Sketchy Politics: the rules of the electoral race

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MIRANDA GREEN: [INAUDIBLE]

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: When was the last time you were at the races, Mira?

MIRANDA GREEN: Well, I've never been on a horse successfully in my life. Where shall I put my lettuce? You can have the lettuce.

OK, it's "Sketchy Politics-- the Race is On." Well, Robert everyone needs a break in their routine. So I thought we'd have a day at the races.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Absolutely. There is no metaphor we're not prepared to use.

MIRANDA GREEN: Absolutely.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: No cliche we won't stoop to.

MIRANDA GREEN: We're now into 2024, the year in which an election must be called to be within the five years. And some of the rules of the race have changed. So I thought we could explore the runners and riders. And while I do that, maybe you'd like to sort of peer at them.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Yes, absolutely.

MIRANDA GREEN: Assess their form.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Put the miles away.

MIRANDA GREEN: Whether they've been--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Miles away.

MIRANDA GREEN: --trained. So what we've got going on here is obviously our two main challenges for the cup, the cup being Downing Street, Sunak and Starmer out in front. I've got the horse right here.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Yeha.

MIRANDA GREEN: The name is Starmer Keir.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Stop it.

MIRANDA GREEN: So I wanted to try--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: I have to say, I think this is actually Rishi Sunak's horse at the moment. We have the old Pushmi Pullyu because he's riding a Conservative party that wants to face, I think, in a number of different ways. And as you know, in a straight race, that could be a disadvantage.

MIRANDA GREEN: Should we have him on the Pushmi Pullyu?

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Let's have him on the--

MIRANDA GREEN: Let's have him on the Pushmi-- OK, you can bank your Rishi going in one strategic direction perhaps for later. And then obviously, we've got the Lib Dems. We've got the two nationalists--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Did you [INAUDIBLE] Ed Davey winning?

MIRANDA GREEN: [INAUDIBLE]

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Ed Davey winning.

MIRANDA GREEN: OK, yeah. He should be right back there with his Lib Dem bird. We've got the SNP, which I'm going to put sort of here near Sunak because that's the fact that we've also got Richard Tice and the Reform Party. Used to be the Brexit Party.

Used to be Ukip before that. And we've got the Welsh nationalists, [INAUDIBLE], the Welsh nationalists. And we've got the Green party, which I'm putting behind Keir Starmer because I think we're going have a bit of a discussion about whether they might be a factor this time.

So, the race is sort of almost upon us. But some of the rules of the game have changed. One is the parties are allowed to spend much more.

It's going up from around 19 million per party to 30 odd million per party. You've got voter ID, and you've got expats being allowed to vote if they register in time. You've got various sort of changes and also boundary changes, which means a couple of fewer seats in Wales, Scotland, and changes in England. How much do you think the Tory party, beset by this Pushmi Pullyu on its strategy, is sort of trying to change the rules of the game to its own advantage? Because there are those that say all of these individual changes put Sunak's a little bit ahead to compensate for where he is in the polls.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Well, you can make a case for any of the individual changes. The one thing we know for sure is the political parties do not change the rules to their disadvantage.

MIRANDA GREEN: Right.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: So if the Conservative party thought that voter ID or higher spending limits or changing the expat rules were disadvantageous to them, then--

MIRANDA GREEN: They wouldn't do it.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: --be doing it. Boundary change is obviously a different matter. They come up intermittently. The boundary changes, I think it has always been said that they'll probably give the Conservatives another 5 to 10 seats on the 2019 election. But it does just make the comparisons a little bit harder.

MIRANDA GREEN: So essentially, on the boundary changes, it might make a tiny bit of difference here and there. Not enough to compensate for a party that's way behind.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Not in the current opinion polls. The other point I think is interesting, though, that I think Conservatives have made possibly a tactical error is the Labour party is, I believe, currently committed-- I have to check. It does move from time to time. Currently committed to votes for 16-year-olds.

So actually, the Conservative party has done all the things you mentioned. And of course, they've changed the electoral rules for mayors and things like that. So it makes it much harder when the Labour party come in, if they come in, and say, well, we want to cut the voting age to 16 for the Conservatives to go--

MIRANDA GREEN: To object.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: --to get all high and mighty and say, oh, no, no, you can't mess with the electoral system. So--

MIRANDA GREEN: Because voter ID--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: --I wonder if it was worth it.

