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Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.

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Speaker 1: It's Monday, November seventeen, twenty twenty five. A growing number

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Speaker 1: of moderate Liberal MPs are abandoning Opposition leader Susan Lee

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Speaker 1: and backing Andrew Hasty for the leadership. That's after a

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Speaker 1: drawn out battle over net zero policy. The Australians reporting

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Speaker 1: today there's a growing sense among MPs who backed Lee

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Speaker 1: for the leadership that she can't take the party forward.

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Speaker 1: One in ten applicants to the august nuclear submarine project

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Speaker 1: is being rejected on security grounds, including because they have

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Speaker 1: suspicious links to China, India and other foreign countries. Australia

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Speaker 1: will need thousands of nuclear trained workers, including in submarine construction,

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Speaker 1: maintenance and crewing. They must be Australian citizens and must

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Speaker 1: have STEM skills, and that means many have family heritage

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Speaker 1: and in you're in connections to countries like India and China.

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Speaker 1: The government says that's fine as long as their connections

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Speaker 1: are just family and friends. Those stories are both exclusives

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Speaker 1: live now at the Australian dot Com dot AU. A

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Speaker 1: big overhaul is looming of how Britain handles its refugee crisis.

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Speaker 1: It's the Labor government's latest attempt to address its catastrophic

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Speaker 1: popularity levels. But it's also a potential prime ministerial audition

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Speaker 1: for one of the three hot candidates said to be

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Speaker 1: angling to oust Kirstarmer. Today, Why Starma is loathed by

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Speaker 1: Britain's and who might replace him? This believe it or

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Speaker 1: not was just over a year ago. We did it

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Speaker 1: so Kirstarmer winning the UK election in July twenty twenty

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Speaker 1: four with the second biggest majority since World War Two.

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Speaker 2: My government will fight every day until you believe again.

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Speaker 1: And this is now. That's a united team.

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Speaker 2: And will this man remain in number ten by the

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Speaker 2: next election? Secure Starmer's leadership of Breton is all but

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Speaker 2: terminal and that as extraordinary considering he won one of

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Speaker 2: the biggest Landslade majorities of any Frost term government and

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Speaker 2: British history.

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Speaker 1: The Australian's Richard Ferguson is a close observer of British politics.

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Speaker 1: The first time he came on the front to talk

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Speaker 1: about this, we discussed how there was speculation in Britain

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Speaker 1: that Kirs Starmer, the charming debonair human rights Barrister might

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Speaker 1: have been the model for Mark Darcy in the Bridget

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Speaker 1: Jones's Diary series. Well, he never ended up fighting in

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Speaker 1: a fountain with Hugh Grant. But Kirstarmer's fortunes have certainly

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Speaker 1: taken an absolute bath. Richard. There's now rampant speculation that

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Speaker 1: Starmer's leadership is going to be taken away from him.

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Speaker 1: I wanted to run through with you the contenders and

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Speaker 1: then we'll get to why this is happening. So first

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Speaker 1: up is the one I find the most intriguing. She

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Speaker 1: looks a bit like a young Fergie. She's got a

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Speaker 1: backstory like a Kath and Kim character. It's Angela Rayner,

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Speaker 1: the former Deputy PM and Housing secretary who was forced

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Speaker 1: out of her job in September over a messy personal

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Speaker 1: financial situation. How is she now at the center of

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Speaker 1: leadership speculation?

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Speaker 2: Angela Arena as you're seeing Claire, has the most extraordinary backstory.

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Speaker 2: She's like a character and Coronation Street, or imagine a

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Speaker 2: Cafarin t character as the Prime Minister. You know, extraordinary thing,

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Speaker 2: single mum, single granny, pretty young as well, very much

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Speaker 2: rags to Ritcher's story. I saw Angela Rena speak when

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Speaker 2: I was covering the twenty nineteen British election in Birmingham

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Speaker 2: and she was with Jeremy Corbin and she's one of

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Speaker 2: the most magnetic speakers I've ever seen politically.

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Speaker 3: But just think about the historic Labor governments and their legacy,

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Speaker 3: the NHS, Social Security, the Welfare State Council, housing, modern

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Speaker 3: higher education, the open university, decriminalizing homosexuality, outlaw in racial discrimination,

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Speaker 3: introducing equal pay, the national minimum wage, sure Start, devolution,

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Speaker 3: the Gods Friday Agreement, several partnerships, equal parts, they hear

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Speaker 3: the Rights out and the world's first climate change up.

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Speaker 2: And I've seen a few of our prime ministers here

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Speaker 2: and she would wipe the floor with any of them.

