so who could be prime minister, sir keir starmer has transformed labour's fortune since the party's historic defeat in 2019. he has also transformed what he and his party say that they stand for which has left a few puzzled as to who the real keir starmer is. one thing is clear, though, he has gone from being the man who could not win the next election to the man who, many say, cannot lose. keir starmer, welcome back to political thinking. thank you for having me back, my third time. it is! what a change since last time you were here in 2021, does that phrase, cannot lose the election, bristle? i do. there is a long way to go. a lot can change until however long it is until the next election and we have to keep utterly focused on what we need to do. is it one of those things where you lie awake at night? what i do, i always remind myself that, to get the worst result since 1935, to even a 1—2 seat labour majority is a bigger swing than the swing in 1997 and that is always sobering. the pessimists always look at 1992. i know you know neil kinnock pretty well. he had one of those elections where people said you cannot lose and he did, tojohn major, back in 1992. do you talk to him? i talk to neil kinnock, tony blair, gordon brown, and talk to tony and gordon particularly about the period of �*95, �*96, �*97, notabout specific policies because that is too long ago, but about the pace, intensity, preparation that we need an also increasingly recently about the mood, because there is this tendency when we should be looking forward to always look back so everybody will say what is next year's election going to be about then search the history books to say is it �*97, �*92, further back, which is obviously wrong because it will be 2024, but the mood in �*97 was one of optimism. the economy was growing. services, public services were not on their knees, and we were turning into a new century which always gives a human sense of hope. and therefore, our theme was that things could only get better, this song that was sung at every labour party gathering ever since. but it chimed with the times. and it wouldn't now. and it is a big mistake to misread the mood of the country. at the moment i think there is a real sense of concern, of insecurity. and people want a labour party and if we are privileged enough to serve, a labour government to weld together the reassurance that they need with the hope that things can change. and it is a different mood, and we have to get that absolutely spot on. coming to hope and how you can rate it at this time. coming to mindset, you just referred to it was that we said that you hate losing, every opposition politician has to say that. i can prove it to you on the football pitch. yes, chopper starmer! i have an allegation to put to you, sitting in that chair not long ago the scottish labour leader anas sarwar�*s captained team scotland against team england, he said his team were winning the referee, one of keir starmer�*s members of staff extended the game not by three minutes passed by 35 minutes until your team went one goal up and then blew the whistle is this true? no! he is exaggerating. it was a great game. we were down at half—time and so, we had to have words. and i realise then that not only my passion for winning but i would never hear the end of it from anas and scottish labour if we didn't win. we have established that you hate losing, that you are ruthless, my words not yours, but what i'm interested in is what stirs you. the question people often ask. and in politics, what stirs you in ordinary life, what makes you angry in the ordinary, everyday life, what is the quickest way to wind up keir? disrespect, not respecting people for who they are, i really hate it and it really makes me angry. you see it in different places and different ways, the way people behave to each other, don't listen to each other, and don't accept each other. does that date back to the treatment of your dad? when we talked before on political thinking, you talked about the fact that your dad was a factory worker who made tools, somebody who always felt it stems back to that. i probably appreciate that more now than i did then if i am honest with myself. but he felt that because he worked on the shop floor in a factory, that he was looked down on, and i could see it manifested. i was lucky. i got through the 11+, went to university, first in a family, my brother really struggled with learning. he had real difficulties. he was called all sorts of names. and my mum and dad instilled in me that his success in where he got to in what he achieved in life wasjust as good as mine, and so, the disrespect that comes with calling people thick, that, you want to wind me up, call somebody thick, i will never accept that. that determination to change things for the better, by which i mean, the living standards of families across the country, families like my family when i was growing up, to give them what i have always called the ordinary hope that particularly working—class families want, that is what stirs me to reach that place, to change their lives, have that opportunity. interesting that you use the word class. people might agree with what you are saying, your goal, but often people in recent years have shied away from class as a classification. sort of nervous about it. with that sense that people don't want to be called working—class, who are now middle class and their lifestyle, just because they used to once worked in a factory, calling themselves working—class. this is a complete mess of standing up what it is to be working class. working—class people, families like mine, we didn't have a lot of money, dad worked in a factory, mum worked as a nurse but had to give up because she wasn't ill, we struggle to make ends meet, we did not have meals out or elaborate holidays, that is an experience i lived, but it is wrong to suggest that the ordinary hope of working class people isn't to get on and to better yourself, to buy that house, to have a slightly bigger house we have children, they get the car you want, the holiday you want. it is a misconception that somehow, this is not the working class dream. it is the ordinary hope of working class family so i am really comfortable. i had incredible journey from that family through university into being a lawyer, working in northern ireland, running a public service, the cps, now sitting here for the third time with you, as leader