‘You call it a shitshow – I say it’s unforgivable’: Lisa Nandy on Epstein, Mandelson and Labour’s torrid week

It is the day after the night before. On Monday, Keir Starmer looked as if he was on his last political legs. At lunchtime, the Scottish Labour party leader Anas Sarwar called for his resignation, but by the evening, the troops had rallied, and the prime minister had survived the worst. At least until the Gorton and Denton byelection later this month.

Now it’s Tuesday afternoon and there’s a hush around 100 Parliament St, home to the government’s culture, media and sport department. It’s hard to know whether this is its natural state (it’s also the headquarters of HMRC), or whether the country’s politicians and civil servants are in a collective state of shock.

“It’s been a quiet week!” says Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, with a big smile. Nandy is surprisingly upbeat considering her government has just had a near-death experience after less than two years in power. She introduces me to Owen, her communications adviser. “Owen is going to sit in, in case I say something really fucking stupid, and I have to apologise to the nation.” Is that likely? “Erm, it’s possible. It has been known.”

Actually, I’ve always been soft left. I hate that phrase. It makes me sound like a jellyfish

The Labour MP for Wigan shows me around her huge office. The culture is immediately obvious – a poster of Hamlet, a painting of a ginnel in Burnley and an illuminated text sculpture by the British artist Nathan Coley of George Bernard Shaw’s quote, “You create what you will.” The sport is also obvious: propped on top of a model of Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth are a football and a rugby ball. The football belongs to Bury FC, whose financial collapse led to the establishment of the Independent Football Regulator, one of Nandy’s proudest achievements at the DCMS.

As for the media element of her title, apart from today’s newspapers arranged on a table, it’s otherwise not so visible. Critics have suggested the same could be said of her performance, at a time of BBC crises, online regulation battles and the scandal over sexualised AI images being created using Grok. She certainly seems happier talking about culture and sport.

There’s also a lovely framed photo on the wall of Tessa Jowell, who died in 2018. Jowell held the same office and was Nandy’s mentor. “They say here she was the best culture secretary within living memory. I was her PPS [parliamentary private secretary] when I first came into parliament. I was a proper awkward sod on the backbenches.” In what way? “Back then, before all the Corbyn stuff started, I was the hard left of the Labour party.” There’s a little poetic licence here.