BREAKING: Makerfield By-election - Burnham Records Comfortable Win, Teeing Up Leadership Challenge

[00:00:00]Hello team, welcome to another ATP Geopolitics video with myself Jonathan MS Pierce. This is a UK political update, a really significant update and it concerns a bi-election that's just taken place in Makerfield up near Wigan in the northwest of England. Why is this bi-election a special election uh particularly important? Well, it was an a constituency where a chap called Josh Simons who was a or is was a Labour MP who had been you know elected in the last election. He stepped down in order to allow Andy Bernham who was the mayor of Greater Manchester to challenge for that seat. Why was that important?

[00:00:46]Because you cannot be the prime minister in UK without being an MP. And if Andy Bernham wanted to challenge Kama for the leadership of the Labour Party and therefore for prime ministership, then he had to be an MP. So someone had to step down from what would potentially be a slightly easier place for Labour to win. Someone had to step down and move aside so that Andy Bernham could come in and become an MP and then challenge for the leadership of the party in the country.

[00:01:21]And there are controversies as to whether that should trigger a general election because hey, no one voted for Andy Bernham to be the prime minister.

[00:01:31]You don't really vote for prime ministers in the UK. You vote for a party.

[00:01:36]You vote for an MP in your constituency and then the leader of the party that gets most MPs becomes prime minister by by default. So it is a bit uh it's a bit of a difficult argument to say that we should have a general election if there's suddenly a new prime minister put in place because it as I say we don't really have presidential style elections and this happened with the conservative government previously uh where the membership actually voted uh there for a change of conservative party leader and actually we had a number of uh prime ministers in quick succession uh without them being voted in by the general public. So you know there is precedence for this uh across parties. Okay. But that aside, um you had this local election then or not local election, a bi-election up in Makerfield that looks to be setting up this fight for leadership of the UK and Reform UK as a right-wing populist party are doing very well in the polls and have been gaining in MPs, winning in a couple of bi-elections and having defectors from the Conservative party.

[00:02:54]Uh and there are two things going on here. There's or three things going on.

[00:02:59]There's a um there's this phenomenon of the populist right becoming more prominent and that's reform and restore Britain as well to right-wing uh farright I would say populist parties growing in prominence and popularity. Then you have um the future of the Labor Party as the govern governing party in the UK. But there is you know a kind of discussion to be had about what is the future of the Labor Party given a more and more fractured political landscape with the Greens eating away at their left. Lib Dems eating away at the center and then resto reform taking workingclass uh formerly unionized type voters away from Labor. um there as well. So, Labor getting attacked from all sides. But don't forget this is also an existential crisis for the Conservative party and this is something that hasn't been discussed enough. The local elections that triggered this. So, what happened is we in May we had these local elections in a number of different um areas of regions of the UK. Well, of actually it was the UK this time and you had reform doing very well indeed. Although interestingly they did less well than they were predicted to do. However, Labour lost a massive bunch of seats local councelor seats to reform even though reform have got poor form for running local councils as you can see from Kent and I think is it uh Sheffield, Northland, a bunch of places um to the north of Nottinghamshire as well. uh even given that people are so dissatisfied with politics in general that they have opted for for reform and there's this whole thing about immigration, immigration, immigration, immigration. Uh therefore vote reform even though in local elections that has nothing they you local counselors have no say in immigration policy so on and so forth. Anyway, reform did arguably very well or at least, you know, they did a lot better than they have done in previous years. But looking at where the polls were, they underachieved compared to the polls. But nonetheless, Labour got a kicking, but the Conservatives got a kicking as well. But because the Conservatives aren't in government, people ignored how much of an existential crisis this is for conservatives. And we're going to look at this in a second with regards to the makerfield bi-election results because actually um you know as the opposition formal opposition party the conservatives they have just lost their deposit in makerfield and they got an absolute pasting in the local elections where the opposition party always does well right when you have a government in charge local elections are normally protest votes against them so you'd expect Labor to lose uh seats when they are in government. That's just generally what happens. But for the Conservatives to lose a mass of seats as well to reform, I think is is equally as interesting and I think earthshattering in in terms of the established politics that we're used to in the UK. So you've had this makerfield election bi-election come along and it has been one that has been fiercely contested by reform but interestingly also restore Britain which is this other uh even further to the right populist party uh under Rert Low. He was an MP with reform, had a big argument. Nigel Farage, left the party, started up his own party and they have chipped away at reforms vote from the right, which is fascinating because that's what reform used have done uh to the Conservative party, a chip away at their vote share from the right. Anyway, Andy Burnham was going to well did have a big fight on his hands with reform and there were many people thinking that reform could win here, but it turned out that Andy Bernham won fairly comfortably.

