The Duran Podcast - Under the bus McSweeney. Starmer regime scrambles to keep power

Episode Date: February 9, 2026

Under the bus McSweeney. Starmer regime scrambles to keep power

All right, Alexander, let's discuss Sir Kier Stommer, the resignation of his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney. I guess we could say this is the combo of the Olensky curse and the Mandelson-Ebstein curse. I guess they both had to team up in order to knock out at least the chief of staff of Stomers, who is, from what I understand, very powerful. a politician in the establishment in the UK, but he's resigned. And the rumors are that Stammer could be resigning any time this week. Some people are even saying he might resign today or tomorrow. I'm not sure he's going to give some big speech, I think, either this afternoon or tomorrow.

And some people are thinking 50-50, the markets have it at 50-50, that he could be resigning. What are your thoughts? Well, first of all, let me just say that you're absolutely. right. This is a combo of the Epstein-Mandelson curse and of the Elensky curse. The Elensky Curse, by the way, has played a very, very big role in this. One of the reasons why Stama is where he is, is because his popularity over the last two years, well, year and a half since he was elected, Prime Minister, has completely drained away. And the reason it has completely drained away is is because everybody could see that even as the economy collapses, even as the living standards continue to fall,

even as things go from bad to worse in Britain, the Prime Minister Kirstama is mostly focused on project Ukraine. People have become increasingly disillusioned and angry about this. We've discussed in previous programs how even his MPs, his parliamentary party, have recently taken to calling him, never hear care. They can't speak to him very often because he's usually floating around Brussels, Washington or Kiev, or wherever it is, meeting his dear friend Vladimir Zelensky. He regularly hugs and embraces him outside Downing Street. He does all of these things. So there is little goodwill to him from any part of British society that has drained away incredibly fast over the last 60, whatever it is, months that he's been prime minister, because he gives the very strong

impression of being far more interested in the affairs of another country, namely Ukraine, than in his own. And that is an essential part of what has happened. But of course, the proximate crisis is the Epstein-Mandelson scandal, though to be very, very clear, even if there had never been a crisis with Epstein or Mandelson, I very, very much doubt that Starmae himself would have survived this year. Personally, I thought that he was likely to fall by May.

May, June at the latest, you remember at one point I thought that he might not even get through to Christmas, but he managed to scrape by because so far there's not been any sustained opposition to him within his own parliamentary party. So will he now resign? Will he fall over the next few days? I think it is extremely likely. And I can tell you for an absolute definite fact that if he had not throne, his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, under the bus, he would have resigned today. He would have been ousted today. The reason he did that, the reason he got rid of Morgan McSweeney over the weekend was because he realized that his political position was collapsing. And so he did what people do, or some people do in this situation. Instead of resigning himself, he's through his most

loyal lieutenant, the person who has been instrumental in making him leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister, the one person who, to the extent that this party, this government, ever had a strategy provided it, he threw this man to the wolves in order to, in order to to save his own position. And, well, the rumours yesterday, the talk that was circulating over the weekend as the news that he dumped Morgan McSweeney broke is that he's bought himself a little more time. Now, a little more time might be hours or it might be days. there is a view that as we have a very difficult, the Labour Party is going to lose an important

parliamentary by-election in the Manchester area later this month that nobody really wants to become leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister until that happens, because they'd rather get that major defeat out of the way so that they can blame it on Starma rather than take it over themselves. So there is that argument. There is the other problem that none of the rivals to Stama look at all convincing. The leader of the Labour Party right wing, West Streeting, who we've discussed in previous programmes, is a very close friend of, guess who? Peter Mandelson. They have a long-standing, historic connection with each other. And of course, Angela Rainer, who was the previous, who was Kirstama's deputy,

who he sacked a few months ago, she still has an outstanding issue over her tax affairs and is still being investigated for. So neither of these people is in a particularly strong position to take over as Prime Minister at the moment. if they did take over as Prime Minister, if there was a decision, for example, by the tax authorities, that Angela Rainer had done something wrong about her taxes, she might be under pressure to resign.

If West Streeting became Prime Minister, and it came to be known that his connections with Mandelson were, shall we say, even more intimate than we imagined, then he might also have to resolve. So we have this massive problem at the centre of British politics that there is no conserved, no compellingly attractive alternative to starm up at the moment from within the Labour Party. And that is probably the one thing that is keeping him in office. But there is no doubt at all that his parliamentary party has completely given up on him.

