 With Labour managing to hold on to Batley and Spen, you might have expected at least a brief stint of unity to break out at the top of the party. Why interrupt a good news story with internal, factional fighting? However, you would be wrong. Allies of Kierstahmer have already begun turning on Angela Reina, the party's deputy leader. This is what one Shadow Cabinet Minister told The Times. Reina spent the last eight weeks promoting herself as the next Labour leader. A total embarrassment. They actively helped the effort to defeat Labour. I think he should sack her and let her be deputy from the back benches. Another Labour source argued that the decision to sack Reina as the party's national campaign chair in May and replace her with Shabana Mahmood is the reason why Labour scraped through in Batley and Spen. They say the reshuffle was messy, but it resulted in Shabana Mahmood being made campaign chair. That was the turning point. This is a victory for those who made that happen. So they're saying actually that reshuffle that happened after Hartlepool that looked like a complete nightmare and undermined all of Kierstahmer's authority actually might look messy, but the outcome was ultimately a good thing. It was that botched reshuffle of one Kierstahmer, this particular by-election. Now, obviously, these comments aren't going to go without a response from Angela Reina's team. Her spokesperson said whoever is doing this briefing and trying to use a fantastic Labour victory to undermine the elected deputy leader doesn't help Kier and doesn't help our party. Angela Reina has of course denied any involvement or knowledge of preparations to launch a challenge, although they were widely briefed by sources close to her, I think, to various newspapers. We talked about those earlier in the week. The Times also has this quote from someone who they described as a supporter of the deputy leader. Kier and his team tried to make Angela the scapegoat for Hartlepool and May's elections and everybody knows how that turned out. The Shadow Cabinet minister calling her disloyal for actually doing the job Kier has appointed her to and for being the only member of the Shadow Cabinet out attacking the Tories in the media every day looks a bit daft. That was an Angela Reina supporter. Now, you can see that the reference there, she's saying they're saying whenever I go on the TV and talk about Tory failures, that's me preparing for a leadership campaign. She's saying, well, that's simply what I'm supposed to do. That's normally actually what the opposition do. Maybe no one on the Labour front bench does it, but it's not an unreasonable thing to do. It doesn't necessarily mean you're maneuvering. It might just mean you want to defeat the Conservatives. Yeah, I think the hypocrisy here is unbelievable, isn't it? I remember Keir Starmer, I think, went to Southampton to campaign and he took a cameraman with him. People thought, this must be for the election campaign, the general election campaign, turned out it was for his leadership campaign, which happened immediately afterwards, which was clearly in his mind throughout the general election campaign, which ultimately, Labour took a huge hit because of a political position he drove I, the second referendum, and yet even during that same election, he had his mind on other things. I don't think Angela Ryan was looking to launch a leadership campaign. I think if Labour had lost, the result as it is, is very bad for Labour in the grand scheme of things. And I talked about some other results they had last night, losing votes in bits of London, Lincolnshire, obviously Amersham and Cheshire, obviously Hartley called the local elections. It's bad. And I think if Starmer had lost, if Labour had lost in the battle in Spouse, I think he would have had to resign. I don't think he would have, but I think anybody with a sort of ounce of common sense would agree that he would have to resign. And clearly, if that does happen, then people need to be prepared to run campaigns. I don't see the issue there. And equally, if they lost badly, if they came third in the race and Galloway overtook them, always unlikely, but not implausible. Ultimately, he got two-thirds of their vote, right? No, no, three-quarters of their vote. He got 8,000 something, they got 13,000. Then clearly, clearly these people will be losing their seats. I mean, even right now, Angela Rayner, Johnny Reynolds, Andrew Gwynne, Sam Terry, West Streeting, Evette Cooper, all these people's seats look really vulnerable right now. You know, I think so it's a bit unfair to say, well, if you have this nadir, nobody should have a plan. I think that's kind of silly. And I don't think that would any political party, even with the nicest people in it, even ones that support Kirstama, I don't think that's a reasonable expectation. And I think the briefing this quickly was super strange, Michael. It doesn't make any sense to me because this is finally a good news story for Kirstama. It's a really good news story. And I just don't understand why the thing the public hate is the labor infighting thing. They hate it. And I just don't know why you would re-inject that into the conversation so quickly. Why would you want to take the shine off? You know, because of this, if a labor and peace can keep their gob shut for a bit, if Kirstama can look authoritative, you know, the shine off this by-election result might bump them up in polls two, three, four percent. But they can't wait. They have to pile in. And it really does suggest that their priorities aren't winning a general election. You know, it's personal enmities with these people. And, you know, it is labor and peace ultimately they did to the last five, five labor leaders, people like Tom Watson got rid of Blair, people, you know, internally also undermining got rid of Brown, same with that Miliband, same with Jeremy Corbyn. So I don't think it's unreasonable to think that there is obviously political maneuvering. But I don't think it's coming from the left. I mean, we know this because the socialist campaign group, so we don't have the signatures, even if we wanted to, to launch a leadership campaign. Similarly, we heard that seven or eight members of the socialist campaign group would get behind Angelorena if necessary. So the idea that there's this kind of organized conspiracy, I don't think, I know that's not true. Yeah. Okay. People were prepared to respond to a potentially terrible set of events. Those aren't the same things. And I think the briefing probably is a more politically toxic thing than actually what they're accusing Angelorena of.