, saying that basically Morgan McSweeny has been drafted back into number 10 to defend Starmer.And it's interesting because Steve Reid, who is the other key player in the McSweeny -Labour -Together story, has been probably the most vociferous supporter of Starmer.I mean, my sense is that unless there's been some crazy mad deal behind the scenes, that A Burnham leadership is really terminal for somebody like McSweeney.It's terminal for his political career in a very profound way, because he's really only valuable at this point to Keir Starmer.

He's the only sort of majorly empty vessel near the leadership he could influence.And there is always, you know, I think one thing that we have to bear in mind, this is a bit of a South African flavour to this politics, but You get a character like Burnham in, unless they've done some dodgy deal buying the scenes, Burnham's smart move will be to say, we need to get to the bottom of the rock that destroyed this party.I'm going to support a select committee inquiry.and to labour together.And then it gets really, really, then it gets ugly.It gets ugly in a way that's like, we call the police ugly, right?

And that's basically the South African situation where you basically have people around power now who will face potentially some serious serious consequences if there's like a meaningful investigations of activities.And there I'm being, and let me be explicit, I'm sort of broadly tiring everyone, but I think Morgan McSweeney in particular will be in serious trouble.

And I mean, what I will also say is that when you actually look at sort of the polling from May, you know, early May 2026, which is, you know, this month, Andy Burnham is actually the most favoured, the most popular Labour leadership challenger amongst reform voters, even more so than right wingers, you know, more than West Streeting, more than Shabana Mahmood, who obviously has been promoting a very toxic migration politics.And so even though he is probably of the people, you know, maybe not Angela Merkel, but he's basically the most left leadership challenger.He's actually more popular amongst reform voters, people who voted reform in 2024 than any other candidate.amongst the challenging roster.

Well, if that's the case, then if Andy Burnham can't be Reform UK, which according to Nigel Farage, they're very much looking forward to the by -election.They will throw everything out.That is a direct tweet from Nigel Farage which has been sent.Then if they can't beat them with him, they probably can't beat them with anybody.Exactly.And this is, you know, before Reform had all the time to set out their stall as well.

So that could be potentially very terminal.And I'm also getting from Stephen Swinford, political editor from The Times, that they will almost certainly allow Andy Burnham to stand in the by -election, i .e.the NEC.They won't put him in the by -election.potentially, because of a massive fallout they got from the blockage in Gorton and in Denton. Now,

Now, Andy Burnham has now confirmed he will ask Labour for permission to stand in the Makerfield by -election.He did release a lengthy statement, we've cut out a bit of it here for you, and here's what he said.I can confirm that I'll be requesting the permission of the NEC to stand in the Makerfield by -election.I grew up in this area and have lived here for more than 25 years.I care deeply about it and its people.I know they have been let down by national politics.

Ten years ago I decided to leave Westminster.Why?Because after 16 years I came to the conclusion that our national political system does not work for areas like ours.I learnt this fighting its failure to invest in the Wigan borough for justice for the Hillsborough families and against its treatment of Greater Manchester during the pandemic.And he went on to say this as well.Much bigger change is needed at a national level if everyday life is to be made more affordable again.

This is why I know SIGPEOPLE supports a return to Parliament to bring the change we have brought to Greater Manchester to the whole of the UK and make politics work properly for people.People are struggling and they need the Labour government to succeed.It has already made changes to make life better in the first two years, and after this week, we owe it to people to come back together as a Labour movement, giving the Prime Minister and the government the space and stability they need as the by -election takes place.Now, we didn't really see much confirmation of his wanting to run for the Labour leadership, which he's been very coy upon for the last however many months in which all this speculation has happened, ever since the Mandelson stuff broke last September, I believe.What did you make of what he said there, Paul?

Well, I mean, I think it's considered very poor etiquette from the Labour Party to be ambitious, openly ambitious.So this is an incredibly roundabout way of him very politely saying to Keir Starmer, you've got six weeks, buddy.And then I'm coming for you.I'm giving you the opportunity.the stability you need to run the country until this by -election is concluded.So if you've got stuff you need to do, If some of your big donors really want you to end jury trials, you'd better do it in the next eight weeks.

You've got a timeline.If there's something you've really promised to one of those big donors, you better get on it now.Otherwise, you're not getting your position in TV afterwards.

Thank you very much, Paul Holden, for joining us tonight.It's been an absolute pleasure.Thanks for having me.Well, on a momentous day, it's not just this resignation, but another domino has also fallen, this time from the Cabinet today, as pressure grows on Keir Starmer to resign in the wake of those disastrous local election results last week.The next domino in question is the now former Health Secretary Wes Screeting, long tipped by Labour allies and the media outriders that he has as a future Labour leader.He released quite a long open letter detailing why he had lost confidence in the Prime Minister, although he stopped short of announcing his own personal bid for leader.

I won't read you his entire letter in full, but there are a couple of key parts worth examining.Of course, as you can imagine, it includes the usual stuff that he can't remain in post while having no confidence in the leader etc etc, but it's his reasons why that are eyebrow -raising.There is no doubt that the unpopularity of this government was a major and common factor in our defeats across England, Scotland and Wales.Good Labour people lost through no fault of their own.There are many reasons we could point to, from individual mistakes in policy, like the decision to cut the winter fuel allowance, to the Island of Strangers speech, all of which have left the country not knowing who we are or what we really stand for.I see West Streeting as entities, now I need to be able to pander to the membership era of his time as a potential leadership contender, because he would have ever criticised the Island of Strangers stuff before now one would have thought if he was looking towards a broader electorate but very interestingly he just goes these were loads of mistakes we made and this is why we

lost this election so badly.And it seems to me that the implication is that he's blaming Keir Starmer directly.Now, on top of that, he also mentioned Starmer's attitude to leadership as well.Where we need vision, we have a vacuum.Where we need direction, we have drift.This was underscored by your speech on Monday.

Leaders take responsibility, but too often that has meant other people falling on their swords.You also need to listen to your colleagues, including backbenchers, and the heavy -handed approach to dissenting voices diminishes our politics.I mean...Well, that's all true.That's all certainly true.Streeting was a Labour Together figurehead.

He was part of that whole clique of people who allowed this kind of single -minded approach to governing both the country and internally within the party, which led to this kind of catastrophic loss that we've seen already.You know, like, you were very happy to be part of that when it looks like it was going to be a really good way of purging the left from politics.And now that it's come back to slap you in the face now that you've lost all of those seats at the election, it seems a little bit hypocritical.viewing it from my end for it to be a criticism that West Streeting is making of somebody else.Now, he then called for a leadership election, which would include a broad list of the best candidates.So I'm assuming everything from centrist to centre -right in his mind.

