Chris Mason

sticking out of people's gardens or driveways or window boxes or whatever.

And you see loads for Labour, you see loads for Reform, you see a few for Restore Britain, this outfit that Rupert Lowe, the former Reform MP, leads.

I even saw, Adam, when I was there this week, someone had a flagpole in their garden that looked like quite a permanent fixture.

I don't think it had been put up purely for this exercise in democracy.

They had a flagpole with a flag of, I forget whether it was Labour or Reform.

Actually, I think it was Reform flying from it.

So what you get, and you don't always get this in elections.

I didn't see much evidence of it, for instance, in the local and devolved elections last month.

albeit the snapshot of the places I went to.

The by-election confronts you just like that.

So if you were a visitor from, you know, from the other side of the world and you happen to drive through the Makerfield constituency, you'd think, ooh,

there's an election going on here.

It's very, very visible.

The most important by-election contest in the past 50 years.

Yeah, so I defer to our quartet, as we all are, of podcasters today in terms of knowledge of and feel for what's going on in those communities broadly to the south of Wigan, because I'm conscious that I wear the hat of the guy from Westminster who turns up a handful of times, etc.,

But, yeah, I was there seeing Robert Kenyon having to what, 10 days previously been to see Andy Burnham when he did his launch.

I think it was the first time when I went to the Andy Burnham launch.

It was the first time I've ever done a TV piece where every single element of it was shot in a car park at the same car park on the same morning because he did a little semicircle of, you know, Labour supporters and whatnot and came in and did a little speech and then worked his way down there.

the broadcasters and the journalists, you know, taking questions.

And Robert Kenyon did something in a pub in Ashton and he had Nigel Farage in tow and it was a broader campaign about the future of pubs and the number of pubs that are closing.