of the labour party, i want everybody to have a chance to, in the way that i have had a chance in my life. we are speaking about your dad, and your mum in previous editions. you spoke movingly about her, notjust a nurse but somebody who utterly dependent on the health service because she was ill for a very long time. the last time we spoke you told a story about her dripping your hand, saying, do not let your dad go private. —— gripping. because it symbolised her passion. but since we have talked, you, wes streeting, have talked endlessly about changing the nhs, nhs reform. can you do that, when there are so many people in the country like your mum, who just think the nhs is what is right and we don't want it to change? there are things in play, the one is whether reform equals private sector in the nhs. i don't agree with that. that is not what i mean by reform. i accept to get the waiting list we should use the private sector to get us through that appalling list of 7.6 million people waiting for operations. but the reform i'm talking about is a broader reform, which is to move the nhs from something which basically treats sickness to something which is a preventative model using technology, ai, diagnostics, much more quickly, moving it closer to people so that the choice isn'tjust the gp or a&e which it is at the moment, and improving mental health services. at the question is how. we are not auoin to at the question is how. we are not going to go _ at the question is how. we are not going to go through _ at the question is how. we are not going to go through your - at the question is how. we are not going to go through your tax - going to go through your tax policies. we are not going to go through your tax policies. there is no point in using this interview to do that, but it it is hard for you because you acknowledge the change in mood since 1997, your words, and that is the sense that there wasn't no country i would suggest, i wonder if you would agree, that things are so bad that nobody can do very much about any of it. let me acknowledge that emotion because it is powerful then explain what i think we can do about it. i think we are fighting on two fronts going into the selection. the first is a group of people that look at the country and think it really has been such a failure over the last 13 years, a feeling that almost nothing is working and therefore in their mind they say, i know that you want to change things for the better but i don't think anybody can do it because it is so broken. there is that group which is a very sad reflection on the last 13 years. there was another group that will say i like what you say but i don't believe you're going to do it because we have been told so many things over the past few years, which have not proved to be true, particularly since the last election, we have to face both of those. the answer is firstly to build the reassurance. i understand where you are at and genuinely... then we can fix the short—term problems and reassure them. that is about stability and security. people often say to me, are for you for your reassurance or are you for hope but you cannot have both and you're not going to win an election if you don't have the hope bit. my answer, we want to weld the two together so that the reassurance comes to the platform and that is particularly true in the economy on which we then build the missions for a better britain as we go forward. back to the football analogy, is this keir starmer so ruthless and determined to win that he will say what he thinks he needs to to be popular, or if you change your mind, because when you rank to be leader you backed tax rises and the rich, common ownership of rail and water, free movement, you're not in favour of those things any more, have you changed your mind, has reality kicked in? the pledges i made when i ran for leadership were pooled reflections of value and actually everybody goes to the two or three but i have had to adjust my position and misses out the majority prior i am in the same place and i would say about that same race, every single speech i did to labour party members ended with me saying, if we don't win an election all of this is just in vain. they knew that if they elected me they would have somebody single—mindedly intent, with steely determination to win the election and that is what i have got and that is why we have come on this journey with them. change is about realism and about looking credible and persuading the country that you are real. i do not accept that we are forever change your mind but i will never pretend that i have never looked again at a decision and i do not hold in high esteem people that do. i have had the incredible privilege of working on the good friday agreement in northern ireland. it was instructive, informative for me, a lot of my thinking came from those years. if every single person who entered the room to try and approve the good friday agreement simply set i'm going to stick to my long—held position, i refuse to adjust in any way, then we would not be where we are in northern ireland. that would be an absolute travesty. why it matters as a question for an interview like this, is it's a question of who the real keir starmer is? the tories are going to play hard on the pitch, you would probably play dirty as well, i suspect, they will call you a lefty lawyer. it is not an unreasonable description of you? i have given up being a lawyer, but you right about playing dirty. why are they going to play dirty? they have not got a record to stand on. they cannot go to the country saying we have delivered these things. at the end of the last labour government yet speeches went on for a long time as we listed our great achievements in government. you can agree with them or not but you didn't say they were not achievements. there is no list for this government. they cannot stand on the leadership because they burned through five prime ministers in seven years, and caused great instability, they cannot stand on the economy because they have busted that and we are in a worse cost of living crisis than other countries say they will have to get dirty and go to that. rishi sunak wants to go into that space. that is the desperate end to a government. but are you saying even as leader of the opposition that there has been a period of reflection, a period of realism, perhaps, but what can and cannot be done? you always have those moments in