What is noticeable, however, is that despite heavily briefing today to the press that he would mount a leadership challenge to the PM, he stopped short of doing so today.It is worth remembering that to challenge the Prime Minister, Streeting would need the backing of at least 81 Labour MPs.You'd have thought that if he'd had the backing already, then he would have launched his bid as he briefed that he would.Former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell spoke to LBC about why he thought Streeting had called for an open contest.

If you look at the range of other candidates, I think Wes Streeting would struggle to get the support, certainly amongst the rank -and -file Labour Party members and even amongst the trade union affiliates as well.And I think he realises that.And there's a range of other candidates.Lewis mentioned on, I heard you say the other day Lewis, about if Ed Miliband ran, I think he would beat Wes Streeting.I'm not promoting anyone, I'm just saying if Wes Streeting is now agreeing with me that we need an election with a range of candidates, well I've always believed in the powers of conversion.

John, you've always reminded me of a good, a good, a scouse Catholic priest.One day I'll probably just rock up and ask you to hear my confession.But today you're reminding me of a cardinal at a conclave.Of course you've decided which kind of candidate you want.

Well, no, I'll always want the socialist candidate.Of course I will.That's my background and all the rest of it.And don't expect abstinence from me, Sheila, by the way.The key for me is You know how things can tear apart.I said before the last election, I was really worried about the future, not just of the government, but of the party itself.

And those elections gave us all a fright, gave us a real shock of what could happen, how the former and others could really take us apart if we're not careful.So my view is that I still believe, from my perspective, the Labour Party is the best vehicle we've got to achieve my objectives, which is socialism.So therefore, I want to hold the party together.And the way to do that is to ensure everyone has their say, everyone has the right to vote, everyone has the right to stand as a candidate, it's as simple as that.

Now it's not just MP support that Streeting lacks, on yesterday's show we pointed out that Streeting loses to Starmer in polling of Labour members, meaning Streeting is also incentivised to not directly challenge him in a losing contest, instead try and potentially pressure Starmer to resign and hope that an easier challenger to him might stand against him, probably looking unlikely in a world of Andy Burnham back in Parliament however.One person who doesn't lack faith in streeting weather is the MP for Milton Keynes North, Chris Curtis, who was full of praise for the former cabinet minister when he was speaking to Channel 4 News yesterday.

I think ultimately, in order to get through the kind of bold change that you need and take on the challenges that this country faces, you need to ensure that you have wide support across your parliamentary party.And it's been shown today that the Prime Minister doesn't have that.And the change that he's been proposing is not bold enough to fix those problems.So I don't think it would be the right decision for him to put his name forward.

Do you think West Street could have that?

I mean, we'll have to see.Wes hasn't entered the race yet.I think Wes is out once in a while.generational political talent.I think we've got many real talented people in the Labour Party.Wes is one of them.

He's a once -in -a -generation political talent?Well, not a once -in -a -generation, but...Because that would mean that's it.He's your man, then, isn't he?There are generational talents, and many of them in the Labour Party, of which Wes is one.I'm a big fan of his, but I'm a big fan of many other people in the Labour Party.

Wes hasn't put his his name forward yet.Let's see what happens, see what the process and the timetable is.

Do you see him as on the Labour right?The way this is being portrayed is that Wes is the candidate of the Labour right and that Andy Burnham or Angela Rayner or Ed Miliband are the people of the soft left.

Is that true?I'm not having this argument at all.The Labour Party doesn't have a right.There are different traditions in the Labour Party.There are different beliefs in the Labour Party, but the Labour Party doesn't have a right.And to be frank with you, I think too often this traditional way of looking at things between the right and the left in the Labour Party is just bonkers.

There are many things that we agree on.I come from not the right, but the moderate wing of the Labour Party, and I proudly have done.Louise Hague, somebody who comes from a more left -wing tradition, the two of us came together and wrote an op -ed in the Times last week talking about what we agree on, whether that's the need to ensure that the welfare bill doesn't spiral out of control.the need to take power out of Westminster and put it into our communities.What we need to be talking about in the Labour Party is those kind of ideas that can bring together all of the different traditions, that can bring out the best talent in the Labour Party, whichever tradition that they come from, bring this party back together and deliver the radical change that this country so desperately needs.

Yeah, I'm not right -wing.I just have these meetings where I talk about how the welfare bill is too high.And like, on top of this, this idea that somehow there's all the traditions need to come together.I'm like, yeah, there is one really big tradition.People joining the Labour Party for careerist reasons, because they know they wouldn't get a seat with the Liberal Democrats, right?Like, come on, Chris.

We all know that there is a Labour right, obviously.Like, even within the framework of a specific party, you can still create a left -right framework within that microcosm.Like, don't play bullshit with me.And on top of that, we're streeting.Generational political talent?Is the generational political talent in the room with us right now, Chris?

The whole point of the Labour Together project, of the... expulsions of people, the blocking of candidates, the rigged selections in the run -up to the election was specifically to filter out the generational political talents to protect Keir Starmer.It's the total dearth of generational political talents in the current Parliamentary Labour Party, which is why Andy Burnham is having to be rushed into Parliament via a by -election so literally anybody can stand against Keir Starmer.Dahlia, do you think that West Streetingers are generational political talent?

I mean, it depends on what generation you're talking about.I mean, if you're talking about the generation of Ilford North MPs that won their seat in 2015, then maybe you can consider him the most talented of that pool of people.Within the sphere of one.Yeah, he probably is the most talented, but in terms of the generation, as in like people who are knocking about, absolutely not.I mean, Wes Streeting is kind of like, he's kind of the worst.of British politics.

He's like, he's career politician, you know, comes up through the NUS.flips a coin, you know, decides that Labour is his best shot of getting a seat, is a consultant for PwC, whatever that means.And, you know, is completely unscrupulous in his addiction to private donors.Every single constituency that Wes Streeting has been democratically accountable to has left has been left deeply disappointed and enraged, whether you start from when he was NUS president, you know, and he was very disliked by the majority of student unions within the NUS because he repeatedly backed the idea of fees, of student fees.He also went against the academic strikes that happened, which, you know, I know he's part of a student union, but Traditionally, you know, student unions see their conditions as being connected to the conditions of academic staff.And so typically, student unions are supposed to support academic staff in their labor struggles because, shock and surprise, the conditions of educators does have an impact on the standard of education that is delivered.