[00:07:19]But he won fairly comfortably by the look of it because of tactical voting.

[00:07:25]So, Labour's um vote share in Makerfield since 1997 has it dipped coming up to the election of the Conservatives in 2010, but then went back up. Uh but then as soon as reform started coming along, it sort of dipped back down. Uh but then with this renewed um I think coalescing around a not reform vote they have done pretty well and also with and the Andy Burnham effect. So people getting excited to have Andy Bernham in not excited about Kia Starmmer. Uh and so a mixture of this has led to Labour rallying in Makerfield but look what happened to all the other parties. Now, Mayfield's never been a particularly big place for Lib Dems and Greens, but they basically got no votes really. They've lost their deposits. The Conservatives lost their deposit. And this is what I mean about we we focus a lot on reform versus Labor, but the Conservatives here have been completely squeezed out. And and they should be the opposition in Makerfield.

[00:08:36]You know, traditionally really the big two parties would have been contesting this seat. So there are questions for conservatives. Have they become are we such a multi-party system now that the conservatives are lending their vote to reform? Is have they become a party of tactical voting like Lib Dems and Green?

[00:08:57]What's this say about Labor in say home counties? Home counties are places like you know Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex, uh Buckinghamshire, you know the Middle Sex kind of area.

[00:09:08]all of these areas sort of around London where you've got quite a big middle class uh traditionally big areas for conservatives to do well. Will reform eat into the conservative vote there?

[00:09:22]Will Labor be decimated with a rise in the Greens there? Uh I want I'm wondering how sustainable the Green vote has been with this surge of the Greens eating away the Labor from the left. But actually, you know, was that a flash in the pan? Can Zach Palansky command enough media uh media presence uh to continue their ascent into mainstream politics? Um what about the Lib Dems? Uh I don't know. It's really interesting.

[00:09:53]So you've got this scenario where it could be that Labour and the Conservatives actually make a case for proportional representation. We have a first pass of post voting system here that has traditionally benefited the major parties. Uh and when reform were UKIP in their previous iteration, UKIP were they received 4 million votes in the what election was it 20 was it 2016 election or was it before that? I forget which year we had the elections, but anyway, you had um was it 2014 would have been anyway you had 4 million votes and no MPs until they had Douglas Carwell defect from the Conservatives to UKIP. Uh and at the time you also had 1.8 million Green votes and they got one MP. And so there's this disparity between the vote share nationally and the number of MPs you got because if you got 10% of the vote in every constituency around the UK and you got therefore 10% of the national vote you can end up with zero MPs even though one in 10 people have voted for your party because if you don't get enough in one given constituency you don't get any representation. This is a weakness of first pass the post is just whoever gets the most in a given constituency you can win as an MP somewhere with only 30% of the vote right because every other party has got even less than you which means that you don't have 50% of the people in the constituency wanting you to uh be their MP and so this is why there's a lot of clamoring for some kind of alternative vote system there are many different ways of doing proportional representation uh and some of them are very complex you rank choice u you've got the the the um Australian system which I think is pretty interesting and so on and so forth. don't want to get into a big discussion about alternative vote, but I think you are with especially with Labour with the mandate they've got now at present, the amount of of advantage they have, the huge majority in parliament from the parliamentary Labor party, they need to use that over the next few years. Now if they are looking at elections and thinking we are getting to a point where uh it's all going to become tactical voting and actually we can't be assured of the dominance we had in the two party system of Labor and Conservatives then maybe this is time for us and for the conservatives they might also be looking at graphs like this and thinking uh and and and a vote share like this. I mean, look at this vote yet. Uh, and Conservatives might be thinking, "Hang on, we've lost our deposit here. Is this a time for us to advocate for an alternative vote system?" And it actually first pass of post might now be something that benefits reform, whereas previously under UKIP, it completely disadvantaged them. So I I wonder whether that's going to come out of this. But but you can look at the figures here and Andy Bernham really quite easily won this vote.

[00:13:02]But it's worth noting two things here.

[00:13:04]Well, three things. One, the Conservative vote just completely capitulated and evidently went to reform.