life. when i went to work in northern ireland, that was the first time i had gone to work within an institution and to test for myself whether you could change from the inside more effectively than from the outside as it was instructive — as labour leader in the last few years, i knew we had to change the party. i knew that having lost that badly you could not look at the electorate and say, what do you think you are doing, you had to look at the party and change it at pace with steely determination. when we got whacked at hartlepool, that really hurt. a by—election that we lost. i felt it like a punch in the stomach. and it really hurt, and it should hurt because losing should hurt, but it also taught me that we had to double down and go even quicker any change that we had to do. i teased you when you are first elected leader that you wrote for the magazine called the human face of the hard left, socialist alternatives, and you asked tony benn about becoming the united party of the oppressed. you are a lefty. with that magazine what we were trying to do was interesting. we were trying to weld together the working class trade union aspect of what is always a labour movement with feminism and green politics, a pretty amateur attempt which did not sell more than half a dozen copies! laughter. at that time you describe yourself as a red green, always interested in the environment. the government is now saying that they are going to develop rosebank. this huge oilfield. when it was talked about, ed miliband, your shadow climate change secretary, said that they do it would drive a coach and horses through our climate commitment. do you still think that? i absolutely think we have got to do the transition to renewables. that is why what i set out was for clean power in 2030, was really difficult and what we have said about rosebank is no new licence to be granted when we were in power, but we will not revoke anything that any licenses that have gone before we came into power. was ed miliband wrong to say that rosebank being developed would drive a coach and horses through our climate policy? he is right that we have to have this transition but i am mindful of the fact that if there is one thing that has killed growth in the last 13 years and it has been killed, is the chopping and changing, lack of strategic thinking, therefore, as a matter of principle, we will accept as it were, the baseline that we inherit from the government, if we win that election and it is if, i am not getting ahead of myself so that is why i am clear that we will not revoke the licence. it is won't, and it is deliberate and it is to ensure that we have that stability we desperately need in our economy. that answer illustrates the fact that your words are hung on now because people think you are quite likely to be our next prime minister. i want to talk about the travel you have been doing. just a more general question to start with. how has it changed for you? over the years that changes as we get towards an election. and there is more expectation now, understandably. live sort of closes in on one level because we do have to be very security conscious now in a way that we were not before. when my wife and i go out for our wedding anniversary and we book and nice restaurant and on the next table we have our protection team and they are fantastic. no complaints, but it is a different environment, different for my children, and my kids, and i worry about that. have you begun to get advice about, and there are more premises that have kids at downing street. i am really not daunted about the difficult decisions you will have to make in government to get that far. i am worried about my children. that is probably the single thing that does keep me awake, as to how we will protect them through this. at the moment, we are in the stage of this is very much, vic my wife, take each day as it comes, we do not do the great planning or anything like that, that would be presumptuous. but we do try to protect them. we do not name them in public. my boy is 15, my girl is 12, i want to protect them. we don't use photos that of them in any way and i want for as long as i can to preserve that space for them. but i am worried. i know that it is an if, but if you can and if you're at number ten, you try to keep that going if you could? i would desperately try to keep that going. we are clear, you know, the fantastic thing about, with my wife, she has instilled this in me, is that her core values of what she wants for our children is happy and confident and when they were born we decided happy and confident so we would not push them, you've got to do this and that and achieve the other, so there is this protected space for them. we talked of the downsides of people assuming you will you be the next prime minister but the upside is that you get to travel the world to meet the people who've done the job in other countries. you have spoken to president 0bama a couple of times. what can you learn from him? you can always wait learn from people who win, how they did it. the challenges as they won and then when they came into power, but he's a keen student of uk politics. he is watching very carefully. ifind it quite helpful to talk to people outside of the bubble, if you like. we have an intense bubble around westminster and sometimes having a line of sight from somebody outside that is really helpful. we saw you meet president macron in paris. you talked about president trump, i am told. how the world cope if the lawbreaker and the democracy denier came back. critical is that you do not talk about one—to—one so i am not going to do that but we covered a wide range of issues. 