# Is this the real life?
# Is this just fantasy?
# Caught in a landslide
# No escape from reality
# Open your eyes
# Look up to the skies and see
# I'm just a poor boy
# I need no sympathy... #
To the country, I would like to say, first and foremost, I am sorry.
It is important that after 14 years in government,
the Conservative Party rebuilds, but also that
it takes up its crucial role in opposition,
professionally and effectively.
# Too late
# My time has come
# Sends shivers down my spine... #
My plan is to build a mass national movement.
# Goodbye, everybody
# I've got to go
# Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth
# Mama, ooh-ooh Any way the wind blows
# Didn't mean to make you cry
# If I'm not back again this time tomorrow
# Carry on, carry on... #
For too long now, we've turned a blind eye as millions slip
into greater insecurity.
Nurses, builders, drivers, carers - people doing the right thing,
working harder every day.
Recognised at moments like this before,
yet as soon as the cameras stop rolling,
their lives are ignored.
Not this time.
Welcome to Newsnight.
There's been a political earthquake across the UK.
The new Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, with a majority almost
as big as Tony Blair's in 1997, has promised you
a "government of service".
When will you begin to notice the change he has promised?
The Tories have had their worst election result in history -
shell-shocked Conservatives are asking, how will they ever
rebuild their party?
The SNP are doing major soul-searching too
after their collapse.
The Lib Dems, the Greens, Plaid and Reform with their phenomenal
results are all working out how they will use their power
in the Commons to put pressure on the Labour Government.
The new House of Commons, by the way,
opens for preliminary business on Tuesday.
To digest the transfer of power from one party to another
and assess last night and to look forward,
we have for you tonight a stellar political panel -
Phil Collins, former Blair and Starmer speech writer,
Jo Tanner, former advisor to Boris Johnson,
Luke Tryl from the pollsters More in Common,
historian David Olusoga
and as always, Nick, our political editor.
There are not many people on the sofa who have had very much asleep
so I am very grateful you have stayed up for our audience on this
important Friday night. David, your assessment of what's
happening the last 24 hours? What has really struck me is that
although the Westminster calculations, that story obviously
is floating around, how quickly it has become a sombre moment, we are
quickly talking about the challenges facing the government, there is not
even a honeymoon period and I think that speaks to everything I've heard
over and over again, this profound sense that the country is deeply
damaged, that nothing works. So the scale of the task I think it's
somewhat inhibiting the celebratory mood, doesn't really feel like 1997.
Jo Tanner, what do you say? I would agree. I think there is
definitely... People I have spoken to, friends in my constituency which
went from being a very Tory area and went to Labour, there was a sense of
this is amazing, it's actually, come on, get on with the job now and I
think that was the tone that was struck in Downing Street today. I
agree, there is a sombre feel but from a Labour point of view, let me
introduce a non-sombre note which is that any political operation which
ends up with a majority of 174 has had a colossal triumph and it
absolutely has to be said of the people who have run this operation
that it's been a remarkable effort to go from 80 seats down to 150 --
back to 174 up. I know the Conservative Party did its level
best to help Labour but nevertheless this is a remarkable turnaround in a
very short period of time. It's worth saying because Keir Starmer
has been underestimated time and time again and I think as he goes on
to commit he will probably be underestimated again. OK, well let's
get into this. We'll Keir Starmer govern in the way he campaigned in
this election, that is, so precociously? In the sense that he
will be careful, yes. -- super cautiously. I don't want to read too
much into his demeanour when he was behind the rostrum in Downing Street
but from knowing Keir Starmer, I think he will take to government, I
think he will command it. I think is someone who is he impatient in
opposition, hasn't enjoyed it, doesn't like the fact he can't do
anything so I'm quite optimistic about this capacity to govern well.
