Hi, Alexei Sale here.

Welcome to podcast number 10.

And I am recording this on Friday, the 7th of May.

And it is the morning following Labor's disastrous showing in both Hartlepool

by-election and the local elections. So it seems to be now, as we unpick it, the Keir Starmes

plan to make the Labour Party more electable consists basically of losing a load of elections,

elections that Jeremy Corbyn won, of course.

One of the strategies that Labor employed to try and get some traction during this period

was that they concentrated on what they called Tory slees,

the corruption around the Conservative Party's acquisition of PPE and services during a pandemic.

This completely failed to wear.

I mean, one of the reasons why it also left Labour vulnerable, I think, because one of

Starmers' advisers was a guy called Peter Mandelson. Now, Peter Mandelson was a man who was

forced to resign from the Labour front bench twice for dubious practices.

And also bringing everything around because everything's connected in this universe,

Peter Mandelson, of course, was the former MP for Hartlepool.

Now, I can't imagine he was a brilliant constituency MP.

Somebody who lives in Hartlepool, this may be able to contradict me, but I can't imagine really this power obsessed, elite obsessed, money obsessed, Metropolitan was really a great representative

for Hartlepool. I wonder whether the people, when he was there in people were saying, well,

I don't mind my

maternity ward closing as long as I can see my MP swanning around on a yacht off the coast of

the south of France with an oligarch. Or I don't mind all the shipyards and the coal mines closing,

...