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Hastie’s got the right stuff but one obsession may fast-track or derail his ambitions

Peter Hartcher Political and international editor October 11, 2025 — 5.00am

“The train coming down the tracks isn’t the one that you expected. It’s not the one advertised on the board,” says actor Benedict Cumberbatch playing the role of a pro-Brexit strategist.

“Well, tough,” he says. “It isn’t even the one that I imagined. But I accept it. And you can’t stop it,” he says in the 2019 movie Brexit: The Uncivil War in the persona of the notorious Dominic Cummings, adviser to Boris Johnson. “There is a new politics in town. One that you cannot control.”

Andrew Hastie is fond of quoting the scene in private. To him, it encapsulates the current sta

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