 In the run-up to Labour Party conference, Keir Starmer has given a series of interviews to ITV's regional news teams. And when speaking to ITV in the North-East, Starmer was played a clip of voters in concert County Durham. Take a look at how he responds. We've been out today to concert County Durham to ask people for their views on your leadership if I can play you a little bit of that now. Tell me what you think Keir Starmer stands for. Erm, don't know. All I know is that Labour is leading, that's it. I don't think he's as strong as what he should be. I mean, this guy, Boris Johnson, should be giving him a good hayden, really. I thought Labour was about the people, the working class people and that, but I'm not too sure. That's what he stands for. What do you make of that? Well, it reinforces my point that in the last 18 months I've not been able to get out and make the argument the way I wanted to. What I would ask you to do, next time you're in Darlington, I think on your patch. Can't serve that, mate. Yeah, I know, darling, but just to give you a counter-example, in Darlington, when you're next there with a camera, go and talk to the taxi-ranked drivers, because every time I've been through Darlington, I've been having a conversation. I stopped and talked to them about they were having a really tough time in Covid. I stopped at the time, talked to them. I actually went back to talk to them two or three weeks later, and they said, Boris Johnson got off the train of Darlington and walked right past them without a knowledge of them. They said, I stopped, talked to them, heard what they were saying, then came back. So, actually, take your camera, I take this on the chin, take your camera to Darlington to the taxi driver. That was Keir Starmer saying they might not like me in concert, but if you go to a different nearby town and find two specific taxi drivers who I've spoken to at length, then they will tell you something different. Also, the only reason we're expecting them to say something different is because they were impressed that Keir Starmer talked to them twice, apparently, according to this anecdote. Ash, it's an interview tactic I'm not sure I've seen before in political interviews where they say these people we spoke to didn't like you, say, well, I've got this one genuine working-class reference who happens to be in a town somewhere else in Britain who maybe you should interview instead. I mean, it was such a weak response as well because it wasn't, oh, you might not know this, but I actually spoke to these taxi drivers in Darlington and this is what I did for them. His whole boast is I acknowledged the existence of these taxi drivers in Darlington, not once, but on two separate occasions. I spoke to them and I looked them in their little flinty eyes and everything. It actually comes across as incredibly patronizing and condescending as if he thinks he's the queen and merely waving out of a motorcade will make these peasant's days. I think it was a really weird way to respond to it. I think, though, there is something really interesting in the framing of that entire interview and I think that this is something which was established in 2019 and is going to keep happening until the left works out how to deal with the fact that its support comes from. When I say the left, I'm talking about the wider left, really from Jeremy Corbyn all the way up to, I know we're going to talk about him in a second, Wes Streeting. But this problem, which is that the left's core support is coming from electorally inconvenient concentrations of under-40s who live in the cities. Now, what this whole notion of the red wall and in particular the red wall town has become is a disciplining tool. You can do any old box pop and you can interview people who predominantly from that video are over 40 years old. You've got a brilliant video package of people saying exactly why they think you're a prick or why you're a failure. The job of the Labour Party is to go, well, I like me, I guess, and that's great. And you don't see the reverse happening, right? So you don't see somebody with a microphone going down to, I don't know, Tower Hamlets and going, what do you think about Boris Johnson? Well, obviously, people would go, I think he's a prick, I hate him. But it's not used as a disciplining tool in the same way. Because when it's framed like this, it's, ah, you don't speak to the country. Now Kirstam's response to that was incredibly weak. It was farcical how silly his response was. Also, it made it sound as if he'd mixed up concert in Darlington. You know, he didn't even say, well, if you go down the road in Darlington, I spoke to at least two taxi drivers on two separate occasions. You know, it sounded almost like he'd mixed it up and he kind of never recovered from it. But this is a line of questioning and a method of delegitimising progressive politics in this country, that ultimately, we're all going to have to get a grip on. You can't keep allowing 2019 to be the stick which hits you around the head. And you know, you've got a video package of people telling you your shit, and you've got to go, oh, yeah, no, I am actually really shit. You've got to come up with a more compelling response. Otherwise, no one's going to vote for you. If you go, oh, yeah, actually, they're right, I am a cunt. Like, why is anybody going to vote for you? Well, the response as well should be, you know, a confident response is to say, well, look, I'm sorry, they think that. But I think if they were to hear our program for the country, what labor would be offering? And then you list those policies, then I hope I would be able to change their mind. Instead, he says, well, they might not like me, but the two guys in Darlington do just sort of like, okay, that's, that's fine. Yeah, because also great, that's good for you. That's good for Darlington. Yeah, because the other thing with a political interview is a chance for you to communicate to the public what you know, you're trying to change people's minds in that interview. And do you seriously think that anyone is going to feel like, oh, maybe Chris Dahmer, you know, I do, I do actually trust taxi drivers in Darlington. I mean, also these taxi drivers, they would probably just be in polite, right? And you don't expect a taxi driver to say, look, no, you're an idiot, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. They will be just being polite to the guy. Do you remember in the 2008 presidential election, Joe the plumber? Yes, but I can't remember the plumber discourse. It was when John McCain was sort of trying to prove his like, you know, connection to the blue collar man was telling all these anecdotes about what Joe the plumber said. And then like, reporters went out and they found the real Joe the plumber, who wasn't, you know, he was going to vote for John McCain, but it was also kind of ridiculous because it was like, I've met somebody who works in a manual profession. And they've also proved the perfect vehicle through which I can ventriloquise the things that I already wanted to say. Like there's no clumsy, there's always clumsy when you do that there's no elegant way to try and pull that off. I think it's always faintly absurd. The other interesting thing about this particular anecdote is why this Keir Starmer, in particular, know the taxi drivers in Darlington. He's seen them at least twice. Potentially knows them quite well. It's worth noting the seat of Starmer's former political secretary and key ally and friend, apparently, Jenny Chapman is in Darlington. We won't delve any fervour into that particular topic, but she did go on to receive a peerage from Keir Starmer.