 Governing parties often lose by elections. That's because there are a chance for voters to protest against the incumbent government with little risk involved. If you're worried about labor getting into power, but you want to beat the Tories with a stick, you can happily vote for a different party and not worry about the consequences. However, whatever the context, when a party loses a seat it's held for 50 years, we should take note. And that's what happened to the Tories last night in Cheshire and Amersham. I'll be joined later by Owen Jones to discuss what this all means. We're going to discuss, of course, what this means for the Conservatives. Is there now a blue wall that's about to crumble, but also for the Labour Party? They got 622 votes in the constituency and breaking news just before we went live. We know that Keir Starmer's Director of Communications has just resigned. So there are clearly some disputes, conversations going on at the top of the Labour Party. This will all, I promise, end in time for the football. As ever, if you are new to the channel, please make sure you hit that subscribe button. First story. Since its creation in 1974, the Cheshire and Amersham constituency has been a safe Conservative stronghold. In that time, the party has never won a majority smaller than 10,000. And in 2019, they won 55% of the vote, 16,000 more than their closest competitors. All this meant that the Lib Dems winning yesterday's by-election was quite the upset. Green, Sarah Louise, Liberal Democrats, 21,517 votes. I do hereby declare that Green, Sarah Louise of the Liberal Democrat Party is duly elected. This Conservative party has taken people across our country for granted for far too long. We will continue the work of holding this government to account for letting Covid rip through the care homes. We will speak up for the 3 million people excluded from financial support throughout the pandemic. And we will challenge Boris Johnson to be far more ambitious in tackling climate change, supporting our frontline workers and backing our small businesses. The Liberal Democrats will ensure that they will be held accountable and they will be scrutinised. That was Sarah Green, the constituency's new MP criticising the Tories for taking voters for granted. And the results do suggest a desire to punish the governing party. Let's take a look at the numbers. The Lib Dems won 57% in the constituency. So a really big win. It wasn't close. And that added 30 percentage points to the results just two years ago. The Conservatives are on 36% or won 36%. That was down 20 points. You can see a massive swing there. Labour vote also declining. But the big story here is that swing from the Tories to the Lib Dems. The Lib Dems now have an 8,000 majority. Now it's a result the Lib Dem leader Ed Davy said would send a political shockwave through the country. Well, I think this will send a shockwave through British politics. Liberal Democrats have had good wins in the past. This is our best ever by-election victory. And it was repeated across the south. Literally dozens of Conservative seats would fall to the Liberal Democrats. People talked about the red wall in the north but forgotten about the blue wall in the south. And that's going to come tumbling down if this result is mimicked across this country. So you heard there a very pleased Ed Davy talking about the blue wall in the south. Now the idea here is that the blue wall is the flip side of the red wall. The red wall that was traditionally Labour voting constituencies who voted Brexit and now are falling to the Conservatives. The idea is that there could be different seats in a different part of the country here in the south of England that would have traditionally been real big Tory strongholds. Affluent voters who voted remain who are now at risk of leaving the party either to the Lib Dems or to Labour. This result was obviously given the Lib Dems lots of confidence that if that blue wall does fall, it will fall to them. This argument was expressed rather crudely in the following visual metaphor. I mentioned a blue wall a few minutes ago and an orange force. You know what happens when a really powerful strong orange force goes against a blue wall? Stand back. Let me show you. So he is there suggesting this is significant. This is a harbinger of things to come. There is this whole constituency in the country, in the broader sense constituency in the country who traditionally voted Conservative and now for various reasons are going to go to the Lib Dems. This could be repeated in a general election and you could see the Lib Dems sweep across the south. That's of course not the only explanation of what happened yesterday. So another big issue in the election was local issues. So this includes HS2, the Lib Dems locally campaigned against high speed rail 2. That goes through the constituency. It so happens that the Lib Dems support it on a national level, but they campaigned on that. They also campaigned on planning reforms, which the Lib Dems say would allow more homes to be built on the green belt and voters rebelled against that. We could then see this as a victory for nimbyism, not necessarily particularly progressive people who don't want high speed rail, which is going to be, I think, necessary for a climate change proof future and who aren't particularly keen on more houses being built in their area even though we have a housing shortage. So it could be these local issues and not necessarily issues which the Lib Dems will be able to take advantage of when it comes to a national election instead of one fought on those local issues. It is also the case that governing parties losing by elections is just the norm in British politics, and perhaps we shouldn't read very much into this at all. I want to show you a graph now from the Institute for Government. Now this shows that in every parliament since 1945, the government have, on average, received a significantly reduced vote share in by elections. It's also the case that the magnitude of this swing isn't particularly unexceptional. So the swing or the drop in the conservative vote share in Cheshireman Amisham was 20 points, and we can see from this graph that actually that was the average drop in vote share for the conservatives between 1992 and 1997. You might say yes, but they lost the next general election. It was also the average vote share lost by Labour between 2001 and 2005. They obviously went on to win that next general election. Precedent then makes the Cheshireman Amisham result seem normal, unexceptional, which is unlike Hartlepool, which has also been plotted. You can see there in the top right of this chart, that was, I mean, almost unprecedented because the conservatives added more