Hi, folks, welcome to another our political chats.

Today we're going to be talking about the situation in Makerfield, because that's really

the only thing worth talking about until Thursday, or Friday, I really, which is when

we get the results.

And we'll get to find out how things played out.

Before we begin, Dan, have you got any predictions?

Dare you make any?

I mean, I woefully underestimated what they were going to do in Great Yarmov.

But I have no particular reason to disbelieve their internal polling, which is coming out in the low 20s.

So I'll just say that, low 20s.

Seems reasonable.

I honestly have no idea.

Like, the polls are all over the place. I don't really believe the establishment polls, which we'll get into in a minute. This does very, very much feel like an exercise in the polls designed to influence the electorate. Oh, yes. Rather than measure the electors with these polls. Yeah, the polling companies, and there's only a couple of them that got involved, and they've only done small samples, but it feels like they're taking a hit for the greater good. It does. It's actually very strange how disinterested the polling companies seem to be in Makerfield. If this is such a titanic battle for the future of the country, if this is really going to decide the next prime minister and only, only, what, two of them are curious enough to do a poll? There have been three now. Oh, okay, right. Three whole polls from the dozens of polling companies who for some reason was just like, yeah, no, that's boring. Yeah, there's nothing to see here. No polling to be done here. It's really strange. Yes. Yeah, for myself, I don't't know. I mean, honestly, I do think Andy Burnham's probably going to win it. So I haven't been there, but we've had lots of our chaps who have been there, lots of our activists who are there, and you'll see how many of our activists are there. When he should, I mean, he handpicked this seat. Yeah. He could have gone anywhere. I mean, if he's going to be the next prime minister, he has so much power of patronage,

he could have gone to any MP in the whole Manchester area and said, I'll make it worth

your while to step aside.

And he chose Makerfield.

Yeah.

So he should win.

I mean, why would he choose it if he's not intending to win?

But also, what was the name of the MP of his name? Was it Luke Simmons or something? Yeah, that sounds right. Yeah, yeah. He is actually a really well-liked MP in the area. He's not from the area, but apparently he's done a lot for the area, and sort of Rupert-low fashion, actually. So a lot of people are actually disappointed to see him go because he had quite good name recognition,

even though outside of McPhil, no one's heard of this MP. But anyway, so let's look at some

the polls. So here's a poll from Convergent, which is a company I'm actually not familiar with.

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