Latest / The Front / The assassins circling hapless UK PM Keir Starmer

Transcript

The assassins circling hapless UK PM Keir Starmer · The Front

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: It's Monday, November seventeen, twenty twenty five. A growing number
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: of moderate Liberal MPs are abandoning Opposition leader Susan Lee
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: and backing Andrew Hasty for the leadership. That's after a
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: drawn out battle over net zero policy. The Australians reporting
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: today there's a growing sense among MPs who backed Lee
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: for the leadership that she can't take the party forward.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: One in ten applicants to the august nuclear submarine project
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: is being rejected on security grounds, including because they have
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: suspicious links to China, India and other foreign countries. Australia
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: will need thousands of nuclear trained workers, including in submarine construction,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: maintenance and crewing. They must be Australian citizens and must
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: have STEM skills, and that means many have family heritage
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: and in you're in connections to countries like India and China.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: The government says that's fine as long as their connections
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: are just family and friends. Those stories are both exclusives
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: live now at the Australian dot Com dot AU. A
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: big overhaul is looming of how Britain handles its refugee crisis.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: It's the Labor government's latest attempt to address its catastrophic
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: popularity levels. But it's also a potential prime ministerial audition
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: for one of the three hot candidates said to be
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: angling to oust Kirstarmer. Today, Why Starma is loathed by
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Britain's and who might replace him? This believe it or
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: not was just over a year ago. We did it
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: so Kirstarmer winning the UK election in July twenty twenty
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: four with the second biggest majority since World War Two.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: My government will fight every day until you believe again.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: And this is now. That's a united team.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: And will this man remain in number ten by the
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: next election? Secure Starmer's leadership of Breton is all but
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: terminal and that as extraordinary considering he won one of
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: the biggest Landslade majorities of any Frost term government and
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: British history.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: The Australian's Richard Ferguson is a close observer of British politics.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: The first time he came on the front to talk
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: about this, we discussed how there was speculation in Britain
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: that Kirs Starmer, the charming debonair human rights Barrister might
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: have been the model for Mark Darcy in the Bridget
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Jones's Diary series. Well, he never ended up fighting in
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: a fountain with Hugh Grant. But Kirstarmer's fortunes have certainly
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: taken an absolute bath. Richard. There's now rampant speculation that
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Starmer's leadership is going to be taken away from him.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: I wanted to run through with you the contenders and
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: then we'll get to why this is happening. So first
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: up is the one I find the most intriguing. She
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: looks a bit like a young Fergie. She's got a
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: backstory like a Kath and Kim character. It's Angela Rayner,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: the former Deputy PM and Housing secretary who was forced
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: out of her job in September over a messy personal
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: financial situation. How is she now at the center of
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: leadership speculation?
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: Angela Arena as you're seeing Claire, has the most extraordinary backstory.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: She's like a character and Coronation Street, or imagine a
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: Cafarin t character as the Prime Minister. You know, extraordinary thing,
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: single mum, single granny, pretty young as well, very much
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: rags to Ritcher's story. I saw Angela Rena speak when
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: I was covering the twenty nineteen British election in Birmingham
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: and she was with Jeremy Corbin and she's one of
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: the most magnetic speakers I've ever seen politically.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: But just think about the historic Labor governments and their legacy,
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: the NHS, Social Security, the Welfare State Council, housing, modern
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: higher education, the open university, decriminalizing homosexuality, outlaw in racial discrimination,
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: introducing equal pay, the national minimum wage, sure Start, devolution,
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: the Gods Friday Agreement, several partnerships, equal parts, they hear
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: the Rights out and the world's first climate change up.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: And I've seen a few of our prime ministers here
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: and she would wipe the floor with any of them.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: She's so charismatic, she's so authentic. Why she very potentially
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: the next Prime Minister of Britain Two reasons. Number One,
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: she's the only one of the Labor Party that has
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: the charisma that they probably need to face Nigel Farage.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Number Two, she is the main left candidate. This is
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: a party that is dominated now by the left and
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: because they have a one member, one vote system where
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: essentially all of the branch members of the Labor Party
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: mainly progressive students and disgruntled lefty ex school teachers. Their
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: vote is just as important as a union member or
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: as an MP, so it is a system that really
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: skews to the left, which is why Jeremy Corbyn got
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: the leadership all those years ago. So she's in with
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: a very good chance.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: The next candidate is a forty two year old who
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: looks a lot to me like Michael Boubley. I realize
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: I'm taking this in a showbiz kind of direction, but
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: these three contenders very tillogenic. Where's strating is the Health Secretary.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: He's being held for preventing a winter of doctors' strikes,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: which was what was expected because of widespread discontent about
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: the health system in the UK. That seems like a
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: low bar to become a possible future prime minister.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: Well I would say that the NXGS is in such
