Hello, come on in. Shoes off, please. Welcome to week two of the 2019 general election campaign and episode four of our brand new podcast calling Peston with Daniel Hewitt. That's me, Edwina Curry's favourite political journalist Shihab Khan.

Hello.

That's him and the Jarvis Cocker of political analysis, Robert Peston, who will be calling to discuss today's big political development.

Which is that the Brexit Party has announced it will not stand in the 317 seats the Conservatives won in 2017,

in what could be a significant boost to Boris Johnson's chances of staying on as Prime Minister.

Now Nigel Farage has said that his party will instead focus on contesting seats which are currently held by Labour.

Let's have a listen to what he had to say in Hartlepool earlier today.

What we will do is concentrate our total effort into all of the seats that are held by the Labour Party,

who have completely broken their manifesto pledge in 2017 to respect the result of the referendum,

and we will also take on the rest of the Remainer parties.

Look, it's key to remember there that Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party will be standing in seats

which Labour currently have, but the Tories are targeting, so it's not necessarily all good

news for Boris Johnson.

They could still be a negative impact there.

We'll be looking at the full implications of that announcement, not only with Robert Peston,

but also with our correspondent Emma Murphy, who's with Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party in Hartlepool today,

as well as our political correspondent, Paul Brand, who's following the Prime Minister

Boris Johnson around the country.

But before we do that, Dan, are you going to explain where you've been all morning?

We've had meetings, we've tried to call you

you have been nowhere to be seen um i would love to tell you but i am under strict instructions

to keep my aware about this morning secret blimey check you out what have you been doing well

...