In fact, many of them have come to actively loathe him. And, of course, the country at LaHajh actively loaths him as well. So he is only there at the moment because there is no organized plot to remove him. And if the sense over the next couple of hours is that he's taking the party down even further, even faster, then, of course, that plot might emerge. and it might even emerge within the next few hours. So, I mean, it's a desperate situation. But we have a prime minister in Britain today who is in office, but not in power.

Yeah, everyone loads, Stommer, except for the globalists in Brussels and Solensky. There you go. Those are the only groups of people that actually like Stommer. Everyone else loaths the man. I don't think I'm exaggerating it either, Alexander. including the Trump administration, right? No. Because Stommer and McSween, actually McSweeney was instrumental in trying to put support behind Kamala Harris in Michigan specifically.

So, I mean, the narrative is McSweeney is responsible for Mandelson? Is that what they're trying to tell us? That's why he has to resign. What kind of nonsense is that? That sounds like complete BS, right? I mean. Well, it is. It is complete BS.

He sounds like BS. Well, of course he is. He's the prime minister. Points the ambassadors. Exactly. He appoints the ambassadors. McSweeney doesn't. And by the way, there is now clearly tension between McSweeney and Stammer, because if you read very carefully

McSweeney's resignation letter, and by the way, he clearly didn't want to resign. I mean, Stama basically told him to go and told him, look, if you don't go, I will dismiss you. So that was how it down. Take the fall. Take the fall. But if you read McSweeney's resignation letter, he says in it, I accept I made a mistake in supporting Peter Mandelson's appointment as ambassador to Washington when I was asked for my opinion about it. So it's quite obvious. It's absolutely clear.

Who asked... Who asked... Who asked the phrase opinion? Exactly. Who could that be? Who could that be? Exactly. So, again, it surprises me that people haven't actually passed McSweeney's letter of resignation

carefully because it is that phrase that really gives the whole picture away. Well, you always look at these things carefully. Absolutely. Nothing gets by you. No. Is there anyone outside of Angela Rayner and Streeting? I mean, are these the only two possible candidates? By the way, Alexander, I was reading a post on next, which said,

seven prime ministers in 10 years. Yes. The UK is a banana republic. That's what the post said. It's true. It's true. Seven in 10 years. Absolutely.

It's absolutely true. Maybe the UK establishment, just before you answer my questions, maybe the UK establishment should stop spending so much time on Russia and Ukraine and start thinking about their own country. That's just some free advice to all of the globalists in the UK establishment. Maybe back off on all the empire, fantasy empire building and maintaining and the whole Russia bashing and maybe focus on keeping a prime minister in office for, I don't know, two years, two and a half years, maybe. No, you are absolutely completely right. The most stable government we've had, this sounds incredible, but the most stable government we've had since the Brexit referendum was the one provided by Rishi Sunak. I mean, it sounds extraordinary. But you are absolutely right about this. And you're completely right. The reason for all of this instability, the reason we have this incredible revolving, you know, door of, people becoming prime minister and not being prime minister for any length of time. And bear mind,

I mean, none of them have been especially popular when they became prime minister. The most popular amongst them, arguably, was Boris Johnson. But then Boris Johnson, as we remember, I mean, he started strong because he seemed to be focused on Brexit. He won a strong victory in the 2019 election. there was a moment, a brief moment, when he looked like he might be going somewhere. But then almost immediately he started, well, he got completely mixed up in the whole pandemic crisis and didn't handle that at all well. And then, of course, he began to focus almost exclusively on Project Ukraine with the disastrous effects that we all know. So you're absolutely right.

We are becoming a banana republic. I mean, we are a constant revolving door of prime ministers. And one effect is that you can see across the country that support for the political class is collapsing because they sense that this is a political class that doesn't care about the country and them that is more focused on other things that wants to, as I said, reach this conflict with Russia and maintain Britain's position as the great global power, which of course we are not, and which has completely failed to try and implement Brexit properly, which they never liked in the first place. So, I mean, there is contempt for the

political class, which is entirely justified contempt, by the way. I mean, look at them. Look at how unimpressive all of them have been. Anyway, contempt for the political class, collapse of support for the political parties that used to be the institutions of British politics, the Conservative and Labour parties, and a sense that the country really is drifting. And you get the sense also that out there, there is uncertainty on the part of many people where to go. Some are saying, let's think about Nigel for real. and reform, but I don't get the sense that there is huge conviction behind it. Others drifting towards the Greens, who are now starting to emerge as the party on the left, but again,

without huge amount of enthusiasm or conviction about that either, we are a nation adrift. So that's the first thing to say. Now, going back to your specific point. Rainer and Streeting. If the Labour Party had the kind of survival instincts that it used to have, if the people in the Labour Party who run the Labour Party had two brain cells to rub together, they would say, look, we are in an immediate crisis of our popularity is collapsing. We have this very difficult by-lection that's coming at the end of February. We have problems with the May elections.

