Life after Keir - will it be coronation or contest?
6/2/202621 min
What has Starmer loyalist Pat McFadden really been thinking when he’s been out defending the PM?
Sam Coates and Anne McElvoy discuss how the latest Mandelson drop makes for an awkward morning in cabinet.
And they’ve lines from Labour’s deputy leader, Lucy Powell, from a podcast recording last night. Was she hinting that a leadership coronation is better than a leadership contest?
Plus, our latest voting intention poll shows Labour’s Reform challenge isn’t going away.
You can listen to the Matt Forde Political Party podcast here.
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSam Coates· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Hello, good morning and welcome. It's Tuesday, June the 2nd. It's raining, there are tube strikes, and at 9:00 AM in Downing Street this morning, Keir Starmer will have to look Pat McFadden in the eye after WhatsApp messages published between the Work and Pensions Secretary and Peter Mandelson revealed his private despair about the government's direction. Can Pat McFadden survive in his job? Should he? Or is he staying in post because he knows the cabinet in its current form isn't there for much longer? My name is Sam Coates of Sky News.
Anne McElvoy· Host0:30
And I'm Anne McElvoy from Politico. McFadden told Peter Mandelson that every meeting he had with members of the Parliamentary Labor Party concerned the question, "Who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others?" An idea that opposition politicians seized on at once. A modern-day update, perhaps, to Liam Byrne's 2010 cry, "There is no money left." Elsewhere, McFadden said that those in Number 10 didn't really know what they wanted and sought ideas and people to reboot the operation last summer, but it didn't appear to want to be part of that. Uh, it was an idea Lord Mandelson clearly thought was pretty hopeless as well.
Sam Coates· Host1:12
All of this from the unprecedented WhatsApp disclosures, which-- of which basically Pat McFadden was the biggest victim. Pages and pages of his exchanges with, uh, Peter Mandelson. Uh, what matters is that Pat McFadden, um, is just about one of the biggest