than 20 points to their vote share as the governing party. That one really did buck a trend. Now when it comes to saying, you know, this most recent by-election doesn't matter that much because this is a peculiar result. By-elections are always novel, unique. Someone pushing that line unsurprisingly was Boris Johnson, who speaking today didn't seem particularly concerned about the result. It's a bit peculiar, a bit bizarre. I won London twice. I think I was elected in Henley twice. And, you know, just last month, we had gains in Baselburne and Maidstone and Basingstoke and all over the place. So, you know, we are a great one-nation party and we will continue with our mission to unite and level up because that is the best way to deliver jobs, prosperity across the whole country. That's, well, I mean, Boris Johnson there seeming incredibly relaxed. I want to bring Owen Jones in now. He's in the digital room. How are you doing, Owen? I'm a bit of a technical man, Michael, which is why I'm using my rubbish old MacBook camera. But I'm here as we scrabbled around trying to find a functioning cable. It's nice. It's old-school. It's intense. I can see you've just had a haircut as well. I knew you were getting that before you came. You've got to make the effort for Navarra, haven't you? We've got two big visions, I suppose, two big explanations of what happened last night. So, one is that this is a real problem for the Conservatives. The Lib Dems are about to sweep through the blue wave in the... Sorry, the blue wall in the south of England. The other is that this was a pretty unique one-off. It's a by-election. People were protesting against the government and voting for local reasons. Which one of those are you going for? I mean, look, the Lib Dems are, by tradition, the by-election kings. And people forget that because as a political force they were so crushed by their experience in coalition. But if there's one thing the Liberal Democrats have traditionally excelled at, it is storming a by-election. And what they do is they often lay the foundations and it is rumoured that, for example, in this particular case, Cheryl Gillan, the former Conservative Member of Parliament, was ill for a while. The Lib Dems, it is rumoured, knew that and laid the foundations for their victory. And what they tend to do is colonise local issues. They are hated as campaigners by both Labour and the Conservatives for very similar reasons, which is they're seen as very opportunistic, cynical campaigners. In some local elections, Lib Dems, one part of the constituency will campaign in favour of something, and then in the other part of the constituency or council area campaign against it. That's just what the Liberal Democrats do. And obviously they did successfully colonise a local issue here. But we also know that there are economically right-wing reflecting their class interests, affluent homeowners, well-to-do, who are socially liberal, who don't like the direction the Conservative Party has taken. And that's collided with a NIMBY-ish political, local political issue. But I'd say a big warning, I mean, kind of for the Liberal Democrats, I suppose, which is there's been lots of, you know, we saw this even after the 2015 coalition experience when, for example, they defeated Zach Goldsmith in Richmond Park, the Lib Dems are back, and it always, it has tended to be a false start because what tends to happen is Lib Dems win often by elections and then lose them at a general election. And we should remember that, and this is, I'm sure we're going to talk about this now, you do expect governments to get punched in the face in a by-election. That is kind of what happens. Opposition priorities do better normally in by-elections than they do in general elections, as I think your graph just indicated earlier. So actually, this should be normal politics. This is what you would expect. Would the Lib Dems probably keep the seat? I'd wager probably not, historically speaking, unless a realignment really is taking place. So I think personally, I think this is an example of what an opposition party, particularly one that excels at by-elections, should do in a midterm scenario, which is what's just happened. I mean, I tend to agree with you on that one. So I'm going to go to another clip to, I suppose, push back with this idea that maybe this is a sign of broader sociological trends. This was Dominic Grieve. He was a former Conservative MP, obviously a big remainer, very anti-Boris Johnson. He spoke to the BBC this morning, and he agreed with the Lib Dem leader that there is a Tory blue wall that might soon crumble. This has happened not just because of HS2 or all because of Greenbelt issues. I doubt this has played a part. It's because this is a pretty sophisticated electorate that knows what a fraudulent prospectus is. And they have a very low opinion of the Prime Minister and they consider him to be a charlatan. And this is, I think, quite a widespread view amongst a certain section of the electorate that has consistently voted Conservative all their lives because this is a deeply Conservative area with a small C. And that's the fundamental problem that Conservative parties got. They have a Prime Minister who appears to have an appeal to some sections of the electorate because he's optimistic, he's sunny, he's outgoing, and towards another group who perhaps take life a little bit more seriously, he comes across extremely badly and it's got much, much worse. So an interesting argument there from Dominic Greaves. To me, it came across as, I mean, the undertone there I thought was a little bit of classism. He's sort of suggesting these are sophisticated voters, these wealthy voters in the south who can see through Boris Johnson's buffoonery, not like the Norverners in the Red Wall who just like to see a sunny, optimistic guy speaking. Did you have the same impression from that intervention from Dominic Greaves? Exactly, that's to be honest. I mean, look, Dominic Greaves, first, he wants his party back. He's not going to get his party back. So he's trying to use this as any politician would in his circumstances when his faction has been so comprehensively defeated within the Conservative party's political leverage to try and use it to say, well actually, the Conservatives thought they had a cost-free political strategy by winning the so-called Red Wall seats by pivoting towards kind of, you know, the right-wing populism which abandoned the austerity economics that I think Dominic Greaves actually was quite comfortable with, but he was quite comfortable with, he voted for it consistently, that they could keep the Red Wall and keep their existing seats in the south. And Dominic Greaves and people are going, no, you can't, you're