Jul 2, 2026 · 39 min · 18 segments
Keir Starmer is preparing to leave Downing Street — and Andy Burnham is waiting in the wings. James Lyons, Starmer's former Director of Strategic Communications, joins me to unpack what went wrong…
Abi BenningtonHostJames LyonsGuest
So with that in mind, I think we should have another little talk about current events.
One of the big probably legacies, and I'd be interested in your take on this, for Keir Starmery is this social media ban.
Do you think that this social media ban for under-16s will last after he's left? So two things there, really.
So yeah, I went to TikTok from the NHS, which is an obviously completely normal career trajectory.
But basically I was in the NHS for COVID and it was my team who PR'd the world.
So there's COVID jab and the vaccine rollout and We had some terrible times but also some extraordinary times and that was a fairly good day in the office I have to say.
But when Covid was over I wanted to go and do something completely different and TikTok was setting up a new comms function doing corporate and policy communications across Europe so I set up that team and ran that team for a while before I got press ganged into Downing Street.
It was a pretty extraordinary job, an amazing company at a very interesting time because President Biden was trying to ban us.
And yeah, so I come at this from, you know, my older two kids are on social media, younger ones too little at the moment.
I mean, the question is, how do you get something that doesn't have the kind of unintended consequences that we're seeing in Australia at the moment, where what's happened is they've restricted a number of specific platforms.
And so what you're seeing is young teams heading off to other bits of the internet that might be less regulated and potentially less safe.
It's not a cure-all, is it? But you think it'll survive in some capacity? I think so.
So with that in mind, I think we should have another little talk about current events.
One of the big probably legacies, and I'd be interested in your take on this, for Keir Starmery is this social media ban.
Do you think that this social media ban for under-16s will last after he's left? So two things there, really.
So yeah, I went to TikTok from the NHS, which is an obviously completely normal career trajectory.
But basically I was in the NHS for COVID and it was my team who PR'd the world.
So there's COVID jab and the vaccine rollout and We had some terrible times but also some extraordinary times and that was a fairly good day in the office I have to say.
But when Covid was over I wanted to go and do something completely different and TikTok was setting up a new comms function doing corporate and policy communications across Europe so I set up that team and ran that team for a while before I got press ganged into Downing Street.
It was a pretty extraordinary job, an amazing company at a very interesting time because President Biden was trying to ban us.
And yeah, so I come at this from, you know, my older two kids are on social media, younger ones too little at the moment.
I mean, the question is, how do you get something that doesn't have the kind of unintended consequences that we're seeing in Australia at the moment, where what's happened is they've restricted a number of specific platforms.
And so what you're seeing is young teams heading off to other bits of the internet that might be less regulated and potentially less safe.
It's not a cure-all, is it? But you think it'll survive in some capacity? I think so.
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