Political heckling and journalistic traditions

The New States man I'm Anoush Shakellion and you're listening to the New Statesman podcast and I'm here as always with my colleague Will Dunn for a weekly roundup. Hello. Hello. Our first category uh is actually the headline of this week's amazing issue of the magazine. It's the eternal category, isn't it? It is. Never ending chaos. For those who are watching, you might be able to see on the camera a picture uh of West Streeting, Kear Starmer, Andy Burman, Edmund , and Angela Rayner all trying to fight it out. Um but yeah, never ending chaos could just be a standard template and we wouldn't have to design covers anymore Next up, never ending chaos. The chaos continues I think Alva Ray, our political editor's column, is particularly good. Not not least because she was writing in difficult circumstances, having to file it on Tuesday evening, Tuesday afternoon, as everything was unfolding. This and I think it's held up pretty well. Yeah, yeah, it really has. Yeah, it's a fantastic piece. And um yeah, this is the difficulty with um writing a magazine that you file on a Tuesday which most people then read the following weekend in the bar especially at a time like this. Yeah. Um I noticed a set of notes in the studio earlier that one of them there was a note appended by some little brackets with Yeah, I think that might have been one of my scripts, one of the many scripts that we've been through today that hasn't been relevant. Uh but it is uh still a highly relevant and uh excellent uh edition of the magazine this week. So do go out and buy it. Um we've also got um a really, really good piece on the slap trap by Peter Gagan and Jenna Corduroy. So this is about how lawyers keep journalists from reporting things about people who are rich or or powerful. We've got um some columns. We've got a column from, I think, I believe Labour's biggest minister, Al Khan's the Armed Forces minister. Um, we have a column column from an up-and-coming trainee journalist, Harry Windsor, who you may have heard of. I believe he also has some sort of hereditary title. But the best the best column by a very long way in this week's magazine is yours. Oh well. It really is. I'm not just saying that. Um if Prince Harry was here Maybe I should take him under my wing as a work experience. You really should. Yeah. I think there's a great deal he could learn. Um but your column, in which you write about an interview you conducted twelve years ago when you were interviewing a hopeful Labour candidate who was talking about the threats from either side of the Labour Party. So this candidate had quite a perceptive sense of Labour being caught between reform on one side and and the Greens on the other side. And big reveal and who was that candidate? That candidate was Keir Starmer. Wow. Um, yes, it was really interesting because I'd forgotten actually that I'd spoken to him for a piece I was writing about Hoburn, which is now his constituency, um, in twenty fourteen. And this was the year where UKIP won the European elections um and Labour were starting to do a lot of soul searching about their identity, losing the traditional heartlands and the working class voters, post-industrial left-behind areas. And that was the big narrative at that time in Labour. But I remember when I interviewed Starmer, and this was when he was running to be the Labour candidate for his seat, he said actually the political compass is harder to read than we think because you've got the greens on the other side. He was seeing that in his patch in inner city London. Um, and he said there's a real election to be won and fought because there were these extremes on left and right. And it's just it just felt like a sad irony that he was someone who actually noticed this quite early on. And it's something that Labour politicians, particularly in London and in cities, have been warning about for a while, so Sadiq Khan and others have been saying London could be the next red wall to fall. Let's not just obsess over this one demographic of voters. But his inability to read that is one of the big reasons why Labour did so badly in the local elections because they actually lost, you know, the reason why they lost so many seats to reform um was because they lost so many votes to the Greens, which is a sort of inconvenient truth for those strategists who have always focused on the more traditional, you know , old seats in the Midlands and and the North. Yeah, I thought that was really interesting that analysis that yeah, losing the seats to the right because of losing the votes to the left. Yeah. Um so I guess slightly counterintuitive. But yeah, as you make the point with this this great, you know, um twelve year look twelve years back, that you know, the the person who has come out worst from that w kne all along that that was the problem. Um even when it was UKIP, sorry I did say reform earlier, but UKIP at the time, but still Farage left people, yeah. Even at that point when they were certainly not seen as the opposition