MIRANDA GREEN: --the voter ID change, the electoral commission said that in 2023's local elections, 14,000 people could have been stopped from exercising a vote they wanted to. So if that disadvantages younger people, as we think it might, it's not great for the Labour party in some seats maybe.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: I think it's a real issue, and I think we'll see some major campaigns to make people aware of what the rules are. And also, the idea that you can use is rather rigged against younger voters.

MIRANDA GREEN: It's not nice. Right, OK. So at the moment, we've got a situation where the polls being what they are, Keir Starmer looks like he's way, way out in front of Rishi Sunak. And it's a consistent sort of 18 to 20 point lead in the polls.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Yeah.

MIRANDA GREEN: It seems like a lot. But obviously, in a campaign, that does usually, usually narrow. So we would expect that sort of thing to happen. But how much, do you think?

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Well, I mean, the interesting question is that I think Keir Starmer is sort of ambling along on his horse, not moving very fast.

MIRANDA GREEN: Well, carefully--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Just pleasantly--

MIRANDA GREEN: Carefully cantering.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: --avoiding dangerous tufts. And the Conservatives are just moving backwards. The Labour poll lead is essentially the Conservatives undertaking them over the last two years and getting further and further back. So--

MIRANDA GREEN: It's the Tories losing--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: The Tories--

MIRANDA GREEN: --as much as the Labour party winning.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: It's very clear we've got to that point. And you see it sometimes in life cycles of parliaments where even when a political party is saying what advisors and strategists and opinion polls are saying was the right thing to be saying and doing what they say they are told they need to do, the public are so lost interest in them, so doesn't rate them, that it doesn't matter that they're saying what voters want to hear because they think--

MIRANDA GREEN: They're not listening.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: --you won't do it. We're not listening. And I think that's where the Tories have got to. It's a terrible place to be. And Labour, for that reason, is trying to leave a few hostages to fortune as it possibly can because it just thinks it can amble across the finish line.

MIRANDA GREEN: But before we get to the finish line, there are sort of some hurdles, as it were we, [NEIGHING] that Starmer would have to jump.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Hurdle the finish line. When was the last time you were at the races, Mira?

MIRANDA GREEN: Well, I've never been on a horse successfully in my life, I have to say. OK, let's make it a hedge, hedgey fence.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: It could be a flat race. It doesn't need--

MIRANDA GREEN: A hedgey fence. That's not the finish line, OK? That's a hedge. So, one of the hurdles that it appears Starmer has got to get over is this question of having promised an enormous industrial strategy with a huge price tag attached-- 28 pounds billion for a green industrial revolution, which, this is only--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: 28 billion a year.

MIRANDA GREEN: Yes, by the end of the first five term parliament, which is one of the only things that the Tory party is successfully kind of hammering him on at the moment. Do you think that this is something where the horse is, in a way, kind of refusing, you know, to get over this hurdle--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: It's a very-- it's a very odd one, this, because obviously, this was introduced a couple of years back.

MIRANDA GREEN: Yeah.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: It is one of the very few clear policy proposals that Labour has got that's been sticking with for a couple of years and people have begun to internalise. 28 billion is a very odd figure.

You don't say 30 or 25-- 28 billion. And nobody knows what 28 billion is. It's just a lot.

MIRANDA GREEN: Huge.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: It's a lot. If it had been 20 billion, we'd be having the same conversation. But the Conservatives see an opportunity here to say Labour is going to borrow very, very heavily or tax very, very heavily to do green things that you don't really care about, the public, when you would want that money spent on health or anything like that. So it's a concern for some Labour strategists there is a weakness here.

MIRANDA GREEN: They haven't maybe been emphasising that it's for jobs.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: They haven't [INAUDIBLE] what it means. It's just the money.

MIRANDA GREEN: It's manufacturing. It's employment. It's reinvigorating local areas to carry on that levelling up strategy.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Insulation of homes.

MIRANDA GREEN: Insulating homes, yeah.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: And they haven't managed to get that across. It's just the number.

MIRANDA GREEN: And that's now been scaled right back to much less-- 4.7 billion. Is the price tag being the story is the problem rather than the policy itself? OK, I think they've also got this other problem at the moment, which is the left--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Yes.