45—50 minute meeting one—to—one, and it was very positive. you don't want to review what you discussed with president macron but a serious question about foreign affairs, which is, it is not up to us, we don't get to choose, but if the united states does back donald trump again to be present, he is going to be a real challenge for you, if you move into number ten. we have to make it work. and i think that is where any incoming labour government would want to be. the challenges for the world are too great. this relationship between the uk and us has been so strong for so many years, and an important, special relationship, that we have to make it work, and that is my mindset. one of the things about being a leader is that you do not get to choose the other leaders around the world. that is the job of democracies where there are democracies. but in a grown—up world you have to make that relationship work. we have talked a lot about how you produce hope. i see this, there was a lot of keir starmer on the front cover here, of the labour conference. there is a kind of rather austere keir there, and if i turn a couple of pages in, there is happy keir. which one do you want people to take most seriously? both, but i think it is the happy one that people focus in on, that is the one they have not seen quite so much of. which brings me back to where we began, about the potential that it doesn't work out. david blunkett, the former labour home secretary, said, actually, this is going to be an election like the one that the leader say you admired the most, harold worsen, the most, harold wilson, 1964, coming after 13 years, tory government, lots of evidence in the opinion polls, that people had enough —— harold wilson. but what happened, do you remember? it is not a number i'm aiming for by any stretch of the imagination. a majority of four. yes. this is the tendency that we have the plug from the past and pretend that the circumstances... his conclusion was that keir starmer needs to provide hope. yes and that is the reassurance of hope, because i think the country is fed up with this lot. they have decided that it is time to go, we now need to answer the question, if not them then why us? and that is the central question that we intend to answer at conference. 0bviously what i've already set out to you is the five missions for an incoming government, how we will work, what we hope to achieve, and they are absolutely jam—packed with hope. the question is, do people think we have got the steely determination to deliver them, and i intend to show them that the steely determination that has taken me from the 11th of april 2020 when i became labour leader, to the position i'm in now sitting opposite you, is the same steely determination that they will have to remain leader of the country who will take them on, fix, rebuild, and we our country. keir starmer, thank you forjoining me on political thinking. thank you. it is not just security that accompanies keir starmer that shows me how much he has changed in a couple of years since he was on political thinking last. it is his thinking. his willingness to say no, his desperation to offer voters reassu ra nce. but he is acknowledging that he also has to find a way to offer hope, when there is a mood in the country which is pretty bleak. that could be his biggest challenge yet. thank you for watching. hello. after record—breaking warmth through september across much of western europe, another very warm day to come for the first day of march. we could see temperatures about 5 to 8 degrees above normal, peaking in the high 30s through parts of south west spain and portugal. but some of that warmth will be felt here in the uk, especially where you get the sunshine. southeast corner, some breaks in the cloud will see that temperature boost. lots of sunshine to scotland and northern ireland, northern england, not quite as warm, but temperatures still above, but in between, after the morning rain in northern england, north wales, brightening up here, outbreaks of rain, drizzle pushing down into the midlands, parts of yorkshire, lincolnshire, south wales and the south west of england. there, confirmation, should be 13 to 17, will be around 17 to 23 or 2a degrees. now through tonight, stays humid and muggy across the south. extensive mist and low cloud continuing for some, especially around some hills and coast, a little bit of drizzle. 15 the low in london, bit fresher through scotland, northern ireland, far north of england, with some clearer skies. a few showers here, but a fresher, brighter start to monday. this area of low pressure will strengthen the winds across northern scotland, whereas the weather front in the south, whilst itjust is there with cloud and some patchy rain, drizzle, mist and fog to begin with, a few brighter breaks. if anything, the cloud thickens up through the day. we'll see outbreaks of rain develop rather erratically. so rainfall amounts will vary, but where it does rain, potential for it to be heavy and thundery. far north of england, scotland, northern ireland, as i said, few passing showers, most frequent in the northwest with the strongest of the winds. and here, a fresherfeel compared with today. still muggy towards the south, though, as it will be into monday night. some even heavier bursts of rain will work its way eastwards across parts of central southern england before clearing out into tuesday. into tuesday, though, we will see things slowly brightening up. we'll have a bit of cloud to begin with, especially in the southeast. a few showers dotted around. most frequent, though, will be across western scotland, northern ireland, northwest england. some of those will be on the heavy side, but actually fewer showers into the afternoon compared with the morning. some southern areas may stay dry. temperatures a little bit closer to october early averages, around 1a to 19 degrees, but still generally above. a cooler night, then to take us into wednesday. and whilst most southern counties will stay dry on this small chance of a shower, outbreaks of rain a bit more persistent across scotland, northern ireland and northern england for a time, and it will feel a bit cooler here given the strength of the wind. take care. live from london, this is bbc news. at least 11 people have been killed after a fire broke out in a nightclub on sunday morning in murcia in southeastern spain. in an interview with the bbc, rishi sunak has denied that his failure to announce a decision on the future of the hs2 rail project is making the uk a laughing stock. i'm not going to comment on all the speculation. we've got a project and we've got spades in the ground, and we're getting on with it. the united states has narrowly avoided a government shutdown after congress approved a short—term funding bill. hello. i'm lewis vaughan jones. we start with the fire in a nightclub in spain. 11 people have been killed. let's take a look at these pictures from the fire service which give you some idea of what they were up against when they enter they were up against when they enter the nightclub. trying to save lives and put out that fire. we believe four people are being treated for smoke inhalation and the number