Starmer in denial: Rivals circle as PM clings to election fantasy | The Daily T

Keir Starmer is insisting he can fight on and win the next general election. Has the Prime Minister finally lost his marbles?

Not least because his enemies are plotting. Andy Burnham and Angela Rayner apparently have a pact and our Ange could be the next Chancellor.

Can you be Chancellor if you don't have GCSE Maths? I'm just asking for a nation. I'm asking for Carol Vorderman. I'm asking for Rachel Riley.

Carol Vorderman. I'm asking for Rachel Riley. Carol Vorderman. I mean, it's not like take two from the top and four from the bottom, I mean, it's all done for you by officials. All Angela has to do is hold up a box and read out the papers in Parliament. I think she can do that.

Tim, it's a marathon, not a sprint. I say that bearing in mind that there are lots of people walking around today wearing their medals. Yesterday was your day. Why? Now just go home and rest. What happened? Sorry, what? There was a marathon yesterday.

Oh really? Okay, I thought, am I supposed to be wearing a poppy?

No.

No, alright.

Have you ever run anything close to a marathon, Tim?

I do jog, but no.

Do you?

No, I've never run a...

What's the furthest you've ever jogged? A strange question, I don't... We wouldn't even time it. I jog around Noel Park, that's quite a lot actually. But do you use one of the old trackers? Like do you care about your...

No, I'm old-fashioned. I do it in plimsolls and a string vest. I don't use all these Google phones, that's too futuristic for me.

Basically there was this thing called the London Marathon yesterday. Somebody broke a world record and ran it in less than two hours and people are walking around today with medals on, which is nice. And I'm saying it's a marathon. Good for them, well done them. It's a marathon, not a sprint because we are going on our own journey this week.

We're going on a road show. We're going to Cardiff tomorrow, Warwick on Wednesday and Worthing on Thursday. Most of the week's events are now sold out. Thank the Lord!

Thank goodness! Isn't it amazing how many friends and family we can get to pack out our venues? And tonight's event is in London, that's sold out, and we will be grilling in a kind of Fiona Bruce and David Dimbleby fashion. Is it viewable? Yes, of course it will be viewable, because we're going to put that podcast out later in the week. So tonight's is going out on Thursday. Thursday's Royal Special is going out on Friday and we don't need to tell them how the sausage is made Tim, but the point is tonight we're going to have Zia Yousaf from Reform, James Cleverley from the Tories and James Murray from Labour

who is Rachel Reeves's right hand man.

Excellent and there is a link in the episode description if you want to buy tickets. We have a couple of updates on last week's episodes. First of all, Green Party council candidate Mark Adderley, who was running in Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood, bear that in mind, Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood, not Judea and Samaria.

For the Greens, I should point out, this is in reaction to the Greens episode.

Right, OK. He has been suspended from the party over anti-semitic rants comparing Israel to Nazi Germany and blaming Mossad for carrying out terror attacks against Jews. I mentioned Mark Adderley in a column last week and when we had on Ellie Chowns,

I mentioned some of his remarks from the past. Exactly.

And I just we picked this up because previously the Green Party had been limiting itself mostly to asking people to take down controversial things they've put up. I think it's interesting this close to the local elections, after what I wrote and after what you said to Ellie Chowns, that they're actually suspending people now. And in case anyone thinks that might be overblown, if you just take a little look at Mark Adly's Instagram feed, and I am picking in order videos he's put up, they have titles, Pompous Foreign Secretary who relished the sound of his own voice so much he repeatedly lied about

selling arms to Israel. Rachel Reeves, is she a racist? I'm a proud Zionist, says Reeves. Wes Streeting, who admitted Israel commits war crimes, allows techno-fascist software company that helped Israel kill people into NHS. And one about Steve Reid, housing minister who spends all his spare time smearing advocates of Palestine, is scared of... I don't know know you'd have to click the link to

Yeah, I'm bringing up a little bit of sick in my own mouth My point is my point is he's running for I'll repeat it Crystal Palace and upper Norwood Wow But all these posts seem to be about Palestine yeah and not about the environment which is odd isn't it? Can I also have a little I had few people contacting me when I was taking the fight to Ellie Chowns on the What I perceive to be the racism of the Zionism is racism motion and people saying I've mischaracterized

