 Keir Starmer is still stuck in his difficult phase as Labour leader. His honeymoon with the press has ended and people from all wings of the party are complaining he stands for not very much. So how have Labour's leadership team responded to the mini-crisis? Well, according to The Sunday Times, they've turned to a familiar face in the party's establishment, Peter Mandelson. Tony Blair's former strategist is helping to craft a message that it is hoped will win the keys to number 10. Mandelson has also offered advice on Brexit and how to woo big business as the party prepares to unveil an unashamedly pro-business agenda with a commitment to individual prosperity, growth and wealth creation. Now, of course, Peter Mandelson is exactly the person to go to for advice. If you want to see pro-business or at least if you want to see pro-rich people, Peter Mandelson is very famous for saying he is intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich. That's the attitude that Starmer wants in the leader of the opposition's office. Once again, let's go back to that time's piece. It says, having spent years in the political wilderness during Corbyn's tenure as leader, Mandelson was brought back into the fold by Starmer's chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney. The pair have struck up a close working relationship of McSweeney. Mandelson has said, I don't know who and how and when he was invented, but whoever it was, they will find their place in heaven. Now, that's not a recent quote about Morgan McSweeney. That's something that Peter Mandelson said quite early on. I think it was probably during the Keir Starmer leadership campaign, but what he was very delighted about was that Morgan McSweeney had quite successfully, essentially outmaneuvered the left in the party, presented to Keir Starmer as a left winger to the Labour Party membership before veering him quite drastically, I suppose, one could say to the right, Ash, I want your take on this. What does it tell us about Keir Starmer that he has turned to Peter Mandelson in this moment of crisis? It tells us three things. One is that Keir Starmer is perfectly happy with this sharp tilt to the right. But two, it also tells us that he's out of ideas. And three, perhaps his instincts for political self-preservation are not as strong as we gave him credit for. And all of these things are in fact related. So Keir Starmer, I think, isn't necessarily someone who is motivated by having a really strong set of politics. Jeremy Corbyn was motivated by a deeply moral sense of socialism. Tony Blair had a vision. He had sincere beliefs which he held. Keir Starmer, I think, just wants to win. He just really wants to be Prime Minister. He's got no idea how he's supposed to do that other than sort of following this quite dull path which has been laid out for him, which is be as inoffensive as possible to win back the votes of five homeowners in stoke. That's not working. He's sort of hemorrhaging some of that goodwill which he'd enjoyed for the past year for simply not being Jeremy Corbyn. And he's quite happy to sort of tilt towards a kind of blue labour direction with faith, flag and family and all that kind of stuff. And doing this tap dance we've all seen before from Labour of I am ferociously, pathologically, neurotically pro-business. So I think it sort of shows the lack of a political centre of gravity in Keir Starmer that Peter Mandel might be being brought in. But this is actually from I think a perspective of, well, how does Keir Starmer survive until the next election and indeed win it? I don't think it's by bringing Peter Mandelson back on board. Let's just take for instance one of the things that he's supposed to help out with which is sort of fashion this identity for Keir Starmer as being unashamedly pro-business. The kinds of business ventures that Peter Mandelson's name became associated with are kind of crooked ones. There was all that stuff about him having to step down from his role as secretary of trade early on in the First Blair Ministry because of an undeclared loan from a super duper rich labour colleague. It was an undeclared interest-free loan which allowed him to buy a massive house in Notting Hill. After his time as a European commissioner, there was talk of a conflict of interest. He was spending time on a Russian oligarch's boat. There was all sorts of stuff about there being this kind of quite underhand access to power that he was perfectly happy participating in. And there was also the expenses scandal. You've got the other time he had to resign which was because he'd helped along with an Indian businessman's passport. He'd made a very generous donation to the Millennium Dome project. What Peter Mandelson is associated with isn't helping mum and pup businesses get on their feet, sort of small businesses that we like to see on our high street helping startups get going and all the rest of it. It's actually quite corrupt, big money interests where there's a consensus in this country that we want that out of our politics. And there's a consensus on that from voters who vote Conservative and Brexit Party in UKIP all the way to the left. So I think that what bringing him in from the cold could indicate for Keir Starmer is that he's going to lose one thing which he had a pretty decent claim to, which is one of kind of general... He had a kind of a commissioner Gordon vibe to break another Batman comparison. It's not necessarily that you trusted his politics or it's not necessarily that you think of Keir Starmer as being someone who is motivated by a very deep set of core beliefs. But you didn't think of himself as Keir Starmer as someone who was being close to corruption and close to those kind of dirty, underhand financial practices which kind of poison and corrode our politics. That's not something you thought about with Keir Starmer. What bringing Peter Mandelson is, it really, I think, risks tarnishing that one bit of Keir Starmer's reputation, which is still intact, which has actually been fairly strong. So I think that this is going to end up being something of an unforced error. And what Peter Mandelson, sorry, will do being closer to Keir Starmer is use that as a means to further disempower the left and I think kind of prepare the ground for a new Labour leader at some point, maybe before the next election even, who comes from the right wing of the party. So I really do think that from all angles, this is an unsound decision for Keir Starmer. You're watching Tisgisawa on Navara media. We go live every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 7pm and we put out videos every single day. So make sure you subscribe to the channel so you don't miss a thing. Another sort of nugget of gossip that