The News Agents

Jim Ratcliffe, the part owner of Manchester United, multi-billionaire and Monaco based non dom, has taken the government to task for allowing immigrants to “colonise“ the U.K. Does he realise he’s using a far right trope? Have we become immune to racism in the immigration debate? And why did a successful businessman not even check his facts on the numbers? Later - why has a foreign office civil se...

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 campai...

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? The News...

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-...

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...

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 s...

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 t...

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...

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 Clinto...

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 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...

You’ve likely seen the viral video of Coco Gauff smashing her racket in a corridor at the Australian Open. She tried to go somewhere without cameras and failed. Now she's complaining the only private place is the locker room, Novak Djokovic says it's like "big brother", Iga Swiatek thinks they're "animals in a zoo". Content is king but at what cost to player privacy? Isn’t this the kind of access...

The election offices of Fulton County were raided by FBI agents yesterday morning. Fulton, in the state of Georgia, was at the heart of Donald Trump's claims six years ago that he’d won the 2020 election (he didn’t). Why are ballot boxes of archived votes now being removed from the premises? Is this still about a six years ago old grudge? Or does it presage Trump's plan for the November midterm el...

Kemi Badenoch has told her party not to get in her way as she steers it further to the Right. Is this the correct assessment of what the Conservatives needs to attract voters back? Or is she way off? Later, Trump has threatened Iran with his big beautiful armada. Does he have any concern for the protestors getting killed in their tens of thousands thousands? Or is this all about US interests? The...

Donald Trump's tone on Minneapolis has changed in the last 24 hours. He’s now having conciliatory meetings and phone calls with State Governor Tim Walz and the city's Mayor Jacob Frey. And it looks like he’s removed his Border Commander Gregory Bovino and put him out to pasture in California. What's behind the change of heart? Was it the polls? The murder of American citizens? Or the fact that his...

Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman has renounced the party that gave her power, and defected to Reform. She's telling us today that Britain is broken and “she” (Britain, not Suella) was “suffering”. Are Reform better off with her? Are the Tories better off without her? And has it been enough of a distraction from the Andy Burnham saga to give Keir Starmer a lucky break? Later, is Trump panicki...

In Minneapolis right now, there are more ICE and border patrol agents than there are police officers. The national guard - the army - is on standby to deploy to the city. Everybody in the city has a story about being targeted by ICE. Many now carry passports on them when they leave the house. If they are fortunate enough not to have been stopped themselves, they will know a neighbour, a friend, a...

Everyone’s been talking about the Beckhams and Naomi Osaka this week. Hard to believe a family feud and a jellyfish outfit at the Australian Open have anything in common - but where Sir Alex Ferguson used to fight to keep David Beckham's focus on the pitch, sport is now embracing fashion like never before... Lewis Hamilton and Serena Williams pictured at the Met Gala, Stella McCartney designing Ar...

Originally intended to be a small group overseeing a ceasefire in Gaza, Trump's Board of Peace has evolved into something much bigger. Apparently "a lot of great people" want to join, but who’s going to pay the billion dollars to sit on it? And what are Trump's real aspirations for the Board of Peace? On today’s show we try and break down what he’s hoping to achieve, whether the UN should feel thr...

Donald Trump took to the stage at Davos to take the military invasion of Greenland off the table, cue sighs of relief from European leaders and NATO. But his ambitions for the US to own the territory have gone nowhere. He still wants to acquire it, and demanded immediate negotiations to begin that process. Increasingly. it seems that America's one-time allies have grown impatient with Trump's bell...

We bring you a special report today of the 'dark flights' that are deporting hundreds of people - the vast majority of them here legally - in shackles from Minnesota to Texas detention centres. There is no official record these flights exists, so one man - an aviation specialist - has made it his life’s work to document each flight that leaves and count the number of people who are being "disappea...

Emily and Lewis report from Minneapolis which has become the dark heart of President Trump's ICE agent immigration crackdown. We patrol the streets with ICE watchers - witnessing a raid alongside the patrollers literally sounding the alarm. We are at a far right rally - watching a January 6th insurrectionist get chased out of town. And we are with people from Somali and Latino communities who desc...

Just a few months ago, historian and author Rutger Bregman found himself at the centre of a very British controversy. He had been asked to deliver a BBC Reith lecture. His theme was the decadence of the political elite and in his lecture, he made a throw away line about President Trump. But when the lecture was broadcast, that critical line had been taken out. What followed was a row about censors...

Hosts Morocco face Senegal in the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) final on Sunday. At this AFCON almost 40% of players were born outside Africa, like the face of the tournament Ashraf Hakimi . So where should teams be putting their money - improving recruitment from the diaspora or investing more at home? What needs to change to attract these players? And can Sadio Mane and Senegal stop the powerhou...

The politician who once complained of not seeing enough "white faces" in Birmingham probably had a very white one himself this morning. Robert Jenrick's apparent imminent plot to defect to Reform was left in tatters when his party leader Kemi Badenoch uncovered the plan, sacked him and booted him out of the party, and announced it to the world on a polished video clip. What happens now to the shad...