Ash Sarkar

speaker

192 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Feb 2026 last heard 26 Feb

Ash Sarkar’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 1.

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Pod Save the UK · Are we stuck in never-ending political scandal? w/Ash Sarkar · 26 Feb 2026 podcast

You're absolutely right.

That is absolutely what they're thinking.

So just to cast your mind back a few months, the Caerphilly by-election in which it was a plied reform 1-2 and the Labour vote completely collapsed.

That was really bad for Labour.

What they were hoping to do is say, look, it's reformer.

Us and Plaid were like, horseshit, right?

We can win this.

And so thinking about the May elections, which for Wales is a Senate election, that's really, really bad for Labour.

Wales traditionally really, really strong voter turnout for Labour.

So they're absolutely thinking, especially if Keir Starmer, by some miracle, hangs on into the next general election, his only real hope is saying it's reform or me.

So he needs a demonstration of that.

And if Gorton and Denton is that demonstration, I would perhaps even suggest that a reform win in Gorton is more useful narratively to a 2029 narrative than a Labour win is.

I always think about that meme where it's like, you know, surely it can't go on like this.

And he's like, it can.

If there's one thing that Keir Starmer, you know, limping on like an un-euthanised old yeller has taught me, it's like, it can.

And that's...

It's got much more to do with internal Labour Party factionalism.

And I think for me, this is such a fascinating thing, which is so much of what we've talked about today, whether it's Mandelson or Morgan McSweeney or Labour Together or Josh Simons, it comes back to how the Labour Party is uniquely...

factionally divided and that the most vicious warfare in the Labour Party is all internal, right?

It's something that they reserve only for card-carrying members as opposed to their opponents, whether they're in the Tory party or Reform or whatever.

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