in any way. He was well aware that they sort of were, they were becoming the opposition, or that that that politics was splintering in that way, that the two parties in the middle did have to understand the parties to the uh to the further to the edges and appreciate the risk that they represented. And they didn't they didn't really do anything about it. They took it for granted. Yeah. That they would keep keep certain voters, the hero voters that you talk about. And um yeah, as you write so perceptively that they have um they they they've taken those people for granted to the point where they're now you know they've they've they've helped them migrate to the edges of of the political spectrum, right? Yeah. And and the point in my column, while that was a fun ac anecdote, the point was to say they keep doing this. So they did it with the Scottish voters in Scotland. You know, you saw them lose all but one of their seats in Scotland in twenty fifteen because they'd taken them for granted, basically. The same thing has happened in Wales. And then of course the Red Wall is the totemic example of that as well. So why again and again do they not learn this lesson? Hm. Is it a lesson that is going to be imposed on reform as well though, do you think? Because one of the things that you notice about reform is how different they are if you go to a reform meeting in Surrey and you go to a reform event in Sunderland, then you are going to see two very, very different parties. Yeah. And is it is it always the case that parties end up having to take one group for granted because they eventually they have to choose uh uh a minority of their voters to appeal to mostly. Yes, exactly. It's y it's usually a sign of a successful successful political party if it has this massive coalition of voters, often described as the beer drinkers and the wine drinkers. You know, the conservatives have a similar thing. Um and it's interesting. I I remember someone telling me an anecdote of Nigel Farage giving a speech in um a s a a more of a Sunderland type style seat. It wasn't I don't think it was there, where he said something like, you know, millionaires are leaving this country in their droves and there was a cheer and he was saying, No, no, no, that's not a good thing. You know, it's because Labour's driving the And I think that's a perfect encapsulation of the of the um tension in reform's voter base. Yeah, he'd accidentally picked up the speech Mark Virginia Water. But that yeah Pit that's what people when you talk to conservatives who yearn for the days of Thatcher, that's what they say about why they still think of Thatcher as being their greatest PM because she was able to unite a coalition of voters that the Conservatives haven't previously appealed to as successfully. Exactly. Um but let's fast forward from a yo ung, hopeful Keir Starmer of twenty fourteen to Keir Starmer fighting for his life on Monday morning, which was supposed to be the make or break speech of his premiership. The reset. Yes. You sketched this and it's brilliant and actually you did the good work for me, which was you basically went through the number of resets that his leadership has had. And I think I count this one as the fifth. I may be wrong. This is the the fifth significant reset promised by Star mer. So he's been promising resets right from Right from the start. In fact he said our country needs a bigger reset when when he was on the steps of Downing Street. Yeah. Literally arrived, said we're gonna reset and then within six months, it's time for a big reset. It's the plan for change. Great big reset. We're not gonna have um five priorities, we're gonna have six. Uh or was it six to five? I can't remember. At one point there was also seven. When you've got more than one priority, they stop being priorities. This is why you need to put them all at a very large piece of stone. That's why they learned nothing ? We could be seeing the return of Edstone politics soon. Yeah, yeah. Wheel it out. It's dusted down from whatever crypt it's being held in . Um yeah, but so so Starmer I don't know if anyone really expected it to be the speech that saved his premiership. I don't think any speech ever really does that other than you know in TV and films when somebody can just hold forth with a monologue and then everything changes. That never really happens in real life. And it certainly didn't happen this week. Yeah, and I I really enjoyed the part of your sketch that picked up on the fact 'cause he was trying to Tom and I spoke about this on the podcast earlier this week. He was trying to amp up the stakes, wasn't he? He was saying you know, we've got these opponents who could lead the country down a very dark path referring to reform UK and Nigel Farage and he was saying in the speech, we're the world today is more dangerous than at any time in my life. And you just you just write this is quite the statement from someone who was born just before the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yeah. Yeah, I mean really I d I don't obviously