He said something very interesting at the Tate Gallery when he did that
big speech, he said, we have changed the Labour Party and we will govern
as a change party. Where did I hear that from? New Labour. And all that
sort of stuff. Looking up on what Phil was saying. I'm sitting next to
the guy who wrote Tony Blair's feminist last speech to the
conference, without great line. -- famous. The one thing I never had to
worry about was the wife running off with the bloke next door! Well, Les
Dawson wrote it, actually, but I adapted it. But I think you could
make a case that in personal terms, this is a great success by Keir
Starmer than what Tony Blair did. What Tony Blair did was, he was the
third Labour leader over a 14 year period covering three parliaments
that took Labour from a big defeat in 1983 to a big win in 1997. Keir
Starmer, one person, one parliament. His challenge, and in a sense of the
difficulty he has pace is what he did to become leader of the Labour
Party was the exact and precise opposite of what he's had to do to
become Prime Minister. That's why he got into difficulty in the election
campaign over Jeremy Corbyn, that is a serious personal political
achievement. To me it felt like when he got there today, when he actually
got to do that it in front of the door of number ten, it felt like he
had relaxed a bit and it is the person everyone has been waiting to
see because he's been so uptight and cautious. The smiles were big, he
looked like he was ready for it today and I think there will be the
interesting bit. Whether he can carry on that. Well, the electorate
have now voted for change three times. 2016, 2019 and now again in
this election. The previous two times, despite the promise of
change, they didn't get it. So if Labour don't deliver on that change
in this Parliament, it will not only mean that this is a one term
government, I think it spells something deeper and more worrying
for our democracy. Can we talk about voter volatility? Because they have
won two thirds of the seats with 34% of the vote. Most people did not
vote for Labour. What can you tell us about what some people are
describing as the shallowness of the Labour vote? The new statement and
its is this a triumph for Labour feels unusually precarious. -- the
new statesman. What happened last night is our political system
fractured, left, right and centre. You had the Lib Dems doing very
well, you had the big Labour majority, the Tories almost
annihilated but on top of that you had votes for Reform, for the
Greens, for independent candidates. I think what voters were saying is,
we desperately want to change, we desperately want this Tory
government out, but we are not sure who is best placed to give us that
change whether the Labour Party are fully making the case to us that
they are the ones to do it. That makes for a very volatile, with
potentially as has been so quite a short honeymoon period for Keir
Starmer. Let me ask you all, do you think, do you believe that things
will change as much as Labour supporters want, or Labour critics
fear? I think there is an awareness in the electorate that is reflected
in this result, I think because there has been so many offers of
change that haven't been delivered. Again there is a sombre nurse but
also a realisation that we need to change the tax system, we need to
find more resources, we need to deal with productivity, that we are, the
country is profoundly broken in a way it wasn't in 1997. People don't
agree on what the change is. In actual fact, Boris Johnson did
deliver the change he promised, he got to accept on, it's just people
decided in the end they didn't quite want what they had wanted or this
wasn't the right version of the thing they fantasised about. So it's
quite complex to provide something as abstract as change. I do think
there will be a lot of things going on, I think Starmer will do a lot.
Whether that satisfies this rather disembodied notion of change, I
don't know. There is no doubt that this is a moment quite unlike
previous landslides, there is no question about that. The British
system amplifies and exaggerates victory and has done so to great
effect while the rest of the politics is fractured. But Brexit
was never just about leaving the EU, it was people saying, we are not
happy with the status quo, and that is where the Johnson government
failed, they didn't deliver on levelling-up, that was a key
promise, these regions of the country that don't or reducing
emigration. I think Starmer faces the same challenge that Boris
Johnson had in 2019, but does he deliver? But with an even more
disaffected electorate. The bar has been raised each time. It's like,
come on, what are you going to do quiz the challenge of that when
there no money, nobody thinks there's any money to do half of this
stuff. They aren't recently saying there is money if you choose tax
wealthier people more. -- they were on recently he made an argument for
the fact there is money around, you just make a political choice. At the
envelope of public spending is enormous so we can make choices
within it too. I think although everyone is saying already the
honeymoon will be very short or may not exist, the Government now has
the capacity of action, they can do things, they can change that, by
actually acting and demonstrating that they are attempting to begin
the long process of levelling-up, for example. I think this
conversation can change. But they do need some luck. Some of it is about
growth and that hasn't been achieved for everybody so this is a fair wind
because otherwise they are nailing their colours to something else
happening to help them on the journey and ultimately, it's all
very well setting the sale and about and putting the sailor but if there
is nothing behind to push it, you're not going to magic stuff ups of a
challenge, but I think some of the things they want to do and they are
suggesting they're going to do, you're going to have the Tories
continually hammering then and probably other parties...
You have Reform on the right and the Lib Dems, the Greens... They do have
a majority of over 170. So I'm not that bothered about them. We have
already had the benefit cap issue, already part of the Labour Party
coming out, they are all going to start fighting amongst themselves.