going to pay a price for that. In an effort, I think, to try and use that as leverage internally, but obviously there's classism there. I think there's a sense that they are, I think they see this and it is far more complicated in terms of what's actually happening on the ground because the Tories are doing well amongst older, home-owning white people in the north. Some of those are working class, some of them aren't, many of them are retired. But as far as people like Dominic Greaves are concerned, this is a kind of plebbing turn by the Conservatives that they have abandoned the genteel, middle-class conservatism of the Shires in favour of the rough, coarse, crude, blue-collar conservatism of the north. That isn't true. And obviously, you know, the form of conservatism that Dominic Greaves and others promoted was one of slash-and-burn economics, which devastated working-class communities. And I'm not saying that that's been entirely comprehensively abandoned by this government. They do turn on the taps very cynically in those communities which they are seeking to win over or to kind of secure and consolidate their existing electoral coalition. But no, I mean, I think, you know, at the end of the day, I think the danger for, I'm afraid, for the Labour Party and for the left and the danger equally for Dominic Greaves is the Conservatives have every chance of consolidating their grip over the so-called red wall, northern, ex-industrial areas which disproportionately have older, white, home-owning voters where younger people have disproportionately left and in a general election keeping those Southern seats. I mean, just on that, I'd say, remember Joe Swinson went very hard much to our chagrin against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party in the general election. And to one degree, that was actually completely irrational and an act of self-harm because by fueling the demonization of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party, all that did is help drive certain voters into the arms of the Conservatives. But the rational basis for what she was doing is trying to appeal to Conservative voters who had disillusioned with the Brexit turn but who were more scared of Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party. And I think the reality is in a place like Cheshireman-Amishin is a lot of those home-owning, affluent voters who've plunked for the Lib Dems this time and quite annoyed about HS2 and don't really like Brexit and think Boris Johnson is probably a bit of a charlatan. I think if any vaguely progressive Labour Party, I mean, at the moment they don't have any political vision of any description, but they will think to themselves, to be honest, any Labour Party in government might increase my taxes and if I vote Lib Dem, I might get those people in power and they'll increase my taxes. So I'm just going to vote Conservative even though I think Boris Johnson's a moron and I think that's what's likely to happen. I agree on that front and I think probably Boris Johnson knows that so I wouldn't expect him to now sort of see this and think, oh God, now I've got to suddenly become a liberal and start speaking as if my main constituency is in the south of England because I agree with you essentially. Once a general election comes along and it looks like a fight between a Conservative or a Labour-led government, these people are going to pitch, or the majority of people in these affluent constituencies are probably going to pitch for people who they are pretty sure won't raise their taxes. Let's go on to our next story. My apologies to Dominic Greve. I was calling him Dominic Greves. I will make sure I get that right next time if he ever appears on the show in a clip again. Labour never expected to win in the Cheshireman-Amisham by-election. However, the scale of their defeat has raised questions about the health of the party under Starmer's leadership. They won only 622 votes, which represents a 1.6% vote share. As you can see from the following chart, this was Labour's worst ever performance in the constituency. So you can see here, they've never done particularly well in the constituency and they have done very badly. Their previous low was 6% in 2010. Their previous high 21% in 2017. So historically, it looks very bad. However, speaking to Sky this morning, Jess Phillips suggested Labour's poor result needn't worry the party, as this time it was the result of tactical voting. Why do you think that you didn't do better in the Cheshireman-Amisham by-election? I mean, I don't think that anyone was necessarily expecting the result we got, but I think even fewer people would have been expecting the Labour Party to take Cheshireman-Amisham. And I think that what's happened there is that voters aren't stupid. Often, I think, in public commentary, we talk about voters in a manner as if they don't know what they're doing, and it seems very clear that the vote in Cheshireman-Amisham was a vote against the government and the voters decided that the best way to do that was to corral around the most likely winner. And in this case, it was the Lib Dems. It's a classic Lib Dem squeeze message. I beat the Lib Dems, so I'm no stranger to it. Now, Jess Phillips has some unreasonable things. That probably wasn't one of them. People are more likely to vote tactically in by-elections. That's because as we talked about, you get to hit the government cost-free, risk-free. Also, in a by-election, you normally have the opposition parties campaigning a bit harder than they normally would in a general election, so we know that the Lib Dems were campaigning incredibly heavily in this constituency. Also, I want to show you one more graphic because we compared this vote to Labour's previous performance in that constituency. It's probably also just as good a comparison, potentially a better comparison, to look at the last by-election, which the Lib Dems gained from the Conservatives and what happened to the Labour vote then. It was Richmond Park in 2016, so that was the last time the Lib Dems took a seat of the Conservatives in between general elections. Then you can see, likewise, the Labour vote really fell as people realised it was a two-horse race. So, in this election, Christian Wormann was the Labour candidate. He only got 1,515 votes, which was 3.6% of the vote, down 8.7% from previous. So, again, we see that the Labour Party was squeezed, though it was to less of a significant degree than it was this time around. Owen Jones, what's your take here? Do you think that Jess Phillips is right that essentially this was just the result of tactical voting, or do you think the fact it was so low that only 622 people voted for the Labour Party suggests that there is