(Another) Labour Leadership Challenge?

This BBC Podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

Hey, it's Bubba Wallace from 2311 Racing.

You know what feels like forever?

Sitting on a plane waiting for take-off.

Good thing I've got Jumbo Casino.

With daily boost in social casino games on tap,

this is a kind of fun that makes time fly.

Why not turbocharged your downtime?

Play now at JumboCasino.com.

Let's Jumbo.

Sponsored by JumboCasino.

No purchase necessary.

VGW GroupFord.

We're prohibited by law.

21 plus terms and conditions apply.

Hello, here's a little quiz for you.

What do Laura Koonsberg and Sean Pan have in common?

Neither of them went to the Oscars.

Both of them have been spending time

with Vladimir Zelensky this week instead.

Here's another one.

What do Angela Reiner and Donald Trump have in common?

This week, they have become

Kirsta Armour's chief critics on either side of the Atlantic.

We'll explain what's going on in this episode of Newscast.

Newscast.

Newscast from the BBC.

That boy slivered me in the classroom during our violin lessons.

I was the tattletail in the class.

Can I have an apology, please?

I trust almost nobody.

That daddy has to sometimes do strong language.

Next time in Moscow.

I feel delulu with no salulu.

Take me down to Downey Street.

Let go have a tour.

Blimey.

Hello, it's Adam in the newscast studio.

And it is Chris at Westminster.

And we're also joined by the BBC's chief North America correspondent

who is in North America.

Gary O'Donnellhue.

Hi, Gary.

Hi, Adam.

Hello.

Gary, do you mind sitting patiently for a few minutes

while me and Chris do some Westminster menu shy?

Although, actually, you're a political correspondent for a long time,

so feel free to chip into that too.

I'm patient, personified.

Are those supposed to be Gary when we talk about labour leadership?

That's more of the TBGB's, was your era, wasn't it?

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Well, I was there when Major was there, actually.

That was my first Prime Minister, as it were.

Oh, you've done them all then.

Great.

We can get the long view, as Jonathan Friedland would say already or for.

So, Chris, my question to you.

Are we now in the era where spring receptions of think tanks and campaign groups

are as important as Christmas parties?

Well, I mean, if Tuesday night was anything to go by, yeah.

So this was the basement of a Westminster pub.

It's like a Westminster twist on an open mic night.

You know, singing not required.

But if you fancy doing a bit of a turn about your political ambitions

and the state of the party that you remember of,

then the floor is yours.

What effectively is how it kind of played out.

So this was a gathering of a group called the mainstream group

within the labour fold.

They're broadly, and excuse the kind of political language here,

but they're broadly on the kind of soft left of the party.

Some people make the point that there's one or two people knocking about

within the group that were previously sort of affiliated to

or close to Jeremy Corbyn.

So it stretches a bit arguably away from some of those

who'd seen themselves as soft left.

Anyway, at this thing, in the basement of a pub,

various speeches from various folk.

But in particular, Angela Rainer, former deputy prime minister,

you remember she lost her job back in September.

A rabbi had tax, at which she's still unresolved.

She's still being dealt with by his majesty's revenue

and customs.

Anyway, there she was, delivering a speech.

So this wasn't off the cuff.

It was scripted, about 1,500 words.

And you know what?

It was pretty punchy critique of the government,

in which, of course, she served.

Implicitly the prime minister, she didn't name Kia Starmer,

but I mean, it was, it was no doubt directly an attack on his

style of leadership.

And a sense from her that Labour is running out of time,

that it needs to be bolder, which in Labourland is usually

code for being more left wing.

And that they sort of need to, need to crack on with it, really.

The thing that jumps out at me from reading the extracts

of this speech in various places, because I mean,

I wasn't there.

I don't go to spring receptions.

It was so rhetorical.

It was written to be delivered in a way and then reported

in a certain way.

It wasn't just some, some off the cuff from Marx, as you were saying.

It was, it was, it reads almost a bit like a sort of conference speech.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, so to be clear.