MIRANDA GREEN: --and discomfiture with Starmer and the shadow cabinet's stance being shoulder to shoulder with the Tory government on support for Israel over Gaza. And we have this potential figure from the past--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Yes.

MIRANDA GREEN: --coming back to haunt the Labour leadership, George Galloway, who has stood previously against Labour--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Twice beaten them in byelections, once failed. And they're really nasty campaigns when he's in. They're really poisonous campaigns where he goes off to the Labour party.

And he thinks there's an opportunity to humble Keir Starmer in the Rochdale byelection. Significant Muslim population which he's targeting that is dissatisfied with Labour's position over Gaza. And he thinks they can deliver a blow to Keir Starmer, if not win the seat. At least dent Labour's vote enough to move its policy. By the way, this goes back to the green issue because--

MIRANDA GREEN: Yeah.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: --where are the voters who aren't going to go to RESPECT? Which won't stand in very-- it's not called RESPECT anymore. I think it's called the Workers Party these days.

MIRANDA GREEN: Whatever the Galloway vehicle becomes, yeah.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Where are they going to go if there isn't a Galloway candidate? People who feel that agitated and want to go to the left of the Labour Party, the Greens are the most likely vehicle, which is another reason for not dumping the green strategy, which you might be able to use to squeeze the Green vote in a general election. The whole Labour strategy has always been we've got a group of people to the left of us.

They don't really like us. They liked Jeremy Corbyn. But when we get to the election, it's us or the Tories, and they'll fall into line, most of them. And that's normally a bankable strategy.

MIRANDA GREEN: To be fair, that is what tends to happen at general elections.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: That's right.

MIRANDA GREEN: But there may be factors that--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Especially if they think if people think that Labour is way ahead and they can afford to be a little bit more demonstrative in the way they vote.

MIRANDA GREEN: We should explain. There are two riders on the green horse because they have a co-leadership strategy.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Caladenia and Adrian Ramsay, as everybody--

MIRANDA GREEN: Everybody. All our viewers will know that.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: And to be fair, the Greens change their leaders quite often. So one does have to-- one does have to keep up. I think it's fair to say none of them has yet cut through to the public. So they've got a bit of work to do, but--

MIRANDA GREEN: But in a way, they don't need to so much because it would be disaffection with the Labour direction that was that was--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Absolutely. Those two issues around the left are a problem for Keir Starmer in England. And obviously in Scotland and Wales, you have the nationalists, which is another repository for disaffected left. The Green issue and the wider disaffection from the left, that's a little bit harder. But obviously, if Gaza is still rumbling on by the time we get to the election and Labour's position has not moved, then I think he has a problem.

MIRANDA GREEN: Some of those voters could go to the Lib Dems as well. And obviously, there are lots of seats in which they are the challengers to the Tory party. The factors are quite different in terms of those blue, yellow seats where that's what the fight is.

But they also benefit from the general strength of the opposition. And there's quite a kind of complementary pattern there. So we've got-- we've got Ed Davey sort of bringing up the rear here but with ambitions to take quite a lot more seats this time.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: The good news for Ed Davey is that in most of the places where the Lib Dems have a chance, it's the Tories that they're going up against. And therefore, they can have actually not an especially good election campaign.

MIRANDA GREEN: And still make progress.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: He can carry on not being an especially charismatic leader, and they can still make gains at the expense of the Tories and some of their southern seats.

MIRANDA GREEN: So we're going to leave Ed Davey sort of getting on with his own thing in his lane. The Greens, we're bringing up the rear here with Starmer because of this factor we've discussed. It's questionable whether the Greens will actually manage to even hold the one seat they have at the moment.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Yes.

MIRANDA GREEN: But they are quite ambitious. They're actually targeting two or three. But we shall see because obviously, under first past the post, it's really difficult because--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: The thing about the Greens is it's not really what they end up doing in the election. It's about what they end up doing in the months before the election, how much they frighten Labour. You know, we've got local elections.

We've got byelections. If the Greens do quite well in some of those, which they could, he's suddenly going to find that the voices on the left of his party-- and not the hard left but just the soft centre left of the Labour party now-- are saying, we've got a problem here. We need to be more radical. We need to be more aggressive. And that's an opening for the Conservatives.