also something else going on here? I think it's a bit from column A, a bit from column B, to be honest. I mean, look, Labour never can, obviously, be competitive in that seat. In 2017, which, of course, the high watermark of Corbynism, Labour came second, but a distant second. This is a true blue country, and realistically, only the Liberal Democrats have a good chance in a constituency, which is, as safe as it is for the Conservatives, as that particular one in the south kind of social composition. And, yeah, I mean, clearly vast numbers of people who would prefer to vote for Labour if they had that choice voted for the Liberal Democrats because they knew that was the best possible way of getting rid of a Conservative Member of Parliament. But equally, the brutal reality is that there is no motivating reason for anyone to vote for the Labour Party in 2020, the year our law 2021. Nothing, no reason at all. I vote Labour because, to the evitations and times of people on the left, I'm a Labour right of a left persuasion. So I'm loyally going vote for that. I don't know why other people are voting for the Labour Party at the moment. I don't know how you answer the question. I really want to vote for the Labour Party because to stop the Tories, fine. But as we've seen in this particular case, people just concluded there was a different way of stopping that. People aren't voting for something. You don't vote for the Labour Party at the moment because you think here's a great inspiring vision that resonates with me, which will transform the life of me, my family, my community, my country, or indeed the world if we look at the climate emergency. Of course no one's doing that. So I mean, the fact that the Labour vote is essentially the same as the Labour membership in that, and I would presume some Labour members vote for the Liberal Democrats. It's not exactly an exact then diagram there. The fact is, you know, the Labour Party's got the sort of vote from the monster-raving-loony party, which is humiliating. You know, there have been many by-elections in the past where people have tactically voted for the Liberal Democrats, but the Labour Party still retain a core vote. No Labour core vote existed at all in this seat. It just vanished, it evaporated utterly. And I think that's the problem that sums up for the Labour Party. Normally, a political party, one of the two major parties in any significant constituency where it's had a significant vote in the past should have a die-hard, I'm going to vote for my party to the bitter end, I don't care what the stakes are, and that didn't exist in this constituency because there's nothing to drive people to vote for the Labour Party, but I do think it was overwhelmingly tactical voting. And I think what we should... I don't know if I'm skipping ahead, so just stop me if I'm skipping ahead. What should worry the Labour Party is their excuse about a so-called vaccine bounce for the government, meaning that they lost the last by-election in Harley-Pool and have a very good chance of losing the next by-election in battling Spen is because of a vaccine roll-out. Well, if that's true, why is it hitting them and not the Liberal Democrats? No, I mean, I absolutely agree with you there. The problem isn't so much Labour's vote share in this by-election, it's what it says about Keir Starmer's excuses about their vote share in by-elections, which they should have won. So in Harley-Pool, obviously Labour didn't lose because of tactical voting, because it was a two-horse race between Labour and the Conservatives. When Labour did lose, what were Keir Starmer's allies saying? They were saying, well, Boris Johnson is now essentially indestructible because we're amid a vaccine bounce. How could anyone, however good our leader was, possibly beat this man who has just delivered vaccines to the masses, right? And as you say, Owen, that argument doesn't stack up because why was Ed Davy able to do it, right? People in this constituency also got vaccinated and actually more of them have been vaccinated now than they had been vaccinated when Harley-Pool was coming along. So Keir Starmer really is going to struggle to find excuses for elections which do matter to the Labour Party when they lose them. Obviously, Harley-Pool was won. Battalion spend is coming up and we will see what happens then. Whatever we think about what this says about Keir Starmer, it does seem that there is some disquiet within the Labour Party, including in Keir Starmer's top team. Kate Ferguson from The Sun today tweeted, knives out for Keir after the Cheshire and Amisham by-election disaster, hearing that supporters of Angela Reina and Lisa Nandi quietly ringing round to sound out possible support if he goes. Now that claim has been disputed. Rachel Wim of The Huffington Post tweeted later, Labour source close to Angela Reina and Lisa Nandi has called reports the two have been sounding out MPs about a leadership challenge. Absolute bollocks. Claims and counterclaims there. What we do know, which I saw Owen Jones tweeting about before this show, is that Ben Nunn, who is Keir Starmer's director of communications, has, in the past hour or so, resigned. So there definitely is disquiet at the top of the team. It's not just a case of briefing and counter briefing. Something is going on. Owen, can you enlighten us any more about what is happening at the top of the Labour Party right now? Well, the wheels are falling off. I'd just be blunt about it. That's very self-evident. I think it's been quite an open secret that Ben Nunn, the director previous, no longer the director of communications has not been happy in that role for a long time. And I think sources, I think various people who have a good grip of Labour politics who aren't necessarily on the left. There was a consensus that they don't have a political strategy of any direction. They came into the position they have thinking that by virtue of looking competent, Keir Starmer not having any baggage, being a knight of the well, no less, having run a state bureaucracy, he could present himself as competent compared to his predecessor and competent in contrast to Boris Johnson. That was incinerated, that dividing line by the vaccine rollout because they didn't offer a dividing line based on the vision or values. They were left with literally absolutely nothing to say, which is not a great position for a directive communications to be left in. I think what we're talking about in terms of the manoeuvring, though, I think it's important, because I know sources close to Angela Rayner's team are very adamant that they're not telephoning people around, but I also know other people who are very adamant that people linked to Angela Rayner are wringing people. There