Today's interview with James Schneider, co-founder of Momentum and former spokesperson and head of strategic communications for Jeremy Corbyn,

was recorded before British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that the UK will have a general election on July 4th.

And so this morning I spoke to James again to get his reaction to that news.

The following is our conversation on the upcoming election

and is then followed by our longer pre-recorded discussion

on James's book, Our Block, How We Win,

and the prospects for the post-Corbyn left.

So James, since our previous conversation, Rishi Sunak has announced that the general election,

which had been widely expected to take place in the autumn, will instead be on July 4th.

The argument he made in his speech for voting Tory seemed to pretty much boil down to inflation has come down,

and economic recovery is supposedly underway,

and that the global situation is increasingly dangerous

and that people are in safer hands with the Tories than they are with Labour.

Can I first get your general reaction to the announcement

and also your thoughts on what the nature of the campaign is likely to be?

Well, it all seemed very strange, to be honest, and it's hard to work out what the political logic of it is, because inflation coming down was going to be their good news at the top of the

news today, and is of course purely theoretical

and they knocked it off with their own announcement that they were going to have an election on

the basis of the fact that this theoretical thing has happened that people won't have felt

so the only thing that i can think is that it's not a political calculation, but a personal calculation

and that he's got something better to do lined up for sooner than November. Yes, better including

better paid, presumably. Yes, although I think to be honest, it's not the, I mean, he's already an

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