Given the state of the world today, it's unsurprising that the spectre of inflation is never very far away.

But if you have savings in cash, it's an ever-present threat.

Alliance-Witten, however, aims to give you returns that beat inflation.

Dating back to 1888, the Trust now manages around £5 billion in assets,

and amazingly, has paid an increased dividend every single year for the last 59

years. So if you're looking to move beyond cash and into investing in stocks and shares, it's an

ideal way to do so without leaving your comfort zone. Investment value may rise or fall. Dividend

increases not guaranteed.

Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Megan McElroyd, and I'm joined today by James Heel. And James, upon the road again, it's another by-election. We're in Makerfield today. You've just spoken to Nigel Farage. What's he had to say? Well, Nigel Farage, in a very good mood today. He is about to do an event here in one of the local pubs, very much part of the political economy of reform. The idea being, of course, the local community under threat from high business rates, etc. So he's got a lot of pub landlords here. He was in a good mood and he was talking basically defending his candidate Robert Kenyon. I asked him about the vetting process used in order to try and select him as a candidate and then talking about some of the issues they're focusing on. What's quite striking to me is how much reform is kind of reacting and was pendulum-like from what the strategy they adopted last time in the Gorton Denton. Listeners remember, of course, that was Matt Goodwin, a national figure. They ran very high-profile, one of the sort of big bombastic campaign, talking about migration. Today,

they're running much more a local one, and that's plain to Robert Kenyon's strengths. He's a man

who's lived in the era all his life, family lived here for many, many years, and talking about

things such as local dual transport links and a local hospital as well.

So I think that this is the campaign drumming very much as a foil to Andy Burnham,

who is clearly doctored all over the billboards here, vote Andy for us,

which is clearly a part of a national campaign to replace the Prime Minister.

You mentioned Andy Burnham. He's currently the mayor of Greater Manchester,

but he's Labour's handed at here. What does the ground game look like? Well, it looks pretty strong. You know, driving around, it does seem to just be reform and labour. And I think that Labor very much would not be in this contest, were it not for Burnham. He has been selected. But you think that given there's some suggestions of a slight split on the right, and given that Burnham has high approval rating, there is a sense that he is going to be the man who gets them over the line here. We think that overall it's going to be a much different campaign to Gorton-Denton, not too far apart in the point of the country, but a very different demographic, much more favourable to Labour's chances than the population of Gorton in Denton, albeit this is not one of the best seats for him. And I think there is a sense of Burnham taking what he could when Josh Simons came up. So I think overall, I would expect him to win based on our visit today, but it's not going to be the kind of triumphant majority that you would expect, perhaps for a figure in other seats that he would command. And could you just put the by-election into context for us? You know, James, this is not the first time that you and I have left Westminster to come and cover a by-election, along with what seems like half of the lobby. We turn up here. We do exactly the same thing every time. I'm interested in your thoughts on how consequential the by-election is. Well, I mean, Farage told me that it was the most consequential by-election since 1964, which of course was when Patrick Gordon Walker, the shadow foreign secretary, had to try and find a seat to get elected into the cabinet. Of course. And I think that you can certainly make the case of this is more important than that, because we're talking about a change of premiere here. And for several reasons, you know, the fact that we have always had political power in Westminster concentrated solely there. We've not had devolution. We've never really had a contest like this before. I mean, the closest you can kind of think of is perhaps great campaigns of the past, like Gladstone's Middle Lodian campaign of the 1880s. But But yeah, it's a very interesting dilemma. Obviously, for I just hear a lot, campaigning very hard. You've obviously got Rupert Lowe as a national figure as well, very much filling in for Rebecca Shepard in an interview. She's the Rassau candidate. But overall, I mean, it is very much dominated by Burnham and that sense of whether you want to talk about him as the candidate or you'd rather

talk about the Labour Party. And so it's striking to me that reformer very much focusing that ammunition

more on labour, it seems, than actually the Mayor Burnham. Your final question to Nigel Farage

this morning was about his Desert Island discs. Let's hear the clip. Well, the choice of the record

would reflect different decades of my life.

I'd have to go for some late 60s stuff and think of my young mum,

...