Good evening and welcome to the Pompey Politics Podcast.

I'm Ian Tini Morris.

And I'm Simon Sandspring.

Welcome, Simon.

Another Sunday evening and after our ramblings last week over all the complex national issues and the fun that was going on,

our focus this week is much more local.

Indeed.

So, yes, this week we welcome back.

Well, it's not kind of quite newly minted, but it is quite a recent development.

But we welcome back to the show.

A multiple-time guest is Councillor Coworky, who is now the leader of the Labour Group on Portsmouth City Council.

So a completely different thing, so it's not just our voices.

We've got someone that actually knows what they're talking about.

Welcome, Cal.

So, welcome. Thank you both very much. Glad to join you. So I guess first, we better offer you

congratulations on being elected as the leader of the local Labour group. Is that an honour

bestowed upon you by your peers in the Labour Council group?

It has been, yep. I'm enjoying it so far. There's a few extra meetings for the diary, which is

always good. Splendid. Well, let's start then by looking back at those May elections and, you know,

Labor increased the number of councillors to nine. They won a seat in the north of the city

in Cossham. So reflecting on the May elections, you know, how would you describe them?

I think we were very happy with the outcome. It was something we'd been aiming for.

...