How do you keep all those people disciplined? That is the difficulty.
It probably will manifest quite quickly with planning mobilisation
because lots of people, lots of new MPs with a patch to defend fulfil,
what do I do hear? Well, do want some development but just not here.
So yes, it's difficult, but of all the problems that you can encounter
the day after an election, the fact we have to make do with trying to
satisfy 418 MPs is low down on the things we one normally write about.
Sorry, 412. Right, so, today, the new Premier stir speaks at the
lectern, talks to the nation and goes inside and appoints his
Cabinet. It's mostly people in the Shadow Cabinet apart from people who
lost their seats last night. And made the appointments very quickly
for so very quickly doing the senior ones. Rachel Reeves as Chancellor,
Pat McFadden as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Angela Rayner
as deputy premised on housing and levelling-up. Pat McFadden is
interesting, you're in the Cabinet Office, the engine room of
government, you're enforcing the will of the Prime Minister. That
post can be a political graveyard, Jack Cunningham 20 years ago, but it
can work. Pat McFadden has a very close relationship with Keir
Starmer, highly rated, they hope that will work. They need to hit the
ground running so there will be more ministerial appointments tomorrow, a
Cabinet meeting on Saturday because they have got to, the only thing the
have cut its growth. You're not increasing borrowing, the only thing
you can go for is growth but you have to move really quickly on
things like planning, but now they have a whole bunch of MPs what one
might describe as blue Tory, greenish seats, they are not going
to be happy.
Keir Starmer has already gone outside of those who have been
elected and created a few new peers. We have had James Timpson, the boss
of Simpsons, who has had an amazing career working with offenders and
trying to help rehabilitation, he has been given a job as prisons
minister already. Will somebody get annoyed about that? A bunch of
people who
annoyed about that? A bunch of people who have just been elected
who expect those jobs. Everyone was upset when David Cameron became
Foreign Secretary so already pews are being bent. I think some might
not like the approach. There is a picture of James Timpson and also
its Patrick Vallance who is in the Lords as the new science secretary.
Another really good move. I was going to ask about the photo you
have the votes and the independents, who have done places in Blackburn
and Batley and Leicester South. You have already done some pulling on
that since last night. We have been looking at this and it is now
abundantly clear one of the stories we weren't expecting in this
electorate is that constituencies where there are a high number of
Muslim voters have moved away from the Labour Party, sometimes quite
dramatically. From focus groups in these areas what I can tell you is
it is in large part the Gazza factor which has an anchor to these voters
from the Labour Party. Can you explain this because I looked at
this on Twitter and I need you here to talk me through it. This is an
overview of all the seats that Labour was contesting. Those seats
which are in the most strong orange hue are the ones with the highest
proportion of Muslim voters in those seats. The direction of the arrow
tells you whether there is an increase in the Labour vote share or
decrease. Look at the Orange seats with a high proportion of Muslim
voters, moving dramatically away. That is why unusually on a night
where Labour are making gains across the board they actually lost seats.
They lost Dewsbury and in Blackburn, Jonathan Ashworth was expected to be
part of the ministerial team but lost his seat and it is that effect
in those seats and something that the new government will have to
reckon with pretty quickly. Interestingly the Labour leadership
thought this would be an issue because they knew they had that
problem when Keir Starmer had the interview on LBC when the party was
slow to call for a ceasefire, they knew they had a problem that was the
Labour high that they would be OK. But the West Midlands mayoral
contest was equally. I've Yacoub got about 19% of the vote in Birmingham
the UK's second largest city, the crew was there and he gave Shabana
Mahmood a very close run in Birmingham. All the polls missed the
number for your coop and it looks like they missed it again. This has
been a bigger problem because the Labour lead was not what it was
being reported, never near 25, it has come down to 10.
Now, I just want to play you this short clip
of the new Chancellor Rachel Reeves when was addressing
civil servants for the first time at the Treasury today.
It is also a huge privilege to be the first-ever
female Chancellor of the Exchequer, so every young woman and girl...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
That was a very long round of applause from civil servants. Let me
introduce you to Meg Hillier who is Labour MP for Hackney South and
Shoreditch. When you see the kind of reception the first woman Chancellor
received houses to make you feel? Very proud. Rachel has earned this.