So, you know, NUS, when it was NUS, left people deeply disappointed.As, you know, Ilford MP, MP for Ilford North, I mean, this is a man who was in a very, very safe Labour seat and last election... won by an absolute hair, was nearly ousted by Lianne Mohamed, right?And it's one thing, so reducing that majority from 5 ,000 to 500 in a very, very safe Labour seat.And it's one thing for you to have your ankles being nipped at by, you know, an established politician from an established party.But to have your ankles being nipped at by a 23 -year -old independent politician with a fraction of the resources that you will have as a Labour MP, that really goes to show that the people of Ilford North really tried to take the first step.to get you elected out.

And one of my big regrets in my life is that I didn't doorknock in Ilford North.Same, so true, so true.I don't live a life of regrets, but one of my big things that like when I go to sleep at night, I'm like, didn't like Leanne Muhammad could have given, you know, by straight in the boot.And then, you know, you look at his tenure as health secretary.I mean, this is a man who is responsible for introducing Palantir into our NHS.The one thing that everyone on the political spectrum in this country can agree on, is we don't want the NHS to be privatized.

And what has Wes Streeting done?Not only has he been taking hundreds of thousands of pounds from private donors linked to the private health industry over the past 10 years, but we have seen the manifestation of that.You know, he has made all of our data in the NHS available to a company that not only is complicit in genocide in Gaza, but is also the founder of that company, is openly against the idea of a public health service.So it's openly and existentially against the institution that is most popular amongst the British people.And when you hand over your data to that company, you are handing over an immense amount of power to someone who wants to see that institution fall.So at every stage in his career, he has disappointed his constituents, whether it's people of Ilford North, whether it's doctors and healthcare workers and patients, or whether it's, you know, students in the NUS.

And so the idea that this is the man who can kind of resurrect the Labour Party from record unpopularity is laughable.He might be the only person that is more disliked than Starmer.I mean, the polling shows that he isn't quite as unpopular as Starmer, but he's all of the worst parts of Starmerism, you know, the opportunism, the sliminess, the back and forth, the U -turn, Burns, the one thing that he has that Starman doesn't have is he does have a bit of a vision.It's that it's a deeply unpopular and demonic vision to privatise our NHS and to basically not be in any way a representative of an actual labour movement.Because when you look at the next election, whenever it happens, there are two right wing parties already.You know, there's the Conservatives and there's Reform.

And under West Streeting, if West Streeting becomes leader of the Labour Party, there will be three right wing parties, because whatever way you slice it, West Streeting is to the furthest right that you can get within the Labour Party.A Labour Party should not be should not be allowing private health industry to cannibalize parts of our NHS.

I mean, I absolutely 100 % agree with you, 100 % agree with you.Apparently, under West Street there have been NHS surgeries funded by BlackRock and places like that.resurrection of like zombie Blairism and to be fair watching him go it feels like we're already seeing Blairism just on its last legs just kind of capitulating.If there's one good thing to come from this week of Westminster psychodrama we're treating no longer health secretary I think all the trans kids out there who may get some respite from his kind of reign of terror that he's inflated upon them.Now another wrench in Streeting's plans also dropped this morning when it was announced that former Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner has been cleared of deliberate underpaying of stamp duty on her Brighton home by HMRC.Just as this news broke, she spoke to ITV's Paul Brand about the cloud that had been hanging over her for the last six months.

When I was in government and this came to my attention that there could have been tax hold, I was really shocked about that because I'd taken advice and I've never wanted to avoid paying my tax.For me that was the most distressing thing is that people felt that I was tax dodging or trying to set up trusts to avoid tax or being careless by not taking the appropriate advice and HMRC have concluded that that isn't the case.

Did that hurt when that was being bandied around?that you might have done it on purpose?

It did and it hurt me because I had to then talk about my son and his personal circumstances which I think you know it's not fair on him he's a young man now and you know it's his history that it's not really for me to band around the airwaves, but equally I didn't want people to think that the person who they know me as, the person who went into politics to fight for people, suddenly dropped all her values and was just on the take, and that's never been me, and I was horrified that that's what The consequences could have been that I'd done something wrong.HMRC, I've concluded that there wasn't any wrongdoing on my behalf.I've chosen not to tackle HMRC on the ambiguity of the law.I think that's the correct thing to do.I've chosen to pay that additional tax because I never want to not pay my taxes.

So for clarity, HMRC has a three grade scale in terms of how they classify unpaid tax.The first in which reasonable care was taken not to avoid paying.the second where someone underpays carelessly, and the third in which someone deliberately underpays.HMRC found that Reyna had taken reasonable care when planning her tax affairs, so was judged to be on the lowest end of the scale and therefore not penalised for it.This judgment that she had not engaged in wrongdoing has come at the perfect time and gives her the scope to challenge Keir Starmer to be leader of the Labour Party or indeed potentially stand in a future contest should he resign.It was on this question that Brand next probed her.

But people are looking to you as a very senior figure within the party and they want to know what should they do?What should MPs do?Should they try and get rid of the Prime Minister?Should they back another candidate if there's a leadership challenge?What do you want them to do?What are you going to do?

Well, I want us to pull together.Because...

So no leadership challenge?

I want us to pull together.I said we have to do better and we all have to play our part in that.And I will play my part in delivering on that.But people put their trust in us.They put their trust in us to deliver for them after 14 years of the conservative psycho drama and, you know, failure to meet the challenge.We have got to meet the challenge now, as a team, as Labour, as a government that promised the British people that it would be better.

And we have now got to start delivering that.

Would you like to lead that team?Would you want to be Prime Minister?

I want to deliver as part of the team.And I've always said that it is a team effort.It's not one person.It's not a presidential situation.We all have to pull together to deliver that.

But would you want to lead the team?Because the team does have to have a leader.

We do have to have a leader.And we've got a leader.And I'm not going to go into hypotheticals.

You're not ruling out potentially taking over as leader?

But I have said that we have to do better.And we have to drive forward that change.I did that in government.I was very successful.I brought the Employment Rights Act.They said we couldn't do it in 100 days.

We did.We had our detractors from it and we still delivered it.

We're talking in the abstract though, really, aren't we?We're not getting to the nub of what's really going on right now in the Labour Party, which is that you're split down the middle.Some people say the Prime Minister should go.Some say he should stay.You're not really telling me what you think.

No, what's happening in the Labour Party at the moment is we've just had a severe beating off the electorate and our ministers, our cabinet members, our Prime Minister and our members and our voters are saying things have to change.

And some people say change the leader.

