Double-dealing, plotting, declarations of loyalty and treachery – in recent weeks the nation has feasted on Celebrity Traitors.

But these sorts of antics emanating from Downing Street, a couple of weeks out from a critical budget, feels far less entertaining and only serves to further hurt a struggling prime minister.

It wasn’t the intention. Allies of Keir Starmer have been alive to growing talk of a possible post-budget challenge, which has building amid growing concerns from MPs about the upcoming manifesto-breaking budget, the continued dire polling, and a Downing Street forever on the back foot.

There was a decision, as I understand it, from the PM’s team, in light of questions being asked about a possible challenge, to put it out there that he would stay and fight a leadership challenge should it come.

Politics latest: Starmer denies authorising attack on Streeting

I was briefed about this on Tuesday by allies that wanted to make the case to the parliamentary party about the perils of trying to oust a sitting prime minister 18 months into the parliamentary term.

My contacts made it very clear to me that the PM would fight any challenge, in turn triggering a three-month leadership battle that would spook the markets, create more chaos and further damage the Labour brand.

They also stressed the PM has no intention of giving way just 18 months in. The intention was to try to see off any plot and scare the parliamentary party into line at the prospect of a full-on meltdown should the challenge come.

But the decision by some of the PM’s allies to anonymously also drop the name of prime traitor suspect – Wes Streeting – into briefings has badly backfired and plunged No 10 into crisis.

‘Frustration’ after PM’s allies went ‘too far’

As for the clean-up job, Mr Streeting – already carded for the morning round ahead of a speech on the NHS on Wednesday – has come out to declare his loyalty (tick), but also take aim at the No 10 briefers, and called on the PM to take them to task.

On the part of No 10, I was told by sources on Wednesday morning that there wasn’t an attempt to brief against the health secretary – there is a view that some of Sir Keir’s allies might have gone too far, rather to make it clear the PM was prepared to fight a challenge if it came.

I am told by one No 10 source there is “frustration” over how his played out and it had “got out of control”.

“Wes is doing a good job, is an asset and doing a big speech today making the broader case of not cutting spending ahead of the budget,” said a source.

But putting the genie back in the bottle is no easy feat. MPs are furious at the briefings and exasperated that No 10 have made a mountain out of a molehill, with some suggesting that there wasn’t an active plot post-budget, and they have created a crisis when there wasn’t one.

“They’ve done this before,” observed on senior party figure. “They pick a fight of their own making and imply everything is a calamity ahead of a big possible negative, be it the budget or the Batley and Spen by-election [in an effort to get MPs to rally around the PM].

“It’s worked in the past; I think they have misplayed it this time. They have started a fire they cannot put out.”

The prime minister has been left badly burnt in all of this. He was forced at PMQs to defend his health secretary and his chief of staff as Kemi Badenoch goaded him over No 10’s “toxic culture”, and called for him to sack Morgan McSweeney, his chief of staff.

The PM told his party that he “never authorised” briefings against his cabinet and that it was “completely unacceptable”. But when his team were later asked about what the PM was going to do about it, they didn’t appear to have an answer.

If he takes no action, it will only feed into the sense among many in his party that Sir Keir doesn’t have a grip of his operation and is not leading from the front. That’s difficult when his health secretary, having professed his loyalty, has called on the PM to deal with those briefing against him. It’s a mess.

Budget measures to calm febrile party

And this mess comes at a time that is already so difficult for this government. Number 10 and No 11 knows exactly how difficult the coming weeks are going to be.

The chancellor has been out pitch rolling her budget, trying to explain the reasons behind potential manifesto-breaking pledges and arguing that the alternatives – cutting spending and a return to austerity or breaking fiscal rules, and the knock on effect in the markets – are far worse.

The prime minister is also going to be out making the case as Downing Street and the Treasury work out how they can possibly try to sell a manifesto-breaking budget to voters already completely disillusioned with this Labour administration.

I’m told that the current working plan is to do a combination of tax rises and action on the two-child benefit cap in order for the prime minister to be able to argue that in breaking his manifesto pledges, he is trying his hardest to protect the poorest in society and those working people he has spoken of being endlessly in his mind’s eye when he takes decisions in No 10.

The final decisions are yet to be taken, but the current thinking is to lift the basic rate of income tax – perhaps by 2p – and then simultaneously cut national insurance contributions for those on the basic rate of income tax (those who earn up to £50,000 a year). That way, the chancellor can raise several billion in tax from those with the ‘broadest shoulders’ – higher-rate taxpayers and pensioners or landlords.