She has put in the hard yards and pushed a very hard discipline on the
Labour Party and has come across to all players is a very serious person
who will do the job very properly. Can she get the highest sustained
growth in the G7? She has letters of some step targets. Can she do it? If
anyone can she can. She has got a plan but a lot of it is about
managing the fiscal situation we are in as well because the growth won't
come immediately, so she has a very hard edge to her about making sure
that discipline is in place and it is something to be real clear that
on the doorsteps when people were asking me and others about the
Labour be putting up taxes we had to say now, this is what our position
is and it is really important we stick to that position because we
will keep maintaining the trust of those voters who have led to
several. Just to be clear our Newsnight audience knows that taxes
are going up because of the AFS showed us taxes will go up if a
Conservative government was re-elected, but the Labour
government was coming in, the AFS graph shows it would be the highest
tax take on record. Just pose for a second and reflect as a Labour MP,
did you ever expect this turnaround from that historic defeat five years
ago? Now. I am always a pessimist about elections but even I began to
believe it at the beginning of this campaign that it could be possible
but it was a phenomenal achievement by Keir Starmer who has personally
driven is, he transformed the party into something electable and set out
to try and create that broad coalition that would get us across
the line and also the tactics by our campaign team to make sure we
weren't just stacking up votes into seats that we already held but that
we were really pushing the envelope of seeds that people did not think
would be Labour territory and if we look at some of those true blue
seats that have now gone read it is an extraordinary achievement but the
truth about the fragility of it as well. That's ask about that. Are you
worried about the shallowness of the vote, the fact it is 34% share of
the vote, two thirds of the seats, and the Tories five years ago had an
80 seat majority, we have seen it washed away. What was really clear
was we know we couldn't do what we want to do to this country without
being in power and we have had too long in opposition, I have been in
both government and opposition were and I know how miserable is when
seeing the problems in my constituency and not having
attraction to deal with the problems because we aren't in government, so
getting in the comment is the first light is absurdly vital to... Is a
difficulty because of the vote? It will be if there isn't... The ideas
can be great, whether you agree with them or not, delivery is the
challenge and that is where Keir Starmer's missions and fans to get
delivery across people like Pat McFadden are key players. People who
support you and for your critics who are watching tonight, when will
people see a difference? That is why some of the things around the health
appointments and making sure you're not waiting for that hill treatment
you have been waiting for a long time, you have paid for, people
waiting years for hippos and for example is very important. When will
they see? I will not pre-empt what comes out of this but some of those
things, the promises made in the election have to be quicker delivery
but what is really interesting is I have been on doorsteps, obviously a
lot and my own constituency but also other places like Wellingborough
which other we won attended by election not a dead cert to win and
when I say to people we can click your fingers and it won't happen
immediately people really understood that, they said there is a big mess
to clear up and the British electorate to understand that we can
transform everything overnight, but we do need to deliver on his
advances. Let's talk about the fact that she lost five seats with large
Muslim populations we just talked about it with Luke thrill, the more
in common poster. One went to an independent, one went to a
Conservative.
Conservative. Because of your Gaza position. It started with this
interview on October the 11th that Keir Starmer gave to LBC and let's
have a reminder.
A siege is appropriate?
Cutting off power, cutting off water?
I think that Israel does have that right.
It is an ongoing situation.
Um, obviously, everything should be done
within international law.
Do you think cutting off food, water and electricity
is within international law?
I think that Israel has an absolute right
to defend itself against terrorism.
That's not the question I asked.
It is an answer to the question that you've asked,
and I think it's an appropriate one at this time.
Why won't you answer whether you think it's in line
with international law?
Because I've tried to answer...
That was obviously also Emily Thornberry he was on this programme
in the same day that Keir Starmer had been on LBC in the morning, she
was an Shadow Attorney General. He knew it was an issue and you knew at
the local elections it was an issue and people like Ellie Reeves your
colleague said that Labour had a lot of work to do to win back the
support of Muslim voters. You have haven't done that, you haven't
succeeded. I think there is a very big issue here. Any party that loses
the votes and we have seen where those votes are being asked really
needs to engage and listen and get to grips with the issue but also...