you can have uh particular views about Nigel Farage and reform and how they might run the country, but when you compare that to I don't know, the two thousand and eight financial crisis or the COVID pandemic, I think it's it's fairly extreme to say that, you know, this is the most dangerous possible moment. I mean, but then it's the present, isn't it? The present is always the most dangerous possible moment. True. The past is safely safely in in the background, it's in the rearview mirror, isn't it? So um yeah, but he also even while he was giving this speech, the last big speech of you know, probably before he's back on the steps of Down the Street, right? Um unless things go very differently for him and and who knows. But you know, he was still being there was still not much he could really say that they were doing. The big thing that he said that they were going to do, the big action piece was nationalis ation of the of British steel. Although it wasn't really nationalisation of British steel, is that we're going to pass legislation that would allow us to nationalise British steel, maybe subject to a public interest test . So even at the point where you say we're just going to do something, and obviously British Steel's pick, you know, steel action, glowing metal, you know, proper jobs, we're just going to get that done. What we legislate to get that done, uh in theory, subject to a public interest . Yeah, yeah. It's just so Keir Starmer, isn't it? Everything is caveated. Um and I enjoyed your part of the sketch that related to this when you said across Britain grateful people ran into the streets and threw their hats into the air. The government was going to do something to an extent. It was going to introduce legislation that would, if passed, give it the option to do something substanti Yeah. I mean he wasn't even particularly decisive about whether or not he was going to do anything to prevent other people from trying to take his job. He was being asked about have you spoken to Angela Rayner and have you you know received assurance from her that she's not going to challenge you? He just sort of said, Yeah, of course we spoke and I'm and he you know, he's asked Oh you know, have you spoken to Andy Burnham? And he said his response wasn't I'm the Prime Minister, I'm the best person to be for the job, I'm gonna continue doing this and I will do everything I can to oppose other people from you know imposing more political chaos in the country, I'm going to maintain control of my government. He said it was more like well me and Andy, we actually get on really well together . the most decisive intervention from the Prime Minister. Well anyway, Will, you had your fun this week with the sketch, but it was back to guilt markets, wasn't it, for you? Online. It was, yes. Um back to my to my safe my safe place phoning up people who invest in UK government debt and asking what they think. And yeah, I mean the speech wasn't gonna save Sturmer. I think it's also fair to say that the bond market's not going to save him either. And I think that's a fairly important point to make because there has been a lot of talk this week about saying, oh look, guilt yields are up. a And lot of pointing to that and saying, look, that's because Andy Burnham's challenging Keir Star mer. And I don't think that's a particularly good argument to make. The main reason that guilt yields are up is because of the market anticipating inflation. That is the main reason people expect more a higher return on bonds because buying a bond is kind of is fixing the price of an investment. And if the price of everything else goes up this then you you want that you you will lose money against that. So you you will you will have to ask for more in the first place. And I won't go through the ways in which investors ask for more um by paying lower prices. But I mean it's it's when you talk to investors, there are some investors who will say, oh yes, you know, this looks a bit dodgy and we're going to so we we will expect that there will be a bit of a premium. But there are lots of different types of investors. And mostly what those investors, s many of whom are algorithms rather than people, are making that decision on is to do with oil prices, you know, it's to do with the the war in Iran, um, it is to do with, you know, f supplies of fertilizer. It is not to do with whether or not Andy Berlin was prime minister. There may be a premium , an uncertainty premium at the moment. But I wouldn't expect Starmer remaining in Downing Street to get rid of that because the other point you you could argue is that the fact that Starmer has been unable to put through cuts to spending or very significant changes to the tax system also suggests to the market that he doesn't really have uh complete control of the g of the the government's finances. And that's the other thing bonders investors look at. They look at how much the country wants to borrow because that will be the the demand for the thing that they might be buying and um and the government