At the same time, the chancellor intends to move on the two-child benefit cap – although it’s unclear if that will be a full or partial lifting of that cap – in order to argue that Labour is trying to still protect those on lower incomes from tax hikes.

Those two measures will be designed to try to calm a febrile party and prevent panic after the budget. As one informed MP put it to me, the combination of tax rises for wealthier workers and more support for parents with more than two children are arguments that many MPs could get behind.

More bad news at moment of peril

This is also why No 10 getting ahead of a possible post-budget coup has surprised me a little, given that pretty much all the conversations about a possible challenge to the PM have been linked to the ballot box test next May.

One party figure told me on Wednesday it would be “insane and catastrophic” to for the party to try and bring down a Labour PM over a Labour budget, given, for a start, how the markets would react, and thinks the No 10 briefing is a reflection of how “paranoid and out of touch” the Starmer operation is with the parliamentary party.

But it is also true that there is a settled view among some very senior figures in the party that Sir Keir lacks the charisma, leadership and communication skills to take on Nigel Farage, while broken manifesto promises will kill his hopes of standing for a second term. As one figure put it to me: “Breaking those promises will destroy him. The public won’t give him a hearing again. We need a clean skin.”

The whispered plots around Westminster are now front page news – not something the Sir Keir would have wanted as he prepares to front up what is shaping up to be his biggest test as prime minister yet, should he break the most sacred of his manifesto pledges on not raising VAT, income tax and national insurance on working people.

There is no doubt the budget will be a moment of peril – and those who wanted to be faithful to the PM this week have somehow only managed to make his situation even worse.

Reform UK has pulled out of a BBC documentary about the party amid a row over the broadcaster’s misleading editing of a Donald Trump speech. 

The Rise Of Reform had been due to air in January, fronted by Laura Kuenssberg, and was being made by the independent production company October Films.

An internal memo sent to all Reform MPs, councillors and other senior figures, and seen by Sky News, told party officials to stop assisting with the documentary.

A senior official wrote: “Hi all, as you will be aware October Films have been filming a documentary with Kuenssberg on the rise of Reform.

“As part of this, they have been visiting and filming at Reform councils and speaking to our councillors and council leaders across the country.

“We want to be clear that October Films have always conducted themselves professionally, and there is no suggestion from our side that they would maliciously misrepresent Reform UK. However, following the Panorama documentary the trust has been lost.”

The email continued: “If you are approached to participate, we would strongly advise you decline. If you have already participated, we would strongly advise that you contact October Films and explicitly withdraw consent for your footage to be used.”

Production company ‘shocked’ over misleading edit

Meanwhile, a source close to October Films told Sky News the company was “shocked” it wasn’t told about concerns over the Panorama Trump documentary, despite an internal review at the corporation highlighting the misleading edit back in January.

October Films worked on the one-hour Panorama special, Trump: A Second Chance with a majority in-house BBC team, which included a BBC director, executive producer, editor and lawyer.

The source told Sky News: “October Films were not informed there was any question of integrity with the edit. Had they been given the opportunity, they would have insisted on the edit being changed.”

October Films – who are an Emmy and BAFTA-winning independent producer, with credits including BBC2’s Laura Kuenssberg: State of Chaos, Channel 4’s Levison Wood: Walking With…, and CNN’s First Ladies – are understood to have first learned of the misleading edit when a leaked BBC memo was published in The Telegraph.

Sky News understands the concealed cut in the president’s speech was present in the first version of the film shown to executive producers at an early viewing, with those producers not told an edit had been made.

Despite subsequent internal viewings, and various changes and tweaks to other parts of the film ahead of sign-off by senior editorial figures, as well as the BBC’s compliance and legal teams, the clip containing the president’s spliced quotes remained intact as part of the final edit.

Sky News approached the BBC for comment and were told they had “nothing to add to the BBC Chair’s letter to CMS committee”.

In his letter, Samir Shah described the edit as an “error of judgement” and admitted it “did give the impression of a direct call for violent action”.

October Films declined to comment.

Where was the documentary shown?

The 57-minute Panorama special – Trump: A Second Chance? – first aired on BBC One on 28 October 2024, a week before the US election.

The documentary aired in the UK and was put on iPlayer.

A shorter international version was cut, but the Capitol speech moment was not included in that cut-down version.