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: a mess that if anybody looks like they're sort of
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: competently handling it, they might have a chance of competently
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: handling the rest of the mess that is currently Britain.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: Where's treating is a very interesting one. He's full of contradictions,
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: he's very young, but he's a darling of the Blairite
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: right of the party. He would be the first openly
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: gay prime Minister of Britain. But when the Cast report
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: was handed down into the abuses in kind of trans
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: medicine for kids, he was the one who led the
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: crackdown and led it hard, so he would really suit that.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: But his problem is is that one he's the first mover.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: So part of the reason all this blew up in
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: the past week Claire was that Starmer's allies in Number
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: ten went out into the media and said, we think
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: that Wes Streeting is planning a challenge right after the
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: budget's handed down at the end of November, and he's
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: going to take about fifty collies with him and we're
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: going to fight him. And then Wes Streeting turned around
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: and said, no, I'm not not planning that at all,
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: and the Prime Minister was forced to apologize to him.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: So that helps because he gets first mover. But as
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: we often know Claire, first movers sometimes don't make it
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: to the end of the line.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Shabana Mackmud is the Home Secretary. She was one of
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: Britain's first female Muslim mpees. She represents an electorate with
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: a most fabulously English name of Birmingham Ladywood and she's
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: now tell us with dealing with the small boats crisis.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: This issue seems like a poison chalice for a minister,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: an unsolvable problem. But Shabana mackmuld is attracting a lot
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: of poles do attention. Why is that?
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: It's mainly because she was a very good Justice secretary,
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: so she was able to keep a handle of the
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: courts in a handle of the prison system, which has
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: been very difficult for Britain in the past couple of years.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: Macmod is also a darling of the right, especially what
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: they call the Blue Labor Group, so she's very right
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: wing for a labor leadership aspirin, although of course she
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: would be the first Muslim Prime Minister of Britain. She
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: has a record for being very pro Palestine, although she
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: was the one who pushed to ban Palestine action to
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: label them a terrorist organization, so she's tried to soften
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: that image when it comes to the Jewish community in Britain.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: But she I think would be a bit of the
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: dark horse because she's shown that she can do the
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: tough things, but she's also shown that she has a
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: bit of personality to her, and if it is considered
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: that Angela Rayner just will not work, they might call
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: less around her rather than weiz streating.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: On manday In Macmody's due to announce new policies on
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: asylum seekers and it's a really critical one for Labor
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: to get their heads around because they're losing ground to
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: the populist right wing Reform Party led by Nigel Farage.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: What do you think those policies are going to be.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Is it going to be something like our own offshore
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: processing system which Britain has tried before.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: What they're more based on than our offshore system. From
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: what we know at the moment, Claire is actually Denmark's
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: reform So Denmark is led by a labor prime Minister
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: called Metti Friedricson, and she's been able to stay in
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: power by having really tough rules on how long asylum
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: seekers are allowed to stay. So currently in Britain, if
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: you're a refugee, you get through the asylum seeker process,
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: after a couple of years you're able to apply for
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: an indefinite leave to remain or get citizenship. This will
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: be the beginning of tightening those screws over what is
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: a very liberal migration program in Britain, and of course
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: the person who is what was responsible for that liberal
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: migration program is actually Boris Johnson. So after Brexit, which
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: a lot of people voted for Brexit to get migrants
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: out of the country. That was the whole point of
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: it for a lot of people. He was responsible for
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: a massive wave of migration because the economy needed it
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: to survive. And this is what they now call the
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: Boris Wave migrants. So this will be the people who
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: are targeted, the people that have come in the past
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: five years or so and telling them basically, you can't stay.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Labor did inherit a mess, and they've said that a
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: lot over the past year. But new governments always have
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: to deal with a legacy. Why do you think Stalma's
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: not getting the kind of patients new governments are usually afforded.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: I think clear that they aren't getting the patients because
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: one the crisis says so bad. The mess that was
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: inherited by Labor was dreadful. I mean, Reshisunak try his best,
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: but he was not a good Prime minister. Liz Trust
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: belongs in a different category of mad and Boris Johnson
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: I think a man who had many qualities was not
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: ultimately a good prime minister. And Theresa May before him,
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: she was also a bad prime minister. Like they had
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: a really bad run of Conservative prime ministers. Keir Starmer
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: is as bad as them, if not sometimes worse. So
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: in the space of a year, he's broken several key
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: election promises, or at least he was about to break
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: his biggest promise, which was an increase in income tax,
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: and he's had to roll that back. He's made lots
