I'm Ed Vasey. We're going to be unpacking the politics of the day from what we learned about Andy Burnham in the first Makerfield by-election debate to disappearing WhatsApp messages should they be allowed in Downing Street and whether journalists are becoming too reliant on AI.

Two journalists who live through AI.

Obviously Michael Binion, the former diplomatic editor of the Times, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Ed.

And Alice Denby, the features and opinions editor for City AM.

Hello, happy birthday, Ed. Thank you so much. I got you a present. Oh, did you? Yeah, do you want it? You have? Yeah, that's amazing. Well, thank you so much. Something to munch on when it's a boring interview. Oh my goodness. So Michael Binion's given me some shortbread with a lovely deer on the front, and Alice has given me something which I have to unwrap, but I'll keep talking, because Alice, I know that you have strong opinions on my eye, but I want you to hold those opinions because we're going to come to them in a minute. But obviously, we have to talk a bit about Andy Burnham, so I'll stop unwrapping because I want a special moment when the present is revealed.

We basically had Andy Burnham's official declaration that he's going to challenge Kirstama as leader, should he win the make-ofield by-election.

The Prime Minister has said, though, that he is not going to walk away from governing the country.

His deputy Prime Minister David Lamamy spoke to Times Radio Breakfast.

There is no leadership contest. Let's be clear. Kirstama has been absolutely clear. He got a mandate from the British people two years ago to be the prime minister. There can only be one prime minister.

He has my full support and loyalty. I happen to believe loyalty is a very good attribute to have in politics.

And I will be supporting him until he no longer wants to continue to lead the Labour Party.

And he's absolutely determined to see out his mandate.

Well, Tompeck has a brilliant sketch of last night's question time in The Times today, and of course you can read it online as well.

He called it a low-rent discussion, said no one can clade to be much the wiser afterward.

Alice, did you tune in?

I mean, I was forced to watch it because I knew was going to have to talk about it on this show.

Incredibly tedious.

I think my main takeaway from it was how much,

I mean, from a very low bar, how much more impressive Andy Burnham and the Tory guy,

who even cares, but was a mayor of Wigan. Michael Winsternan. Thank you. So much more impressive

than the reform and the green people who just seemed completely inartic, moronic, really unsurious. And I suppose it just made me think, God, I wish we were back to two-party politics. At least the Labour guy and the Tory guy were proper people. Yeah. Yeah, that was my, that's all I could take from it, really. That's a very good review. Yeah, very good. Michael, did you watch it?

...