 A YouGov poll commissioned by Sky News has found that 69% of Labour members believe Andy Burnham would be a better Labour leader than Keir Starmer. Now Andy Burnham has impressed people over the past year with his willingness to take on the government and speak in an emotionally engaging way, two qualities distinctly lacking when it comes to Keir Starmer. The only consolation for Starmer with these polls is that Asmayer and not an MP Burnham is not eligible to stand against him. So there is this unfortunate position where all of these members can see this candidate who they would like to be leader. He's the one person or one of the few people who cannot take on that role because he's not in Westminster. The rest of the poll also had some interesting results. So what the YouGov polling showed was that 65% of Labour members believe Labour are on course to lose the next general election. That's compared to only 21% who believe Labour will win it. However, despite that, despite the fact that people aren't seeing the direction of the party as leading Labour into government, the majority are still willing to give Starmer a chance. So even if the party lose the battle and spend by election, YouGov suggests that 41% of people want Keir Starmer to stand down and 48% say he should stay. That's obviously very close, but there is the plurality in favour of him staying on, even if Labour lose in battle and spend. We've talked about how historic it would be for Labour to lose that election. No opposition leader in over a century has lost two by elections to the governing party. Still, members, according to YouGov, are willing to give him a chance. Now, also what will probably be reassuring to Keir Starmer from this polling is that the opposition to him seems pretty divided. The most, I suppose, open opposition to Keir Starmer at this point in time comes from the left in the party. That's because of all the promises he broke in his 10 pledges. Yet the polling shows that while the left might be most opposed to Starmer, it's not clear they would be in a position to take advantage if there were any future leadership contests. So Sky report that in the event of a sudden leadership contest drawn from existing MPs, Home Affairs Select Committee chair Evette Cooper would get the highest level of support of members with 35% of Labour members saying she would get their first preference. Shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy is second on 13%, Deputy Leader Angela Reiner on 12%, former leadership contender Rebecca Longbailey on 11% and left-wing stalwart Richard Bergen on 6%. Now, that's not the most reassuring statistic to look at if you are on the left of the Labour Party. If you're thinking at this point, look, this is just a YouGov poll, maybe it's wrong, maybe it's completely meaningless. I mean, I can't guarantee that's not the case. They might have messed up here, but it is worth pointing out that in the past they have tended to be fairly accurate. This is a tweet from Ben Walker from the new statesman and he points out that in past leadership contests, YouGov have been fairly successful at predicting what Labour members are thinking. So in 2020, YouGov polling had Starmer on 53% and Longbailey on 31%. The actual result was Starmer on 56% and Longbailey on 28%. In 2016, YouGov had Corbyn on 62% and Owen Smith on 38%. The actual result was exactly that, 62% for Corbyn and 38% for Smith. Then we can go back to 2015. Then YouGov had Corbyn on 53%, Burnham on 21% and Cooper on 18%. And the result was Corbyn on 60%, Burnham on 19% and Cooper on 17%. So it seems like their pool of Labour members is fairly representative, obviously. This polling was done towards the end of a leadership campaign. There isn't even a leadership campaign now. So this is more hypothetical, but still somewhat worrying if you're on the Labour left. And my question, given this polling, Owen, is let's put aside whether or not a leadership challenge will happen and how it would happen because we've got that coming up next. But first, given these numbers, should the left even want one? Should the left want a leadership challenge when it's not particularly clear that we'd win it? I suppose it's slightly different interpretation of those figures, because I think they're worse from the leadership than they actually look. Because look, we don't know if Labour are going to lose battle in spend. I think it's important to make that clear. Labour might not lose in battle in spend. But there's a difference when something is hypothetical in someone's head and when it actually happens. So Labour members saying, you know, the facts that basically it's even I did in terms of those who think Labour, Kirsten Armour should resign if lose. That's before the shock of a potential loss. That's before the shock of whatever the scale is of that potential loss. And it's also before anyone's made any consistent argument for Kirsten Armour to resign. That hasn't really happened. The only person who's actually done that is Andrew Adonis, who is, I would say, a very eccentric playwright figure. I didn't call for Kirsten Armour. I do think he should resign myself after battle in spend if Labour lose. If Labour don't lose, it's different. If Labour lose, I think he should resign. But I haven't made that argument. And most that argument hasn't been publicly had in the pages of newspapers and all the rest of it. So I think the dynamic changes if Labour loses and depending on the scale and depending on the argument being made. Also, to be honest, Labourism instills a sense of loyalty amongst much of the membership in whoever the leader is. So even if they don't think they're doing well before a very important election, they might not feel that willing to tell even a pollster privately that they think the leader should resign in those circumstances. To be honest, I think this shows a membership which is very dissatisfied with the leadership. I think in terms of Andy Burnham, a lot of people, you know, whatever his politics, there's a lot of people on the left who do obviously want Andy Burnham to be leader. I think Andy Burnham would have to be very clear about what his vision is before the left would actually indulge about myself as much as I like to go on a personal level. But actually, I think it's different when candidates set out their stalls, take Yvette Cooper on 35%. A lot of people might look at that and think, what's the point? But 35%, that's the right of the membership kind of co-hearing around one candidate really. And that's before she sets out a stall. She'd just be a vet. She'd be Kirsten, all over again. She'd have the exact same drawbacks, by the way. Technocratic, no vision for the country. And as soon as she sets out her pitch, as she did in 2015, where she bombed, I think she would do very badly again. And I think if you have a contest, which is