Labour leadership polling and future strategy

How does a banana trigger a CIA backed coup Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order What do LED lights say about the future of humanity I'mt Conway, and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open, and reveal the world shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow Hello, good morning and welcome. It's Tuesday, june sixteenth. World leaders are gathering in Evang in France at the G seven, including the Prime Minister. They have the Iran ceasefire and how to handle China trade deficits high on their agenda. I'm Anne Mclboy from Politico. And I'm Sam Coates of Sky News. Kir Daharmer is not currently expected to have his own bilateral with Donald Trump. Let's see how develops, but it doesn't do much Sam to dispel the impression that he's finding it harder to play a major role in Ukraine discussions which are also going to feature over the next day or so. But he is a leader attending this gathering with quite a story to tell his peers Russian aggression And that is the extraordinary tale we thought we'd dive into that emerged in the court case on the firebombing of a car and property belonging to the Starmer family. and how that came to light as the case has come to court, the clear indications there being that it was orchestrated from deep inside the Putin system So maybe it's slightly unusual starting point for this morning's pod past, but it's very relevant to Kirst Arma and Britain's position in the world and what we do about defence and Russia, but it really is at its heart a chilling, highly personal story Yesterday, at the Old Bailey, a Ukrainian and a Romanian were both found guilty of conspiracy to commit arson But why that case matters is that one of them, twenty two year old Ukrainian fires a property in Kentish Town, including a townhouse occupied by Kirammer's sister in law and the car Toyota previously owned by the Prime Minister. This all took place. You might remember in the first couple of months of twenty twenty five But here's the thing. the old Bailey was told that the attacks were directed by somebody using the messaging platform Tlegram using the handle E money. What do we know about them? Well, what we know so far is that E money at the time of these exchanges, Sam was located in Russia and was closely allied with a pro Kremlin haivist group that the U.S has called a Russian state sanctioned project, although they say there are no direct government ties, There is extra evidence here in the form of open source research conducted by the BBC. Both the BBC and the Financial Times have got very good deep dives on this. The BBC account saying that it had identified evidence that EL, so that is the go between here in terms of of making a contact. with those in this grouping, including the man now convicted, it was in fact, a young Russian diplomat who also had ties to the highest levels of power in Moscow and his name was Yevgini Lushan the suon, it is said, of a senior official., obviously, the Russian embassy denies this strongly. But what you end up with is That's cradle of informal possibly formal signing off nods and winks or direct approval of an action like this. and if you just want my old Russia hand cynical view, you don't end up attacking assets belonging to the Prime Minister without that being signed off at the highest levels in Moscow. I mean this is remarkable and you know for this to get anywhere near assets connected to a prime minister seems seems something like Lly like anything I've seen in my lifetime The details from the trial, if you dig down into the sort of transcript are something else. The Russian handler L Money spent seven months grooming one of the men We thought of low level acts before they moved on to targeting the PM The BBC suggests that El Money offered Russian citizenship in return for other attacks. and also glorified President Putin. All of this suggests this kind of pro patriotic group, which you know am which typically these sorts of groups amplify far right and anti migrant messagesross across, you know, the rest of Europe for the sort of greater good of Russia But this in a in a week where you've got issues to do with Russia they discussed at the G seven, but also very plainly questions about whether Britain can defend itself against Russia absolutely at the forefront of British politics with the resignation of John Healley saying that Kistammer was specifically not funding defence to the tune needed to protect the UK from some kind of Russian action in the coming years A US body said that despite the direct ties, some of the people in the network associated with L money appear to have associations with the Russian state through direct or indirect support. So that's a US government body very much supporting what I think would be your sort of analysis Anne you understand Russian destabilization and sort of how it works and what that playbook looks like.ust tell us a bit more. I have to say the scale of this as you indicates s to stretch even those of us who've been looking at Russian destabilization operations over a long time. It just goes so Father. A lot of it is based on playbook of the Cold War the worst instences then of sabotage, destabilization, etcetera. But this's use abuse of social media channels, of getting into chat rooms of basically pulling, targeting People who, if you like, are kind of below the radar of the intelligence services when this starts and then getting them accustomed to doing more and more damaging acts on They can then be given a role which ends up attacking assets belonging to the prrime minister's family. You know this is pretty out there stuff even by the standards of the Russian state MI five have already given us a bit of insight into this actually. And that was when Ken McCullum, the head of MII five his last statement the back end of last year and he basically laid out exactly this kind of playbook. I had to quit look at it this morning. He warned that the UK's leading role in supporting Ukraine means that we loom large in the fevered imagination of the Putin regime further acts of aggression on UK so he said, were to be expected. this probably turned out to be more dramatic than most. Using Ukrainians also means that the cause of Ukraine in the war with Russia is further damaged in public eyes, particularly if we look across Europe and see that there are a lot of forces who would like to come to peaceful terms with Russia and ditch Ukraine. It also puts pay to this gigantic online social media conspiracy theory involving Kistama and Ukrainians, which I won't go to the details of. frrankly, nonsense, which has been spilling around the internet and adopted by Eremists. u that just appears to be completely baseless, but it's worth just pointing out, I think the trial absolutely draws a line under that. Right. Russia and Ukraine is the order of the day at the G seven summit. Basically what's happening is that the European leaders who are turning up and trying to use this moment as yet another reset