We need to bring in somebody who can steady the situation and perhaps begin to turn it round. The only person who shows any sign of being able to do that is the mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham. So we get Stama out today. I mean, I don't mean tomorrow or next week, we go round and tell Stama, look, enough's enough. We have this by-election to win in Manchester. We need to support the position of the Labour Party in the country. Obviously, this isn't a long-term solution, but we have an immediate, short-term, existential crisis that we are facing.

You have to step down today. Then we need to reconvene immediately the National Executive Committee, the people who blocked Andy Burnham. for standing for that seat, that parliamentary by-election in Manchester. We need to do this today to reverse that decision, to clear the way so that Burnham can stand in Manchester. The overwhelming likelihood in that case is that he will win the by-election. Afterwards, a Manchester by-election, he's a popular figure in Manchester.

it would look to many people in Manchester as if the party finally is coming together and is supporting a convincing candidate at least a person who looks a little convincing. Burnham would then win the by-election. He'd be in Parliament by the end of this month. He would look an election winner and the party could unite around him

and they would have a proven election winner who would probably succeed in getting his own protégé elected as mayor of Manchester and who might be able to stem the tide in the incoming local elections. Let me make it very, very clear. I don't believe Andy Burnham is remotely the solution to the problems of Britain or even to the problems of the political class. More likely than not, as Prime Minister, he would quickly fail as well. But in politics, tactics is as important as strategy. You have a crisis now. You deal with it. There is no sign that any of these people have any ability to think through and game plan or strategize in the way that I have suggested. So we're going to just

drift along, perhaps we're going to get Starma out next week. By next week, the by election in Manchester will be only, I think, two weeks away or even less. There won't be any time. So there's going to be chaos and the by-election. The local elections will be a complete disaster. The Labour Party will continue to see. And that is the reality. They don't think like a political party anymore, because fundamentally, they're not that any longer. They are not like the Labour Party that I used to remember, just as the Conservative Party is not like the Conservative Party I used to remember. And if people come back and say, after all that I've said, that Burnham is not the answer that he has died of the wool Blairite, who's occasionally

changed his political clothes to appear a little more left wing, that his successes in Manchester have been overstated. Let me make it absolutely clear that I agree. He sounds like a short-term solution. A short-term solution. What you described is you're putting yourself in the shoes of, say, a Labour Party strategist. Of the old days. Of the old days. If you were one of these strategist for the Labor Party 20 years ago or whatever. That is how you would strategize things, at least to stop the bleeding, the current bleeding that's happening. Not that this guy, Burnham, is any solution for the country, but he could be the solution

for the labor party to perhaps make it through the next year or two, a short-term solution. That's it. Exactly. That's the problem, though, with the UK. Exactly. All they have are short-term fixes. When you go through the seven prime ministers, they were all short-term solutions. And to be clear, so would Andrew Bernard?

Yeah, so would he. He would be number eight. Exactly. So, absolutely. I agree. I agree with that entirely. It in some ways illustrates the crisis that we are in. We are in a profound crisis of politics and society and economy here in Britain.

There was the Brexit referendum, which was the decisive moment. I mean, that ought to have been the moment when the political class understood that globalization was completely unacceptable to the mass of people in Britain. Even many people who voted remain are critical of, we're deeply critical of the whole globalization. process, and the moment had come, basically to jettison that and to rethink politics after the Brexit referendum. They didn't. On the contrary, if you remember, there was that long civil war, Brexit war where they tried to reverse Brexit. Some Labour politicians, like the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, are openly saying they still want to reverse Brexit. And of course, that is their underlying overriding objective.

And the other underlying overriding objective is to do as much injury to Russia as possible and to try to preserve as long as possible the alliance with not the United States, but with the globalist, neoliberal, neoconservative faction in the United States, which in the United States itself is in serious trouble. So they have no imagination, they have no strategy, and they have no real fundamental liking of or interest in the people of Britain. You saw that very obviously when there was that big rally that took place a couple of months ago, the Three Kingdoms rally.