Zionism is actually to defend the state of Israel and its existence rather than to be pro-israel I was kind of just I was I was prefacing I was trying to quite simply express what my perception of Zionism is. The point is I did take the fight to chowns and you have to listen if you haven't already. It's Friday's episode, just have a listen because I don't think anybody has grilled the greens quite as extensively

as we did in that one-hour episode. So there we have it. Also picking up from

last week, we said that PMQs would be cancelled. Or we said it might be cancelled. Yes. It now turns out it's not going to be because the government whips are probably not going to get all the legislation through by Tuesday night. So this week we will probably have a PMQs, Kemi versus Starmer, which will come off the back of Morgan McSweeney's appearance before the Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday. And we're covering it all even though we're on the road. We're on the road but we're doing reactive live news so don't worry.

And in terms of reactive live news, the Prime Minister's come out fighting.

Yes.

Thank goodness because nobody cares, Tim, nobody cares about the Peter Mandelson scandal, according to the Prime Minister. He's got a very important job to do. He would much rather talk about shoplifting. We might be talking about phone theft tomorrow when Mick Sweeney, as you say, the Prime Minister's former Chief of Staff, appears before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

That is Emily Thornberry 3.0. We'll be looking forward to that, Tim. And the Telegraph is exclusively reporting that the police do indeed want to ask Downing Street about that phone that was allegedly stolen by a man in a balaclava on a bike after Morgan Mitswini had a night out in London. But the Prime Minister's interview with the Sunday Times, it merits some consideration. It carried the headline, I will fight the next general election.

And I looked at it puzzled, thinking, is that really the best you could come out with? That is going to come back to haunt him again and again, isn't it?

Well, he also believes that he can win. The Prime Minister insists that reports of a growing cabinet rebellion over his handling of the Mandelson scandal are just talk, and said, in politics, you get this sort of thing all the time. What you never hear from are all the people who are supportive, loyal, and just

want to get on with the job. And that is the vast majority of people in the parliamentary Labour Party.

Is it? Let me just remind people of some of the quotes that have been picked up so far, including by our own political editor, Tony Diver. Dead man walking. It's a case of when not if. Time's up. He must go. I don't know whether there is this warm mood music anywhere in the Labour Party.

But what we don't tend to hear from is Clara McGonigal MP for Scotland's outer borough north who thinks he's

all right. Well to be fair I did have an MP on my GB News show again got snubbed by the cabinet twice in a row couldn't get Darren Jones didn't miss much because clearly he was in defensive mode and I had a chap on called Perrin Moon lovely man Labour MP down in Cornwall making the point that people have got more on their minds with the cost of living and energy crisis than whether or not the PM misled Parliament. Having said all that, we have got some YouGov polling just in saying that the public would actually prefer somebody else, anybody else, to be Prime Minister and we're going to get

on to them.

And that's the key thing. I don't doubt that the public is confused as to why Westminster keeps talking about Mandelson. Yes. But the anger about that story is symptomatic of anger at the Prime Minister's leadership. It was the same with Boris Johnson. It wasn't one thing, it was the cumulative total of all things. Sure. And eventually something happens that is the reason why someone has to go. But it's always an indictment of everything they've done before.

Around a third of the public, 34% think Andy Burnham would do a better job than Keir Starmer. Only one in seven, 15%, think Angela Rayner would do better. Even less, 13% say that of Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and Health Secretary Wes Streeting respectively, so they're tied. A quarter of Britain's 26% say Burnham would be a good or great Prime Minister. And most people agree that the Prime Minister isn't doing a good job, regardless of him

insisting that he is doing a good job and that there is nothing to see here on Mandelton. By the way can I just ask a question? If you are that enthralled to the process and you are a believer in the rule of law and you like to follow the rules, why not just volunteer to go before the Privileges Committee? Why wouldn't you have said to the Sunday Times, this is a way of getting ahead of the story, I've got nothing to hide. I'm whiter than white. And shouldn't he be cognizant of the fact that he is quite good at obfuscating. He is quite good, as you said last week, of sort of boring the

public to tears. He could have volunteered himself. That would have been the best line going into Monday.

