Barry Soper: ZB Senior Political Correspondent on Keir Starmer's win in the UK election

Christopher Luxon is set to meet the UK’s new Prime Minister next week. 

He said in a media standup earlier today that he would work with “every leader the partner countries deliver” and was confident he would have a good relationship with whoever won the election. 

Labour’s Keir Starmer has won the election by a landslide, the party having taken over 360 seats. 

ZB Senior Political Correspondent Barry Soper told Heather du Plessis-Allan that he has a busy first month, with diplomatic meetings with various world leaders in store. 

“For the first time now in 14 years, we’re going to see a change in government. Let's only hope that the Labour Party is better than the one that we saw here.” 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Right, Barry, soop our seeing your political correspondence with us.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Hey Barry, good afternoon.

Speaker 1 (00:03):
So Starmer is the new Prime Minister of the UK
and Luxem meets him pretty early next week.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Well, yes, he is likely to meet him next week.
It was interesting just before Richie Sunac conceded defeat, Luxon
was playing it very careful down on Ashburton.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
It's up to the UK people to decide who they
elect as their leaders and their government. My job as
New Zealand Prime Minister is to work with every leader
that our partner countries delivered. I'm very confident we'll have
a very good relationship with whichever leader the UK people decide.
My job is to make sure I've got good relationships
with all leaders.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
So he'll no doubt bump into Joe Biden at the
NATO seventy fifth summit next week in Washington, DC, although
Biden probably won't know it, but he is the new
Zealand Prime Minister. Keirs Starmer will have a formal meeting
with Biden and only the first month if you look

(01:01):
at the schedule for Starmer is pretty full on. I
mean he'll only be sworn in. I would imagine you
know over the next twenty four hours if that, But
so certainly there's a lot of diplomatic meetings, the ones
with Joe Biden. He will basically see the French prime

(01:27):
of French President Emmanuel Macron, although Macron was very much
under threat himself. He's hosting at Blenham Palace near Oxford
European Political Community meeting that Macron will be at, so
too will Germany's Chancellor. He'll be there as well. So,

(01:48):
you know, for a man who has just become Prime minister,
it's pretty heavy hitting stuff for him. Interesting background he's got,
isn't he. I mean, he was a Marxist when he
was younger, he was a lawyer, but he came from
a very working class family. His mother was a nurse.
His father worked in a factory, and the father always

(02:11):
felt that he was locked down on because he worked
in a factory. That's probably why he was such a
lefty in his younger days. He's an atheist, an interesting character.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
But married to a woman who was Jewish and observes
the faith.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
By the looks of thing, observes the faith. Yes, and
you know, for the first time now in fourteen years,
we're going to see a change of government. Let's only
hope that the Labor Party is better than the one
that we saw here.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
Yeah, the last expression that we had to go through. Yeah, listen,
speaking of the Labor Party, what do you make of
their listening exercise trying to figure out what went wrong
in Auckland.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
Well, you know, I think most Aucklanders could tell Labor
what went wrong here, and that was that they said
he was locked down long, much longer than it should
have been during the COVID outbreak.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
There was also the crime after wards. Remember I mean
we were hassling them about the crime and doing something
about the crime. We had Sandrigham Dairy on a stab
to death, and meanwhile Jinny Anderson's telling us crime is
not a problem, we're just reporting more of it.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
That's exactly right. And of course, essentially I think really
he was coming this, Chris Hipkins was coming at it
from a very difficult perspective because he's a Willington MP,
and he talked a lot when he was here for
the past with his MPs, talked a lot about visiting

(03:32):
the city during the COVID lockdown. He was the COVID
minister as well, so you know, really, Labour's got a
lot of work to do in the city. When you
look at the green of the green wave, I was
going to say, well Aukland Central was the only one
that the green and blue wave totally a blue wave.
When you look at some of those seats that traditionally

(03:55):
like Roscall it was very much labor then changed. So yeah,
it's been an interesting time here in this city. And
no doubt, hopefully the Labor MPISA was thirty out of
the thirty four of them that visited here over the
past two and a half days. When they go back
to Wellington, hopefully they have a lot to reflect on
because I remember being here during that lockdown and just

(04:18):
In Dern hadn't even visited her own electorate.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
Okay, enough enough you started, you were just starting up there,
you go, Hey, how good is it? The first first
lot of the cancer drugs because of David Simol's big
money announcement.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yeah, and it's great. Key Truder is the obviously going
to be one of the early ones as well as
op Devo for kidney cancer, but Truder for the five
cancer conditions. And I know, you know, I had a
personal friend that spent thousands and thousands and thousands of
dollars dollars buying the drug because Farmac wasn't financing it,

(04:57):
and many people were in that situation. So you know
it's great to see that by October, Key Truder will
probably be funded by Farmac, and you know, you'd have
to say that, okay, the list that finally National came
up with or presented to Farmac at being carried out

(05:19):
cancer patients will be I think very thankful for the
six hundred odd million that the government, So.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
I would say, so, yeah, thank you, Verry, really appreciate
a Barry sopsing your political corresponding, we'll get you back
quarter pass sex rap the political week that was.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
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