The support for the Labour government is quite broad but extremely shallow and fickle because a lot of the

support was you're not the Tories and then look at the popular vote. The Starmer government

got fewer votes in the July 2024 general election than Corbyn got in

2019 and in 2017 when Labour had their worst election result for decades. The landslide was loveless. Hello, welcome back to the Brendan O'Neill show with me Brendan O'Neill

and my special guest this week, Liam Halligan. Liam welcome to the show.

Good to be with you, Brendan. It's been a while. it's been a while and a lot has happened since we last spoke on this podcast

Not least that we've got a new government the labor government and I guess I just want to start off with a broad question. I hope it's not a boring question, but in your capacity as a esteemed commentator on economic and political affairs for the telegraph and many others.

I wanted to ask you what you think of the new government.

It seems to have had an extraordinarily short honeymoon period,

even in comparison with other governments., doesn't seem to be going

fantastically well. What's your take on the Starmer government?

Well, I think the honeymoon was always going to be short, Brendan, because the landslide was

loveless. We've got this headline majority of something like 170 seats.

It's not quite clear what the majority is because Labour has already suspended some of its MPs of course.

But you know, a Blair era majority, right?

Blair got 179 in 1997 and Starmer got around 170 as a majority.

But the underlying scophology of that result

could not be more different.

You know, I covered the Blair election for the FT

as a lobby correspondent.

There was a genuine wave of enthusiasm for new

labour. The shadow cabinet incoming the new government. There were many people on

...