The film never aired in the US and couldn’t be viewed in the US on iPlayer as the content was geoblocked.

What was the misleading edit?

While the BBC say the film received “no significant audience feedback” at the time, the corporation says it has since received over 500 complaints after an internal memo detailing investigations into impartiality was leaked to The Telegraph.

The most contentious issue raised in the memo was the cutting together two parts of a long Trump speech, which he had made on 6 January 2021.

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This was the day of the storming of the Capitol building in Washington by Trump supporters who believed the 2020 election had been stolen by Joe Biden.

In the documentary, the clip was presented as one sentence, in which Mr Trump appeared to say: “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you and we fight. We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore.”

In reality Mr Trump’s words, “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you,” came around 50 minutes before he said, “and we fight. We fight like hell….” The cut had been covered by crowd shots.

When were issues over the cut first raised?

The author of the leaked memo, Michael Prescott, former adviser to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Board (EGSB), says he first raised concerns over impartiality after watching the documentary when it aired on the BBC.

He says his complaint led to an investigation by senior EGSC advisor David Grossman, with a report delivered in January 2025. He said this report raised the alarm over the edit of Mr Trump’s Capitol Hill speech.

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Mr Prescott said that following the review BBC executives “refused to accept there had been a breach of standards and doubled down on its defence of Panorama”.

He says he was told at an EGSC meeting in May 2025 that it was “normal practice to edit speeches into short form clips”.

It was after this meeting in May that Mr Prescott says he wrote to the BBC chairman, Samir Shah, asking him to “take some form of action,” but “received no reply”.

What’s the fallout been and what’s next?

The misleading edit has already led to the departure of BBC director-general, Tim Davie, and the head of BBC News, Deborah Turness.

Adding to the BBC’s problems, on Monday, the corporation received a letter from Mr Trump’s lawyers, threatening to sue them for $1bn.

They have been asked to issue a “full and fair retraction” of the documentary, “apologise immediately” and “appropriately compensate” the US president.

The BBC has been given a deadline of 10pm UK time on Friday to respond.

A series of emails between disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and others which feature the name of Donald Trump have been released.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee who put out the messages claim the correspondence “raises questions about Trump and Epstein’s relationship, Trump’s knowledge of Epstein’s crimes” and the president’s relationship to Epstein’s victims.

But White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, says the “selectively leaked emails” are an attempt to “create a fake narrative to smear President Trump“.

The messages are dated between 2011 and 2019 and some are between Jeffrey Epstein and his sex trafficking co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell and others between Epstein and author Michael Wolff.

The US president has consistently denied any involvement or knowledge about Epstein’s sex trafficking operation.

Trump latest: 20,000 pages published in response to ‘leak’

Here’s what the emails say…

In the first exchange of emails, between Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, dated 2 April 2011, Epstein wrote:

i want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.. [REDACTED NAME] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75% there

Maxwell responded:

I have been thinking about that…

In the second exchange of emails, between Epstein and Michael Wolff, a journalist who has written several books about the Trump administration, dated 31 January 2019, Epstein wrote:

[REDACTED NAME] mara lago. [REDACTED] . trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever. . of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop

The third email exchange, between Epstein and Wolff, dated between 15 and 16 December 2015 shows that Wolff wrote:

I hear CNN planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you–either on air or in scrum afterwards.

Epstein replied:

if we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?

Wolff responded:

I think you should let him hang himself. If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt. Of course, it is possible that, when asked, he’ll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime.

Explainer: Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘friendship’

Whose name has been redacted?

The White House and Republicans on the committee have said that the redacted name in one of the emails was Virginia Giuffre, a prominent Epstein survivor who died in April and had never accused Mr Trump of wrongdoing.

Ms Giuffre made allegations of three sexual encounters with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who was stripped of his prince title, in her autobiography which was released last month – allegations Andrew has denied.

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Key claims by Virginia Giuffre in memoir
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Sky News’s US news partner NBC News has reached out to lawyers for Michael Wolff, Maxwell and the family of Virginia Giuffre for comment.

The top Democrat on the House committee, Robert Garcia of California, said in a statement that the released emails “raise glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the President”.

The Oversight Committee Democrats say the email strike “a blow against the White House’s Epstein cover-up”.

But White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt said in a statement: “The Democrats selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump.

“The ‘unnamed victim’ referenced in these emails is the late Virginia Giuffre, who repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever and ‘couldn’t have been friendlier’ to her in their limited interactions.”