There's half sentences.

Yeah.

Don't lead anywhere.

No, but say to that.

No, but say to that.

It's quite, so to, for the, for the abundance of transparency,

I wasn't there either, but I was very quickly able to get hold of

the entire script of what she said.

And yes, when you look at his on a sheet of A4,

it is laid out in the way that, at speeches are written,

where sentences are kind of half, half complete,

and then there's a dot, dot, dot to allow for a breathing point,

and then there's another bit.

And so it, you know, it, it's a base, some of the kind of rules of rhetoric,

how these things are formulated, how arguments are made

when they are intended to be delivered out loud,

as opposed to be, you know, read on the, read on the page.

So, yes, it was in the basement of a pub,

but this was not ad libbed.

This wasn't kind of, you know, carefree and in the moment,

some thought had gone into this, knowing,

given her prominence and significance within the Labour movement,

that it would, that it would cause ripples at make headlines.

So, I mean, the big headline this morning that everyone

woke up to was her saying, oh, time is running out.

Yeah.

What, what is she getting out there?

Well, she basically is getting out the,

the, the, at the moment, perpetual fear of Labour MPs,

I speak to every day, which is that the party,

the poll suggests, is very, very unpopular.

And they need to do something about it and do something about it pretty quickly.

Now, in the very short term, as the elections coming up in May,

the devolved elections in Wales and Scotland,

and local elections in many parts of England,

Labour are expecting it to be from their perspective bleak.

There's a separate, separate question about,

what is the difference between bad, very bad,

dire and oblivion?

And how the party responds might depend on in which of those categories

they collectively conclude that they are in.

So, that's the, that's the immediate, if you like, short term.

But then for plenty of Labour MPs,

the vast majority of whom only arrived in Parliament under two years ago,

you know, they've been delighted to be able to try and build a career at Westminster,

that extended beyond one parliamentary term.

And when they look at opinion polls of the likes of which Labour have had for ages now,

they would suggest if they don't move,

and yes, it's still very early in the Parliament,

but if they don't move one heck of a lot of them,

are going to be out on their ear.

So, that's the kind of, if you like,

the bruise that Angela Rainer is punching,

and making an argument without explicitly naming Keir Starmer,

without explicitly saying that either or indeed saying at all,

that he should go or she wants the job,

making her ambitions and her visions

for what the party ought to look and sound like, abundantly clear.

But Gary, putting you massively on the spot for a political story

happening in a different country at an event, you weren't at,

when a political speech maker uses a phrase like,

time is running out.

That's to conjure in the minds and ears of the audience

that Keir Starmer's time is running out, isn't it?

Yeah, in many ways, you know,

it's one of those things which you don't have to say out loud,

is it, you don't have to name anyone.

It reminds me, actually, you know, in the old days,

when there was any kind of hint of leadership,

potential leadership contests and Westminster,

there used to always be stories about, you know,

people installing phone lines in some of those terrorist houses

behind Millback.

How many phone lines were they putting in, et cetera, et cetera?

Today, clearly, it's about going to the basement of,

and I'll be intrigued to know which public was,

because I know a few of them in Westminster.

But what I don't know, because I've been out of this for so long,

is how easy is it to trigger a leadership election?

Because both parties over the years have made it harder and harder,

haven't they?

Yeah, and the answer is particularly for Labour, not easy.

So not easy mechanically, but then also not easy,

history suggests sort of psychologically for Labour.

Are they in the business as a parliamentary party,

often, of toppling a leader that they themselves have concluded

might not be up to much?

And recent history suggests, no, they're not.

What they would need, just to answer the question directly,

you would need 80 Labour MPs to be up for going public,

saying that this should be a challenge.

That is one heck of a threshold, but at the moment,

during the last sort of bout of the wobbles earlier this calendar year,

there was a handful.

I mean, if that of Labour MPs who were publicly willing to say

the Prime Minister ought to go, and then you've got the issue of

any potential wannabe successor not wanting to be seen

to be the person who brings the Prime Minister down,

and presumably you've got plenty of...

