The News Agents

Keir Starmer came away from a bruising Prime Minister's Questions encounter having to explain why he appeared to make the same mistake twice. No sooner had the fallout from the Mandelson appointment settled (briefly) than the question of why he’d sent another friend of a paedo to the House of Lords.

This time it’s his former comms director Matthew Doyle who admitted his error of judgment in campaigning for a sex offender after he was charged by police. What does it tell us about Downing Street, vetting and the House of Lords?

Later, is the story of the Murdoch dynasty essentially one of emotional abuse? We’re with author and insider Gabriel Sherman.

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What was the moment of maximum jeopardy for the Prime Minister on Monday? And how did he turn it around? Was there more than one plotter? And what brought the party back from the brink?

We dissect what we know about the coup that went wrong.

Later, why is Congress talking about the perilous state of our monarchy? And is the King doing enough to set the Andrew Mountbatten record straight?

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Another head spinning day in Westminster. Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar called on Starmer to stand down as Prime Minister, saying "the distraction needs to end and the leadership in Downing Street has to change."

Many Cabinet Ministers were quick to jump to Starmer's defence. Some were notably slow to back the Prime Minister. With the drama coming just a day after Starmer lost his right-hand-man, Morgan McSweeney, the question today is whether this is the beginning of the end for Keir Starmer?

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Imagine a loan where the Government sets the terms. It can change the terms at any time, and you have no recourse to alter them yourself.

A loan designed so most people never clear it, but pay for it anyway. Not because they failed, but because that’s how it was built.

This is the system successive British governments have built. In this episode of The News Agents, we examine the relations of our student loan system and ask how can it be that the UK government has built a system that you might say would make a loan shark blush?

The News Agents is brought to you by HSBC UK - https://www.hsbc.co.uk/

The Winter Olympics are here! What sport are we all going to pretend to be an expert at? Curling maybe? Today Gabby and Mark are joined by one of Great Britain’s biggest medal hopes, freestyle skier Kirsty Muir.

She started skiing at 3 years old on the dry slopes of Scotland - imagine the carpet burn doing flips on that surface! Her nan can’t even watch when she does the huge tricks. This year she’s already won gold at the X Games and her third World Cup title. So can she win gold in Italy?

Plus, we catch you up on the best bits from The Sports Agents this week, from Carlos Alcaraz's historic victory in Australia, to Gabby being pranked by Roger Federer at Wimbledon, and a big look at the Super Bowl this weekend.

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Executive Producer: Adonis Pratsides

Producer: Sophie Penney

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Tom Hughes is Editor for The News Agents podcast network

Vicky Etchells is the Commissioning Editor for Global

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Keir Starmer apologised this morning for appointing Peter Mandelson as Britain's ambassador to the US. He said he should never have believed "the lies" of Mandelson.

He says he understands the "anger and frustration" of Labour MPs. But is he in a position to win back the support of his own party? How close is he to the brink? And - if Mandelson's relationship with Epstein was widely known at the time of his appointment - what is the PM actually apologising for?

One of those concerned Labour MPs, Brian Leishman, tells us that Starmer's chief of staff Morgan McSweeney needs to leave Downing Street, and serious changes need to take place if Starmer is to stay on as Prime Minister.

Later, Emily discusses the infamous Andrew Mountbatten Windsor photo with Virginia Giuffre. It was real after all and the former Prince lied to her when he said he'd never seen it. So what next for Andrew?

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Keir Starmer says Peter Mandelson "lied repeatedly" about the extent of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, and said that he regrets appointing the Labour Peer as US ambassador in 2024. But with the relationship between the men well known, questions about the Prime Minister's political judgement are looming. Could this be the moment that brings down the Prime Minister?

Later, Sir Brian Leveson on why the courts system faces potential collapse without major reform - and the calls to resurrect his investigations into phone hacking and the media.

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Things are moving at quite a pace these days, but at the time of writing Peter Mandelson has relinquished his peerage and the Prime Minister has asked the Cabinet Office to hand over Mandelson's emails to the police. The Republican campaign group has also called on the police to investigate Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. Will any of this lead anywhere? Or is it all just noise? And why have the Clinton’s now decided to testify before Congress on what they knew about Jefrey Epstein?

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Peter Mandelson has resigned from the Labour party and insists he "doesn’t recall" receiving tens of thousands of pounds from Jeffrey Epstein but has now called for "an investigation...by me“ to check.

What was he doing lobbying for the paedophile billionaire from the heart of government? And what retribution if any should he now face? Keir Starmer has called for his peerage to be removed. But is Keir the only person who can actually make it happen?

Later we hear from tax expert Dan Neidle on whether criminal charges could be brought. And what do the 3 million strong Epstein files tell us more widely about who was at the heart of this global power network - where corruption, paedophilia , and cover-up flourished?

Since recording, the SNP and Reform have reported Peter Mandelson to the police over allegations he released confidential government documents to Epstein whilst in public office. The Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru have also demanded the police investigate.

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Keir Starmer is historically unpopular. When he entered Downing Street, his approval rating stood around +10%. Now? The Prime Minister languishes around -50%. It's the steepest drop in support for any governing party still in its infancy. 8 out of 10 people say that Britain is getting worse as a place to live under Labour's watch. One poll conducted towards the end of last year suggested that even Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor had more public confidence than Keir Starmer's government.

What on earth is going on? What explains such an instant - and decisive - turn in public mood away from a party and a Prime Minister elected in a landslide? As the Andy Burnham saga has illustrated this week, questions around Keir Starmer's authority seem a permanent feature of the news agenda. Was it always this way? Or is there something new, something unique, to Britain and British politics in 2026?

David Runciman is a professor, an author, and host of the Past Present Future podcast. He is one of Britain's leading thinkers on democracy, power and the state. His book, 'How Democracy Ends', observed the new threats to our political model and honed in on the very modern rot inside the representative democracy of the twenty first century.

Lewis paid him a visit - at his home in Cambridge - for a conversation about whether politics here is now ungovernable, whether political authority is now impossible to maintain, and whether democracy itself is indeed coming to an end.

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