[00:13:12]Is that a long-term thing? Do the Conservatives have to worry about this in other constituencies or was this right? We need to get behind either one or the other here because look at what happened with the Greens and the Lib Dems. They no one voted there for them really and it it seems very clear that they all piled in to support almost certainly Labor here. Maybe a few from Lib Dems, I don't know, maybe a few going to reform. Um but the other thing that's really worthy of note here is restore restore Britain could do to reform what reform did to the conservatives in the last election.

[00:13:50]Split the vote and if restore try and field candidates in the next general election and continue to get the backing of Elon Musk as Rbert Low does. So Elon Musk fell out with Nigel Farage and now reform doesn't have the algorithmic backing um maybe even the financial backing of uh of Elon Musk and Twitter.

[00:14:11]If Twitter's going to get behind Restore Britain, then you might get an interesting scenario where they end up becoming more and more popular. Not that they would win a seat particularly, but if they eat away significantly enough at reform, then reform have a problem.

[00:14:30]Nigel Farage needs to have an option, a strategy for defeating restore here. So they go even further to the right to do that, you know, or because at the moment reform have taken on a load of conservative MP defectors. And so people from Restore are saying, "Look, if you vote for reform, you're just getting the Conservative Party 2.0.

[00:14:54]Reform said they were going to be their own people. They're going to be a new way of doing politics. They're going to be this, you know, populist party, etc., etc., etc." But actually, it just looks like they are a another version of the Conservatives.

[00:15:09]So, you know, how does reform deal with that? How do the Conservatives deal with that? How do the Conservatives deal with reform? Do they try and chase a reform vote by continuing to be uh just another populist reform party style party?

[00:15:24]That's kind of where Kem Badnut's gone at the moment. They've given up their their old school kind of one nation tourism of kind of centrist center right uh but not populist right. You know the Rory Stewarts of the world, David Gorks and others. you know that they those kind of conservatives have no home anymore. So they seem to be going to the Lib Dems, but then the Lib Dems are like in in races like this are like we're not going to win. So we're going to get behind the Labor Party now because we don't want reform. So then you have this other consideration. So pre prior to this uh with this era I might might say the Labour Party particularly has been against what's called a progressive alliance.

[00:16:13]Progressive alliance is this idea that you tactically vote around uh particularly England in a general election. So you if you have the Labour party, the lid dems and the Greens getting together and and formally saying right we won't run someone or we won't put campaign money into a um a candidate in this constituency because actually this is somewhere where the Greens do quite well. So Lib Dems and Labour go we won't really contest this and likewise somewhere else the you know Greens might say we're not going to contest this seat in this Labour heartland and somewhere else in the in a home counties maybe Labor and and Greens say we're not going to contest this and and the Lib Dems can go for it really we're not going to put any money behind our candidate here we might put someone up just so we can say we run a candidate everywhere but we're effectively giving that to the lids for example. Now, this is called the Progressive Alliance. It's uh it's a form form of tactical voting obviously that has been assued by the Labour Party previously particularly because they're like we're too big to have to stoop to doing deals with these other smaller parties so that we don't get it used to be the Conservatives in right because the Conservative vote was never split but now the Conservative vote is split and the left and center vote is split between Lib Dems's uh Greens and the Labour and up in Scot Scotland S&P and in Wales Plyumbry I think going forward in this much more multi- um multifarious multiaceted multi-party political system I think that there's a a stronger likelihood that Labor are going to entertain doing progressive alliances. The next um next election is going to be very interesting to see how it all plays out. Um that's if they keep with the first pass of post system. If they don't keep with the first pass of post system, they don't have to do that. Everyone fights for their votes because then you get that proportionally aortioned to you in one way or another um in the House of Commons. But if you're if you got first pass the post, this is much more likely to promote some kind of progressive alliance. Uh and then the question is will do do reform restore and the conservatives do that on the right as well. So that this election I think promotes all sorts of conversations along these sorts of lines.

[00:18:51]But really and what I haven't said is okay well Andy Bernham's won this and he's won it handsomely.

[00:18:59]What does this say to Karma? So my position is on Kstarma like it is deeply deeply unfair what has happened to Kia Starama and that makes me very angry because I am very affected by things of fairness. Like it really gets my goat that mainstream media and uh social media has constructed this narrative and created a perception of Kama that doesn't track with reality. He is the most hated PM in history. And you're like, he has not done things to elicit that hate.

[00:19:33]There is not a onetoone correlation between, you know, insanely bad policies and um rhetoric and decision-m and prime ministership and the perception of that. So I go on social media and he's like, he's the most hated prime minister ever. There's visceral like disdain for the man.