Well, of course, Boris did allow things to go to Privile privileges committee in the hope that that would kill it and the opposite happened He would also argue that it's we've already answered all the questions through the interrogations at the Foreign Affairs Committee Why do you need to repeat this process with the privileges one? I'm not unsympathetic to that I personally also feel this story is burning itself out But the new story is that labor MPs won't let it go. Not what do journalists think about it. I think we've asked all the questions.

I think we've had all the bad answers. McSweeney really is the last big player to have their turn. After that, what more is there to know? But the point is, is that, as I say, it has reminded people in Parliament of why they don't like Keir Starmer.

Well, Tim, it does look as if he's one step closer to getting that grilling because the Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle has allowed a vote on whether the Prime Minister should appear before the Privileges Committee. Although with a large majority majority you need quite a significant backbench rebellion for this to be allowed. I think 79 Labour MPs have to vote for the Prime Minister to be put on the rack. How likely is that to happen? I know we've heard from Karl Turner and an MP with a surname Brash and others off the record, but 79 of them?

And the interesting question is, will that vote whipped and presumably it would be. Yes. So if it were whipped and you're going to come out and vote for the PM to go to the committee then you're going to lose the whip. And you're going to be suspended

ahead of a local election not the great greatest look in the world. Exactly. So it's it feels

unlikely at this stage that this will still proceed. Keir Starmer wants to move this on, and we've had a hint of what his strategy will be, which is he's reported to have said that he wants the next election to be against reform, a debate about what kind of country this is. Now, that's really interesting, because the implication of that is I'm not going to run on the economy.

I'm not running on my material record. I'm going to turn it into a vote on reform. And he's gambling that there is a majority of people in this country that can't stand reform. And he's also gambling that they would choose to vote Labour to block them.

That's daft by the way, because they might vote Green to block them. This is naive. You know, there's a story in the Sunday P papers, it was in the Mail on Sunday, saying that if he gives 16 to 18 year olds the vote he's going to shoot himself not just in the foot but in the face.

I almost want that to happen.

Yeah, because that caucus of...

They've got to learn. See like children, Labour MPs have got to learn there are consequences

to their actions.

There are consequences. So the polling is suggesting that all of those teenagers, or the vast majority of them, will go to the Greens. And by the way, if they don't, Tim, they'll go to reform if they're the other side of the ideological divide. So that's stupid. Second of all, the other reason he can't pin everything on the economy?

Well, obviously we're in kind of a state of economic collapse with some people now predicting a recession. We're being told to wear hair shirts, won't see any improvement according to Darren Jones until eight months time and that's if the war ends. Also rumors in the papers, what's the next reset? The next reset involves getting rid of

Rachel Reeves. Right, right, exactly, yes. I mean honestly. But I think the gamble of who does this country prefer most is reminiscent of Ted Heath in 1974 and his election which was who runs Britain and the answer from the public was not you. Not you please. And I just suspect there's still this strange aura around the Prime Minister if he still seems to believe yeah that he speaks for the country and he kind of gets this country and the country gets him that if he puts it to a vote the country will go

Yeah, yeah, my my my nation is defined by you Kirstama. I look at you and I see myself Kirstama I don't think that's how much we were thinking now labor tried to release an ad and the BBC and ITV Tried to censor it in which an actress read out quotes by reform officials and it has since been put up by the Labour Party and people like Wes Streeting and

Chris Bryant said on X I never thought I'd be so shocked as I am seeing this ad you know shocked by their own ad so performative isn't it these are two

people that do not think before they tweet.

But she read out, she has a pint and she's sitting in an empty pub and she reads out these quotes and she gets steadily angrier and angrier.

The funding of the NHS is a total failure. The French do it much better with less funding. There's a lesson there.

If you can afford it, you pay.

If you can't, you don't.

It works incredibly well. I do not want it funded through general taxation. It doesn't work. It's not working. I think we're going to have to move to an insurance-based system of healthcare. It's highly likely that the COVID vaccines have been a factor, a significant factor in the cancer of members of the royal family. Depression isn't real! It drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people, full of people that, you know,

basically are anything other than white. London has become a third world shithole.