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Speaker 2: She's so charismatic, she's so authentic. Why she very potentially

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Speaker 2: the next Prime Minister of Britain Two reasons. Number One,

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Speaker 2: she's the only one of the Labor Party that has

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Speaker 2: the charisma that they probably need to face Nigel Farage.

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Speaker 2: Number Two, she is the main left candidate. This is

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Speaker 2: a party that is dominated now by the left and

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Speaker 2: because they have a one member, one vote system where

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Speaker 2: essentially all of the branch members of the Labor Party

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Speaker 2: mainly progressive students and disgruntled lefty ex school teachers. Their

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Speaker 2: vote is just as important as a union member or

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Speaker 2: as an MP, so it is a system that really

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Speaker 2: skews to the left, which is why Jeremy Corbyn got

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Speaker 2: the leadership all those years ago. So she's in with

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Speaker 2: a very good chance.

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Speaker 1: The next candidate is a forty two year old who

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Speaker 1: looks a lot to me like Michael Boubley. I realize

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Speaker 1: I'm taking this in a showbiz kind of direction, but

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Speaker 1: these three contenders very tillogenic. Where's strating is the Health Secretary.

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Speaker 1: He's being held for preventing a winter of doctors' strikes,

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Speaker 1: which was what was expected because of widespread discontent about

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Speaker 1: the health system in the UK. That seems like a

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Speaker 1: low bar to become a possible future prime minister.

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Speaker 2: Well I would say that the NXGS is in such

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Speaker 2: a mess that if anybody looks like they're sort of

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Speaker 2: competently handling it, they might have a chance of competently

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Speaker 2: handling the rest of the mess that is currently Britain.

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Speaker 2: Where's treating is a very interesting one. He's full of contradictions,

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Speaker 2: he's very young, but he's a darling of the Blairite

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Speaker 2: right of the party. He would be the first openly

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Speaker 2: gay prime Minister of Britain. But when the Cast report

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Speaker 2: was handed down into the abuses in kind of trans

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Speaker 2: medicine for kids, he was the one who led the

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Speaker 2: crackdown and led it hard, so he would really suit that.

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Speaker 2: But his problem is is that one he's the first mover.

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Speaker 2: So part of the reason all this blew up in

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Speaker 2: the past week Claire was that Starmer's allies in Number

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Speaker 2: ten went out into the media and said, we think

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Speaker 2: that Wes Streeting is planning a challenge right after the

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Speaker 2: budget's handed down at the end of November, and he's

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Speaker 2: going to take about fifty collies with him and we're

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Speaker 2: going to fight him. And then Wes Streeting turned around

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Speaker 2: and said, no, I'm not not planning that at all,

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Speaker 2: and the Prime Minister was forced to apologize to him.

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Speaker 2: So that helps because he gets first mover. But as

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Speaker 2: we often know Claire, first movers sometimes don't make it

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Speaker 2: to the end of the line.

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Speaker 1: Shabana Mackmud is the Home Secretary. She was one of

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Speaker 1: Britain's first female Muslim mpees. She represents an electorate with

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Speaker 1: a most fabulously English name of Birmingham Ladywood and she's

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Speaker 1: now tell us with dealing with the small boats crisis.

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Speaker 1: This issue seems like a poison chalice for a minister,

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Speaker 1: an unsolvable problem. But Shabana mackmuld is attracting a lot

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Speaker 1: of poles do attention. Why is that?

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Speaker 2: It's mainly because she was a very good Justice secretary,

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Speaker 2: so she was able to keep a handle of the

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Speaker 2: courts in a handle of the prison system, which has

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Speaker 2: been very difficult for Britain in the past couple of years.

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Speaker 2: Macmod is also a darling of the right, especially what

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Speaker 2: they call the Blue Labor Group, so she's very right

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Speaker 2: wing for a labor leadership aspirin, although of course she

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Speaker 2: would be the first Muslim Prime Minister of Britain. She

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Speaker 2: has a record for being very pro Palestine, although she

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Speaker 2: was the one who pushed to ban Palestine action to

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Speaker 2: label them a terrorist organization, so she's tried to soften

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Speaker 2: that image when it comes to the Jewish community in Britain.

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Speaker 2: But she I think would be a bit of the

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Speaker 2: dark horse because she's shown that she can do the

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Speaker 2: tough things, but she's also shown that she has a

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Speaker 2: bit of personality to her, and if it is considered

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Speaker 2: that Angela Rayner just will not work, they might call

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Speaker 2: less around her rather than weiz streating.