was a conflict in understanding of what's happening in that particular case. I think the issue with Angela Rayner is there are people close to Angela Rayner who do want her to stand for leader and I think there are others who don't at the moment. I think the worry is that old adage, the cliche, who wields the dagger never wears the crown. If you overthrow your leader, you generally do not or you never. There's not really a direct precedent for then replacing them. Take example, Michael Heseltine. Michael Heseltine mobilized in an attempt to overthrow Margaret Thatcher and the coup. He didn't end up her replacement. John Major, who was the chancellor of the Exchequer, and loyal to Margaret Thatcher in that episode, he instead became the successor. There's no easy route. I think the other issue I'd say is a big chunk of the right of the Labour Party, I think there's good reasons to believe, are waiting to see what the result of the Unite General Secretary election is. Unite is the most influential trade union in the country, the most influential union within the Labour Party. If Gerard Coyne, the right-wing candidate, wins, that will then be used to clamp down on democracy within the Labour Party and do all sorts of very, very, very terrifying, bad things. But also to rewrite the leadership rules, probably a reversion to the Electoral College, for example. So you give a massive chunk of the votes weighted in favour of members of Parliament. You change the nominations required to get a left-winger on the ballot in the first place, and that would stop a left-winger getting on the ballot paper. The issue, I think, with Keir Starmer now is dead man walking politically speaking. You can't lose two by-elections and stay on his leader in the long-term. If he loses, Batley and Sped, where I was earlier this week, we have to call for him to resign no ifs, no buts. It's ludicrous position to be in. The leader of, I mean, just to be very clear about how just, and it does link to what we just talked about with the by-election in Amersham and Cheshire, in Amherst, I keep going, anyway. Oppositions do not lose by-elections. That almost never happens. Before Hartlepool, that had happened twice in the last 50 years. You can't double the number of by-elections you have lost, or an opposition that's also the government, in the last half-century, within the space of two months. And credibly argue you have any chance whatsoever of staying in power. I went to and what I saw were particularly Muslim Labour voters who are core Labour voters, very important point to make, by the way, because there's going to be a whole load of Islamophobic dog whistles, there already are, coming out of Batley and Spen somehow suggesting that Muslim voters aren't legitimate voters, that this is a George Galway factor, rah, rah, rah, rah. In the last general election, an estimated corner to the latest poll, 86% of British Muslims voted for the Labour Party in this country. There's over 3 million Muslims in this country. In many seats, British Muslims have a big, big influence over which party becomes, or wins that each constituency. And they are furious, furious when you talk to them. They feel completely abandoned by their party, they want to teach Labour a lesson, they want to give Labour a punch in the nose, that's how the people I spoke to, they sounded just like Scottish Labour voters before them, who've spoken just the same way, my father, my mother, my grandmother, my grandfather. Ever since our family first arrived here, we always voted for the Labour Party, for the first time I'm not going to vote for the Labour Party. And I'm going to teach them a lesson. And I heard that from Scottish Labour voters. It was the same said by some voters in the so-called red wall as well. And the issue is, in Scotland, when they crossed the electoral rubric and they didn't come back. Now, in Batley and Spen, George Galway, I think is a cynical opportunist, to say the least, but nonetheless, he has cut through with his messages on things like Palestine. And when pundits say, oh, Palestine and, you know, these are foreign policy niche issues that the average voter doesn't care about, apart from freaks in the Labour Party and all the rest of it, well, they're wrong because everyone was talking about Palestine and the doorstep, or a lot of people in Batley and Spen. The reason that so many British Muslims were more attracted to Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party was his track record on fighting Islamophobia and his stance on issues like Palestine, but also Kashmir, for example, and also the fact that around half of Muslims in this country live below the poverty line and Labour's domestic policies are more likely to resonate with them as a consequence. And that, you know, this idea that Keir Starmer's leadership had, which was the biggest, you know, this was what Peter Mandelson said about working-class voters, allegedly, they have nowhere else to go. And that, they thought 2019 voters, whether they be Muslim, whether they be young voters, that's the floor. They're not going to leave Labour Party. We don't need to listen to them anymore. We just have to go and chase these other voters and wave flags in a very patronising way in order to do so without committing to a vision of what we're going to do with the country. And guess what? It's not one of those voters on over, but it is losing the support of those voters instead. So I think what's happening is Labour's electoral coalition is further collapsing because of Keir Starmer's leadership. As things stand, things are looking very bad in battle-inspirational Labour and privately Labour councillors tell me that the seat is lost. They tell me on streets where 80 to 90% of local residents voted Labour in the last election. They're just telling canvases to eff off. Bitter opposition. Actually, the Labour candidate, you know, Joe Cox's sister is actually very charismatic on the doorstep. She's obviously a very good campaigner. You know, there's no political vision being offered by the Labour Party. That's the issue. That's cutting through. So I think what will happen after battle-inspend is we on the left have to, if he loses battle-inspend, Keir Starmer has to resign as leader of the Labour Party and the left has to think very seriously about how we get some sort of candidate on the ballot paper in those circumstances. If people have left the Labour Party over the last few months, I would strongly recommend you join so that you have a vote in any coming contest. It does underline how important the United General Secretary election is. That's why Steve Turner has to win. So for those of you who are angry that Howard Beckett is not in anymore, after he withdrew to