But that hasn't happened between May and now. I think on the ground on
the seats I'm sure it was happening but there needs to be better. A
better understanding in the centre of the party about how we deal with
all sorts of different committees. There is a lot of work that goes on
in all parties with focus groups about individuals but there is a
danger of lumping people together and we have to make sure we are
really listening to our MPs on all of the seats they are in and really
understanding what is affecting people and clearly we need to have
some resolution in the Middle East and there will be... I looked at the
Labour manifesto, we are committed to recognising a Palestinian state
as a contribution to a renewed peace process which results in a two state
solution. Norway, Spain, Ireland have already recognised a
Palestinian state. Why can't you do that this weekend? David Lammy has
already been out publicly talking about his desire to engage with this
and it is for him as Foreign Secretary. What would you like to
see, do you want to wait to make it part of a new negotiation? We can
call for anything we want but we do need to have a long-term sustainable
solution for peace in
the Middle East. What has happened from the 7th of October and since
has been horrendous. Thousands of people have been killed. We have an
Israeli government that doesn't want to engage with a lot of the
international community so a lot of work needs to be done and the
international community took its eye off the ball for a long time in the
Middle East and we now have a Foreign Secretary in place and he
was determined to focus on this and we will wait and see what he can
achieve but the UK is part of a wider international community and we
need to be clearly listening to what people say to us on the 4th of July.
No more ministerial appointment site because it is a 10:40pm on a Friday
night but we are told there will be more appointments tomorrow, are you
expecting a call? No indication otherwise, it is a matter for Keir
Starmer. I am sure I speak my colleagues, no one feels they are
entitled to anything. I am the MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch
which is hugely important and I'm happy to have that position again.
Thank you. It is 11 o'clock, I got the time wrong.
Right - let's talk about the Tories.
Here's what the new Father of the House, Sir Edward Leigh,
to our colleagues at BBC Look North this evening.
We have got to I think invite Reform voters and Farage to join us because
otherwise... We can't have a divided right-wing vote. So you would
welcome in Farage and Reform to the Conservative Party? I would
absolutely welcome him in, join us, if he wants to stand for a leader
that would be a member for our members. Jo
Tanner is a former adviser to Boris Johnson, why are you smiling at
that? They have just had that horrendous night and it is even in
the run-up there was all the talk about Nigel Farage and what role he
could play with the Tory party and they don't know what it is any more.
It hasn't known for ages. The idea it will run in his
direction to snuffle what it can from Reform just seems bonkers. But
the collapse of the party is one of the big political stories of our
times, so you can see why there might be kneejerk reactions. The
problem is, the reason it has collapsed is because it hasn't known
what it has been. So many people within the party itself, there are
many politicians that were Tory politicians that couldn't stand have
their colleagues because of the different views they were expressing
about Brexit for example. Ever since the stopper got taken out of the
bottle on that issue they all started biting like rats in a sack.
Then they didn't really want to be in the same corridors or putting
lobbies or sit together in the tea rooms. There has been this constant
battle amongst itself and then of course what does anyone out there
think they are voting for when this lot can get on anyway, completely
ungovernable in such a range of views that they weren't coalescing
around something simple. Conspirators are saying how do we
rebuild, we have haemorrhaged voters to reform and also haemorrhaged
filters to the Lib Dems, being pulled in two different directions.
They don't stand for anything any more. Conservatives would presumably
push back on that. There is a very strong and arguably noble tradition
of British conservatism that has lots of very long-standing ideas
that go back to Burke, what the Conservative Party should be. Centre
right parties play an absolutely critical role and functioning
democracies. They are the bulwark against a hard left. There is an
obvious anti-who saw growth of the Conservative Party but either your
role is to embody that all it is to seek power under any circumstances
anything but its what is talking about. If there is no appeal in the
centre everyone goes to the exchange. The problem is they
vacated the centre which is where the boats are and I have vacated.
Let's just dispense with this nonsense that you can just add
Conservative vote in the Reform vote and you get some United centre-right
vote. We polled people today after they had voted and we asked Reform
voters, did you have any thoughts about voting for anyone else, is
there anyone else you would have voted for? And barely over a third
of Reform UK voters said they would consider voting for the
Conservatives to stop so that sentence again. Barely a third of
Reform voters... 36% of Reform voters who voted Reform yesterday
said they would consider voting for the Conservatives. That that would
have been a second choice for them in that election. And that's on top
of the fact that the Conservatives would lose votes in other
directions, to the Lib Dems and Labour. It's really interesting that
Boris Johnson has come out and said don't merge with Reform, avoid the
charm of Nigel Farage. You can see those figures I was talking about.
