The New Statesman.

The spotlight of British politics is shining on Andy Burnham and his long coup is underway,

starting out with weeks of campaigning in the Makerfield by-election, where reform has put its

faith in a local plumber as its candidate. But Wes Streeting is also jostling for a position in a potential leadership race,

and Kirstama himself has to find a way to resume some semblance of government as usual,

with Rachel Reeves facing a cost of living crisis due to hit the UK hard and angry drivers at the petrol pump.

I'm Anoushekelian, and this is the politics show from the New Statesman,

and I'm joined by our editor-in-chief, Tom McTag. Hi, Tom. Hello. And our political editor,

Alva Ray. And you've written a great cover story this week on what's going on both in

number 10 and the leadership camps. Can you first give us an insight into the atmosphere in

number 10 now? Because it might be quite strange it is it sounds very strange um yeah i mean one person just described it to me is sort of

very very odd because things have gone back to what they described as semi-normal yeah last week

was just such a dramatic week full of high adrenaline.

You can kind of imagine it.

And there was this moment on Monday night.

The more I talk to people about it, the clearer it is to me that there was a massive, massive

wobble inside number 10.

As those resignations started coming in, Kirstarmer really

did quite seriously think about whether he would need to resign the following day. And so they came

kind of so close to the end and it was just high stakes, high adrenaline. They weren't getting

much sleep and then now they've just sort of picked themselves up and carried on.

And so I think, yeah, the atmosphere is a kind of surreal one.

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