The Makerfield Gamble & Wes Side Story
The Trawl
Jemma Forte & Marina Purkiss
4.7 • 867 Ratings
🗓️ 20 May 2026
⏱️ 49 minutes
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Summary
Marina and Jemma are spiralling over Labour’s risky civil war.
With Andy Burnham heading into the hugely consequential Makerfield by-election, Wes Streeting apparently eyeing the top job, and Reform circling like sharks, the pair ask: how the hell did we end up here already?
There’s fury over Brexit being dragged back from the dead, despair at the state of political discourse, confusion over Eurovision, and a growing sense that liberal democracies everywhere are entering their “what could possibly go wrong?” era.
Plus: globe-faced insults, emotional support via concert tickets, and perhaps the most stressful by-election since England last went to penalties.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | 47% of Labour members say they would back Andy Burnham. Meanwhile, West Streeting trails on just 4% of Labour members saying that they would support him. |
| 0:20.3 | Hello and welcome to The Trall, where Britain's political class continues to ask, |
| 0:25.7 | how do things get this bad? |
| 0:28.1 | Immediately after making them worse, I'm Marina Perkis. |
| 0:31.8 | And I'm Gemma Forte, and in this episode we are mainly going to be despairing at how amazing the left are fucking everything up. |
| 0:42.9 | A3-440 said, it's an absolute shambles. |
| 0:46.7 | But it feels as if we knew in our hearts that it would be even before the 2024 vote. |
| 0:52.3 | It's like the thick of it, but people's real lives are on the line. |
| 0:56.3 | So it's not funny. |
| 0:57.5 | True. |
| 0:58.4 | But anyway, look, before we dive into the political quagmire, |
| 1:02.0 | let's start by talking about something really affirming. |
| 1:04.6 | So we had our first ever live trow show in a little theatre last Friday, |
| 1:14.0 | and it was so much fun, it went really well so we're going to be doing more and in fact we've got our second one coming up this Sunday and yeah |
| 1:20.4 | it was just a very personal moment for marina and I you know we started this podcast about was it three |
| 1:26.7 | and a half years ago or something |
| 1:27.5 | like that? And so we had a real moment. We had a real moment just before we started going, |
| 1:33.5 | would you ever imagine this would be happening? Like, this is crazy. So thank you for enabling us, |
| 1:40.3 | because even if you don't want to come to the show, you've listened. And so you've grown this |
| 1:43.4 | thing. And here we are. And it's just, it's all a bit dreamy. And we really, really appreciate it. And for those of you who we did meet, just, just fabulous. Yeah. It was the warmest, loveliest crowd. Couldn't quite believe it. And we get to do it all over again. I'm so excited to do it all over again and it's so nice. |
| 2:05.4 | Just so nice meeting normal trawlers. You're always so cool, so lovely, so like-minded. |
| 2:11.1 | And you know, it's bloody tough out there being aware of what's going on in the world. |
... |
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