to try and get President Trump to engage with what's going on. President Zelenskyy is turning up And you know yes, the Europeans are open to some kind of negotiations with President Putin, but not on the kind of favorable terms that we've had in the past. Is this going anywhere around? Well, the worry is that it might be going in the wrong direction in terms of Russia very much targeting and blandishing. the U. S. and Donald Trump personally on the Eve of this summit Sam in order to try and force a ceasefire back onto the table on terms that would be very damaging indeed to Ukraine Battlefield gains for Ukraine partly account for that. successes in the grim but necessary economics of the war, the rising kill rate of Russians by Ukrainians upskilling of drone warfare automated weapons in which it's just widely agreed that Ukraine has made massive leaps, but the diplomatic cards, if you remember the help was said Donald Trump's description of how he saw the road to a ceasefire when he dressed down Volir Zelensky at that infamous White House encounter. The cards still rest with the US and Russia in terms of what the road might look like. And how long does he last there? frrankly, because there are rumors he could just leave early, which would be blow. As as long as Donald Trump is there, Kis Aama is in his happy place with other G seven leaders. He'll be there until tomorrow by my reckoning missing Prime Minister's questions. know it's not like he has an infinite number of them left. Well, let's have a look at how he and everybody else is doing in the polling. It's Tuesday. The schoolore's on the doorsday. Sam. you have got more than just the headline voting intention to spoil us with today. So the top line figures from UGver Reform on twenty four down one, Toriesanne Labor on nineteen, Green old fifteen, Libdams on thirteen point lead for reform over the Tories and labour. That by the way, Anne, is before the public digests this story from a government kango they want to kill know lots of the ponies on Dartmoor, which I think may not do hisam's government much favour Anyway, I've got a bit of extra hubble bubble for you from UGv today because we've been testing how the various labour leadership candidates are thought of amongst the general public. We've asked this a few times over the last few months, but still, still Andy Burnham is the only one that the public at large think would be better than Kirst Armor If you ask the general public who would make if certain characters would make a better or worse prrime Minister than Starmer, Burnham gets a net score of plus eleven. so twenty nine percent better, eighteen percent worse. Everybody else, everybody else is below water, notably West streeting on minus eighteen And, you know, when you compare Burnham to other, you know, party leaders his net favorability score is minus six, but Nigel Farge is on minus forty three, Kemi minus eighteen, Ed David minus fourteen and Kirstam minus forty four. So he actually does pretty well on all of that as well. None of which is that good for the one other person who's desperate to reenter this contest and that's Where streing? Yeah, those negatives have not shifted despite massive streeting levels of interview granting, opening up his soul about why he resigned as he did. But that maybe that resignation and the manner of it does seem to hang around in a quite negative way in as much as the public notice these These things it certainly hasn't helped him, hasas it? But Streeting has a speech today about the need to build, build build he', proposing emergency infrastructure legislation, he says, would demonstrate an intent to create wealth, putting himself very strongly on that pro growth. side of the agenda. I mean critics might counttlve it's actually quite ineffective. There's one bit of government that is rolling along reasonably well is a big pushes on infrastructure and modernization of infrastructure. but anyway, he says he would go further Parliament would take control of specific classifications of projects of national economic significance is an an agency that already does that. But I think by saying that he would bring back more control to Parliament accelerate some priority areas. You could choose energy, water, frontier technology, housing and transport, I suppose He's saying we need to get our sleeves rolled up Is that enough to get him back into the race? We'll see, I mean, being visible, I think is part of the game at the moment. West Streeting friends and his campaign insist that he does have the eighty one MPs needed to enter a contest likely after quite possible after Fridayss Bacfield by election, Cynics and opponents say that he doesn't have the numbers. I they think the Berham campaign think that he's got the numbers as well But really isn't all of this to ensure that Wespriting has a cabinet job in a possible future burnham government and that's a far less ridiculous notion. Because I've got a bit of something for you as we draw your close and I'm quite taken by this I think we're on course now for a world in which if he does become Prime Minister, Andy Berham's got to disappoint some of his friends take his friends on the Mank Union Soft left People around him have absolutely clockged that this now, the Andy Bernam political project, if it gets into if it gets into number ten cannot be the Mancunian Soft leftft project. In other words, you cannot have Andy Burnham's long term friends, the Angela Reyners, the Lisa And', along with figures like Edmund Aband, you cannot have them all getting the biggest positioned in an anti bandon parliament because this has got to be a project that reaches across the whole of the Labour Party and the whole of the country. and I think there's a dawning realization that there could be some quite difficult conversations and predict which of those are the winners and which of those lose out. But I think that any assumption that Lisa Andandy, Angela Rna and Edminund Aand will all do incredibly well in this forthcoming change of administration, if it happens, I think pretty big and possibly incorrect assumption. I think that's also where those rums are coming from even Shaban Mahouud could be a possible chancellor. you could do something that sent a very, very different message about how you wanted to handle that key growth area. You just reminded me actually by pointing us to what W Streeting wants to talk about. Don't you think he's showing off his skill set? I mean, I'm slightly perplexed by this because I follow the infructure argument quite closely.'s like, well why is he talking about things that are already kind of underway in many ways and happening? But actually thinking about it, I think he's making himself available for a large number of potential roles by showing that he has an interest in the more economic and growth side of the agenda Yeah, there's jobs like the housing department, the business department, as well as that coveted you know, Chancellor role, all of which you could see this speech today fitting into Okay, we have fitted