I’m not sure that’s a ratio I would like, now before we speak to Benedict Spence about the state of the nation, let’s refresh ourselves because this is what I call Keir Starmer’s greatest hits. Let’s kick off, first of all with what he said before he sacked Sue Gray.

I just want to clarify her position as apparently, it’s been causing divisions, can you obviously carry on with it? Yeah, that’s complete nonsense, so I hope that’s clear enough. That’s complete nonsense absolutely no divisions being caused by Sue Gray. Why have you finally then, I can’t, let’s move on because still he has got something more to say about cronyism. Let’s move on because still he’s got something more to say about it. We will restore standards in public life with a total crackdown on Judaism.

Seriously politicians think they can carry on like this or my, what they can forget how do you fancy £32,000 for some suits and some glasses yeah right then. Next one here’s Starmer on the rules. It very important to me that the rules are followed, I’ve always said that I said before. It’s very important to me that the rules are followed, I’ve always said that I said that before the election I’ve reinforced it after the election. This is too good isn’t it I mean you can’t write this stuff.

This is actually genuinely, absolutely what he said here’s what he said on your line of third before you prepare the issue party for government.

We have prepared all about apartments for government if we are privileged to come in to serve our country it will be public service, for me as it always has been not self-entitlement. Public service not self-entitlement. Really, we’ll be the judge of that and finally the P.A. is to this dance on a very serious matter, I’m afraid he managed to make this blunder. So, I call again for restraint and de-escalation of all between Lebanon and Israel. Again, all parties to pull back from the wing. I call again for the media, a ceasefire in Gaza, the return of the sausages, the hostages.

I just can’t explain that, I mean it’s, we’re going to, people all week about this and nobody but nobody can explain how you mistake the word hostages for sausages. I mean it’s got so bad I was out last night having some dinner and they served up a rather nice pasta with some Tuscan sausage in it and we all talking about you know pasta with hostages. We’re all talking about you know pasta hostages. That’s what we do.

Benedict Spencer is here very good morning to you Benedict. Good morning, Mike, I’m very well I mean It’s hard to keep a straight face and watching all that but it’s quite actually pathetic, is it not that we are about to reach the first 100 days of this new Labour government and that’s the kind of shambles that we’re having to encounter on a daily basis.

Well not only a hundred days of the new Labour government but as we were so reliably informed a hundred days of the grown-ups not being back in charge. It’s been, it is delicious actually in many ways that so many it has been, it is delicious actually in many ways that so many people the day after that election said don’t worry everything’s going to be fine, we’ve got a sensible government full of people who are serious on policy and have your best interests at heart and it frankly has been even more laughable than the last hundred days of the Tories here being to be honest.

Well, it is and that yeah, that staggers me so much that the bare face lies, the hypocrisy, I mean some of those quotes, we’re sharing some of those clips that we’re showing where he’s clearly demented isn’t he? I mean when he says this is not going to be a government of self-entitlement, this is going to be a government of integrity. This is going to be a government of service, I mean who do you think he is kidding? I mean he’s carpet-bombing what reputation, what actual respect the Labour Party had. I mean we do have to remember they won a large majority not because people like them but because they weren’t the Tories, so actually as much as people they might say that they were offering something different that the people bought, but I still think there was a lot of scepticism about how good it is from bench work but yeah they’ve just taken it to lengths that I didn’t really think were possible in terms of you know the gifts and the freebies and the double standards and the two facedness and even the explanations you know.

People like Angela Rayner coming out in the midst of all this going well everybody does this, it’s perfectly fine you know basically setting out their stall, why the Tories were bad and they got away with it so we can do the same, as if that’s how this works. As if that’s how popularity works is that how legitimacy works and as if her prime minister then doesn’t very regularly go on television saying we will do the exact opposite of these things, then it turns out we’re still doing well, this is the problem you know because no matter how much he might want it all to go away, he seems to be forgetting that unfortunately the media in this country are still relatively free and suddenly shuts it all down and manages to sort of stop us all from saying things that he doesn’t like.

But, you know this whole you know, please go, you know trouser gate Lord Alli being in person and be investigated by the House of Lords now being looked up by the police you know, in case the Keir Starmer’s also now being looked at by the police in case he misreported where he was living, I mean it’s just, he can’t shake it off the, I mean you will see I mean they’ve tried actually, they’ve tried to say always the right wing press is that you know it’s all of that sort of thing but nobody’s buying that particular I mean what’s most telling is that even the Guardian and the Observer are now very frequently running pages that discuss not perhaps so much things like you know the freebies or anything like that but a very frequently running stories about Rachel Reeves tax plans and how actually they’re probably aren’t very good and are not going to work.

If you’ve already got the Guardian going in two footed on Labour policy saying hang on guys this might not be very good for the economy, I mean that I think tells you everything you need to know about how well Labour have started and I think people were prepared to give them a grace period, that’s the irony. You know in the first sort of three or four days people were out there going well this government will need time to bed in and undo a lot of the problems that the Tories have left them with, but they shot themselves in the foot and I don’t even just mean with things like the sleaze allegations but actually starting off your time in government by saying we have too many people in prison and so we’re going to be letting out people before they finish their sentences.

What were they expecting things to happen? You can’t tempt fate like that and think oh yes everything will be fine just because we say we’re grown up right and you also said when he was asked before that happened if it could be absolutely sure that nobody would reoffend, nobody would be in danger and when he managed to get that wrong as well but it was very indignant of being asked the question as we saw from the one about Sue Gray, you know is she being divisive behind the scenes?

