 Now, the 6th of May will be Keir Starmer's first big electoral test as Labour leader. Commentators will be looking out for whether there are signs of the start of a recovery in Scotland, whether Labour can remain dominant in elections to the Welsh Assembly, and whether the party will go forwards or backwards across England's councils. However, perhaps because Starmer has spent so much energy relentlessly focusing on winning back MPs in the red wall, the loudest chatter within Labour circles has been about the by-election that will be held on that day in Hartlepool, where constituents will vote in a replacement for the former Labour MP, Mike Hill. Now, that chatter went into overdrive on Tuesday when Servaiton released the first constituency and only constituency-based polling in Hartlepool. We can get up the results here. So, Servaiton have projected that the Tories are winning 49% to Labour's 42%. They also projected the brand-new Northern Independence Party in Ferd, which is quite an achievement. They mainly exist on Twitter. They do have a great candidate, Falmer Walker, who's knocking on doors. Most people think of them at this point as kind of a Twitter phenomenon. So, to get 2% would be impressive if that is borne out in fact. They also asked about the favourability of the different leaders. As we've discussed, it's not looking great for Keir Starmer at the moment. So, Boris Johnson there, 49% favourable compared to 30% unfavourable. Keir Starmer, only 24% favourable compared to 38% unfavourable. And that's obviously the people in the constituency who are asked. They're not national favourability ratings. They're local favourability ratings. Now, the poll was commissioned by the Communication Workers Union and their General Secretary Dave Ward joins me now. Now, Dave, welcome to the show. Hi, Michael. I'm going to go through some of the policy questions which the poll asked, because I know this is close to the CWU's heart, the issues about broadband, etc. But first of all, I want to talk about the pushback you got for commissioning this poll from certain Labour MPs. This is what Brent Bradshaw, this is how he responded to the poll. So, he tweeted, hi, Dave Ward, how about helping on the Labour doorstep in Hartlepool and elsewhere instead of spending CWU members money on a dodgy looking unweighted poll with leading questions and using it to undermine Keir Starmer and Labour? That was followed up by this from Toby Perkins, Shadow Minister for Apprentices and Lifelong Learning. Toby Perkins wrote, instead of spending his members money running tiny polls to undermine Labour campaign, Dave Ward could more usefully get himself up to Hartlepool. A lot more than 42% of voters I've met are voting for Paul Williams. That's not really how the Labour doorstep works. You normally knock on people who are expecting to vote Labour. But Dave, I want to know, what do you say? How would you respond to Ben and Toby? Yeah, I mean, I think you saw our response in our tweets last night that sort of really sort of said they're irrelevant in this debate if that's their view. I think it's a very shallow response from those MPs. I guess it's the start of a coordinated response from some on the right in the party. And I think what it tells me is that they're still blind to the real reasons why they're not connecting with working class communities. And the fact that they would rather attack, not us in that sense. I mean, this was carried out by salvation, one of the most well respected polling companies in the country. I think it just demonstrates how off the pace they are. But to me, personally, I mean, they're on the relevance in the debate. I mean, the CWU, Michael, we commissioned the poll for a number of really important reasons where we thought it was right to make this intervention. Firstly, the CWU is a union where we've worked really hard to connect our industrial and political agendas. So it was important to us to test some policies that were around in the general election that Labour then supported. But these are policies that support our members' jobs. So as you said, things like free broadband, renationalization, roll amount. I have to say, I was quite taken aback by the scowl of the support for free broadband and the difference between how that was seen in this particular poll compared to what a lot of critics on the right of Labour were criticising Jeremy and John McDonnell for coming up with that policy, which we were part of developing. So I thought that was really interesting. And therefore, it helps us understand what we need to do to connect with our members' jobs and in supporting the industries that they work in. The second reason we do it is the CWU is a union that strongly believes that it's time for the trade union movement to harness our collective strength and to really change some of the imbalances of power and wealth that exist, that unions can make change happen on the ground. So it was a strong message from us that we wanted to reconnect with working class communities as a trade union movement. We wanted to understand what was happening. And then thirdly, the poll was clearly that we're unhappy with the direction that Labour are taking. We think that Labour are genuinely in danger of becoming an irrelevance. And my feeling for some time has been that there's no pathway to victory for the Labour Party without a radical platform that changes the inequalities, that challenges that balance of power and wealth in the world of work, in the economy and in wider society. And for me, the poll showed that without those policies, a Labour Party that spent the last year obsessing with telling everybody what Jeremy Corbyn, sorry, that they're not Jeremy Corbyn, rightly, it seems to us that people are saying, well, who are you then? And I think there's a message there for Labour that if it wants to win seats like Hartipal, it now needs to go back to setting out a bold agenda for the future. I want to get up some of those poll results. As you say, they were quite striking. So first of all, let's look at what people said in terms of their priority being investing more in public services or paying off the country's deficit. Now, 67% when asked that question chose investing in more public services. So they're a clear rejection of austerity, although to be fair, most parties are talking along those lines. Now they've been quite a turnaround there. There was also, as you mentioned, overwhelming support for Royal Mail nationalisation. And then the real headline result, the real surprising result for many people was on broadband as you say. So you can see here, 69% of people supported having a policy of providing free broadband internet