I mean, they've got the argument is there's plenty of time.

Yeah, isn't there?

There's plenty of time.

So those around the Prime Minister say, hang on a minute,

if I was talking to a Cabinet Minister about exactly this this morning,

and the observation being, hang on a minute,

it only at Christmas at the end of this year,

which is mercifully still quite a long way away,

only at that point does this Westminster Parliament reach its halfway point

if it runs its full course, and governments that remain unpopular

tend to let a Parliament run its full course.

So only at Christmas, only in eight or nine months' time,

do we reach the halfway point.

And of course, if you're the Prime Minister, you can say,

hang on a minute, you can effectively say,

this is not the kind of language gear Stammer would use,

certainly not in public, you can say, get lost,

I was the guy on the ticket who won this massive majority,

who the hell do you think you are?

You know, all words of that, words of that effect,

and also give us time, et cetera, et cetera,

and make it clear, as he has repeatedly,

that he's going nowhere, in other words,

create another barrier to entry to the whole thing,

which is, you do realise there'd be a contest,

if you're looking at it through the prism of being a Labour MP,

is arguably unquestionably bad,

whoever emerges out of the other side of it,

because you're having a contest in government.

You sort of create a whole bunch of other legitimacy questions,

don't you, if you replace a leader mid-Parliman,

because people turn around and say, hang on,

when did the electorate choose you?

You're quite.

Exactly that.

Which again is a sort of baked in negative, whoever you pick.

So also, just on the timeline,

we're not even halfway to Christmas yet.

No, in this calendar year, quite.

Although I've discovered my smart speaker,

you can ask it how many days to go to Christmas,

then it'll tell you,

and then you get a little joke from Santa.

How many other?

I haven't done it for a few days,

we normally have that number at my fingertips.

Anyway, if we're at Christmas back to Miss Rainer's speech,

what was pub was it in?

We want to know.

I have asked that exact question,

including if someone who was there,

and they wouldn't tell me.

And they wouldn't tell me.

Well, they wouldn't tell me.

I think it was because they couldn't,

I genuinely think it was because they couldn't remember.

Rather than, because I reckon,

Gary and I, you know, get you and I, Gary,

at some point, maybe even together,

but at some point,

we'll have both been in the basement of that pub,

because, you know, there's only,

it's fine.

They don't have basement.

Chris, what I was going to ask,

I know, was in terms of policy substance,

Miss Rainer did zoom in on one particular policy

that she's got beef with.

Yes, so this is the idea that has been sort of long

in the gestation from the Home Secretary,

Shabana Mahmouds,

and Labour wanting to be seen in the big picture

to be a punchy and robust on migration,

on immigration.

And in particular, this idea of increasing the time

it would take for people to be able to qualify

for indefinite leave to remain.

And there was a chunk in Angela Rainer's speech,

a fairly small chunk,

but it was a chunk about a specific bit

of current government policy,

in which she branded that un-British,

which is quite a thing to brand it in that way.

Her view being that you shouldn't change the rules

of the game halfway through,

because this could have an impact on people

who are already here,

who might have assumed on arrival

that it would take a certain period of time

before that might be something that they could qualify for,

and actually then discover it would take significantly longer.

And there's a fair chunk of Labour MPs,

I think more than 100 now have gone public,

saying they don't much like it.

The twist from their perspective,

there would be rebels,

is that you can actually do this

without actually primary legislation.

In other words, there doesn't have to be a point

where there's a vote in the Commons.

Now, you could still have a situation

where the parliamentary party was sufficiently restless

that the government felt that it had to tweak things.

And actually, I was in a briefing after Prime Minister's question

to where it looked like they might be going a bit wobbly on it.

They then later insisted they weren't going wobbly.

Right.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't one

or two wobbles potentially in the mix.

But anyway, yeah.

So, yeah, there was a particular policy critique

in pretty blunt language from Angela Rainer

about something that the Home Secretary,

who, by the way, has is widely seen

to have her own leadership ambitions.