Well, some people are saying that.But what I'm saying is the delivery of what we promised the electorate is the most important thing that we need to be concentrating on at the moment.I'm not getting into hypotheticals about leadership at the moment.

Well, it certainly looks like that she's identified the correct problem, which is that not only is Keir Starmer an issue, but obviously the policy is an issue in terms of how the public are reacting to the policy perspectives that's been laid out.It's a real kind of subtle dig, the kind of things that have really kind of bounced off of voters and really kind of turned the weens against them.Although in terms of the leadership stuff, it does seem quite ambiguous.So I guess, Dahlia, I want to ask you, do you think that she's eyeing a leadership challenge?Maybe might be something more different now that we've had the potential for Burnham come back.What do you think?

Yeah, I think if Burnham wasn't potentially able to run, then I would be able to answer that quite definitively in that I'm almost 100 % sure that she is eyeing up a leadership run.I think if Burnham does make it onto the ballot, which, you know, if he does manage to become an MP, if he does win that by -election, I think he probably will get on the ballot, then it's a more complicated question because then it does genuinely become a question of splitting the soft left vote.And, you know, we always have to do these kind of annoying dances where you can't outright come, you can't come out outright and say, yes, I will be challenging Keir Starmer.You have to kind of pretend that you're very much towing the line, and then eventually you do what everyone knows you're going to do.And, you know, look, there are many reasons to be very frustrated with Angela Rayner.You know, she signed off on Starmerism implicitly or explicitly.

Many in the left feel that she kind of did betray them politically.And I think she can be sort of swayed by a convincing right or a convincing left.She can kind of be a bit blown in the wind a little bit, which I think is concerning.But I also think maybe Andy Burnham could as well.That's kind of the nature of being soft left.And I do think that she's had a bit of a an unfair trial by the press and by Starmer, because it makes you wonder, you know, why would Starmer defend to the hilt Peter Mandelson but wouldn't defend Angela Rayner?

And I think that expulsion was not expulsion, sorry, that the pushing her to step down was quite cynical.And, you know, I think that the way that the press treat her is related to the fact that, you know, she's a working class woman and not only is she working class, but she's a working class woman who hasn't been seen to transcend those working class roots in terms, like culturally, right?Like Wes Streeting is someone who sorry, Wes Streeting grew up on a council estate, but he went to Cambridge.Whereas Angela Rayner, you know, grew up working class, she had, you know, single mother, left school at 16.And these are the kinds of things that, especially when it's a woman, the press really, really go for, like the press really are quite horrible to, you know, young, single, teenage people who are young, single, Well, she was literally growing up during like the early 2010s era where everyone was hammering the teenage mother stuff.

It was a real kind of bugbear of the press.

Yeah, and that's always been there.That undercurrent has always been there.Even the way, you know, in which they talk about her, oh, you know, are you drunk in Parliament?Are you this?That photo of her on Ibiza on holiday.Yeah, like vaping and all of that.

Like, it's all very coded.And, you know, as Hannah, Hannah, Spencer told us, you know, a lot of them are actually drunk at work.So I don't see why, if Angela Rayner was drunk at work, I don't see why she should be punished for that.It seems to be kind of normal.But if Andy Burnham is going to be running, I think that Angela Rayner would probably have to step aside in that context.Because whatever way you slice it, Andy Burnham is more popular, not just amongst the Labour members, but he's more popular by other people.

amongst voters from all parties.So whatever party someone voted for in 2024, their favourite Labour MP or Labour politician, sorry, is Andy Burnham.And also, and I think part of that is the fact that he isnot marred by the stench of starmarism.He was able to sort of be active in politics and execute a programme as Mayor of Manchester and remain very active and build a governance record, but without having to vote in any of the toxic ways that Starmer whipped the Labour Party into voting without having to stake his claim on top of that, having to have a public opinion on Starmer as such.And so the fact that he has that distance, that political distance, means that if what you're looking for is the best shot of a, you know, somewhat progressive leader to win the Labour Party and to go on and actually have a shot of defeating reform, it has to be Andy Burnham.

I think you're right, I think you're right.And I do agree, I think that whilst I have loads of misgivings with Reyna because of her links to Starmarism, her response to Palestine, I think, I think was very disappointing, given her previous levels of support.But that's just the Labour Party.I mean, it's true, like there's, you know, cabinet responsibility, it's really difficult.And there are plenty of things I could take her to task on, but more broadly, you talk about her working class roots, and not just roots, the fact that she, her whole career, is working class, she was a carer, she worked professionally as a carer and then she was a union official for the sector that she was working in.That's really important in that it distinguishes her from everybody else.

They may have had working class backgrounds but they all became elite professionals because they were children of the Blair era, 50 % of kids going to university, right?And that particular background that she comes from that's kind of been expunged really from the Labour Party as of late, which has traditionally been a party which not just elected, people from, you know, actual kind of working backgrounds, but also put them in the cabinet.You know, Clement Attlee in his cabinet had like printers and miners and postal workers and teachers.And those people have been, you can't see them anywhere in the cabinet, apart from when Angela Rayner was deputy leader.

Yeah.And look, you know, I don't think that the reason that the press have gone for her is just purely misogyny and classism.I think if she was firmly on the right of the party, they would have celebrated that as a wonderful, you know, sort of rags -to -riches story.

I think what they would have done, they would have done the NC politics.They would have done the, you know, this is what the white working class, the progressive left had abandoned, you know, and that's why she's on the right of the party.But because she has those progressive left positions, or at least she has done historically, there's no position for them to be able to take her and, you know, take her under their wing because she opposes materially the politics that they represent.And on top of this, right, again, may not like her personally, but if she did become prime minister, the absolute meltdown from the SW1 Oxbridge poshos, if, you know, having somebody who they believe would be beneath the wrong guy in their classes terminology being in charge, you know what, I'm there for the cope.

And like, what happens is that when someone, even unthreateningly left because I would describe Reina as a very unthreatening soft left figure but even that when someone who is an unthreatening soft left figure gains pop seems to gain popularity or power the press sit there and say what can we use?What kind of prejudice or what kind of bigotry or what kind of skeleton in the closet can we use to destroy this person?And for Angela Rayner, it's been like, oh, she reminds people of you know, the bogeyman of the single, you know, the single mom, the teen mom.And there's an ancestral bigotry against that.We'll just pull on that kind of cultural repertoire, cultural stereotype to destroy her.So it's not that they see a working class woman and say, oh, well, we can't have that.

