Well, the bun fight continues. I'm Hugo Rifkin, and now we're going to be unpacking the

politics of the day from the Prime Minister's future to what happened to the promised peace

and quiet to whether Martin Lewis would really do a better job as Prime Minister.

And joining me, two columnists treading lightly on our lives. And they are Charlotte Ivers.

Hello, Charlotte.

Hello, Hugo.

How's it going?

Yeah, all right, not too bad.

And James Marriott, hello. Good morning. You're breaking the ritual of black t-shirts only in this section of the show by wearing a grey one. I know, it's totally crazy. Well, the thing is, now the show is visualised on YouTube. we've got to provide the audience not only with amazing analysis but also some sartorial diversity.

Right.

So I've broken away from the black t-shirt rule that has been the norm on this podcast. Charlott and I are both not only wearing black t-shirts, but black cardigans as well. It's actually a navy blue t-shirts. So I'm also adding diversity to the colour palette here. Yeah. Yeah. Don't worry about it. We've got this under control. Very fashionable people. All the exciting the exciting thoughts here on times radio look there's only really one thing to talk about this morning at the time of speaking tuesday morning kirstama is determined to hang on in downing street uh before we get to the politics james and i'll start with you wouldn't a normal human reaction to this be if you were kirstarmer and you've got all this going on, just, I've had enough,

I'm off, you do a better job, I'm out of here. It would absolutely be my reaction, I'd just be like, Jesus Christ, I am so incredibly stressed. Can you imagine going into work every morning and all your colleagues try and kick you out of the door the moment you walk through the front door? A little. I just couldn't do it. I think it is interesting psychologically about Kirstarman, but I think's maybe easy to misread him because he seems a bit sort of mild, mad, and ineffectual when we see him speaking and in interviews. I think there is a bit of a core of steel there. And I think there has to be when you, you know, think of the background he came from. Think of the way he's worked him his way up through, you know, through the first the law and then into politics, the way he dealt with Corbyn. It's easy to, I think, you know, I don't think he's a brilliant Prime Minister. He clearly has this core of, like, tenacious self-belief that I think people just forget, forget exists. And I'm kind of in a way not surprised he's hanging on because he just completely, know the corbett you know the dealing dealing with corbin and remolding the labor party he just

kind of doggedly got his head down and just kind of like pushed through it and everybody

hated him then and he sort of there's clear that instinct in him to just keep going well and I think

it's not only it's not just ego I mean one gets the impression He probably truly believes it would be bad for the country to, to not let him carry on. And obviously, people in that situation, they end up convincing themselves that their interests are the country's interests. But I also think, you know, I mean, what do you think, Charlotte? Like, you know, we've had so many changes in, in prime minister in recent years. You can understand

Kirstama going, if I go now, I have failed utterly. It is my job to not go. Yeah, 100%. And I think I

probably agree with him in the sense that I look at the people queuing up to replace him. And you just

think these are not particularly serious people. Let's assume Andy Burnham's nowhere near

Westminster at the moment.

There's no obvious way in which he would get in in time if this doesn't fall apart.

Angela Rainer, really, West Streeting, really, West Streeting, sort of, you know, he's been,

he's compared to Hamlet in the paper a couple of weeks ago, you know, all this, will I, will I, won't,

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