"Is Starmer a truthful man?" | David Starkey clashes with Labour's Peter Edwards

Amid the ongoing collapse of Sir Keir Starmer's premiership, it occurred to me that the one person I hadn't discussed this with was somebody who actually believes the Prime Minister is doing a good job.

I speak to Labour members frequently, but even they mostly concede that Starmer has been a disaster in office, and so we end up broadly agreeing with each other on the bigger points, if not the specifics.

However my guest this week was bravely willing to stump up a defence of Sir Keir; and he is Labour through and through. Peter Edwards was an adviser to a former Labour Shadow Chancellor and for years edited the LabourList publication; the equivalent of ConservativeHome for the political Right, which tracks the party's people, policies and fortunes closely. His contacts inside the party are impeccable.

I really wanted to pin him down on a specific point: that having ridden into office on a wave of sanctimonious outrage at Tory sleaze, Sir Keir Starmer has proven to be at least as mendacious as his Conservative rivals, but worse, cloaks his lies with piety.

As you'll see, Peter was having none of it, and what struck me about the conversation is how two people, both reasonably intelligent and informed, can come to such wildly different conclusions about contemporary events. Enjoy the episode!

Thumbnail credit: “Prime Minister Keir Starmer visits Northern Ireland” by Number 10, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0