You know, we've got to kind of like do this campaign of misogyny against her.It's that they look at her as a as a soft left figure first and then say, OK, what tools do we have in the toolbox to destroy this person?Oh, misogyny andclassism?Great, we'll pick that one up and then they just... they go for it.

100 % 100 % now there's over 4 ,000 of you watching at home so make sure that given we are looking at upgrading everything that we've got here moving to a new site please make sure that if you want to support new media for a different politics you go to novara .media forward slash support any support as of always welcome from our paid supporters.Now we've spent the last couple of days talking about some high profile Labour figures who are rumoured to be up to the job of replacing brave Sir Kim but in reality Anyone could theoretically challenge him should they get the 81 nominations that they would need.And with 400 MPs to choose from, Who knows what hidden talent could be lurking on the backbenches?While Sky News were alerted to one such hopeful this afternoon.

Let's get more now on that breaking news that the Armed Forces Minister Al Khans would join a leadership race if the starting gun was fired, in his words.Lucy McDade, our political correspondent, is here with me.So just remind us who he is.He's possibly not a familiar name necessarily to all our viewers.

No, exactly.However, in Westminster, Al Khans is a name.He's a bit of a rising star, if you like.24 intake MP.He represents a Birmingham seat.But his name has been swirling for quite some time as potentially a bit of a dark horse in any possible leadership contest.

But as you say, members of the public at the moment might not know who this man is.Well, he has a strong military history.He is a minister in the Ministry of Defence.He's a minister for armed forces, but a strong military history.He was in the Royal Marines.He's completed five tours of Afghanistan.

Somebody, therefore, that I think a lot of MPs potentially actually a growing number of MPs feel that in any leadership contest, this man would have a strong personal story to be able to win over the public.And actually, when we're talking about personalities, we're talking about an electorate that's very disillusioned with mainstream politicians, perhaps he's somebody that could actually win over a vote in a general election.So what do we know?Well, it is being reported that he would run if there was a leadership contest.Of course, this week we are seeing plenty of speculation that there may well be one coming up soon.I've spoken to a number of people this morning who believe that to be true.

In fact, I was speaking to one person who's been heavily involved with working with Al Khans previously, saying that he is very ambitious.This is a man that wants to rise to the top, actually interestingly saying that even if Al Khans doesn't get the numbers, wouldn't necessarily win a leadership contest, that's not to say that he wouldn't then become an even more significant figure in the party.Perhaps a defence secretary, this is a man that has advised a number of defence secretaries, has a fair bit of political experience behind the scenes, so could well be somebody that might come out from, you know, not one of the names that we're seeing where streeting Angela Rayner, Andy Burnham, but perhaps might actually get quite a lot of support from the majority of MPs who have so far stayed silent.

There's always one, isn't there?Someone who uses a potential leadership election to be able to raise their profile politically, even if they have no shot at winning.Remember Rahman Shishti when it comes to mind from 2022?He's certainly got a personal story to tell, Alkans does as well, as Sky News have pointed out.He's clowned Mount Everest, he's served five tours of Afghanistan, and he has a resume that boasts plenty of defence advisory roles.But does he actually believe in anything?

Well, yesterday he just happened to write an article for the New Statesman that outlines his vision.And well, I'll let you at home be the judge.What is the point of Labour if it does not represent Sheffield, Stoke -on -Trent, Barnsley, Swansea and Aberdeen?What is the point of the Labour Party if it cannot replace despair and frustration with hope, stability and purpose?The party was founded to give ordinary working people security, dignity and bargaining power over their lives.We don't need more slogans, he goes on to say, and all we've seen there is a bunch of slogans that he's reeled off.

Well, it seems very policy -like to me, but do we at least need more slogans?

Is it worth the risk?The beauty of democracy is you can vote for whoever you like, but it's important to be clear about what that choice really means.If you vote green in these local elections, you're voting towards the decriminalization of all drugs.Now, I have children.No thanks.You're voting in the middle of two major conflicts to leave NATO.

Absolutely no thanks.You're also voting for someone whose fiscal policy would seriously undermine, if not destroy, our economy.

You mean the debt or the deficit?The debt.Okay, the debt is more of a deficit, sorry.Okay.

Absolutely, no thanks.From my perspective, these are really serious times.We need serious policies, and we need serious politics.So before you vote, ask yourself, is that risk worth taking?

Okay, so we're like serious politics and pretending that NATO is on the ballot at Birmingham City Council.Still not much to go off of there, although his politics were elucidated a little further in this Times article from July 2024, which revealed he had previously been a Tory voter.Carnes, who says he had voted Tory at past elections, quotes Ben Wallace, the former defence secretary, who last year described the armed forces as hollowed out.Statistically, Labour has always spent more on defence than the Conservative Party, says Carnes.There's no way I would come across to Labour if I didn't genuinely believe they were strong and confident on defence.He's the exact candidate the Labour Right love, reflexively opposed to left -wing politics, one of their supposed hero voters who is tempted back from Tory to Labour after the expunging of Corbynism from the party, and the kind of aesthetic that the Labour Right believes is supposed to appeal to their headcanon of what Red Bull voters want, dangling his military history in front of them like an electoral carrot.

No wonder then that he was foisted upon his constituency of Birmingham's Selly Oak by Labour HQ.This is from Michael Crick earlier this year.MPs are suggesting Al Kahns as a possible new leader, but I advise against having I would advise having detailed account of military rep...before considering him.Labour bigwigs imposed Carnes on Birmingham's Selly Oak with no public scrutiny, after Summer persuaded Steve McCabe to step down in return for a peerage.Oh, and on top of this, he's also a member of Labour Friends of Israel.

Now, what is funny to me is that what we have seen in terms of the discussion around why Keir Starmer has been a failure, both from the letter we've seen from West Street and broadly what's happening in the press, and Angela Rayner touched on it too, is a lack of vision, is a lack of any actual policy prospects on what they want to do, what they want to change, a theory of change.Have we seen any of that from Alcant?In fact, he's the exact replica of the kind of politics and the kind of political strategy that led to Labour together specifically going after Keir Starmer, not in terms of anything that he wanted, anything that he believed, but because he looked prime ministerial, right?He was the director of public prosecutions, people will like him.He's carrying a briefcase.The same is true when it comes to Al Khan.

It's just a different kind of aesthetic, right?He's a rugged, Bear Grylls -type former Marine, and that's all that matters.Policy?No.Ideology?What's that?