support Steve Turner, that is a politically very, very important battlefield in terms of for the left in British society and within the Labour Party. But I think the right may hold their fire, or a lot of the Parliamentary Labour Party, because they fear at the moment until the leadership rules are changed, the left has a chance of clawing back some power either with a candidate who's more amenable to the left, or an outright left candidate. So I think they will hold fire a lot of them. But his position will be untenable if he loses the battle and spend by election. He won't lead Labour into the next general election in my view. If that happens, the issue is will it happen a leadership contest when they rigged the rules to stop the left getting on and that's a big, big problem for us. We're going to talk a bit more about the United Leadership Election in a moment, because there have been some developments today. That point you raised, though, about MPs waiting to see what happens before they make a move is really interesting, because it could work in both ways, I feel, because thinking about the decision-making processes of Angela Rainer, which seems pretty significant at this point in time, she seems like probably one of the most likely people who could topple Keir Starmer. And even though I know many people on the left have lots of issues, but I think she probably would be more amenable to the left than Keir Starmer is. She might not try to change the leadership rules, for example. I'd been assuming that whilst it might be better for the Labour Party for her to go early, she might be happy to sort of plod along until we lose the next general election, and then after that try and go for the leadership. But if she fears that actually the leadership rules might change in the near future, because it will go back to the Electoral College, she's not going to go for long MPs, then she might think, I've got to go early. This is my only chance, right? So could it be the case that this fret of the leadership rules changing could push a kind of soft left coalition to defeat Keir Starmer and to stand before it's too late and the party is completely stitched up for the people, even to the right of them? Well, a very an influential left fixer within who straddles, I'd say, the trade union movement told me today that actually, given there is a significant chance that Gerard Coyne is going to win the Unite General Secretary race, because although Howard Beckett, who should be commended for standing down and putting the left in the Labour movement before himself has stuck down, Sharon Graham, another candidate who positions himself on the left hasn't done so, and Gerard Coyne last time round got 40% of the vote and then we'll talk about the Unite race in detail, but he has a very good chance of winning and therefore it could be a do or die moment, that unless the left as well as those sections of the soft left who I suppose are left facing, the left facing elements of the soft left who are now angrily disillusioned with Keir Starmer's leadership and realised that this is a massive train wreck, if there isn't an attempt to act in the aftermath or they defeat it, if it happens in Batman's bed, it's not certain, but there's a lot of evidence pointing in that direction, then that could be it. So I think there needs to be and I really do think the problem that the Unite General Secretary race showed was I think it would be replicated on the left flank of the parliamentary Labour Party because I don't think there would be an easy consensus over who the candidate should be, I think you'll end up with a lot of fights on social media in the same way where rival candidates appeal to people on social media for legitimacy and it could end up being a bum fight where no one gets on the ballot paper as a consequence because you've got too many rival candidates asserting that they should be the left candidate of some description in that particular eventuality. It does depend by the way if it's an open contest. So for example if Keir Starmer resigns the nominations goes down to 20 that's game on then, you could get a left candidate quite easily on the ballot paper. If he didn't resign it's 40. That would be very, very hard. In a recent backbench election Graham Morris who's a left wing backbench who got 38 votes that's nearly 40 and that suggests you could, you know, it's nearly there you could in theory that I don't, I think getting a left candidate to challenge Keir Starmer I'm not sure they'd get the 40 nominations I really don't and it would depend on what our stance and I think there'd be a lot of pressure on Keir Starmer not to resign for that for that reason there could be a stalking horse that's obviously what happened of course famously with Margaret Thatcher Anthony Mayer stood as a stalking horse he was in a school backbencher that paved the way for an open leadership contest where other candidates could stand so that's a possibility as well but I think the danger at the moment is we're running out of time because we saw in unison where you had more than one left candidate standing they got a majority together they won a majority but quite stupidly unison and unite have first passed the place electoral systems operating so it doesn't really matter if you win a majority for the left because the right wing candidate just comes through the middle and they will change the leadership rules and then we won't be able to get a left candidate on maybe for a generation so I do think after battling Spen if Keir Starmer, sorry but loses I think the left should go for it. I don't think we have a choice in those circumstances but who it is, how we get there, how we build a coalition to do that, that would be very difficult but I have to say to people anyone now who's saying oh well this is outrageous you're just destabilizing this isn't tenable come on even if you know lots of people I don't vote for Keir Starmer a majority of people in the Labour movement who voted did by a big margin he stood on ten pledges which have disappeared he hasn't offered a clear vision he promised part of unity that hasn't happened he promised professionalism that hasn't happened he promised electability that clearly hasn't happened this is heading for catastrophe for the Labour movement the Labour Party and as a consequence British society it's not a tenable situation so I do think we have to make an appeal the left has to be savvy and sometimes this doesn't happen which means appealing to people who voted for Keir Starmer who are now disillusioned they do exist I know personally people who voted for Keir Starmer who now feel very disillusioned so there needs to be an appeal to those that chunk of the Labour Party not idiot why