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Speaker 1: On manday In Macmody's due to announce new policies on

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Speaker 1: asylum seekers and it's a really critical one for Labor

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Speaker 1: to get their heads around because they're losing ground to

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Speaker 1: the populist right wing Reform Party led by Nigel Farage.

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Speaker 1: What do you think those policies are going to be.

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Speaker 1: Is it going to be something like our own offshore

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Speaker 1: processing system which Britain has tried before.

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Speaker 2: What they're more based on than our offshore system. From

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Speaker 2: what we know at the moment, Claire is actually Denmark's

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Speaker 2: reform So Denmark is led by a labor prime Minister

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Speaker 2: called Metti Friedricson, and she's been able to stay in

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Speaker 2: power by having really tough rules on how long asylum

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Speaker 2: seekers are allowed to stay. So currently in Britain, if

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Speaker 2: you're a refugee, you get through the asylum seeker process,

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Speaker 2: after a couple of years you're able to apply for

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Speaker 2: an indefinite leave to remain or get citizenship. This will

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Speaker 2: be the beginning of tightening those screws over what is

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Speaker 2: a very liberal migration program in Britain, and of course

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Speaker 2: the person who is what was responsible for that liberal

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Speaker 2: migration program is actually Boris Johnson. So after Brexit, which

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Speaker 2: a lot of people voted for Brexit to get migrants

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Speaker 2: out of the country. That was the whole point of

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Speaker 2: it for a lot of people. He was responsible for

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Speaker 2: a massive wave of migration because the economy needed it

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Speaker 2: to survive. And this is what they now call the

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Speaker 2: Boris Wave migrants. So this will be the people who

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Speaker 2: are targeted, the people that have come in the past

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Speaker 2: five years or so and telling them basically, you can't stay.

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Speaker 1: Labor did inherit a mess, and they've said that a

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Speaker 1: lot over the past year. But new governments always have

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Speaker 1: to deal with a legacy. Why do you think Stalma's

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Speaker 1: not getting the kind of patients new governments are usually afforded.

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Speaker 2: I think clear that they aren't getting the patients because

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Speaker 2: one the crisis says so bad. The mess that was

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Speaker 2: inherited by Labor was dreadful. I mean, Reshisunak try his best,

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Speaker 2: but he was not a good Prime minister. Liz Trust

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Speaker 2: belongs in a different category of mad and Boris Johnson

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Speaker 2: I think a man who had many qualities was not

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Speaker 2: ultimately a good prime minister. And Theresa May before him,

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Speaker 2: she was also a bad prime minister. Like they had

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Speaker 2: a really bad run of Conservative prime ministers. Keir Starmer

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Speaker 2: is as bad as them, if not sometimes worse. So

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Speaker 2: in the space of a year, he's broken several key

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Speaker 2: election promises, or at least he was about to break

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Speaker 2: his biggest promise, which was an increase in income tax,

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Speaker 2: and he's had to roll that back. He's made lots

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Speaker 2: of bad spending decisions. He tried to take away support

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Speaker 2: from pensioners for their winter fuel excise, which is pretty

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Speaker 2: important in a country as cold as Britain. And so

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Speaker 2: the first thing he did when he entered government was

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Speaker 2: try and harm benchers. And he's been rounded by scandal.

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Speaker 2: You know, you talk about Angela Rayner, but we haven't

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Speaker 2: talked about Peter Mandelson, the scandal plagued conciliary of Tony Blair,

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Speaker 2: who he put in as the ambassador to Washington. And

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Speaker 2: then it was revealed that he was one of Jeffrey Epstein,

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Speaker 2: the dead Peterphiles best mates.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and he was photographed recently urineating in the street

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Speaker 1: in London.

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Speaker 2: Yes, after spending the night at George Osborne, the former

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Speaker 2: Tory British Chancellor's house. So you know. The question is,

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Speaker 2: if Prince Andrews had all his titles stripped, why is

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Speaker 2: Lord Mandalsson still in the House of Lords. It's unbelievable.

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Speaker 2: Starmar doesn't seem to have any beliefs. He doesn't seem

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Speaker 2: to have any substance. He has no guiding philosophy, he

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Speaker 2: has no north Star. And that's ultimately what makes him

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Speaker 2: bad is that he doesn't believe in anything. He doesn't

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Speaker 2: have any political skills, and he's been surrounded by incompetence

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Speaker 2: in scandal ridden people. It's not a good mixture.