Totally free of ideology.And he's the exact kind of person who would continue, in my mind, the Labour doom loop that we have seen all along.already.When the fingers of Prime Minister Keir Starmer are eventually prized off the door to Downing Street, a lot of Labour MPs will suddenly find themselves pretty adrift.That's because many of them are in Parliament, not for their political chops or progressive values, but for their allegiance to the Labour Right project that put Starmer into power.One of them is Luke Akhurst, MP for North Durham, rewarded for his loyal service to the party's right with a parliamentary safe seat in 2024.

In January, Akerst argued in the new statement that the party should give up on the idea of a progressive coalition, pursuing reform voters instead.Never mind that much of Stalmer's Labour project appears to have involved alienating those voters economically, snatching money from pensioners and kids, but Akerst has always displayed significant animosity towards the party.the left of the party, summed up in this post from 2021.There is a lot of historical polling evidence that voters like it when Labour leaders put the hard left back in their box, which is obvious given how much swing voters dislike Corbyn, etc.The less influential and visible they are, the more popular Labour becomes.Well, that doesn't appear to be quite the case now.

And while doing the media rounds over the increasing likelihood of a stoma decapitation, there was one boogeyman that kept coming up.Should there be a leadership contest?

I'd not.And I think that even the speculation has been damaging, where it's cost about three billion in terms of the bond markets being destabilized by the potential for political instability.That's money that we could have spent on public services.And it's divisive.It looks chaotic.Who knows what the outcome might be?

If Wes started this, it could actually end us up with a a Prime Minister that's a long way to the left of him or Keir or me. I really hope that people come back from the brink.I'm very firmly on the moderate wing of the Labour Party and I am worried that Wes has pushed over a domino that could lead to the party shifting to the left, which would be absolutely bizarre given that places like my constituency in North Durham in our local elections last year and neighbouring authorities across the North and the Midlands have voted for reform councillors.I don't understand why anyone would risk something that moved the Labour Party further away from those voters.

That's a political theory about why voters across the red wall are shifting to reform.And it's one that makes two assumptions.First, that the reasons for those voters leaving the Labour Party are because it's not conservative enough.And second, that their concerns can't in fact be met by more radical economic policies.rather than the business -as -usual neoliberal offer the Labour Party has made so far.It also doesn't explain why more rather than fewer people are moving to reform given nearly two years of Keir Starmer in the Labour Right's leadership.

Of course, there were also signs that Aykhurst may just be completely delusional.This was his appearance in LBC.Yeah, I'm sure ranking avoiding turmoil in the international finance markets above finding solutions to the problems people face is exactly what the people of North Durham want to hear about.Very convincing stuff there from Luke Acurst.Dahlia, now when it comes to reform voters I was looking at a really interesting graph that was put up by a data scientist showing that actually the movement of voters isn't from Labour to reform.Actually most of the Labour voters in terms of deserting the party going to the Green Party.

Or staying home.

Or indeed staying home.What reform voters are winning or what the voters that reform are winning aren't voters at all, they were non -voters, people who stayed at home last time who are former winning now, I guess because there was no kind of Johnson -style candidate of the last election potentially.Does this mean this strategy can work?I don't know what you think about what he said then.

No, I mean, look, I said earlier in the show that West Streeting is the worst of British politics and I actually want to take that back because I actually think it's Luke Aikhurst because Luke Aikhurst also has, you know, he's opportunistic, he's unscrupulous, but like, at least West Streeting actually comes from East London.Do you know what I mean?Like, at least he's actually from the place that he is representing, whereas like, on top of all of that, Luke Aikhurst was just parachuted into a seat that he has nothing to do with as a reward for being blindly loyal to the Starmer project and to Morgan McSweeney.And I actually think that Morgan McSweeney and the kind of the way that Morgan McSweeney operates is that his favorite kind of candidate or his favorite kind of MP is an MP who's crap and unpopular as a constituency MP and owes him their entire political career because then, you know, you don't have a situation where, for example, you have, like, a Corbyn who is able to, or a Diane Abbott, perhaps, who is still able to win because they are so popular with their constituency, regardless of what the central Labour Party committee wants or is trying to get them to do.Whereas, like, someone like a Luke Aikhurst, you know, the only reason that he's in is because he was parachuted in by the NEC, by Morgan McSweeney.And so he owes his entire political career to the NEC.

to Morgan McSweeney and that creates the bonds of loyalty that Morgan McSweeney so cherishes.And so it's not a surprise to me that Luke Aikhurst is going to come on and say basically completely hypocritical things in order to keep Starmer in as leader of the Labour Party.Hypocritical things including saying, you know, Labour Party members don't like to launch leadership elections.They don't like to go after their leader.Sorry, all you did when Corbyn was leader of the Labour Party was publicly mouth off about how much you hate the leader of the Labour Party.Now, I don't know

have a problem with that.I don't believe in this kind of like party above all sort of mentality.Like I think there should be lively discussion, but it's like when your guy is leader of the Labour Party, then suddenly we will have to exercise this discipline and restraint and not you know, use the tools that Labour Party members have to get rid of a leader that is hemorrhaging Labour votes, that is making it not only risking the possibility of, not only making it likely that Labour won't win the next election, but is making Labour look like maybe it might come fourth in the general election, which if you're, you know, the Labour Party who's concerned with the survival of the party, then that is, there's an absolutely valid reason to kind of challenge to challenge his leadership.And the thing that, you know, the people like Aikhurst, the so -called moderates, which is apparently the word that the Labour right like to use to describe themselves.So like, we're the moderates and everyone else is far left fringe.Their strategy has been tested.

It has been publicly experimented with, and it has failed.Having a Labour Party leader whose sole objective goal is to destroy the left of the party, to ape the right as much as it can, has put the Labour Party in a worst position than they could have ever imagined.Far worse than they were under Corbyn.

In fact, they called the Corbyn period like an existential crisis.They were just like, well, Corbyn being in charge, worst election result ever, 33 % of the vote, whatever it was, millions more votes than Keir Starmer got in 2024.It's nothing compared.And they're looking now.What's the projected vote share at the local elections, like on a national level?15 % or something for Labour?

Yeah, they're not even one of the two major parties anymore.That never happened under Corbyn, whatever you think of him.So honestly, I mean, I want that.see the back of this crop of Labour MPs who were elected, who were parachuted in because of their loyalty to a broken project and without that kind of loyalty from McSweeney and the Central Labour Committee, have absolutely no standing in their local constituency.It's the worst, it's the most perverted part of the British political system.

No, but they're developing power to the nations and regions, Dalia.

No, and Labour has developed a reputation for being that parachuting in party, you know, and it's really a shame.