They didn't like it. They didn't like it that Tommy Robinson was there. They didn't like any of the people. who were there. They said all sorts of extraordinary, rude things about the people who rallied. They don't like their own country. They don't like their own people. And they have no plan or strategy for how to address their problems. Meanwhile, we continue to be saddled with Kirstama. I have to say that from my own perspective, just to say this, I long for him to go, just because However bad the replacement can be, it cannot be worse that Stama himself.

He was probably the worst of the seven. Maybe Boris, and I say Boris because he's responsible for sabotaging the one true peace deal that we had in the conflict of Ukraine in 2022. And for that, I don't think Boris Johnson should ever be forgiven or let off the hook for what he did going to Kiev in 2022. and sabotaging the peace deal. But Stomber was without a doubt, one of the worst of the seven prime ministers. Yeah, you know, the whole left-right thing, conservative labor means nothing. They're all globalists. Yeah.

And their number one, there are two concerns. The number one concern is three concerns. Their number one concern is the whole transatlantic partnership, keeping that ideology. liberal world order, keeping that intact. Then you have reversing Brexit and then you have Project Ukraine. That's it. Yeah, that's it. That's what they're cult. And that's what they are. They're all members of this neoliberal, globalist ideology and cult. That's their religion. That's the club that they're all a part of. It has nothing to do with the UK. They couldn't care about the UK. They need to reverse Brexit. They need to prop up Project Ukraine. And actually all of that

feeds into the neoliberal world order, the whole transatlantic rules-based order religion. It's all part of that religion, and they're all members of it. Is reform just a rebranding of the conservative party, or is it becoming just a rebranding of the conservative party? And are the the Greens just becoming a rebranding of the Labor Party? Is there some sort of globalist trickery that they're now playing, understanding that the two traditional parties, labor and conservative, are dying away? I would say that the greeds absolutely are that. I mean, the greeds are blareism ultimately taken to its ultimate level.

I mean, they do come up with some radical things. So, Zach Bolansky, for example, spoke about needing to end NATO. But then how does he talk about that? What does he want to put in the place of NATO? Does he want, for example, a better relationship with the Russians? Does he want to reconsider Britain's position in the world? Does he want to see a world beyond the Western globalist system? No, he doesn't.

He wants a European alliance with Britain involved in it and Ukraine also part of it. So that tells you the kind of philosophies and thinking that Zach Polanski has. And yes, of course, he's part of all of the usual things. the, you know, the sort of identity politics that we've heard about so much. He's even more into that than most people in the Labour Party are, by the way. He is, as far as I can see, he wants to lift whatever immigration restrictions there are. He has no fundamental ideas that seem to me to go against the neoliberal orthodoxes that have dominated us.

And he packages them, he presents them, he does so more fluently and more articulately than Starma could do, which isn't difficult. And he is winning over a certain group

within British society, which it must be said or attracted to these ideas. So, yes, I think he is basically the inheritor of that particular current that is still very

strong and still has a lot of support in some of the cities and the universities and amongst younger people and the student community and people of that kind. So yes, that is the Green Party. Reform is a more complex thing because what it is becoming is a place where the old Labour Party and the old Conservative Party are starting to meet, if you like. So it's electoral base. so far as I can judge is the English, the old English working class. They're particularly strong in the old coal mining areas, the old manufacturing cities, the places which voted for Brexit, in other words. So they obviously still hanker for some kind of return to the kind of old Labour policies

that the Labour Party used to have in the 50s and 60s and 70s, and that's what basically they want to see in terms of economic policies. And they're also fairly interested in some of the more conservative cultural issues as well. Though I think the importance of that for those voters can be overstated, by the way. But what is also doing is that you see entering reform, a drift of former right-wing conservative figures. And they are the sort of people who, if reform were ever to form a government, I have to say, I would see as basically filling up the places in that government.

So you see people like Genrick and Braverman and other people like that, Frost, who is, who I think, I think he's joined reform, or is he thinking of doing so. So they're drifting into the, to reform. And I have to say, what would come out of it, it seems to me, is a government rather like the one that Boris Johnson briefly had. But with more incoherence in some ways. and a prime minister in the person of Farage, who I think would be very uncomfortable working with these people. But certainly, reform is a more difficult party to understand. And it's perhaps more of a work in progress, if I can put it like that, than the Greens are.

All right. We will end the video there. And I guess we will be waiting to see what happens to Stammer. Indeed. All right. The duran. Dot locals.com. We're on X.

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