[00:19:53]You're like, "Hang on." And I've said this before. I speak with my own parents, people I know. Like, you've told me that you hate you literally hate KT. Why do you hate this man? What has he done to elicit actual hate? It's like, okay, he doesn't have massive charisma. Okay. But should you hate someone over that? No. Okay. Well, he he backtrack on the winter fuel allowance.

[00:20:19]Yeah. Okay. He changed his mind based on listening to what people said. Is it wrong to to to do a U-turn to change your mind on something? Surely we want people to change, you know, so on and so forth. And we can have all these conversations, but but the point and Rory Stewart and and the rest of politics did a or they referenced an analysis that if I remember rightly from last year where they were like it it doesn't track this kind of hatred or or dislike for Star doesn't track with the reality of the policies and and who he is and what he's done. So therefore something else is going on and that something else is social media influence from say Russia um Elon Musk, Iran, all these all these nefarious actors that are fermenting hate but also you know people on social media being more likely to be polarized algorithmically and so on so forth and you know Facebook Meta so on and so forth they also play a role in this. It's not just Elon Musk, but then you also have mainstream media and the oligarchic control of mainstream media that very much favors the other side of the political coin from Ki Starama and Labour and so they are getting rinsed by mainstream media uh and social media and the comm's team for Labor need to be sacked and need to just get a handle on what's going on.

[00:21:42]So there is this argument to say that and and like I say like I'm deep I find is deeply unfair. It's unfair that Karma who I think is respected around the world even if he isn't at home he's respected around the world um as as a pretty decent leader. So, I mean, one option could be that Andy Bernham takes over, becomes prime minister, and puts him as foreign minister. And I think that would be that would be the best result for me if he's if Star is definitely going to lose this, which it's looking likely that he will, then he needs to be foreign minister. Um, but, uh, Andy Burnham is really no different from Star. I don't think there's any considerable policy difference between the two. Like, he's not going to be some kind of panace. So what will happen is Andy Bernham will will come in get voted in because because he's seen as like fresh and and I don't know not Kier starman has more charisma but actually he won't be discernably different I don't think in any major way and you will then get social media and mainstream media continuing to do to Andy Bernham what they did to Kia Starmer and the Labour party will be in a pretty similar situation. So you could argue what's the point of going through all this self harm in order to just end up in the same place. But then there are others that say well look a general general election coming around in a couple of years time. Andy Bernham's in a better position given the polls. You can say what you like about the the unfair disparity between perception and reality. But reality is per uh sorry perception does become reality. So it doesn't matter whether it's kind of true or not or accurate or not. If that's what people believe, it's what people believe. And given that, you need to have someone other than Karma in charge in order to give Labor a chance of of doing well at the next general election and retaining uh premiership. Um and and the government.

[00:23:37]So I I do understand that. Uh I think that Karma u made a mistake by not being all over social media and media ever since you heard of these challenges from streeting uh the former health secretary and uh Andy Bernham. And I think you the mere exposure effect which is how Trump does so well, how Farage does so well is just being on TV the whole time. Be on TV the whole time. Use social media far more effectively. Just be everywhere. That will also lead you to become more relaxed when you are on uh on TV and on the media and to just be yourself and be more likable and the mere exposure effect is how advertising works. The more you hear something, the more you see something, the more attractive it becomes. So Kama should just have gone on a charm offensive or or not even to charm but just a be there offensive.

[00:24:32]This is what Trump does. He controls the media narratives. He does says ridiculous things, but that gets him on TV the whole time. And then he just becomes more and more credible to much of the audience just by being there the whole time. So Karma should have taken the bull by the horns and just got involved uh with all of these information spaces, been on podcasts, been on all the the news shows and and just offered himself to the public to say, "Look, this is who I am. Understand who I am. Know who I am." and you will you will probably like me a bit more.

[00:25:08]Now, that would have shifted the needle a little bit. I'm not saying it would have made him suddenly really popular, but he if you're fighting for your uh political existence, you've got to get out there and you've got to get amongst it. And he hasn't really done that. But then, of course, this is at a time where you've got G7 summits and Iran wars and Ukraine and he's having to go around the world and do all these things. But he needs to be everywhere. He should be setting aside an hour a day, an hour a day to just be on in the media.

