The Observer.

Hello, I'm James Harding. I'm the editor of The Observer.

And I'm stepping in for this week's slow newscast extra because I can't pretend we're headed into

local elections, elections in Wales and Scotland in the UK.

And almost any time I can remember, there seems like there's so much at stake.

It's an oddity, really.

We don't pay nearly enough attention to local government and then local elections like

this come along and suddenly it seems like the future of politics, the prime minister, the party

system is all in play and so we thought we'd just try and do a little bit of thinking aloud

to try and make sense of what's going to happen in the UK this Friday, Saturday and into next week.

I'm joined by the Observer's political editor, the great Rachel Sylvester.

So Rachel, do you want to just start by telling us a little bit about how you prepare for the elections? How do you think about

where the electorate is? How do you plan for when the results come in? Just how are you thinking

about it? What's fascinating about these elections is that it should be about potholes and parks and

social care and all the local issues, but this is so much about national politics.

And, you know, is the Prime Minister going to survive?

Labour MPs and Cabinet Ministers have been putting off for months the moment of

decision about are they going to topp or Kirstama and now it's sort of put up or shut up

time. That is coming up. So talking to lots of MPs about where their heads are on that.

But then also you've got the future of the Union at state. You might have, or the three of the

countries,

represented by nationalists. So you'll have Wales represented by Plykeumry, Scotland by the

...