That was a specific thing within what she was saying.

I'm also just remembering last time Angela Rainer did this,

and it was when the Tories forced this debate

on releasing all the Mandelson files

for his vetting and appointment as ambassador to Washington.

And the first high-profile Labour MP

to stand up and say, oh, hang on.

The government's trying to potentially pull a fast one here

by deciding what documents get to be released

or exempted for national security.

And maybe the Intelligence and Security Committee

of Parliament should be doing that job was Angela Rainer.

So, she's been making trouble already.

Indeed.

And then after that, but before today,

in the immediate hours after the loss for Labour

of the Gawson and Denton Violation in Greater Manchester,

a neighbouring MP by the name of, yes, Angela Rainer,

went on social media and said it was a wake-up call,

which, again, is language not wildly dissimilar

from the kind of stuff she was saying in the basements of that pub.

Chris, we'll talk about PMQs today as well,

because it was an intriguing example of PMQs

that tells us a bit about where our politics is going.

And I've got very mixed feelings about watching it.

But we'll come onto that in a second.

But Gary, focus turns to you now.

Quite a few things happening in DC today.

One of the kind of very visible things was Tulsi Gabbard,

who is basically one of the sort of intelligence chiefs now

for Trump, being questioned on the hill about the war aims.

What's she been saying?

So Tulsi Gabbard, you know, interesting character,

been on a big political journey of her own over the years.

Now is what's called the Director of National Intelligence,

which is basically the top spy in the country.

I mean, she's not a spy, but you know what I mean?

She heads up all of the nylon 20 different agencies

that make up the intelligence community here.

And you'll remember at the beginning of this war,

18 days ago, the White House said that there was an imminent

nuclear threat from Iran, the regime posed,

and that was the justification for the attacks.

Well, her evidence today, or at least her written evidence,

this is chiefs submitted to the committee,

said that in fact, after the 12-day war last year,

Iran's nuclear capacities have been obliterated.

Fine, that's what Donald Trump has been saying.

But she also said there'd been no efforts to rebuild

those capacities at all.

Since then, that they were cemented in the ground

these enrichment capacities.

Problem was, when it got to the actual hearing,

she wouldn't say it.

And Democrats kept pressing her to say it,

and she wouldn't say it.

And they kept pressing her on a whole bunch of other things,

as well, including whether she and others had warned the president

that neighboring countries in the Gulf would be attacked

by Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar, these places,

because he expressed some surprise that that had happened,

and said none of the great minds had expected that.

And the intelligence community has been warning about things

like that, consequences like that, for years,

including the closure of the strait of war moves

and the oil shock that has created.

So a lot of pressure.

And I think really what comes out of all this

is that there is a significant sort of dislocation

in the messaging around this war from the administration,

that they are struggling to define

certain things like what is imminent and what isn't imminent.

They are struggling also to find a way of justifying

why this American president who promised not to get involved

in foreign wars is so involved.

And struggling to articulate why there was this kind of threat,

or this supposed threat within weeks to the American homeland.

All these things are proving problematic.

And that's a political problem, massive political problem.

But it's starting to, you know, the war is starting to have concrete effects

on every American, you know, dollar average price of gases,

there are 350 gallon here, which is 25% up

and what it was, I think, three weeks ago.

Those sorts of things really, really matter to voters.

And there's sort of things people hone in on at a time

when people are worried about the cost of living

and at a time where they're approaching these midterm elections

in November, where, you know, for those who don't follow these things closely,

every single seat in the House is contested.

And a third of the Senate is contested.

And while at the moment the Republicans have a razor-thin majority

in the House of Representatives, that could easily go.

And in those midterms, presidents often get,

even though they're not on the ballot paper, they often get punished.

So there are all sorts of things coming together

that means that this conflict and finding an off-ramp

is becoming increasingly urgent, I think, for this administration.