MIRANDA GREEN: Or possibly even, we need to enthuse because one of the problems they might have with this election is a general sense of despair about the state of the country but less enthusiasm for a positive Labour programme.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Yeah, I mean, Tony Blair was used to say the choice in the general election is not between the Labour party of your dreams and the Labour party I'm leading. It's between the Labour party and the Conservative party, and that's the message Starmer has to keep hammering home and so far has managed to do reasonably well.

MIRANDA GREEN: Now, one thing that's helping Keir Starmer is the relative falling back of the SNP under Humza Yousaf, first minister of Scotland, because the SNP, having dominated the whole territory in Scotland since the mid-2000s-- 2007, they became the largest party in the Holyrood Scottish parliament. But they are less popular now. They have all the problems that come with incumbency, not least how they handled COVID, which we're seeing on the inquiry stand at the moment.

And so as they fall back, that hugely helps Labour, and this sort of, in a way, this SNP horse. I'm not quite sure how to sort of visually, but this SNP horse is sort of helping the Labour horse on its way. But Sunak, for his part, has got some real problems.

It's the Pushmi Pullyu strategy, as you've described, but also the presence of this party to the right, Reform, who are saying they're going to stand against Tory candidates. And of course, they stood down in 2019 in a lot of seats, thereby enabling Conservative victory or certainly making it more dramatic. But this time, they're going to stand against Sunak, and that surely, like, pulls him way back again.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: It's certainly very problematic I mean, if you take two different-- I mean, the SNP situation is so dire. I mean, all the things you listed, plus, of course, we're waiting on police investigations into the previous leader.

MIRANDA GREEN: It's a spectacular catastrophe, yep.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: It's like, you know, someone has cut a load of stitches in a woolly jumper, and the whole thing is unravelling. And you can see it. You add to that the fact that Labour looks like it's going to win.

So you actually have, incentives in Scotland, if you're left-leaning, not to vote SNP this election but to vote for Keir Starmer. So I mean, they're having an absolutely terrible time. Humza Yousaf keeps changing the strategy on how to approach Labour.

They attack Labour for being not left wing enough. And then on the other hand, they say, we can work with Labour and part of the anti-Tory [INAUDIBLE]. It's all over the place.

MIRANDA GREEN: Although they are still the most popular party in Scotland, right?

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: [INAUDIBLE]

MIRANDA GREEN: So it's a question of how many seats Labour can take off the SNP from it's incredibly dominant position--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: But--

MIRANDA GREEN: --rather than suddenly--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: --you say that, but--

MIRANDA GREEN: Well, I do.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: You do, but there are some polls which show the gap really getting quite narrow. And one of the important things about the way first past the post works, [INAUDIBLE] the way it works against Liberal Democrats--

MIRANDA GREEN: Where are your voters concentrated?

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: --where are your votes? But also, the key number for the SNP is around 40%. If they start dropping below 40, then all of a sudden, it can fall away.

And the polls suggest that could be happening. So, that's the worry for them. Reform is, in a way, much more interesting. It's always been a shakedown party on the Conservatives.

MIRANDA GREEN: Yeah.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Always been a party to frighten the Conservatives to doing things that its leaders wish they were doing.

MIRANDA GREEN: So again, shall we just try and make clear? It's not that we're expecting Reform UK unless something really extraordinary happens to take seats in the Commons. It's taking enough voters away from Sunak's party to cause him serious difficulties in a lot of seats.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: The question, though, is whether--

MIRANDA GREEN: Lots of seats. A lot of seats.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Potentially. I mean, the question is whether they're causal or whether they're just a response to what's happening. So, is it that Reform is doing something interesting and important which is pulling people away from the Conservative Party, or is it just that people are fed up with the Conservative Party? And that cohort are then giving their votes to Reform.

MIRANDA GREEN: Yeah.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Now, at the moment--

MIRANDA GREEN: --it's just a vehicle for protest votes but not, like, all of this lot, protest votes off to the left-- protest votes off to the right.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: They appeal also to a core of voters-- you know, the nationalist Conservative voters and MPs in the Conservative party-- who've made common cause with them in lots of ways.