It was 36% there was to 16% said Labour. The danger is that the
Conservative Party learn the wrong lessons from this, as parties
generally do when they lose, they take a whole electoral cycle, doing
exactly the same thing they've done before, only more so. Although Keir
Starmer with Labour didn't. I had messages from Tory MPs last night,
well, not MPs any more, they were. Cabinet ministers, say if Labour can
do it in five years, maybe the Conservatives can. In a sense that
is encouraging but I don't think there is any victory for them to be
won by moving to the right. I would like to echo what David said, from a
Labour point of view it is important that the Conservative Party occupies
a good place in British politics. There will be a day when a sane and
sensible and delectable Conservative Party is a natural repository of the
fact that the electorate have tired of the Labour Party, that will
happen and when that day comes I wanted to be a party -- I want it to
be a party like one that Jo likes. The nature of Rishi Sunak a's
departure is crucial to how this plays out. He has said he's going,
but there have been presentations, as I understand, May to the Prime
Minister today by senior figures, William Hague, David Cameron...
Sorry, to Rishi Sunak! The former Prime Minister. He was Prime
Minister this morning. Representations have been made,
David Cameron, William Hague and another former minister, to Rishi
Sunak, saying, please can you delay your departure, can you do what they
say is a Michael Howard? Back in 2005 when Michael Howard lost that
general he said he was going, but he didn't actually go into much later
in the year. What that allowed them to do was have the conference in
October is the beauty contest, then the leadership election happened
after that. It was quite an effort to persuade Michael Howard to do
that and it looks like that same process is under way right now with
Rishi Sunak. I remember this well because in the last night of the
2005 general election campaign I was with Michael Howard, were at a rally
that I was covering for the Guardian in Selby. We got the bus down to
Birmingham Airport of all places and stated one of the hotels there and
Michael Howard went off and had dinner and the journalists had
dinner in another area, then we were allowed in afterwards and we had a
great with Michael Howard, he then went off to bed, then we went to the
bar and chatting away, one of his aides ended up crying on my shoulder
and I was thinking, what's that all about? I thought, clearly what's
happening is they know have lost birds a bit upsetting. The next day,
Michael Howard pitched up in Putney which have been won by Justine
Greening and he announced he was resigning and it was on this sort of
long fuse. What had happened was that at that dinner, Michael Howard
said, I'm off, I'm off tomorrow and that's it. The reason why the aides
were so upset is they wanted to persuade Michael Howard to delay it,
because had he gone immediately, David Davis would have become leader
and the fear was that the party needed a new generation, a
generational leap, and by delaying the resignation, the departure, that
give a chance of a younger person, could have been George Osborne,
turned out to be David Cameron. What they are trying to do deep, these
people trying to persuade Rishi Sunak to do this, is if you want it
now, maybe Suella Braverman would get in there and say let's have a
pact with Nigel Farage and what they are hoping is that it will give
another candidate a greater chance. So it poses things, slows things
down. If you think about the make-up of the party, it has changed. The
people left are the ones that are going to be deciding who the next
leader is so they have to have a bit of time to work it out. This is a
picture of the people, some of whom would have been leadership can
tenders -- contenders if they had kept their seats. Now we can see the
people who retained their seats. Robert Jenrick, Suella Braverman,
possibly James Cleverly and Kemi Badenoch, there are potential
leadership contenders. I think a longer contest does allow the party
to do what we've been saying which is to think what kind of institution
are we, what are we for Christmas have a cup proper conversation about
the type of party they want to be. It's a fair stampeding to contest
there is a danger they Chase Parker. I think there needs to be two halves
of the conversation, there needs to be a one nation centrist side, so
many of them have lost their seat. As an air of them have been part of
administrations that have failed so the idea that anyone is going to
emerge from that group, it's a big leap for them to think they are
going to get the country... There is a much smaller Overton window
entering into the conversation stop and there is a huge gap that has
been left in the race because if you look to any of the polling of
Conservative 2019 voters on who performed best, who had the highest
approval ratings, it was Penny Mordaunt, she was a clear
frontrunner with people that voted for Boris Johnson in 2019. I think
they need time just to find out... Penny Mordaunt was the Brexiteer who
was acceptable to the one nation group. At the new person who might
fit into that role is Kemi Badenoch, Brexiteer who might be acceptable to
one nation group. I mean, delayed for a year and have a whole string
of by-elections and bring a whole load of people back. Can we talk
about the collapse of the SNP? There was more a collapse, 80% of their
seats they lost, bigger collapse than the Conservatives. Does that
mean, certainly in the short term, maybe even longer term, independence
is of the table, would you think? I think it still poles very strongly
particularly amongst the young. The support has evaporated partly
because of the belief that Labour is the only game in town and getting
rid of the Tories but I look at the demographics and the huge support
for independence amongst young Scots and I think it would be naive to
think that this is now off the agenda. It was noticeable outside
Downing Street today that as well as the union flag there were the flags
of the four nations. The other thing that's happened with the SNP is that
finally the Scottish people have thought, they are actually the
government, how are we going to punish them? For a long time they
defied gravity by being both the comet and the opposition at the same
time and trick finally ran out. What are the Greens going to do with
their power, Reform, the independent candidates, Plaid? I think they will
put pressure on this new government from all sides. There are going to
have that presence in parliament, I think it was notable... O, Lib Dems,
I'm sorry, a phenomenal night for them. Just starting with Reform,...