[00:25:38]And that's what Andy Bernham's going to have to do. He's going to have to be everywhere because Farage is or certainly was uh and maybe reform have suffered because Nigel Farage has disappeared since the 5 million pound scandal erupted and he's kind of gone underground.

[00:25:57]And I wonder whether that had any impact on the polling on on the the vote in the end.

[00:26:07]There's so many discussions to have off the back of this vote. I mean the fact that you know three parties lost their deposits, three parties maintain their deposits and of those three parties of all the main parties, two of them are farright populist parties. I would argue that is insane that like the two of the three parties that that retained their uh deposit. So basically uh you have to pay £500 I think to run and if you don't get 5% of the votes you lose your £500. Uh now for that to have happened to the conservatives as I say is just unbelievable considering you know it just used to be Labor and Conservatives and they would never lose their deposits. Um Bern Bernham's vote share was higher than the figure achieved by his predecessor Josh Simons in the 2024 general election which was 45.2% and ranks as Labour's best performance in the seat since 2017.

[00:27:06]Uh Bernham won more than half of all the votes cast comfortably beating the combined total for second and third place reform and uh restore. The now former Greater Manchester Mayor won 54.8% eight% of the votes cast outperforming all the opinion polls published during the campaign none of which placed him above 50%. So a lot of people thinking this is going to be really close and it wasn't really close in the end and I and I put that down to not reform like just people coalesing around coalesing around the idea of not reform.

[00:27:35]um reform candidate Rob Kenyon who had made previously like really bad sexist and uh you know misogynist and and uh deeply inappropriate comments on on social media and whatnot. So some can argue he he was a typical reform kind of candidate others like you will struggle to have mass appeal if you keep putting forward people like this. Um so there that's that's a conversation that reform need to be having. um restores Restore Britain's Rebecca Shepard won 6.8% uh of the vote. Um Conservative candidate 2.2% of the vote. Uh second lowest share Tories second lowest share of the vote at Westminster bi-election since the Second World War. That's how bad this was for the Conservatives. So you know a lot of people focusing on the local elections and on these sort of bi-elections on how Labor do. a spare of thought for the Conservatives. Like this is one of the worst results in history for the Conservatives. Now, yeah, okay, it wasn't great for Labor and Lib uh for Lib Dems and the Greens, but they're not one of the big two. It just shows that we do not live in the big two um political system anymore. We live in a completely fractured multi-party political system that is much more uh I think something you would expect in a proportional representation uh system rather than first pass the post. Um the lowest occurred a few months ago by the way in the Gorton and Denton Denton bi-election. So, the two worst Conservative Party election results in a in a standard constituency MP election, the two worst results ever have happened just in the last few months.

[00:29:27]The there is an existential crisis going on for the Conservatives and they need to work out who they want to be going forward. This has been good for Labor as a party, but you are now going to see a horrifically scrappy fight for leadership unless uh Karma reads a writing on the wall, reads a tea leaves and then just hands over, you know, allows this coronation of Andy Burden to take place. Does Karma have enough support in the parliamentary Labor Party, the MPs in Westminster for him to try and fight this or does he understand that this might be damaging for the Labor brand and for the for the government as a whole? Is that's going to be fascinating?

[00:30:12]Is there a time now where actually they don't go for a big uh leadership contest until things settle down? Ady Bernham just, you know, lets the dust settle, looks at how to strategize this, you know, goes about working out what supports he has. He would have done that to some degree already, but you know, take some time and and then go for a proper um leadership contest because there will be others who will fight for this. So uh we're streeting will I think Al Khn's a former armed forces minister will put his hat in the ring. It's really interesting listening to Frank Luntz yesterday on BBC News night uh where by I don't think it was yesterday two nights ago where he he said a Republican um pollster right uh he's quite famous pollster Frank Lance and he was interviewed and started talking about what kind of Labour should do now and he said he said I spoke to Al Kahn at I can't remember where it was was it at uh wasn't it G7 it It was may have been at a defense. Anyway, wherever it was, he was speaking to Al Counc. He's like, I was totally impressed by him. He tells it like it is blah blah blah. Now, this is, you know, a Scottish former marine, I think he was a veteran who just resigned from as armed forces minister as John Healey resigned as defense secretary.