Gary, I wonder how much it might this be

in the president's mind at the moment,

that with those midterms relatively imminent

and then the potential kind of loss of power,

loss of political sway that he could have after it,

that he needs to crack on with stuff that he needs to do

as soon as possible, that there might be a limit

to what he can do the other side of November.

So crack on with it now.

Yeah, I mean, that's true.

I mean, I think that there is also a general temptation

by a second term, and obviously this is a split second term,

but second term presidents and presidents who are approaching those last years,

despite their protestations that their focus is always going to be on the domestic,

of the economy, stupid, et cetera, that they all get drawn

into foreign adventures one way or another,

that they feel that's the only place,

because they have significant executive power in that realm,

where they can make a difference.

They get frustrated about not being able to make change at home,

and even though the Republicans control Congress,

Congress is sclerotic.

It gets the big, beautiful bill, yes,

but it gets very little done,

even if you control both houses,

even with narrow majority.

It gets just very little done.

And so I think that there is something in that,

and of course, presidents are often accused of going,

what they might call legacy hunting,

what can I show history that I have actually achieved?

All these things are there,

but he is worried about the midterms as well, I think,

in political terms, because he just doesn't like losing.

He hates the idea of losing.

It's a sort of visceral thing for Donald Trump.

And so all these things are, I think, causing a sort of,

veering about in the messaging day in, day out,

and the White House, I think, in terms of its communications,

if it struggles to keep up with this president,

because he is so often out there,

you can't say this president isn't transparent,

he's out there twice a day sometimes, just riffing,

and the rest of the administration

kind of has to follow and clean up afterwards.

Tell you what, the vocabulary on newscast this week

has been world class.

On Monday, Chris was talking about wags.

Yesterday, I was talking about old coves,

and today, Gary, you've talked about things being sclerotic,

which means rigid or unresponsive.

I like the legacy hunting as a phrase.

I think that's fascinating.

In terms of a political, you know,

the mindset of a politician who knows they're ticking towards the end,

if you like, of their time, even if it's a few years ahead.

They really care about, you know, posthumous reputation.

It's kind of one of those sort of philosophical things.

Why would you care about what people thought once you'd gone,

but people do?

Gary, just going back to Chelsea Gabbard's testimony to Congress,

we talked about the sort of the shifting sands

around the origins of the war,

but she also gave quite sort of subtle description

of what's been achieved so far.

Yeah, she, I mean, she, you know,

she says that they have been, you know,

substantial degradation of their military capacity, et cetera.

The intriguing thing she said is that the regime remains intact.

Now, again, this depends on what she said, doesn't it?

In terms of security definition, she said, doesn't it?

Yeah, but Donald Trump had said, you know,

we've wiped out the leadership.

We've wiped out at least two echelons of leadership.

So, you know, there is some tension there,

in terms of, you know, to what extent are you getting

at the people who you think are the problem,

and to what extent, you know, how deep is their benches,

they would say, in sporting terms in the United States.

You know, how many people are in reserve?

So, there's that, and of course, that is the problem they face

because, you know, when do you stop?

Because there's certainly no sign,

and the president admitted it this week.

Last week rather, there's no sign of what, you know,

perhaps Israel has been hoping for,

and has sort of called for explicitly,

and what the Americans would like to see,

which is some sort of popular, organized uprising,

that could replace the regime,

because we know that the threats are there,

and we know that this regime has murdered protesters

on the streets, tens of thousands of them.

So, the impetus to sort of come out

and find some sort of organized alternative

seems a long way off as well.

Gary, I can also imagine some people interpreting

what Chelsea Gabbard has said,

and both of the things we've just talked about,

as being somebody who's not totally convinced about this war,

and that may or may not be the case with her,

but there are lots of other people

who are being clearly unconvinced,

and I'm just thinking, but like Joe Rogan, the podcaster,

he's been casting doubt on this whole enterprise as well.

Yeah, and later on today,

we're going to get an interview with Joe Kent

on who's going to give an interview,

he's the guy who resigned yesterday,

who was effectively Chelsea Gabbard's deputy,

very Trumpian, but also saying, you know,

couldn't stay on because he didn't think Iran

was an imminent threat,

very close to Chelsea Gabbard.

