Folks, welcome to another one of our political chats where today we're going to be talking about the Battle for Makerfield.

So in Wigan, there is a constituency called Makerfield, and it has been triggered for a by-election by the resignation of Labour MP John Simons.

Now, sorry, Josh Simons.

Now, this has been done in order to allow Andy Burnham, the current mayor of Manchester,

to have a run at the parliament so that he can trigger a leadership challenge against Kirstama

and save the Labour Party.

Well, I mean, that's a theory, isn't it?

That's the goal.

I mean, it's the point.

Let's say you do get Andy Burnham. Everything is still going to be broken. Yes. You're just

going to have a different person. And it, I think that we'll talk about Andy Burnham's record

at some point as well, because it's not as actually amazing as it might seem.

Well, there is a reason that he didn't get on in Westminster politics,

and he went off to Manchester.

Yes.

He's not coming from Manchester because he is a once-in-a-generation politician

who took Westminster by storm.

That is not what happened.

It's certainly not.

So if anyone doesn't know, Andy Burnham represents basically the last great hope of the sort of soft left faction.

He's been endorsed by Angela Rainer, and he's to the left of West Streeting.

West Streeting represents the kind of Blairite managerialists who really are lined up behind

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