didn't you see that one coming that's not going to help us at this particular juncture we've got to build that coalition but we're running out of time and as I've said I think they're going to try and hold out the right for a change in leadership rules and the question is would Keir Starmer resign in that eventuality I'm not convinced he would we've got to operate on the basis that it might be 40 nominations and it might be 20 we're going to have to make some very difficult decisions if that happens I mean he's not going to resign because it would benefit the left if we've learnt anything about Keir Starmer his priority is to make sure the left can't have much of an influence in the Labour Party so I'm pretty sure he'll stay on and the left or the opponents of Starmer are going to need for your nominations which as you say is probably going to involve some potentially awkward compromises talking of awkward compromises or at least the failure to come to them we are going to go now onto the latest developments in Unite, I think we can get up an image for you now on previous shows we've despaired at the fact that free left candidates entered the race to lead Unite the Union against only one candidate from the right that risk spitting the left vote and handing a union with 1.4 million members and which is the Labour Party's largest donor to a candidate committed to rolling back any gains made by socialists over the past decade in Britain on that front we have some good news and some bad news the good news is that two of the candidates have come to an agreement and one will be dropping out Steve Turner and Howard Beckett have released a joint statement that included the following Howard Beckett has decided he will support Steve Turner as Unite's next General Secretary both recognise the vision and strengths of their respective campaigns and Steve Turner recognises the key manifesto commitments and energy generated by Howard's campaign they will both work to implement a blended manifesto taking the best ideas from both candidates when Steve Turner becomes General Secretary it goes on Howard Beckett will campaign alongside Steve for the next two months to present a joint programme which includes greater support for workplace representatives important new communications initiatives including Unite TV upgraded education and training for members an independent and progressive political voice and a new structure for the Union reflecting the diversity of our nations and regions that's the good news there were three candidates two of them are now uniting behind Steve Turner much credit to Howard Beckett for doing so the bad news is that the other left candidate Sharon Graham has refused to come to any deal so in response to the statement from Turner and Beckett Graham said the Turner Beckett ticket along with Gerard along with the Gerard coin candidacy now completes the Westminster Brigade I am the workplace candidate and will be standing to ensure the voice of Unite members is heard so there's still going to be two left candidates and one right wing candidate do you have any insight into why this has happened I think lots of people watching this will be completely despairing that we are going into another Union election one that really matters both for the Union movement and for the Labour Party and the left couldn't get it together to Unite behind a single candidate why when Howard Beckett was willing to fall behind Steve Turner could Steve Turner and Sharon Graham not come to any kind of agreement here Sharon Graham is coming from a different place because what we saw with Howard Beckett he put his greatest emphasis on political strategy which was to that Unite should have a very very firm line on Keir Starmer's leadership including potentially pulling the plug and that's to be fair to him that wasn't all he for example talked about increasing the strike ballot the strike ballot fund for example Sharon Graham is more of what you would describe as a syndicalist she's not somebody who has a particular interest in Unite's relationship with the Labour Party she has you know she's known as a good organiser she has a very dedicated following of people around her from the organising department of Unite and that's her big thing it's about you know not having a service model of trade unionism focusing on organising which a lot of us watching would strongly agree with that she's not somebody who really has a strong position on vis a vis Unite and the Labour Party and the political left I suppose so I think you know it was very difficult negotiations which took place over the last few days which was very difficult in itself between Howard Beckett's team and Steve Turner's team but Sharon Graham's team are adamant they're not going to stand down one of the main arguments they're pushing is that she's a female candidate it is of course true that the trade union movement the majority of women and that isn't represented properly at all at the top of the trade union movement there is to be to be really honest something of machismo partly in some sections of the leadership of the trade union movement we've seen what happened in GMB which was one of the big trade unions in the country one of the big three when their last general secretary you know it was forced to resign and it's the terrible scandal so you can see you know it was a big problem but at the same time what's likely to happen if this goes wrong and there's very good chance it will it won't be a woman leading it will be an extremely right wing 1950s style trade union right winger Gerald Coyne who is a left bashing reactionary of a very very old school of as I say 1950s style trade unionism who would completely trash the kind of whether it be united in terms of organizing workers in terms of having a militant edge with employers as well as obviously working hand in glove with the leadership of the Labour Party to suppress Labour Party democracy and stitch up the leadership rules so you know unfortunately Sharon you know just Sharon Graham is just not on the same she's not coming from the same position as Howard Beckett it's not in the same way to appeal to her some might argue by the way she might end up taking votes off Gerald Coyne because you know some of Gerald Coyne's likely people voting for him will be people going well I'm just fed up with Unite and the Labour Party going hand in hand and Unite should brought out and I don't want my money going on that and Sharon Graham her pitch could actually appeal to some of them but I have put that to people and they did point out to me in the last Unite general sexual action when it's very important to make this point Gerald Coyne got ten times less nominations than Len McCluskey but then ended up