{"id":760578,"date":"2026-02-13T00:03:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T00:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/760578\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T00:03:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T00:03:11","slug":"question-time-guest-asks-brutal-keir-starmer-question-as-labour-minister-squirms-politics-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/760578\/","title":{"rendered":"Question Time guest asks brutal Keir Starmer question as Labour minister squirms | Politics | News"},"content":{"rendered":"

A BBC Question Time<\/a> audience member asked a brutal question about Sir Keir Starmer<\/a> moments into tonight’s show. The man questioned whether he is “now a lame duck prime minister” after a chaotic week which saw Sir Keir fighting to save his premiership amid the Lord Mandelson scandal.<\/p>\n

Cabinet minister Luke Pollard was rendered speechless in the awkward seconds that followed before presenter Fiona Bruce said: “That’s coming your way, Luke.”<\/p>\n

The Defence Secretary replied: “No, I don’t think he is. I think what I wanted to see from a leader, especially after so many years of chaos, is someone that can try things, make mistakes but admit they’ve made mistakes, apologise for it, learn those lessons and do better.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think any of us want to return to the political chaos we saw over the last decade.”<\/p>\n

Former Tory MP Nadine Dorries cut in: “What have we seen over the last week?”<\/p>\n

Mr Pollard went on: “I want to see the Prime Minister focus on the issues that matter.<\/p>\n

“That means restoring trust, it also means learning where mistakes have been made and he’s been very honest this week which is what I want to see from a political leader.<\/p>\n

“I want to see someone that if they make a mistake admits it, learns the lessons and then does better and that’s precisely what I’ve heard him say this week.<\/p>\n

“What I know the public wants us to do, focus on getting stuff done, changing Britain for the better, delivering the manifesto.<\/p>\n

“We’re making progress with that, I want us to make progress faster and the more time we spend on Westminster ups and downs, I don’t think that’s where the public wants us to be. Focus on the issues that matter.<\/p>\n

“But we’ve got to learn from this week because I don’t want to see this week repeated again frankly.”<\/p>\n

Tory Ben Spencer branded him as a “zombie” Prime Minister, adding: “He seems to be wandering around aimlessly at the moment sort of neither dead or alive.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A BBC Question Time audience member asked a brutal question about Sir Keir Starmer moments into tonight’s show.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":760579,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[9],"tags":[77,807,223451,60847,28300,48486,16,15],"class_list":["post-760578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-keir-starmer","tag-lord-mandelson","tag-luke-pollard","tag-peter-mandelson","tag-question-time","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116060396207579278","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=760578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/760579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}