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: of bad spending decisions. He tried to take away support
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: from pensioners for their winter fuel excise, which is pretty
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: important in a country as cold as Britain. And so
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: the first thing he did when he entered government was
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: try and harm benchers. And he's been rounded by scandal.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: You know, you talk about Angela Rayner, but we haven't
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: talked about Peter Mandelson, the scandal plagued conciliary of Tony Blair,
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: who he put in as the ambassador to Washington. And
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: then it was revealed that he was one of Jeffrey Epstein,
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: the dead Peterphiles best mates.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he was photographed recently urineating in the street
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: in London.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: Yes, after spending the night at George Osborne, the former
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: Tory British Chancellor's house. So you know. The question is,
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: if Prince Andrews had all his titles stripped, why is
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: Lord Mandalsson still in the House of Lords. It's unbelievable.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: Starmar doesn't seem to have any beliefs. He doesn't seem
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: to have any substance. He has no guiding philosophy, he
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: has no north Star. And that's ultimately what makes him
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: bad is that he doesn't believe in anything. He doesn't
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: have any political skills, and he's been surrounded by incompetence
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: in scandal ridden people. It's not a good mixture.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Coming up. Can Starmer pull it back from here? It's
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: hard to get a sense from here in Australia of
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: how bad things actually are in Britain. We read about
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: tens of thousands of mobile phones being stolen every year
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: to be shipped off to China. We read about ordinary
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Britain's being put in jail for nonviolent hate crimes like tweets.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: What's your sense, as a Richard how bad are things really?
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: Or is there a bit of British glass half empty? Thinking?
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Going on here. Think it's a.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: Bit of both. I also think when it comes to
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: our Australian perspective, we sometimes don't realize just how good
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: we have it here in Australia, which is the main
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: reason why so many British people like my family wanted
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: to move here. And we do find the idea of
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: big city life, real big city life like a New
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: York or London and think of it as dystopia, when
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: in fact that's just big city life like exactly not
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: that bad. And it's not like there's not rough places
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: in Australia. You know, some of us did grow up
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: in Gosnos Western Australia. But I think it's a mixture
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: of both. There is clearly serious problems with the British
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: economy and the British popular culture. At the moment, there
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: is no growth, they don't have any industry to speak of.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: They're lost in themselves because they basically were centered as
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: the financial center, the financial link between the Americans, the
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: Asians and the Europeans, and the minute breaks it happened
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: that kind of cut that off. Even though there's all
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: a lot of financial center there, it wasn't as bad
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: as they thought it was, but they didn't end up
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: being Singapore on Thames, that that vision didn't occur, so
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: they don't really the country does really know what it is.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: It has all these splinter movements that are growing. I mean,
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: the Scottish Nationalists are as strong as they ever been Pliedcomery,
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: the Welsh Nationalists are strengthening. You go over in Ireland,
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: the new far left Irish President Catherine Connolly is openly
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: talking about a border poll, and shin Feine, which was
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: once the political arm of the Irish Republican Army, is
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: in a pretty good position to be the next Irish
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: government in a couple of years. So you've got the
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: whole Everything in Britain just seems to be falling apart,
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: but you know, there's an argument that everything in Britain's
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: has been falling apart since the First World War. Really.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: There's a great line in The Crown in season three
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: where Olivia Coleman's Queens says Missus Thatcher is leaving bial
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: Moral to deal with the crisis and hell in a
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: bottom car as Princess Margaret says, life in Britain has
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: been one long crisis since the war, and I think
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: that is true. I think there's a lot of what
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: we're seeing now in Britain. It's very reminiscent of what
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: happened in the nineteen seventies during that kind of stagflation era,
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: which of course felt so many global leaders during the seventies,
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: including Jimmy Carter, including our own golf Whitlam and it
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: felled both Harold Wilson and Ted Heath and finally Jim
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Callahan and it led to Margaret Thatcher. So I think
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: there is a case of that. We're living in a
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: world of high inflation, which we haven't experience for years,
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: but that golden moment I think, just when Tony Blair
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: took over, where the culture and the economy had finally
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: aligned and was taking a very centrist path, a bit
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: like happened to us during the eighties with Hawking keating.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: That moment is very much over. The decline is real,
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: but also don't ever doubt the British ability to make
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: everything seem worse than it is.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Well, the next elections not due till twenty twenty nine,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: so there's lots of drama to come.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: I'd say, Claire, I think we'll have about four labor
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: prime ministers by the time we get to those four years.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: Thanks Richard, Thanks so much.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: Richard Ferguson is the Australian's canber bureau chief. You can
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: read all our reporting on British politics and the best
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: news from the rest of the world anytime at the
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Australian dot com dot au