nearly winning he came within four percentage points of winning he got about 42% of the vote and people then go well nominations mean nothing well actually what it shows is the right always outperform the nominations so Gerald Coyne again came last but the right people who support his candidacy are less likely to turn up to trade union branch meetings and that's I suppose that's the danger now which is because they said to me if you compare with what happened in 2017 we did have another syndicalist candidate Allinson who stood and he only got about 14% of the vote but that was nearly enough for Gerald Coyne to win that just getting that share of the vote was a nearly enough so the danger is Gerald she may take some off Gerald Coyne but she's going to take some off Steve Turner too I know Steve Turner's team are war gaming on the basis now that Sharon is not going to stand down and there's no evidence to suggest she will I understand a letter is going to go in signed by women in the trade union movement urging her to do so and that pressure does need to be exerted but we're nearly at time Monday's the absolute cutoff that's when the statements are submitted she's digging in and the danger therefore is as things stand you know we saw what happened in Unison more than three left candidates stood the right wing candidate won even though they won a collectively a majority and the danger is again with Sharon Graham that she will take enough of both to come through to allow Gerald Coyne still to come through the middle that would be a catastrophe and that's why if there's any difference between now and 2017 back then no one thought Lemakoski had any chance of losing he had incumbency advantage as well and they didn't mobilize as a consequence honestly if you're on the left this is do or die this is a kind of you know we're talking a generational defeat if this goes wrong so the left if they want you know the unite which is in the absolute sense of the left's infrastructure in British society not just in the in the in the labour pie but class the people's assembly you can cut they were very much involved in supporting all these other movements that will be a catastrophe that the left will struggle to recover from for a very long time so I do think the left has to throw everything into this because Sharon Graham standing means Gerald Coyne if I was a betting man I'd say he's going to win this he's the favourite to win and only if people throw everything into Steve Turner's campaign is there any chance that that's not happening the stakes could not be higher we promised we'd end in time for the football so we're going to rush through our final story which is a more lighthearted one by elections are famously unpredictable affairs which is precisely why it's risky to make long predictions yet Jim Picard who is chief political correspondent at the final Financial Times didn't get that memo on the day of the Cheshireman-Amisham by-election he tweeted the following seeing lots of excited speculation today but I'll eat my hat if the Lib Dems win here one of the most true blue seats in the country now within 12 hours of that tweet Picard was proven to have been dramatically wrong not only did the Lib Dems win that seat but they won it comfortably with an 8000 majority so the next question would Jim Picard eat his hat let's take a look I did a stupid tweet predicting that the Liberal Democrats would not win in Cheshireman-Amisham and if that happened I would eat my hat um this is the hat I've chosen just cutting off some fine mortals so here we go cheating to wash it down with a nice glass of water I like to think that I can say I've kept my word let's hope it's not toxic because if there's one thing worse than a stupid tweet it's death buying hat eating now I have to say we have our disagreements with Jim Picard on this on this show but I had some respect for that clip because unlike Matt Goodwin he's a political scientist that's maybe too nice a way to put it he's someone who makes political predictions and he got it wrong in 2017 he said if Labour get more than 38% of the vote I'll eat my book live on TV now he went on Sky News to do that but he just put the page in his mouth and then after the cameras went away, spat it out I was kind of genuinely impressed there that Jim Picard swallowed parts of the hat do you have increased respect for Jim Picard even though he's terrible at predictions, he swallowed parts of his hat? I was really worried about him what's going to happen to his digestive system what chemicals are in that that's all I could think about I've met Jim Picard obviously my politics are different he's a nice guy not something you can say about lots of lobby journalists he's a genuinely nice guy he's not the financial time stable reflects the politics therefore but I was like I was going to get in touch with him just to see if he was okay I'm seriously worried about him Michael it's really worrying I think it just goes straight through I think things like it's not going to break down in your stomach so I think you're going to get it's a cloth in your shit that's a horrible image the dye seeps out of it I think you should check I think what you should do first is research the hat and the chemicals involved because it's risky there will be people watching it who are going to emulate it and we could have a wave of hat related fatalities in this country so you think he now if he's a responsible journalist he should now put don't try this at home and suggest he can say he researched all of the the impressionable readership of the financial times you know the commuter the stockbroker belt could just be decimated this could be worse than Covid I can imagine I think a hat this is just a guess I haven't researched it but I think it would probably tend more towards the constipation side than the shit side I think you might get hunged up by a hat we'll have to we'll have to ask Jim for card which way it goes obviously one other option is just not to make dumb predictions online but once you've done it if you follow through it could be worse Dan Hodges ran Naked after saying UKIT wouldn't do very well in 2015 and that was horrible so I prefer to watch someone potentially poison themselves with dye than watch Dan Hodges run Naked through the streets of London thank you so much for coming on this evening it's been an absolute pleasure lots of love I know you're going to be watching it don't pretend you're not interested I am watching it I'm actually very excited I'm going to go and watch it now I get very head up I'll let you pump yourself up now for that thank you as ever for watching Tiskey Sour we'll be back on Monday at 7pm for now you've been watching Tiskey Sour on Navara Media, good night