MIRANDA GREEN: Yeah, especially on immigration.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Particularly on immigration, and who use the threat of reform to try and scare Rishi Sunak into different policy positions just as once upon a time, the eurosceptics used the threat of Ukip to scare the Conservative leadership into a referendum.

MIRANDA GREEN: And there's the kind of shadow of Nigel Farage over all this. Now, Farage has said quite clearly--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: --the scary sun in "The Teletubbies," like kjust hovering over.

MIRANDA GREEN: Well, exactly. So if you're Sunak, that's exactly what he is, right? So he's sort of hovering in the background, and he's insisted that he won't kind of take over--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Yeah.

MIRANDA GREEN: --Richard Tice's leadership of Reform UK or get too involved because he's enjoying his new life as a as a pundit.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Yeah.

MIRANDA GREEN: I'm not sure what the pundits union, you and I, would have to say about that. But anyway, but he's still there in the background, right? And the very thought of him scares the Tories witless. And he is associated with Tice. So he's not really a co-leader, but he's sort of--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: I mean, technically, officially, he absolutely--

MIRANDA GREEN: Well, he's the owner of the party. He's the proprietor. So--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: He can do whatever he likes in the election. I was at the launch of the Popular Conservatives, Liz Truss's vehicle for pushing her policies. And who should be at the back but Nigel Farage, here in his journalistic capacity, let me tell you. But you know, being interviewed in his journalistic capacity and talking to lots of people in his journalist-- and you could see the whole thing is he's hovering over that side of the Conservative movement waiting to see what they look like when the dust settles after the election. And you can see there are a whole load of people around the Reform party who can sense the opportunity for some kind of reverse takeover of the Tories, and--

MIRANDA GREEN: It's phenomenally dangerous, actually, isn't it, in terms of the future of the party. So if we were going to do-- because we've done the hurdles that Starmer's got to get over. Let's think about some of the hurdles that Sunak's got to get over. I mean, there is this whole question of the budget and the handling of the economy. There's also May elections--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Which, likely to be terrible.

MIRANDA GREEN: --which is mayoral elections, local elections. There's the summer, which people talk about perhaps an increase in small boats in the channel.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Well, I think the May elections are more important in the summer because if they're as bad as we all think they're going to be, then you just get another upsurge of discontent and panic from his own party. I've heard the theory expressed that if George Galloway--

MIRANDA GREEN: So you could get over the budget, maybe some less tax cuts than they thought they were going to be able to offer. But they'll clear it. But then the May elections could be really, really--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Yeah, I mean, I've heard the theory put out that if George Galloway would do really well in Rochdale, maybe win or stop Labour winning, that there would be a renewed push by some Conservatives to say, let's dash for May, before the May elections. Labour is in a mess on Gaza. Let's go, then.

I'm still not convinced. I still think they're too far behind in the polls. But I see the argument.

But I mean, Sunak, he's having good weeks. He had a good week with Northern Ireland. He got the Stormont assembly back. There'll be very little credit for him in this.

MIRANDA GREEN: There will indeed be very little credit for him from the electorate on--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: All he can do is attempt to keep showing that he is a capable prime minister and try to scare people at the Labour party. And the problem he's got at the moment is he's not succeeding in scaring people about the Labour party yet because at this point, the voters aren't listening. Now, as we get closer and closer, maybe he will.

But you know, Keir Starmer is closing down every possible avenue for attack that he can see. Their first draft of their manifesto, which they're working on now, is going to be absolutely safety first. I mean, you'll scan-- if you find adjectives, it'll be a miracle, let alone policies. It's very clear they're going to give Rishi Sunak a smaller target as possible.

MIRANDA GREEN: I have another very valued prop here left over from our excellent market stall episode, which you can catch on YouTube, because we should also remind ourselves that the last time that Rishi Sunak faced any electorate at all, it was the Tory membership, not the British electorate. And he lost to a lettuce.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Liz the Lettice.

MIRANDA GREEN: To Liz Truss, the lettuce. So he is an untried prime minister in terms of a general election campaign, the pressure that he will be under--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Yeah.