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Speaker 1: Coming up. Can Starmer pull it back from here? It's

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Speaker 1: hard to get a sense from here in Australia of

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Speaker 1: how bad things actually are in Britain. We read about

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Speaker 1: tens of thousands of mobile phones being stolen every year

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Speaker 1: to be shipped off to China. We read about ordinary

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Speaker 1: Britain's being put in jail for nonviolent hate crimes like tweets.

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Speaker 1: What's your sense, as a Richard how bad are things really?

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Speaker 1: Or is there a bit of British glass half empty? Thinking?

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Speaker 1: Going on here. Think it's a.

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Speaker 2: Bit of both. I also think when it comes to

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Speaker 2: our Australian perspective, we sometimes don't realize just how good

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Speaker 2: we have it here in Australia, which is the main

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Speaker 2: reason why so many British people like my family wanted

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Speaker 2: to move here. And we do find the idea of

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Speaker 2: big city life, real big city life like a New

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Speaker 2: York or London and think of it as dystopia, when

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Speaker 2: in fact that's just big city life like exactly not

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Speaker 2: that bad. And it's not like there's not rough places

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Speaker 2: in Australia. You know, some of us did grow up

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Speaker 2: in Gosnos Western Australia. But I think it's a mixture

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Speaker 2: of both. There is clearly serious problems with the British

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Speaker 2: economy and the British popular culture. At the moment, there

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Speaker 2: is no growth, they don't have any industry to speak of.

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Speaker 2: They're lost in themselves because they basically were centered as

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Speaker 2: the financial center, the financial link between the Americans, the

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Speaker 2: Asians and the Europeans, and the minute breaks it happened

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Speaker 2: that kind of cut that off. Even though there's all

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Speaker 2: a lot of financial center there, it wasn't as bad

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Speaker 2: as they thought it was, but they didn't end up

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Speaker 2: being Singapore on Thames, that that vision didn't occur, so

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Speaker 2: they don't really the country does really know what it is.

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Speaker 2: It has all these splinter movements that are growing. I mean,

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Speaker 2: the Scottish Nationalists are as strong as they ever been Pliedcomery,

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Speaker 2: the Welsh Nationalists are strengthening. You go over in Ireland,

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Speaker 2: the new far left Irish President Catherine Connolly is openly

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Speaker 2: talking about a border poll, and shin Feine, which was

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Speaker 2: once the political arm of the Irish Republican Army, is

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Speaker 2: in a pretty good position to be the next Irish

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Speaker 2: government in a couple of years. So you've got the

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Speaker 2: whole Everything in Britain just seems to be falling apart,

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Speaker 2: but you know, there's an argument that everything in Britain's

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Speaker 2: has been falling apart since the First World War. Really.

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Speaker 2: There's a great line in The Crown in season three

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Speaker 2: where Olivia Coleman's Queens says Missus Thatcher is leaving bial

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Speaker 2: Moral to deal with the crisis and hell in a

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Speaker 2: bottom car as Princess Margaret says, life in Britain has

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Speaker 2: been one long crisis since the war, and I think

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Speaker 2: that is true. I think there's a lot of what

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Speaker 2: we're seeing now in Britain. It's very reminiscent of what

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Speaker 2: happened in the nineteen seventies during that kind of stagflation era,

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Speaker 2: which of course felt so many global leaders during the seventies,

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Speaker 2: including Jimmy Carter, including our own golf Whitlam and it

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Speaker 2: felled both Harold Wilson and Ted Heath and finally Jim

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Speaker 2: Callahan and it led to Margaret Thatcher. So I think

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Speaker 2: there is a case of that. We're living in a

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Speaker 2: world of high inflation, which we haven't experience for years,

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Speaker 2: but that golden moment I think, just when Tony Blair

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Speaker 2: took over, where the culture and the economy had finally

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Speaker 2: aligned and was taking a very centrist path, a bit

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Speaker 2: like happened to us during the eighties with Hawking keating.

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Speaker 2: That moment is very much over. The decline is real,

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Speaker 2: but also don't ever doubt the British ability to make

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Speaker 2: everything seem worse than it is.

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Speaker 1: Well, the next elections not due till twenty twenty nine,

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Speaker 1: so there's lots of drama to come.

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Speaker 2: I'd say, Claire, I think we'll have about four labor

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Speaker 2: prime ministers by the time we get to those four years.

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Speaker 2: Thanks Richard, Thanks so much.

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Speaker 1: Richard Ferguson is the Australian's canber bureau chief. You can

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Speaker 1: read all our reporting on British politics and the best

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Speaker 1: news from the rest of the world anytime at the

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Speaker 1: Australian dot com dot au