Just imagine what your best Christmas ever would sound like.

Thank you for calling National Lottery. I can see you calling about a winner today, is that correct?

Yeah, I think I have. I'd just take to double check before I do a cartwheel.

Yeah, I can confirm that you have won the top prize 1.2 million oh my

what happy Christmas why do now you have the best Christmas ever this Christmas it could be you. The National Lottery. Rules and procedures apply. Players must be

18 or over. Hello and welcome to the Red Box Politics Podcast and The Times, I'm Matt Chorley.

So we've not got long to go now until election day. So let's go behind the scenes on what a campaign is really like.

I'm joined by three people who've been there through the good times and the bad.

I'm joined by Matt Zab cousin who spent a year as a spin doctor for

Jeremy Corbyn. James McGrawy, who spent five years spinning for Nick Clegg during the coalition,

and Katie Perrier, who was Theresa May's director of Communications in Number 10 until the election was called

and also worked on two of Boris Johnson's London mayoral campaigns.

Welcome to you all.

What I want to try and do is get under the skin of a campaign? What's it really like for the

politicians and even more so the spin doctors trading round after the politicians?

Let's start with just who you think is having a good

campaign or a bad campaign but don't just say your own team because that's cool.

Let's start with you Matt who do you think is having a good campaign?

I think that it was inevitable that when the general election was called and the

public starts to become more engaged with politics and

then you had the broadcast rules kicking in for the general election and Labour were getting

more airtime that the policies and their message would start to cut through more and I think what we've seen is

...