[00:31:46]And Al Khn's I think is going to be a dark horse one to watch. I don't know that he's got particularly much in terms of policy knowhow and whatnot but he has that kind of strength of character uh he's a he's a robust human being if you like uh that that might he might get a lot of traction for that. So there are a number of people who might put their hat in a ring to uh to run for uh the position of well leader Labour Party Prime Minister of the UK. Um there's a swing in the share of the vote from reform to Labor at 3.4 percentage points, the equivalent of more than three in 100 people who voted reform in the 2024 general election switching to Labor this time. Mr. Bernham's majority over Mr. Kenyon was 9,231, 4,000 more than the previous majority in 2024. Um Mr. Burnham also pushed up the size of leaders Labour's lead over reform from 13 percentage points in 2024 to 20 percentage points. Turnout in Mayfield was 58.7 which is the highest uh 58.7% highest for a parliamentary bi-election in nearly seven years. Last time a bi-election had a higher turnout was in contest in Breen and Radnasher in August 2019 which saw the Liberal Democrats win the seat from the Conservatives with a turnout of 59.6%.

[00:33:05]So there are a lot there's a lot of good news here for the Labour party. But I think it's it it's really about leadership challenges and about people wanting reform or not wanting reform. Um so yeah, big news today.

[00:33:22]What is Karma going to do? What is Andy Andy Bernham going to do? And how quickly will he do? We know what he's going to he's going to challenge for for the leadership, but how quickly will that will that materialize?

[00:33:34]And then what what are the Conservatives going to do? I think is is another fascinating question to have there. But I just think it's desperately unfair for Kia Starmer. Um but I guess this world isn't interested in fairness. Uh and here we have a man who has been decimated in his PR. Uh as a result of combined work of mainstream media and social media. Uh but this won't be something that is particular to Karmama.

[00:34:06]This is this will always be the case now with anyone who runs against the objectives of those controlling mainstream media. And now I mean that always used to be the case but now it's about social media. Social media is uh is dictating political outcomes in this country and around the world. And if the Labour Party want to secure their future beyond the next general election, they will have to contend with that. Does there need to be regulation around social media, around disinformation, around lying, around algorithmic platforming for certain parties over others? Um is that is that fine? Is that just should they have the freedom to do that? You know, there lots of discussions to be had had around that, but there is certainly a lot of money and a lot of support for right-wing populism now coming from social media companies um either explicitly or just with the way algorithms work to polarize the electorate. So, we know that Facebook over time, Facebook used to algorithmically support the the right.

[00:35:16]This is why uh entities like the Daily Wire suddenly exploded. I I know this firsthand because I used to write for a platform that we saw the algorithm change time and time and time again to disadvantage us as Paththeus non-religious as part of the Paththe um interfaith network. I was writing with a cadra of writers for uh the non-religious um group. There's about 25 30 of us writers and we were um we were very political and leftwing political and we had you know huge readership and there was quite a lot of income coming in. I was just a small time writer there so you know it's pocket money for me but um but the there was considerable money coming from Facebook. Facebook determined a lot of the um the clicks and then they changed their algorithm and then they changed it again. I think 2014 was that one of the big years they changed our algorithm. They kept changing our algorithm and it and it essentially just cut off clicks to kind of left-leaning um political content and advant explicitly advantage then that is why the Daily Wire suddenly exploded as a thing. they they literally like profited from Facebook's change of algorithm and then over time as it was more and more recognized that Facebook was benefiting the right explicitly it then they change algorithm again again so so now as far as I understand it Facebook doesn't so much benefit the right I think it does still more than left but it it the algorithm now is one that just polarizes like if you're like this you'll get sent off into this end. And if you like that, you go to that end and you just get get pushed and pushed towards each end. And same with kind of rage farming and uh clickbayy kind of like scaring people, enraging people on Twitter, although Twitter X does that algorithmically, but it also very much um through its coding benefits certain political entities and people uh explicitly. That's what Elon Musk has done. But anyway, this scenario needs to be dealt with by I think all political parties who who are who are interested in truth and fairness as opposed to you know just uh using these platforms for um political and power gaining ends. uh that that I think that whole scenario I I think is reflected in but also led to this situation where you have labor versus reform. You've just got these two everyone's had to go for one or the other. Uh and all these other parties have been you know left behind and it's just become this polarized well do you want reform or not reform? Do you want Andy? You know, K star is evil.

[00:38:31]Therefore, we need to get rid of him.

[00:38:33]So, therefore, we need to get Andy Bernham in. That kind of thing. It's just this polarization of our of our electoral system. Anyway, that's enough from me. That's my unrehearsed stream of consciousness uh words tumbling out of my mouth appraisal of what has happened last night. Just get ready for a big old leadership scrap for the next however long.