No absolute, long since, I am clear on that, and he gets very touchy and he tells the obvious Miss Truths, he must know he’s lying because he knows that she is being divisive because you know two weeks later we yeah, I mean that whole thing and the telling what the effort they went to get her in the first place right and controversy that it caused, because it did cause controversy, to get sort of a very senior civil servant to then come on board and take a political role once she’d been involved in a role that was meant to be very impartial and of course it was involved in the defenestration of Boris Johnson with that investigation to sort of go to that lengths to bring this person in and say well we’re prepared to take that risk, but she’s a real straight talker, she knows how everything works and why she’s going to make it work and then again, keep on staying with her until your chief of staff is out of the door then replaced I mean again what does that say about his judgement of course and the story doesn’t end there because you know we were sort of all led to believe by the sort of spin doctors in Downing St, frankly they were not very good at.

This was a bit of a battle between Harry Morgan and McSweeney, now it’s all over she is going to go do the job as the Envoys for Nations and Regions, it’s all going to be lovely well apparently not because she’s still briefing against the government, she’s still briefing against McSweeney who she clearly hates and she’s now angling for a big massive payoff from the job that she was fired from because she was no bleeding good at it.

I’ve got to be honest so I kind of think from her perspective well why not, you’ve you know you have torpedoed your own reputation as an impartial civil servant to come and work for Two Tier Keir yeah and he clearly has no handle on his own operation.

He’s already allowed a power struggle within number 10 between her and McSweeney and you’d probably be feeling from her perspective well yeah, that’s my reputation gone, my future in the civil service gone, my service, my future in government you know in the administration of the country has gone and seeing is actually the Labour party throwing money around left right and centre on your freebies and redecorations and all the money for train drivers and this money for the special press group and that you’re probably sat there going well, why shouldn’t I have a piece of this?

Why I’m not the one that made this appointment I’m absolutely going to get my tuppence worth yeah and every story seems and not be able to be put away, I mean you can imagine in the old days whether you like it or not and I don’t like him, Alistair Campbell was pretty good at killing stories if he didn’t like them you know, by the same token previous kind of press secretaries in even John Majors time and Margaret Thatcher’s time were pretty good ending stories, but still we’re talking about the Taylor Swift motorcade.

Here’s Angela Rayner trying to justify what it was, an absolute operational decision by the police in the context of threats that the singer had heard of in Europe so it was a purely operational. I absolutely dispute that somehow this was in any way connected to whether somebody went to a concert or not, it was an operational matter for the police and it was about security in regards to the threats that were active across Europe to make sure that the singer was able to deliver those concerts which brought in a huge amounts of investment and money into our economy, including those small businesses that need that, but it was a policing matter, not an issue for politicians.

I don’t know the range of the rain it was briefed, not to mention that singer’s name Taylor Swift but you know is clear that something happened in that Cooper has not justified what she did. She’s never come out and said anything she completely failed to disclose the fact that you got free tickets through her husband Ed Balls you know and it shouldn’t be a story.

I don’t think it’s a massive story but it’s indicative is it not? Been a so very useless they are managing the news well that’s exactly the point and I think if Cooper is not one of the sorts of the new intake of Labour and people that has little experience a government, she actually is a very sort of wise old head supposedly who’s been put in into office. She should have known in her position as Home Secretary, look you may be at some stage called upon to intervene on behalf of certain individuals to do with security matters. It is not as if Taylor Swift was an unknown entity, you know that this is somebody who actually you can see the tour coming six months in advance because it’s so vast and actually she would have known that there would have been special security implications around that even before we had this territory yeah.

You’d have known that, so what is she and other MPs senior MPs ministers doing taking tickets for this sort of thing, because she should have known at some point there was a very high likelihood that somebody would have turned around and gone hang on, as you’re in charge of this person’s security aren’t you in some way compromised? Doesn’t it look a little bit odd you know that they’re trying to spin it, saying well they get the tickets from Ed Balls and that’s how she got them, but still, come on you can’t make that degree of operation to get away with it, no you can’t and also there are implications for other people who are going to come here now in the future, who are going to say any given sort of you know drop of the hat, there’s a bit of a death threat that we’ve been given so we better get a police motorcade.

According to the Sun this morning there were several trips each one of which cost £30,000 for the police to police and of course there’s a Prince Harry scenario, now where he may come back and say to the people who effectively won the court case over him, to say you don’t need this, you don’t deserve it, we’re not giving it. So, he’s now got perfect, I mean you know I’m no fan of Prince Harry but I can say he’s got the perfect right to go back to the police now and say well hang on you’re going to give it to Taylor Swift and I’ll give it as there is the latest death threat.

I agree with you, I think of suddenly we’re all saying thinking Prince Harry, it’s got a very justified point as a member of the royal family to say actually I should get at least some of what Taylor Swift is getting, but I mean equally you know if this is going to be the thing it’s going to become a marketing strategy actually the lots and lots of American celebrities are going to use maybe British ones as well they’re going to apply for this sort of thing, they’re going to expect it, they’re going to factor it into sort of the promotional stuff around their tour and the British taxpayer will be footing the bill for that all because actually of inexperience and frankly a breed on the part of British ministers it basically saying to anybody well look if you got a big enough profile you can have it you can have the state doing this whole sort of blue lights thing which, just on a sort of an operational level I would have thought would draw attention to the whereabouts of a particular end of it.

If you’re a terrorist who’s I don’t know willing to blow themselves up or be shot trying cause mayhem are you actually going to be put off by the sights of the blue lights no, you’re going to go towards the lights yeah?

You’re absolutely right I mean it’s not in any way necessarily a way to save you on somebody’s life but listen, graduates and talks you haven’t experienced thank you very much, I do we can talk all day because it’s so much more to so many more things to talk about this, from Nigel in Cambridge is “as the threat in Vienna was not to her, it was to her audience, not sure how a police escort for her personally would help a similar threat which the MET judge to be risk” Idiots yeah, I think that’s right, let’s get a voice note.