And she has, you know,

she's been a very, you know, part of that right wing movement

has been very skeptical about it.

Apparently, even in 2019, she was telling,

you know, no war with Iran t-shirts,

apparently that was one thing she once did.

So yeah, she, and people say this about the vice president as well,

of that mindset that believes these foreign entanglements

are a mistake for the United States.

And of course, parts of the mega base

and parts of Donald Trump's support

thought that's what Donald Trump thought as well,

until, you know, these new adventures have started,

Venezuela, Middle East,

a flirtation with even Greenland, of course.

Right, Gary, I'm going to let you go

because there's lots of things for you,

some monitor in Washington,

and happy to have a drink with you in the basement of the West,

whether it's to pub next time you're back.

Oh, you're watching tomorrow.

I'd love it.

Chris, I promised.

And today's PMQs, I'll tell you why I was in two minds about it.

So yeah, I can imagine,

I can imagine your facial expression watching PMQs today.

Well, this is the thing.

So I didn't watch it in real time.

I heard about it afterwards,

and I thought, oh,

this is a new low in the world of

leader of the opposition asking a set of questions,

prime minister,

answering a whole different set of questions

and using it to attack the leader of the opposition.

I thought, this, yeah,

this is going to sound like not very edifying.

But then when I actually watched it,

an hour or so later,

it was quite a dramatic bit of politics

that tells you quite a lot about

where the conservatives and labor are.

Yes.

So what you had was

Kimmy Bader not standing up,

and she has all of her questions,

and the partly game on a Wednesday morning at Westminster

is what will the leader of the opposition ask about?

And obviously it's a choice for them,

and then they've got to decide

how frequently do you pursue a particular topic

or a particular question

if that question is not answered

if it is swerved or ducked or whatever.

And Kimmy Bader not decided she was going to ask about

Peter Mandelson,

and the files that we got a week ago,

a week ago on Wednesday,

but after PMQ's a week ago,

in other words,

she hadn't had a chance to ask the Prime Minister about it,

and there was some criticism of the Prime Minister

doing what they did a week ago on Wednesday afternoon,

in other words,

just after the point that Kirsta Murd left

the House of Commons.

So she asks him whether he had spoken to Peter Mandelson

during the whole business of his recruitment

as ambassador in Washington.

And the Prime Minister didn't answer,

but chose various answers

that had absolutely nothing to do with Peter Mandelson.

So one was Kimmy Bader not was positioned

on the war in the Middle East,

and the other was Kimmy Bader not was positioned

and her view about her shadow

Justice Secretary Nick Timothy,

who'd been saying some stuff on social media.

And so this conversation almost at cross purposes

went on for ages,

where you've got these questions

and you've got answers that were completely unrelated.

Now, what the two of them were trying to do

was point out to the audience

why the leadership and judgment

of their opponent in their view

wasn't up to much.

That's what they were each trying to do,

but they were each using totally different case studies

in order to do it.

Now, if you're of the view that Prime Ministers

or indeed anyone in the House of Commons

ought to make a reasonable stab at answering the question

that they've been asked,

then there would be considerable steam

probably pouring out of your ears today,

because, just to be frank,

those questions weren't asked answered.

But yeah, that was kind of what the two of them were doing.

And then the curious, the added absurdity

into the mix of it,

which leaving us laughing in the press gallery,

was that on a couple of occasions,

Kemi-Badenock delivered some quite sort of

withering putdowns

and then sat down forgetting that at the end of a putdown,

she actually needs to ask a question

because it's Prime Ministers' questions.

So it was almost like the Prime Minister

either forgot or chose not to answer.

And on various occasions,

Kemi-Badenock forgot to ask a question,

which is why the whole business

of asking questions and answering them

was sort of even more bizarre

than PMQ's can often be.