spending. So when they look at a Prime Minister who, despite having an enormous majority, can't get through something as simple as the cut to winter fuel , then they'll say, okay, well that you know we will charge a premium for you know it's not an uncertainty premium, it's a incapability premium. Yeah. I thought your piece was the one of the best things that I read this week because all of the narratives that you're getting, especially out of the Treasury, but by a lot of MPs who are opposing the idea of a leadership ch leadership challenge, is oh, look at the jitters in the markets, this is causing chaos, this is harming people's, you know budgets, let's just you know calm everything down, it's really irresponsible. But I thought your piece explained really well and clearly that it's not you know the markets aren't looking necessarily at Andy Burnham and then forming a conclusion. It's about the fundamentals of the economy and the uncertainty that comes with that, you know, the fact that we sort of import inflation through the way that we that we uh get our energy is is a big part of it as well. Um also you, know who,'s to say that Andy Burnham won't get more buy-in for r raising, you know, broad based tax rises to do the things that he wants to do? That's not something that the markets would necessarily be spooked by. You know, if you're just giving yourself more headroom by something that Yeah. I mean the the market likes fiscal consolidation, which means either raising taxes or cutting spending or both. And it would be very easy to find a hedge fund manager who doesn't really like Andy Burnham. I'm sure you go I you I you know throw a sandwich throw a a Palmer Ham sandwich in Mayfair and you'll hit a hedge fund man Hey, I think we're throwing salads now, according to our colleague Finn Finn McR edmond. We're throwing chickpeas, not sandwiches anymore. Um but yeah, but that that doesn't mean that the wider market, which is made up of lots of other participants, wouldn't necessarily, you know, look more at the fundamentals. That's that's really what people trade on. Yeah, brilliant. Okay, let's take a quick break. Remember, you can listen to the New Statesman podcast without ads by downloading the New Statesman app. It's available on iOS and Android. Links are in the show notes. On this week's episode of The Exchange, our Longform Interviews podcast, we speak to Eric Schlosser, one of America's foremost investigative journalists about the hidden systems underpinning modern life. Save 75% off a New Statesman subscription this spring. Go to NewStatesman.com forward slash spring twenty-six to subscribe today. We'll be back after this . Welcome back. Our next category, suspended counsellor of the week. So much choice for this one, Will. There are quite a few to choose from. I've I've been looking at a there are various lists that have been compiled by people of um the councillors who have already left the positions that they were elected to last week. At the time that we're recording this, which is on Thursday, thirteen councillors who were elected last week have already been suspended or expelled or resigned or otherwise moved on from the job that they were elected to do. Well maybe they got the job done. Sorted social care, send provision, the bins. Easy. Easy. The potholes, everything. Three and a half working days was all it took for these guys. Although there is um a fair bit of evidence that it it might not be entirely that. Um so who is your suspended counsellor of the week? And let me guess which party they're from is Glenn Gibbons of Sunderland who was suspended by reform. I mean there's so many comments here. Let's go through them though because it is definitely worth quoting them. He he said that the Nigerian population in Sunderland should be melted down to fill fill in potholes. And Richard Tice, reform's deputy leader, failed to be Melt Nigerians to fill potholes. We have an internal party process. But here's the point. Forgive me. Laura . I'm going later to a campaign against the scourge of anti-Semitism, right, which is the greatest threat facing us here in uh particularly in London, but elsewhere across the UK. That's what people are really concerned about. We've stood up strongly for the Jewish community. And if people have said daft things, of course it'll be looked at. But you know, let's just remember we've got a a party that has been successful that is now the anti-Semitic Green Party. And bearing in mind how concerned reform is about anti-Semitism will tell us which councillor you've chosen this week. So Nathaniel Mende was elected to represent the Woodhouse ward on Sheffield City Council, he's also been suspended. Um again for social media posts. It which he now, as reform put it, he failed to declare these social media posts, which makes it sound a bit like you know, failing to declare a couple of extra bottles of wine in the boot on the on the way back from France. Um, what he failed to declare was that he had posted things like you know Nazi flags with swastikas on. He