about vision, because I think the argument would be, this has been an experiment in a leadership having no vision whatsoever. And actually, Labour needs to believe in something again. And I think the candidate who makes argument the most convincingly would be in pole position to win. So actually, I don't personally, I look at that and think those are worse for Kirsten. I mean, I agree, the left hasn't made any case, again, for any candidate. And that would have to happen, again, in the aftermath, if a defeat happens. So again, no, there's not exactly being some big, high visible candidate, making a clear case as an alternative to Kirsten. So I think everything would change. I mean, after the EU referendum result, the youth of polling of the Labour membership, the first poll was pretty bad for Jeremy Corbyn. But that changed in the course of the leadership contest, because he could put forward his pitch, Owen Smith put his terrible pitch and disintegrated as the campaign went along. And I think Kirsten, I mean, I would be surprised if he stood in such a leadership contest myself, because I think he would be absolutely destroyed in that leadership contest. Because what would his pitch be? I mean, this is, you know, he couldn't say honesty, because no one thinks he stuck by his pledges, electability, that's dead, charismatic, I'm sorry, principled, you know, this is, there's no principles attached to this leadership, they synthesized every possible bad element of any leadership. There's not really a case to be made. So I think whoever stands against him would have a very good or whichever candidates would have a very good chance. And I don't think he would put himself forward if a leadership contest actually happened personally. The challenge for the left is, if it's a, if he doesn't resign, and I think the argument should be if Labour lose, there should be a very loud argument for him to resign. And if he doesn't, then we need 40 MPs to nominate a candidate. The left would struggle with that no question. And also the left would not necessarily agree who the candidate should be. Angela Reina would have a good chance there. I know lots of people have different opinions about Angela Reina, so I'm not going to go into that. But he who wheels them, I mean, or she who wheels the knife never wears the crown, the old adage of politics. So that if that was going to happen, there'd have to be a stalking horse put forward. If Geist Armour resigns, then you need 20 MPs. And the left would then have a very good chance of putting his candidate forward. A lot of people would say John McDonnell would be the obvious candidate in that particular circumstance. And I think he would be a very good, have a very good chance of winning a leadership contest, to be honest with you. Let's quickly look at the speculation in the press over who may be considering a challenge. As Owen says, to launch a challenge against an incumbent leader, one needs 20% of the parliamentary Labour Party to nominate you. That at the moment would be 40 MPs. Were he to resign, you'd only need 10% of the PLP or 20 MPs. Now, the times have suggested that Dawn Butler, Lisa Nandi, Angela Rayner and Yvette Cooper could all be considering a challenge against Keir Starmer, or at least throwing their hat in were a contest to begin. Unsurprisingly, I suppose, Keir Starmer for his part has indicated he will defy any calls to quit if the party loses the by-election. Now, that for me, I don't know how seriously we should take that, because no leader is ever going to say, yeah, if I lose, I'm going to resign. I mean, sometimes I say that when it comes to referendums, but no one's ever going to say that when it comes to a by-election. Yes, if I lose this by-election, I'll stand down of my own accord, even if, in the back of Keir Starmer's mind, which I actually think is very unlikely, I don't think he will resign, because I don't think the right will let him. But even if he was planning on it, he wouldn't tell the mirror he was going to do it. Having spoke to lots of Labour MPs, including those who backed Keir Starmer, there's actually a broad consensus that his leadership is doomed a lot, believe very strongly, that he needs to go. But there's division about the mechanics of actually getting there, about who the candidate should be. And a lot of people think it would, you know, an operation will come into play to defend Keir Starmer and shore him up, which particularly come from the right. So time would potentially be of the essence. So it's difficult to know, because it really does depend on the left and the soft left putting their differences aside, because some of those differences have opened, working together in order to ensure that, A, that, you know, I think the beginning, the strategy should be voices, particularly MPs who backed Keir Starmer in the leadership contest, saying, and this is what they say to me, that some of them will privately, including Shadow Ministers, go to Keir Starmer and tell him in a kind of, you know, this in the Tory party, they call this the Men in Grey Suits, that do you want to go down in history as the manager of the Labour Party? And in that situation, what normally happens is a bunker is set up to protect the leader, where they just stop MPs being able to talk to the leader to stop that from happening. So I suppose it, you know, will they then go public and, you know, demand his resignation? And, you know, maybe will there be resignations from the front bench? How much of an impact will that have? It will depend on a lot of factors and it will be depend on whether they feel paralysed by who the candidate should be and the mechanism to get there. I think there's a very significant chance that by the end of the year, Keir Starmer will not be leader of the Labour Party. I said to their team in January that they were heading for a leadership crisis within six to 12 months. And I think actually, I'm now pretty, pretty accurate. But I think it depends whether basically it ends up with the right changing the leadership rules and then getting rid of him and putting someone even worse in. And that is a very real possibility. So I would say a big, if you're on the left, a big, big part of strategy now is to appeal to the soft left to get them to speak out the people who backed Keir Starmer back in 2020 to say, this isn't working. You've got to stand down for the sake of the Labour Party. You're going to destroy the Labour Party if you carry on as leader. And I think that argument has to be made consistently. And then maybe he'll resign. If not, there needs to be some stalking horse put forward in order to bring the leadership to a close if Labour is in battle and spend. It's going to be hard. But I think that's the only, I think this is do or die, because I think they're going to shut down democracy and leave the Labour Party of burning skip.