Craft Politics25 Juni 2025

Sam Coates: Starmer’s Tightrope—Trump, Welfare, and the Trouble Inside Labour

With Sam Coates, Deputy Political Editor, Sky News

This week, we’re joined by Sam Coates, co-host of Politics at Sam and Anne and one of the UK’s sharpest political analysts, to make sense of a government struggling to hold the line—on foreign policy, economic discipline, and party unity.

In this episode:

🇮🇷 Why the UK backed the ends but not the means of Trump’s strike on Iran

⚖️ How Starmer’s deference to legal advice is reshaping UK foreign policy—and what it reveals about his break from Blairism
🇺🇸 What it means when the UK is the only country warned in advance of a US strike
📉 And why the transatlantic relationship may be less stable than it seems

Then we go domestic:

💷 Labour’s looming rebellion on welfare reform:
• Over 100 Labour MPs openly defying the PM
• A government with a 165-seat majority on the verge of losing a key vote
• And no clear plan for what comes next
🧨 Starmer’s political gamble: alienating his base to keep markets calm—and failing to please either
🗳 Could this trigger a leadership challenge?

And don’t miss:

📈 Reform UK’s surge: is Prime Minister Farage still far-fetched—or suddenly plausible?
🗺 The open question: what is the relationship between Reform and the Conservatives heading into 2028?

Also on the radar:

⚖️ Assisted dying and abortion: the social policies no one campaigned on—but that may define this Parliament

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