I'm going to say something that's going to sound really trite now,

but for me, it was just a reminder

that everything is politics now

and everything gets weaponized.

So Kemi-Badenock was asking about a person

who is under investigation by the police

for potential misconduct in public office,

and we haven't heard from Lord Mandelson

on the record in person,

but we understand that he denies all those things

and says he never acted for a personal gain

or in a way that was criminal.

But then you've got Kirstama,

attacking Kemi-Badenock for her position

over an active conflict

and in the old days,

that would have been kind of not really

territory that you went into in this format.

But both those things are now just totally fair game politically.

Yes, I think that's right.

I mean, look, the Prime Minister is absolutely determined

whenever he gets the chance,

and this has been the case for a while now,

to make an argument that says he is proud of

his conviction and judgment around the UK's posture,

regarding the war in the Middle East,

and that in his view,

the conservatives to an extent

and reform to a greater extent

have occupied lots of different positions.

And he sees that as a kind of key test

of judgment and your capacity to be Prime Minister.

And he argues, and he wouldn't see,

but he argues that he passed that test

and Kemi-Badenock and Nigel Farage failed to.

Kemi-Badenock is absolutely keen

to prosecute an argument that says that

as she would see it,

the best case study in proving

that Kirstama is a deaf leader

is the ear-pointed Peter Mandelson

as ambassador to Washington.

And so she'll take every opportunity

to make that argument.

He makes an argument in return

about the judgments that she made around the war.

And by the way, when Nigel Farage asked a question

at PMQs about drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea,

the answer that came back was

about Nigel Farage's position on the war in the Middle East.

In other words, he kind of got the same treatment.

He asked a question and got a different answer.

So yeah, I mean, you're right,

sort of everything being politicised.

I mean, I think both sides would say

they are reasonable point,

they are reasonable case studies

in the leadership failings of their opponent

in those moments.

But I mean, yeah, I think that wider point

about sort of everything being political

is a fair one.

The other thing that came to mind watching it

is as Kirstama becomes ever more enthusiastic

about using his position on the war

as a tool to beat his opponents.

Well, he's opening up

yet more opportunities for then Donald Trump

to attack him.

Yeah, that's true.

He's raising the salience of that over hire.

I think that's right.

I mean, perhaps that ship has sailed.

Like the HMS Dragon coin did.

Yes, I certainly realised I was about to...

I think we need some new message for us too.

We do.

Yeah, yes, yes, it does.

It does.

And for me now, the intriguing thing

and this is kind of into Gary's day-to-day reporting

and I'm no longer...

I know he's down gone.

But the...

Is...

Does the repeated nature of Donald Trump

sort of doubling down on what he sees

as the leadership failing of Kirstama

mean that that is going to be a sort of permanent position

that he can't be shifted from?

Or, as is often the case with Donald Trump,

it's not because he sort of, I don't know,

forgets or changes his mind or whatever.

We don't know the answer to that.

But it's certainly not a single barbed comment

that then disappears into the review mirror.

Right, Chris, thank you very much.

Thank you.

And thank you to you too for listening

to this episode of Newscast,

which has now come to an end about 7pm on Wednesday evening.

But don't worry, we'll be back with another episode very soon.

Tera.

Newscast.

Newscast from the BBC.

From one newscaster to another,

thank you so much for making it to the end of this episode.

You clearly do, in the words of Chris Mason,

ooze stamina.

Can I also gently encourage you

to subscribe to us on BBC Sounds.

Tell everyone you know, and don't forget,

you can email us anytime at newscast

at bbc.co.uk

or, if you're that way inclined,

send us a WhatsApp on

plus 440-330-123-948-0.

Be assured, I promise.

We listen to everyone.

We focus on the part of the internet

that most people don't know about.

It's called the Dark Web.

Undercover, in the furthest corners of the Dark Web,

US Special agents call on a mission

to locate and rescue children from abuse.

Move it now.

From the BBC World Service, World of Secrets,

the darkest web follows their shocking investigations.

Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get

to your BBC podcasts.