Fact.

People from other religions should eat bacon for a month to prove their Christian sincerity and credentials.

I'm a racist and I'm proud of it.

Now the problem with it is that first of all she has the classic Labour face.

Right.

Do you know what I mean? What do you mean?

Angry face?

Yeah, whenever they hire a woman to represent the party they always look like that woman in Line of Duty. Yes. They always have this I'm not mucking about, I'm sick of mucking about face. What do you mean, Vicki McClure? That's it, Vicki McClure.

Right, I've got a lanyard and I'm not afraid to use it.

Exactly. Give me the answer. And she just has this classic Vicki McClure face. And some of the lines she's reading out are very funny.

What are they?

Because it's like, I've had enough. So she's funny in part because she's saying things that are obviously said by red-faced white old men But it's a woman trying to say so she's impersonating a gammon boomer, right? There are other things she says where I've seen they're thinking. Yeah, I agree with that Forming like reforming the NHS etc. Is that is that really so controversial we make the NHS more productive Exactly And then of course there are some

quotes which are just unfair either because the person was punished for saying them. So there's the man who said of Grenfell Tower, people do die. And so the party said, well thank you, we'll no longer have you as our housing person. And she gets angrier and angrier

and then of course at the end she's sort of, and rest. I don't believe any of what I've just said. But you should know that there are people who do. Every word you've just heard was spoken by reform UK politicians, senior figures, advisers, candidates, councillors, MPs.

There's only one way to stop reform. Vote Labour on Thursday, the 7th of May.

And I was watching this thinking, if Zia or Nigel see this, they should immediately hire an actor and they should get him to read out emails between Peter Mandelson and Geoffrey Epstein.

Yes, why not? Yum yum. Just do it. No fun for Petey. We can ask Zia Yousaf about that attack ad. Yeah. And indeed James Murray.

You take my point. Labour is gambling on a, everyone hates what reform really thinks. Yeah, they might hate us but they hate reform more. They really hate what reform thinks. Actually, there might be a significant number of them in this country who agree with what reform has to say.

But secondly, that they like us, they don't like them, but they like us. No, no, because there are many, many reasons to dislike Labour people.

And also if you look forward to the narrative over the next few weeks, which we'll obviously be covering in intimate detail, this is the story of May the 7th. I can already tell you what it is. Story number one is, can the PM survive? Story number two is, Labour bloodbath. Story number three is can the PM survive? Story number two is Labour bloodbath? Story number three is reform rise? Story number four is Greens rise?

Can we bait not Scott? Less to worry about than she thinks.

We can run almost up to 15 with other parties too because SNP played everyone's no-do well.

The Tories' worst night is already, we already know it's happened, so as far as the Tories are concerned, it's they have lost Wales and Scotland.

I had briefly forgot they exist.

That is down page two. So this whole idea that suddenly they're going to, why is the PM thinking he is in any position for any kind of revival at all? It's like, it's like, somebody did say this on my show a couple of weeks ago, it's like the dead parrot in Monty Python.

This parrot cannot be revived. So, who are the new pirates in town? Angie and Andy. Can I just say, it has now been confirmed by Andy Burnham's people that he did not wear a transparent rain bonnet to Angela Rayner's house

that Friday night in Manchester. He said it was just a really weird like trick of the camera.

So it was just an optical illusion that made him look like Hilda Ogden. Yes.

Although I bet Angie wears one of those bonnets if she leaves the hairdresser and has spent quite a lot of money. But that by the by, who wouldn't? Who wouldn't? I'd do the same. So Andy and Angie are now apparently, according to Tony Diver, our political editor, in talks to do a Blair-Brown pact. What's interesting about this is this is being reported as if Rainer's the junior partner to Burnham. Does she really need to be?

No. The idea is that Burnham would run to replace Keir Starmer, which he can't, while Rayner would campaign for him and be given, quote, any job she wanted in the cabinet.

Well, she's already been Deputy Prime Minister. What other job can she take that doesn't look like a demotion? Oh my gosh. Is she going to sign up to be Chancellor?

That's going to be Chancellor, isn't it?

What?