MIRANDA GREEN: --as the incumbent.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: And I mean--

MIRANDA GREEN: Where shall I put my lettuce? You can have the lettuce. It's nearly lunchtime anyway.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Lettuce us go, then, you and I. It's telling that when parties replace a leader mid-term, the record of them being able to take them over the line later on is not great. There are exceptions, like Boris Johnson. But actually, more often than not, you are seen by the public as a sort of fag end prime minister of a party that's run out of steam.

And so even if he were god's gift to campaigning, this would be difficult. And what we've seen is he's a bit stilted as a campaigner. It's not quite there.

MIRANDA GREEN: So I'm glad you got on to that territory because also, in election campaigns, it becomes quite important who the kind of chief, I don't know, trainer, the trainer of the jockey and the horse, might be. And Sunak has Isaac Levido, who has a proven track record, not least in Boris Johnson, in getting Tory candidates over the line quite successfully.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: He comes from the Lynton Crosby school of Australian campaign managers--

MIRANDA GREEN: Really hard-nosed.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: --of the right. Really hard-nosed.

MIRANDA GREEN: He's very ruthless.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Very good at sort of wedge-- so-called wedge politics, where they just identify enough to get you the majority plus one, as it were. Just enough to win. And he's been very successful at it.

He's very clear sighted about what the Conservatives need to do. But on the other hand, even he says it's a very, very narrow path to victory. And even he isn't--

MIRANDA GREEN: No, bud he's tog worse than that. He said it's a narrow path to victory, and it's now become it's a narrow and steep path to victory. So what's next? Crowded around with thorn bushes, presumably.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: With robbers hiding in the bushes.

MIRANDA GREEN: Yeah.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: But even he's not foolproof. He's not a miracle worker. There's only so much he can do.

MIRANDA GREEN: But then Starmer has recently hired-- has his chief of staff.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: We're going to get a call from Morgan McSweeney complaining that he's the campaign chief, really.

MIRANDA GREEN: OK, but the person--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: [INAUDIBLE] is chief of staff [INAUDIBLE].

MIRANDA GREEN: --with pulling the Starmer operation together and making it all more effective is Sue Grey, who has this very, very high ranking background in government. So you know, you've got considerable firepower in both the main groups of trainers. And we should also say that Levido, Sunak's man, really does want to get-- this lettuce really gets in the way. Levido really does want to push it--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: As late--

MIRANDA GREEN: --as late as possible to the end of the year.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Because he's--

MIRANDA GREEN: Hoping that things improve.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: He wants people to feel a bit better off. He wants hopefully to see some flights to Rwanda have taken off so that Sunak's claim to be dealing with the illegal asylum is working. Ideally, you'd like another set of immigration figures to show they're much lower, though they still won't be low enough for people who feel strongly about this. So, all of those things do still point to going long. Sue Grey has definitely brought--

MIRANDA GREEN: October, December?

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Or November.

MIRANDA GREEN: I just think they'd be mad to go to December.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: November is the date that's talked about most.

MIRANDA GREEN: Right.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Sue Grey is bringing professionalism and organisation to Starmer's operation. I mean, her main role was to be to get them ready for government.

MIRANDA GREEN: OK, so Robert, just to finish, if you wanted to sort of study, study the runners and riders in a bit more detail--

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Use this prop again.

MIRANDA GREEN: --we have had this slightly ridiculous situation of the prime minister himself on air taking a bet-- a 1,000 pounds bet, actually, in this case-- on whether flights to Rwanda full of asylum seekers and immigrants will ever take off from the UK. And he took that bet, 1,000 pounds.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: And then he backed out of it the next day.

MIRANDA GREEN: Then he backed out of it. I mean, if you were a betting man-- I don't know if you are a betting man.

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Not much.

MIRANDA GREEN: What do you think? Do you think that it's worth even having a punt on anyone other than Starmer getting over the line?

ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: It was a stomach-clenchingly awful moment when he did that. I mean, you know, 1,000 quid so I can get an asylum seeker on a plane. I mean, it was really was-- it was as if Danny Dyer had been made prime minister.

But no, I wouldn't put money on anybody else at the moment. I think he is coming around the fairway. And-- the fairway.

That's golf, isn't it? Just giving myself away. Coming around the last bend. He's heading towards the finishing line, and he's-- at the moment, he's still out of sight. Gallup polls?

MIRANDA GREEN: Oh, Gallup polls!