was in that Sunday Times piece, which was people pushing for a cabinet or a shadow cabinet, sorry, reshuffle. So let's go back to that piece. So apparently, privately, Starmer has also been warned by allies that certain members of his team are underperforming and near invisible among those who have been identified at Annalise Dodds, the Shadow Chancellor, Andy McDonald, the Shadow Employment Secretary, and Kate Green, the Shadow Education Secretary. At least one source close to Starmer is understood to be arguing for a reshuffle. Many of those appointed to Keir's team have never served in opposition, let alone government. It goes on. The lack of experience is telling. There are very talented people within the party and there is a sense that he is not fielding his top team. Another senior Labour figure said, Boris Johnson has got one of the worst cabinets in post-war British history. It is disturbing that some of their Labour counterparts are even worse. Some believe that able former ministers, including Yvette Cooper and Hillary Ben, should be offered a route back. Now this might seem insignificant because I'm listing a bunch of names who are not particularly outstanding in terms of their politics or their performances. Annalise Dodds seems fairly decent. She seems like her politics are reasonably progressive, but she hasn't really impressed as Shadow Chancellor. I think that's mainly because she hasn't been allowed to say anything. They'd be replaced by people who are also not particularly outstanding or exciting. In terms of the nuts and bolts of the party, it is quite significant actually that people like Yvette Cooper and Hillary Ben are being pushed as people who should be right at the top of the party again. This really goes back to the Ed Miliband era, because Ed Miliband probably is to the left of Keir Starmer. He did come to the leadership with an idea, which was that after the financial crisis, the centre of political gravity had changed, and so if he took the party to the left, then that could build a broader coalition for the Labour Party. But he was really restrained by having people like Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper in top jobs. So they were Shadow Chancellor and Shadow Home Secretary, respectively. And what's happening now is those same right-wing backbenches are saying, look, Keir Starmer, the problem is he has actually quite a soft left Shadow Cabinet, people like Annalise Dodds, who are reasonably progressive. He needs to get rid of them and have another Blairite, Brownite, whatever, new Labour set of people up there with him who can get rid of any suggestion that this could be a progressive party and would implement progressive reforms that could potentially hold big businesses in this country to account. What's your take? Do you think we will see Yvette Cooper and Hillary Bann back in those top positions? I think that it's possible. And I think one of the reasons that makes it possible is that the Labour Party is really bad at dealing with its own jitters. So as soon as you have the story brought into motion of Keir Starmer's experiencing a bit of a midlife crisis politically, people are losing faith in him, it comes across as boring, and that becomes a self-perpetuating story. If after local elections there aren't great results which are delivered, or there are results which can be spun into, suboptimal results, then I think there will be a reshuffle on the cards. Something which I predicted in my edition of the Cortado a couple of weeks ago, which you know if you actually read it, Michael, that I did think that a reshuffle would be on the cards later in the year, possibly with the kind of resurrection zombie-like of some of these Blair and Brownite figures. What do I think that is? Let's leave aside my political differences with Hillary Bann and Yvette Cooper for a second. I have very profound political differences with them. Is it going to be successful? It is the dumbest fucking decision ever because what it means that Keir Starmer is doing is looking at Labour's history over the last 20 years and going, the people who oversaw the decline of Labour in Scotland, the beginnings of a crumbling red wall, the people who had no ideas, who had lost the faith of their own grassroots, to the extent that Jeremy Corbyn, the backbenchers foreign secretary, the worthers, originals, granddad of socialism could become leader of the Labour Party. Let's just get those people back in again because even if you accept all the things that were said of Jeremy Corbyn, oh, he's the worst leader ever, actually he was able to outflank your boy. He was able to speak to the grassroots too well and deliver the largest increase in Labour's vote share since 1945. He was still doing better than this set of horrors. What worries me is that the Labour Party, and I'm talking about this from the party's right its centre and its left wing, but is it really difficult to bring in young new talents? Now there are skilled communicators on Labour's right. I've always said that Bridget Philipson is one to watch out for. I think there's a reason why she keeps a low profile, but slowly building up her reputation. And of course, as talented MPs and the parties left, Sara Sultana carving out a bit of an AOC-like space for herself by being that kind of people's tribute in Parliament. That's what she's trying to do. But because of the way selections work, because of all the fucking backdoor horse trading and who knows how you become selected as a parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party. You've got to sacrifice 30 goats and give someone a five-hink hand shandy at some point. I don't know what you have to do, but it doesn't seem to get really excellent new fresh blood into Parliament. You often get the case where you've got people who are really excellent community activists or really sort of skilled communicators who just because of the opaque nature of the selection process, don't make it into Parliament. And that's a problem for the Labour's right as well as a problem for the Labour's left. Because it doesn't mean you've got this whole set of new faces, clean skins, as it were, to come in and say, you know what, we're going to do new Labour sort of tilt towards capital without any of the baggage from Blair and Brown. Here they are suggesting Hillary, Ben and Yvette Cooper just bring in all that baggage in with them. And people's memories do extend back to those years. They do remember the allegations around sort of cash for honours and the sort of overseeing of the, I don't know what you would call it, the like shopping mollification of British politics, a sense of like lost integrity, of lost purpose. People remember that from the Blair and the Brown years.