Well, they literally, when all in on Zak Polanski for not parachuting himself into Gorton and Denton, despite the fact that he was obviously living in London, right?These people have this kind of stuff in their DNA.It's part of been the labor rights project forever.They're the sensible adults in the room, and that involves gaming the system.And we've seen that the public have really reacted negatively to that, reacted negatively to the policy prospectus that's been laid down in a lot of cases, right?There are some things, usually the more left -wing things, the public like.

They do like 28 billion of climate investment.They like you know, a worker's rights remuneration package.Those are the things that the public actually reacting well to.And they're overshadowed by a bunch of austerity cuts to PIP, cuts to winter fuel allowance, mimicking Osborne politics.

And, you know, as I said, like, as I said earlier in the show, when we look at the next election and you have, you know, someone where in a situation where almost every constituency feels like it's up for grabs, unpredictable, voters are going to go to the polls and they're going to vote if Luke Eggers has his way, they will have a choice between three right -wing parties, right?And it's like that, the way that you win elections, the way that reform, as you've mentioned, has managed to become this breakthrough political force is because it was able to activate its organic coalition.It didn't try to copy anyone, didn't try to look sensible according to, you know, businessusual, politics as normal.It activated its organic coalition, which includes some existing voters and also some people who have never voted.I've always said that the only pathway for a radical politics in this country from the left is to activate non -voters.

There is a whole world out there to tap into, young people, people who have never been represented by politics as usual, and it's only by activating those people that you have any pathway to power.This whole idea that we can fold over a couple of Tories and fold over a couple of reform voters is delusional.They know where they stand on the political spectrum now, and it's time to look to what to in this moment of anti -establishment, in this moment where establishment versus anti -establishment is more important to people's perception of a politician than left or right, there has to be an insurgent approach.

Oh yeah, these people don't accept that like reform green voters are a thing that exists.And like what they specifically had a strategy of, given that they accepted This former FT columnist, I think, in 2021 said that the UK's populist moment is over.This was accepted by the political class in this country in the run -up to the 2024 general election.We can offer the public minute distinctions between different forms of technocracy, and we saw some of the lowest turnout we've seen in absolutely years.Incredibly low turnout compared to the high turnout in 2017 and in 2019.And in that low turnout environment, you can rely on just activating a very small sector of swing voters engaged.

But in the wake of the activation of non -voters by the populist left and populist right, it's not enough to be able to triangulate existing cohorts, you have to build new ones and activate new ones.Reform have done that, the Greens have done that, and if the Labour Party and indeed on the other side of politics, the Tories don't do that, the major partieswill die.Former Tory Culture Minister Nadine Dorries defected to reform last year.Famous for being fairly messy during the fall of then Prime Minister Boris Johnson, she's kept a fairly low profile since leaving Parliament after quitting her seat in late 2023, in what many described as a strop over not getting a peerage.But she's back, and now apparently an expert on political coups.

Appearing on Peston, Dorries was asked about the wave of Labour ministers who've quit Starmer's team, specifically Jess Phillips, who quit as a Home Office Minister after accusing Starmer of failing to put into place her policies for protecting children from online sexual exploitation.In her resignation letter, Philip said this, We could make this possible in every phone and device in the country.We could stop this abuse.It has taken me a year to get you to agree to even threaten to legislate in this space.Not legislate, just threaten.This is the definition of incremental change.

Nothing bold about it.The announcement was meant to be in March.I'm still on a promise this will happen in June.I've given up believing it.How many children were left without a safety net in the time we dilly -dallied and worried about tech buses?Pretty scathing, pretty scathing criticism there.

And it's worth pointing out that Phillips is a long time West Streeting ally, but the accusations against Keir Starmer of being very slow to act don't seem that surprising given his growing reputation for being ineffective.But Nadine Dorries took a pretty different view, shall we say.

I'm actually going to pick up with you, Nadine, because as Culture Secretary, you had your own interactions with big tech.Do you have any sympathy for the Prime Minister not standing up to them on this issue?

Well, what I would say is if Jess Phillips spent less time complaining and more time working,as both an MP and a minister, she may have achieved more.And frankly, to send the letter that she did to the Prime Minister just complaining that he hadn't done what it just showed that she hadn't done, I'm afraid I agree with Steve on this.She just hadn't done her job as a minister for whatever reason.But also, what Liz Kendall did was the right approach, if you're a Secretary of State.And I did it as Culture Secretary on sanctions and Putin invaded Ukraine, you get other leaders.

I got my opposite numbers in Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, you have to work across time zones, you have to work 24 hours a day for four or five days.But you can do it with the support of number 10, your allies, you can do we can do what the government did on Brock.But You know, the Prime Minister cannot force mobile phone companies, nobody can, to install software on their phones that they don't want to install.There is no legal framework to enable them to do that.You as one country and one single voice simply cannot do it.And I know this from the online safety bill.

It's one of the reasons why the online safety bill doesn't work.

I mean, definitely an interesting reaction there.Although I will say, if you've got Number 10 onside, you can do this.I thought the whole point of Jess Phillips' letter was that Number 10 wasn't onside.But of course, again, she is indeed one of the architects of the online safety bill, something I'm definitely a huge fan of.But if she understands that area, which, you know, I'd never seen that happen before when Nadine Dorries understands an area very well, then that might well be the case that they couldn't even do what Jess Phillips was asking about.Now, Dorries was also asked questions about her new boss, Nadja Farage, and brewing scandals around the millions of pounds in gifts he said to have accepted without declaring them in his register of interests.

So this is just a story that's put out there.First of all to try and stop people voting reform during the local elections.It's a confected story.

It's not just a story that's put out there.He received this massive gift from this billionaire and he is a great crypto fan himself.So people inevitably think there's a conflict of interest.

So what?It was before he was an MP and it was a personal gift for his lifetime personal security.So I'm sure you've read the Ministerial Code.I had to live by it.I'm sure you've read it.The big issue will be if he'd been given that £5 million and it had been for any benefit to his work in the House.

So if he'd asked questions in the House which would have personally Christopher Harbourn or any donor would personally benefit from.He's done none of that.It was for his personal security.It was given to him before he was an even MP.It's like, move on.That's all there is to it.

Why did you keep it a secret then?

Sorry, John, what were you saying?

Why did Mr Farage keep it a secret if there was no problem with it?We can be completely open.People in my area earn less than £20 ,000 a year and he's talking to five nuns without telling anybody.

John, if he was an MP and he hadn't declared it, then you'd have a point, but he wasn't an MP.I haven't declared anything I received before I was an MP, not that I am any longer, and I'm sure you didn't either, so why would you expect that?