posted an image of Hitler's Mein Kampf. He so talked about he posted some other far-right iconography and he talked about a subhuman underclass and he well , I think there has long been a tradition of British politicians going to other countries, particularly over to Europe, and spending a week or so visiting pavement cafes, you know, enjoying some nice public services and then coming back So he uh seems to have come back from a holiday and see he said that um compared to many continental countries, people in the UK are fatter, uglier and, poor ly dressed which is big talk coming from a pound shop Herman Goering, who can't do his own type, I have to say. So I have looked some pictures of Nathaniel. And I've got to say that if you're gonna criticise the dress sense of an entire country, then maybe doing it wearing something more flattering than a polyester TK Max blazer that is obviously two sizes too small, Nathaniel Pro European though at least, you know, truly a heterodox party these days. Yeah, and I I think in his explanation of his comments, he said that he had always been motivated by love. So Okay, that's clear. He needn't have said that. Love of Hitler. That's the bit that you've left out Well yeah, okay, well let's let's move on to another one. But it's well it's not all reform, is it? No, because uh the the so among those thirteen councillors I b I believe there are uh I think eight of them are reform, but there are also some some Greens and some Tories in there. There are and we've and we've actually written a few articles about the Greens dodgy council candidates' comments. A new Lambeth councillor who won office, she's been suspended, Saika Ali , after she allegedly made a series of anti Semitic social media posts, seemingly calling Keir Starmer a Jewish Zionist and posting content that I've had a look at, and it looks quite a bit like anti-Jewish propaganda, like the caricatures and cartoons. So interestingly, on the greens, some listeners might be wondering why these people are just being exposed now as having posted these things. And that's in a many cases not actually the case. So the the green candidate that you mentioned her social media posts were reported in the national press on the fifteenth of April and then she is thought to have been one of two green candidates who were arrested on the thirtieth of April and then still won a seat on seventh of May. So when you're at that point quite close to the elections, there's not a huge amount a party can do. They can withdraw support. So there were two Green candidates in Newcastle who were named in reports about anti-Semitic social media posts, and one of them had the party's support withdrawn, but they still won their council seat as an independent, so they they remain on on the ballot. But it does suggest that there is quite a lot to be done with the vetting processes, especially for reform and the Greens. Because it's not just that then suddenly people realise who they've got or who they've very briefly had as a councillor. It's it's also really expensive for local authorities. So it's there isn't a lot of hard data on how much it then costs to go and get a new councillor. But by elections aren't free and they're paid for by so a parliamentary by election is paid for by central government, but for council by elections they're paid for by the council. So the council then has to take on the cost. And it's not a huge amount, it's a it's tens of thousands of country. Yeah, I remember someone telling me it's about twenty five thousand to do a council councillor by election. Yeah, it's thought I th the there's been a report that in Essex where there's a a another reform councillor who was elected on Saturday and resigned on the Monday again over social media posts. So there's gonna be a new council by election there that the council reportedly thinks will cost about thirty-five thousand pounds. So for one council that's not even for a cash strapped local council, that's not the biggest hit. But Well it's a salary for a year for someone . Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what's the average salary for a full time worker now? Thirty nine something. So I think it's probable that there will be more of these because that's what happened last year. So in the May 2025 local elections, there's a a list that's been um compiled by the the Lib Dempeer Mark Pack, who Love Mark Pack. Yes, yeah, the the polling guru Mark Pack who um he compiled a list of ru just the reform councillors who lasted less than a year after the May 2025 local elections? There are 73 names on that list. And reform won six hundred and seventy-seven seats, council seats in that election, and they won more than twice as many this year. So you might expect to see, you know, more than a hundred of such names if the vetting processes have not improved in a year's time, which given the speed at which candidates were being recruited, it would be there would need to be a lot of extra party machinery for that voting uh for that vetting uh process to have