Sorry to interrupt, I was at the end Davey count... He didn't mention
this earlier! When Ed Davey came in, he said today Dem supporters, I'm
sorry I'm not paragliding in! Than when he turned up at a party in
Central London, they were playing Sweet Caroline and then he walked
and started dancing and went to the stage and off he came and it was
Curtice Mayfield. Obviously Ed Davey got a lot of attention from all
these sort of stunts but as you say, they did really well. 71
they did really well. 71 seats up, -- 71 seats, up 63. At the voucher
is lower than Reform. -- the vote share. 3.5 million votes. Is that
going to hack people off? I'm sure it will. There is a clear disparity,
it's interesting that Reform have made proportional representation
part of their pitch, part of their... But the interesting thing
about the Lib Dems' success is it links back to what we were talking
about because when we would chat to people in focus groups, the reason
they didn't vote for there was because of the policy, they just
seemed more normal than the Conservatives.
seemed more normal than the Conservatives. You could go out for
a drink with them. I used to vote Tory because they managed the
economy well... They don't do that any more so I'm going to the Lib
Dems. Plenty of people did not vote for Labour, so when Sir Keir
Starmer, the new Prime Minister, is at the lectern today and he's
talking about wanting to unite the country, how does a promise to do
that with Bluetooth things on the voting at the turnout is low, but it
is low among those registered to vote. I think we have an enormous
democratic deficit which is not just to do with the failings and oddities
of first-past-the-post. I think it was very noticeable and I'm very
hopeful to hear Sir Keir Starmer talk about wanting to serve those
who voted against him, even perhaps more so. And in some ways it is the
opposite of something Rishi Sunak was very guilty of, talking about us
and them because he talked about the real people. There is the real
people and then there's these others. Is it possible to unite a
country? You never know entirely about what you are going to do this
signal that as David says, you are in government for the country. I
thought Rishi Sunak struck a really good and gracious note in his
speech. If only he had covered in the same spirit. There would be in a
much better position. Essentially, you are my Prime Minister now too.
It would be nice to have more of that. Let's have a look at the front
pages. The Daily Telegraph is a photo of Keir Starmer and his wife
walking up Downing Street, smiling and waving and holding hands but the
main headlines is about the NHS being broken. The Scotsman, all
change, picture of Keir Starmer and his wife. Starmer tells UK, politics
can be a force for good. The Daily Mail, now he has to deliver.
Pressure begins already. The Guardian, we will fight every day
until you believe again. That was the point he was making about
restoring trust. What has Wes Streeting said now that he is Health
Secretary about the NHS? He walked into his new department and issued a
statement that was recorded on video and he says from today, the policy
of this department is that the NHS is broken. That is a big statement
for the Secretary of State for Health and social care to say, and
essentially what they are doing is saying, this is how serious it is,
setting the bar of expectation incredibly low, and he has said Wes
Streeting has said before that it is a service, not a shrine, you can't
just chuck money at it, you need to reform and he is saying we will have
to do some tough stuff. We are out of time. You can all go and get some
sleep! Have a great weekend. We are back on Monday, have a brilliant
weekend, thanks for being with us for this whole election campaign.
The programme goes on for the next Parliament at least. See you on
Monday, good night.