Alastair Campbell

I think most of them think he will win.

But he might need a little bit of restore vote off reform.

I think that's kind of happening up there.

It's absolutely a two-horse race.

The stuff that in a normal universe really would have damaged the candidate, Kenyon, and all the terrible things he says and his awful performance on Question Time, not to mention Farage and his stoking of the riots and Farage and his £5 million donation.

They don't seem to be damaging as much as I think they should and as much as maybe Labour hope that they might.

But I think he probably will win.

I wouldn't put my life on it, but he probably will win.

I don't think we should expect that he's going to come in on Friday morning and announce that he's taken on Keir Starmer.

And I think that would backfire in the party if he did.

But I think there is an assumption that there will be a challenge at some time.

And I think there are very, very mixed views of that.

The other thing, just my final point about the Keir Starmer operation, I was speaking to a couple of MPs earlier in the week who were saying they were amongst the ones who at the start signed that sort of round robin that Keir Starmer should stay, which I assumed was a piece of Downey Street or Whip's office operation.

They said it wasn't, they just did it.

Um, since when they said, we've had no contact, we've had no encouragement, we've had no sense of, you know, what the plan is.

Um, so I think it's kind of down, a lot of this is down to old fashioned political management, just not being quite what it should be.

But the other thing that I feel, and I know it's difficult for Andy Burnham because he's... I've just got a gift challenge.

But see, if you look at the way that, and you've seen this in some of Andy Burnham's media appearances, is that he's almost having to pretend that he's doing something that he's not.

He's running for election in Mayfield.

He wants to put the place on his map and take the place as high as he can go, etc.,