With respect, I say this as somebody so functionally enumerate that this morning I couldn't calculate what somebody who ran a marathon in two hours were running in miles per hour. And then I was like, oh, it's 13. But on telly this morning, on this morning, I said it was 11 miles an hour. That's how bad I am at maths, but I do have a GCSE in it. Can you be Chancellor if you don't have GCSE maths?

I'm just asking for a nation. I'm asking for Carol Vorderman. I'm asking for Rachel Riley.

Carol Vorderman. I mean, it's not like take two from the top and four from the bottom. It's all done for you by officials. All Angela has to do is hold up a box and read out the papers in Parliament. I think she can do that.

Again, I feel a question coming on to James Murray. Yes. James Murray, could Angela Rayner be the next chancellor? And is it OK that she hasn't got a GCSE in math? Please do answer. Anyway, that's for tonight. Also, reports of the weekend suggesting that her tax probe has been delayed.

She wanted to be cleared ahead of the locals. She could then strike immediately afterwards. It's looking unlikely at the moment that she can do that. So she's slightly kiboshed.

And there are questions around does she pay the full amount, the 40k, or does she just pay a fine?

Yeah, I hear Streeting was holding court in Strangers Bar last week. Right, okay. Which is interesting. I also hear that rumours of Baidnott reshuffling after the locals are well wide of the mark. She's not reshuffling anyone or anything until 18 months out from the next general election? Why would she move people around at their inest of comparatively singing birds right now? Nobody's having a hissy fit. All of these criticisms by the way of reform and

indeed restore being hard right far right have kept all of the lefties and the Tories happy because even if they do leave the ECHR nobody's going to point at Kemi Bainock and say you're a racist and a bigot. So they're all in clover, which is interesting for context. Yes. Speaking of

which, what are your thoughts on this from Hannah Spencer speaking to Joe Politics?

I'm really uneasy about, and I noticed this the other day, when you can smell the alcohol when people are in between votes and everyone's going in to vote. Some people have been drinking in between. Like there's a room where I walked past and I've done my back and looked in because people are just sat having a drink. But again, that's a job. Like I can't imagine if a cleaner did that

or someone working in a bank, like had a few drinks and then went back to work, like a bit, you know, like smelling of alcohol, like that wouldn't happen. And I think there's been so many cases recently of like questionable and dangerous behaviour from, you know, allegedly from MPAs, but staff, like because this culture of a really unprofessional and worrying setting where people can just drink alcohol and then

while they're in work, it's like life doesn't work like that. And when I say that, that is what I find very out of touch about that place. It's things like that, that I mean, because I just think the vast majority of voters that have come from backgrounds of normal jobs, that's not how the world works. So why does it work in somewhere where arguably the most important decisions get made?

Hannah Spencer should try coming into the average newsroom or indeed any bar in Fleet Street. Look, I'm not a drinker, you're not a drinker, but yeah, Parliament is awash with booze. What can we say? I mean, so is the world, so is Britain. Hannah, step into a pub sometime soon. What

is this puritanical... People have pointed out the paradox that she's uncomfortable with people drinking, but her party wants to legalise heroin. Exactly. So if you're shooting up with some crack or whatever you do with crack, do you smoke it, shoot it? I don't know. That's fine according to Hannah Spencer, but for God's sake don't have a Lamborghini and strangers on a Friday night Exactly, but also isn't Parliament supposed to be convivial? Well, I think Don't you have to be permanently drunk to be an MP and cope with it when we were interviewing Ellie Chowns last week I was doing my best to be nice and be balanced and objective

But when I heard this actually it put me off the party for life

I loved how you were last week by the way. Because I was being so horrible to her and you were good copping as I went further bad. Right. I basically went rogue and you were trying to maintain a relationship with the Green Party.

But I thought Greens were all about live and let live, libertarian and drinking turnip wine. No you can't. And they actually come from that same historical tradition as everyone on the left, which is puritanical and boring.

That's right.

They just want to tell us how to run our lives.

Yeah. And if you think a man can't be a woman and vice versa, you're out. But if you glorify October the 7th, you're fine. But if you glorify October the 7th, you're fine.

So they're happy for someone in the chamber to be