"They're going to have to drag him out" - Starmer prepares for a leadership battle
5/5/202631 min
Thursday's local elections are set to blow apart Britain’s political duopoly, and the fallout for Labour could be existential. Pressure is mounting on the Prime Minister as rivals circle. Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham are all positioning. But who moves first?
Meanwhile, it's not all smooth sailing for the insurgents. Questions over Reform's Nigel Farage’s £5 million gift from Thai-based crypto tycoon Christopher Harborne aren’t going away.
And on the left flank, Green Party leader Zack Polanski has seen his approval ratings dip after questioning police tactics during the Golders Green attack.
Steven Swinford, political editor, The Times
Lara Spirit, deputy political editor, The Sunday Times
Producers: Euan Dawtrey, Harry Kitson
Picture credit: Getty Images
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSteven Swinford· Host0:00
[upbeat music] The whole notion that we would copy the Conservatives and go doom scrolling through leaders is an absolute nonsense.
Lara Spirit· Host0:07
We need a reality check in the Labor Party because the truth is Keir Starmer's not going anywhere.
Steven Swinford· Host0:13
And this Labor government is in complete shambles. I've never seen a government, since I've been in politics, which has collapsed so fast. Welcome to The State of It, the political podcast from the Times and the Sunday Times. I'm Stephen Swinford, the political editor at the Times, and with me today is ...
Lara Spirit· Host0:30
I'm Lara Spier. I'm the deputy political editor of the Sunday Times.
Steven Swinford· Host0:33
Now, it's just the two of us this week because Gabriel Pogrund, our brilliant colleague, is starting his first day as editor of Insight, so big moment for him.
Lara Spirit· Host0:41
Mm.
Steven Swinford· Host0:41
And Patrick Maguire is unsurprisingly on the road with another politician for an article later this week. So both send their regards. They, they will be back in coming weeks. Um, but obviously we wanted to come to you to talk to you about what is a tectonic moment in British politics. This is about as big as it gets. I was talking to John Curtice, Professor Sir John Curtice last week, who's been doing the, uh, exit polls and working on elections for the BBC since 1979, and he was saying to me, and he's not a man given to hyperbole, he was saying, "I have never seen anything like this. This is unprecedented. Records will be broken across the board on the night of the local elections." Uh, the duopoly, as he called it, the post-war duopoly of the Conservatives and Labor i- is over, and this is the first time we're going to see that writ large at the ballot box. So