to all UK homes and businesses by 2030. Now, Dave, my question for you, because I mean, some people have responded as we've seen by saying, oh, this is an unweighted poll. It's nonsense. People don't actually want free broadband. The more I suppose subtle and sophisticated critique is to say that, yes, we all knew that people like nice things. The reason why Labour going into an election promising all of these things was a problem was because it sort of fed into a narrative that Labour just offer nice things and you can't really trust them to deliver them or they're offering so many nice things that will end up in loads of debt. So whilst the public might say, oh, I'd love free broadband if the Tories gave it to me, but if Labour give it to me, that would seem a bit suspicious there. What do you make of that critique? Well, first of all, it wasn't an unweighted poll. So it was done exactly in the way that salvation would do any poll. And we actually saw the unweighted results and then they're weighted at that point and they go through all the same processes that they do with any poll. So that did then come back towards a more narrow result, actually, in terms of whether they would be supporting Labour auditories. The critique, I think what's interesting about it is quite a relatively short period of time since that policy was ridiculed by a lot of people, including many people in the Labour Party. But actually, I think what's happened is that during the pandemic, I think people have realised the importance of broadband, the importance of that in tackling inequality, how it keeps people connected. And I think everybody recognises that unless you've got full fibre broadband connected across the whole of the country, that without that is a key part of your infrastructure to rebuild the economy. Because there's been lots of discussions about rebuilding the economy, I think people have just realised that these are essential things. More importantly, I think there's a willingness to recognise there that the state should intervene in funding and investing in free broadband. So for me, in some ways, it was a justification of the work that we done with John McDonald leading into the last general election. And I would say that John and his team were ahead of the game with this policy. Boris Johnson, I think, has recognised that a year on more than what Labour are. And so it's a wake-up call for Labour to get back to a radical policy agenda and to set that out as part of its election offering. I think that's a really important point, actually. If you ask most people, who do you think is more likely to now offer free broadband in the next general election? I think it probably would be Boris Johnson. I want to ask you, because we're talking about Hartley Paul, the other big takeaway from that poll was that in third place was the Northern Independence Party. I want to go to a statement they released in response to them being shown to be inferred. So they say, a political party that was set up by strangers over Twitter and WhatsApp five months ago is now polling higher than the Liberal Democrats and Brexit Party Reform UK. We've not even started our campaign. We've spent nothing on this election, yet we are already beating established Westminster parties. The Labour Party is a spent force in British politics. They are not a fit opposition to the Tories. Now, Dave, in a way, you seem to share some of their analysis. The Labour Party is becoming irrelevant. They're not providing proper opposition to the Tories. Are you in any way tempted by this new, you might call it a very online party, but they're polling inferred. What's your opinion on the Northern Independence Party? Well, I haven't really formed an opinion on them other than I did see the guy who's the leader. His name is Proudfoot. Was he on your show? I think I saw a clip. Yeah, Philip Proudfoot. He was on the show with Aaron. I thought he was pretty good, to be honest with you. I thought he was talking on a more sort of radical platform than what I hear from Labour. So again, you know, a reason for Labour to watch out. But look, you know, I mean, there's a general consensus, I think, building that people are moving towards more separatism and they seem to be supporting more political parties that are closely aligned to where they are, what their issues are. So I think there's lessons for Labour in that. For me, you know, the big takeaway in all of this is, and this is kind of where the CW is at the moment politically, I don't want us as a union to get engaged in a debate about disaffiliation. And because, you know, I don't really think that that takes us anywhere. But equally, I'm not prepared to, you know, see Labour use the union movement like a bank, where it can withdraw money at the time of elections and not represent the policies that we feel that we need in this country, that our members would support. So, you know, Labour should never get anything, something for nothing from the trade union movement. I'm a very strong supporter, Michael, of the trade union movement showing the way for Labour. And I think we're due to talk in a couple of weeks time about this new deal for working people and why I think it's important that the trade union movement, whether you're affiliated to the Labour Party or not, that we are willing to step up and take on some of these companies, take on whole sectors of the economy to tackle insecure employment, to tackle the imbalance of power in the world of work in the way that the economy shape. That's our job. We have to do that. And what this poll is about for me, it just, again, says to me that we are the people that can connect with working class communities. And that's what we're going to do. We're going to develop that. We're going to diversify the way that we spend our political money. I mean, the other interesting thing, which we haven't touched on, is my team have been looking at this during the course of the day. And it was really interesting to see how many CW members went back at people like Ben Bradshaw, almost saying to him, don't tell us how our union spends their political money, because they're putting it to good use. And I think that's a warning sign for Labour not to treat trade unions disrespectfully. And I have to say, it fills in the last year that they've got more distance from the trade union movement and from engaging with us. We're not fringe movement. We're a powerful movement. And I think we've got a really good chance of bridging, you know, a lot of the divides that exist in society and unite in working class people. So, you know, that's our strategy. That's what we're going to do. And whatever people like Ben Bradshaw say.