improved. Yeah, yeah. And some of that is because th they would have been paper candidates, right, who didn't expect to win the seat and then f found out that they'd won it and were like, Well, I don't want to be a councillor. Which is which is a problem in itself, but um a s probably a sign of the party's success as well. Yeah. It's i it's interesting though, because reforms chair Zia Youssef said in March, he boasted, I would argue we've got the best vetting in the country which is sort of Trump levels of delusion. Great greatest vetting. Unless they're using the vetting to weed out the people who aren't That's what they mean by they haven't declared those posts. You need to show how much of a racist you are Okay, let's take another quick break here. We'll be back in a bit . Welcome back. We're on to our last category already. This is political heckle of the week. It has been a particularly busy week for TV journos bellowing questions at ministers as they walk past a great tradition of British political journalism. But there's one uh reporter who has been giving it their all . Have you asked the Prime Minister to step down, Minister? Should the Prime Minister resign? Has anyone got the guts to challenge Kiestoma ? So Anoush, have you ever It sounds like Dominic Cummings to me. Maybe that's who it that's that's his new job. Yeah. GD News. Um have you ever shouted a question at a politician? I was trying to think about this and I see I'm never usually in the sort of press scrum at these things because I'm not in the lobby. Um but I have done it once and or at least I've done it the first time I did it I remember it was because I was I was covering the um the London riots because I was working on the Ealing and Acton Gazette that summer. Oh yeah. Um and they came to Ealing, Leafy Ealing. Um and Boris Johnson came along to see the aftermath the morning after and I had to run down the street and bellow questions at him. I remember it because I felt so embarrassed and and out of place. And he did actually stop and and answer some questions. So for ages on like little cover letters that I was writing for internships, I would say I've interviewed Boris Johnson. It's probab ly what w part of the reason that I got my job here, so maybe I shouldn't out the uh the the reality of the situation. Well I'll be speaking to the editor about that. Have you ever bellowed at a journalist? Um have I bellowed at a journalist? All the time. Yeah, you're a real monster in the office, Well um I have n I don't think I've bellowed at a politician, no. Um the occasional street level encounter where um I think the last one I won't say who it was, but like I'd s saw somebody who I had been trying to get to do an interview at some traffic lights and thought oh great I've got until the green man appears to go and badger this person and I did, but m I didn't didn't get my dictaphone out 'cause I thought it was n you know, not quite proper to go up and Well they just in you just happened to bump into them in public. J just literally walking down the street and recognized them and thought, ah, I'm gonna give that a go. But the bellowing I think I um I'm not I I don't necessarily think it's bad. I think it can be good journalism to show that people in power aren't pre prepared to talk to you. And I think an example of that that I quite like doing is when you get an unanswered freedom of information request or declined, or particularly where they admit that they don't collect the information that you've asked for, I think it can still be good to report that because then first of all you get you get something back for the work that you've done. But also it can show that the people in power aren't prepared to answer that question, which does say something, but I do find the particularly the Downing Street um bellowing uh it does watching that clip did make me cringe a bit, I have to say. Um and I I've always assumed that if I tried it my voice would just sort of go all high and squeaky and I just fumble the words and say the wrong thing and then my trousers would fall down and all the other journalists would point at me and laugh and somebody official um would just turn up and uh I'd just ask me to return my press card and I'd just be sent home. Yeah. Yeah, I can I I I know the feeling when actually no one's listening to what you're saying whatsoever. No, no, that's the thing. Please don't get my words a bit mixed up. Um My political heckle of the week was from Labour MP Torquil Crichton, who seems to have taken on the mantle of Dennis Skinner, um, shouting the joke at the King's speech after Blackrod bangs on the Commons doors. He shouted Not now, Andy, which was quite witty, I think. That's a great lie to Almost as good as Dennis Skinner's what my favourite one of his um when Blackrod was knocking on the door during what was the Queen's speech back then. He said, tell her to pay her taxes. You've been listening to the New Statesman podcast with me, Anush Shakelian, and my colleague Will Dunn. This episode was produced by Bieber Kang