Well, the rules of the MP's Code of Conduct actually say that for a year, for 12 months before you become an MP, you need to declare.Now, what the Standards Commissioner will do is establish whether... what the Establishment Commissioner will do.

Come on Nadine, you grew up in Liverpool.I know full well from your working -class background that you know people don't give you five million pounds just because it's completely out of the blue, right?This doesn't appear out of nowhere, out of the ether.Now Doris had ended there by admitting that Farage could indeed be in breach of the rule if the undeclared funds were of benefit to himself.The Guardian has ruled thatthat Farage bought a £1 .4 million property in cash shortly after receiving that £5 million gift.

In response to the story Reform UK has said this, the relevant chronology is straightforward.The offer and purchase process for the property commenced before the gift.Mr. Farage had already passed proof of funds and the relevant cheques before receiving the gift.The purchase was therefore already proceeding independently of it.Now, Dahlia, what did you make of Nadine Dorries' interventions there?And more broadly, it's £5 million stuff.

If it's in it.

I mean, listen, one thing about Nadine Dorries is she's ride or die.She believes in standing by your man when he's down.And I think she's just disgusted by the fact that Jess Phillips would leave her man high and dry when he's in a bad way.So that's the thing, you know, it's her core kind of, I think they call it pick me, the kids call it.But anyway, yeah, I mean, obviously, there's no such thing as a free lunch.And it's not so much that these kinds of donations happen in this very quid pro quo way.

They happen in a lot more subtle way.You know, billionaires and private industry do not give away millions of pounds to politicians just for the fun of it.They give it to politicians in order to, you know, cozy up to get the ear of, get the attention of people who then can go on to decide what kind of regulatory environment you're offering in.And particularly, I'm particularly interested in the kind of the crypto currency funding link thing.And I'm interested in this more broadly as well.Not just with Nigel Farage, but with the broader kind of far right, because when crypto first like came onto the scene, it was kind of this like anti -establishment thing that Even a lot of lefties were sort of saying, you know, this can kind of break the kind of structural monopoly that banks hold.

over our finance systems and there can be a kind of radical potential to this new form of currency but over the past sort of five to ten years there's been a concerted shift from this sort of more you know politically ambiguous kind of industry to becoming an industry that is very much part and parcel of the far -right's funding ecosystem and political ecosystem.So the first thing you'll see is...far -right politicians creating very hospitable environments for cryptocurrency, you know, in terms of regulation.So, you know, Donald Trump went from saying that cryptocurrency was a disaster waiting to happen in 2021 to now basically saying that he's going to make the U .S.

the crypto capital of the world, talking about creating a strategic reserve of Bitcoin, launching his own meme coin.That's after he receives an 11 million pound, 11 million dollar donations in contributions to his inaugural committee from the crypto industry.You have Javier Millet, who also sort of launches this meme coin.You have Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, who also had this crypto obsession that basically left his country $16 million in debt or cost his country $60 million.And so there's this pattern now of the crypto industry financing these far -right politicians, and then those far -right politicians implementing regulations and policies that are very friendly to cryptocurrency.And it's in Reform's manifesto to make the UK far more friendly to the crypto industry.

And so my question is, you know, why are the far -right, why have the far -right become so interested in crypto?And why has the crypto industry become so interested in the far -right?And I think, firstly, it's because crypto is very, very easy to buy.money very easy to hide.It's very good for offshoring.It's very good for kind of if you want to do what the far right want to do, which is make the rich richer at the expense of the majority.

Crypto is basically the next most lucrative vehicle to do that.We know that these cryptocurrencies basically operate like pyramid schemes, where the people who can buy up the most of them or have as much of them as possible or can get in there early make a lot of money from it.Most people lose money from it.And it evades state regulation.It's easier to evade tax.It's easier to offshore.

So it's become something that has all the hallmarks of the far -right project, which is hoarding resources and evading any kind of regulation that is there to put some kind of guardrails on accumulation by the already very rich.And so for me, it's very clear that Nigel Farage sits within this broader landscape of the crypto industry realizing that their best meal ticket to being able to grow is is the bankrolling of far -right politicians.And those far -right politicians are giving the crypto industry what they paid for, which is low levels of regulation on their industry.And so the idea that there's no kind of indirect lobbying happening through this donation of huge amounts of money, I don't think anyone ordinary believes it.I think my question is, why does that not seem to sully or depress the popularity of Nigel Farage as an allegedly anti -establishment candidate?

I think the big issue is that there would have to be some kind of oppositional party, oppositional candidate, oppositional political force that is squeaky clean.And we've seen with Quadrature Capital donating to Labour, Frank Hester with the Conservativesall the Freebiegate stuff, like this all kicked off and it's really kind of sullied people's opinions of politics more broadly, which allows someone like Nigel Farage to go, well, you can support me because I admit, I admit that I have all of these, these kind of established factors, right?

It can say, you know, everyone does it.And I mean, look, Nadeem Doris is talking about, look, you know, this wasn't for his personal gain.They were donating him a lifetime of security protection, you know, for his security.If there was a company or an industry that was responsible for my lifetime safety and security, I'd maybe feel like I owe them something in exchange for that.I'd feel a little bit indebted to them because, you know, what happens if I go against you?You're going to pull my security?

Where am I going to get the money to fund that next?

Very good point.It's really interesting, my favourite part of Nadine Dorries' response there was when John Trickett points out it's a conflict of interest.It might have been Pasty who said so, and she was like, yeah, it's a conflict of interest, so what?And the irony, of course, is that that is the British state's response.The British response to it is, you've got a conflict of interest, OK, declare it.That's it.

That's our approach as a country, as a political machine to conflict of interest, because we have a system that's based upon this idea of, you know, good boys rules, where we don't really have any kind of set boundaries.You expect people to act with integrity, and in a world in which, you know, integrity is very hard to come by.Look at Keir Starmer's ascension to office, his ascension to power at the top of Labour.Integrity is nowhere near the kind of top of the political class in this country, and therefore, the system breaks down when you're expecting people to follow unwritten rules about how conflicts of interest work.You declare them and then they don't really get scrutinised, at least not enough as far as I am concerned.Well, thank you very much, Charlie, for joining me tonight.

Thanks for having me, Elena.

It has been quite the show, quite the evening.Putting a script together for today is very, very difficult because we kept having new news dropping every single hour.And of course, make sure that if you do want to support our journalism for new media for a different politics, go to Novara .media forward slash support as always.Thank you everyone at home for tuning in.Come back tomorrow for another live stream from 6pm.

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