Chris Mason

But outwardly, when we've had such a loud argument, haven't we, for so long around migration, I mean, going back a very long time pre the Brexit referendum, from the government's perspective, this is something, given that they've wanted to get this number down, you can have an argument about whether it going up or down is a good thing, but the government is making an argument it wants to get it down and therefore from its perspective can say,

this is good news, and the Prime Minister has absolutely said that, as has the Home Secretary.

Yeah, it's quite a thing, isn't it?

It is quite a number, when not that long ago, the number was not far shy of a million.

And then, as you say, if we start picking up on Joe's riff of things that the parallel universe of a scenario where you're less than two years on from a general election with a prime minister who won a landslide majority and then he's looking at a data set that says that...

the economy's growing a bit more than some people thought, that inflation's down perhaps by more than some people thought, that rating lists in England are shrinking, that net migration is shrinking.

And then he thinks, hang on a minute, all of these things outwardly are positive indicators.

And what's the soundtrack?

There's basically a leadership election underway.

And I don't know, you know, that kind of parallel universe that he must imagine of...

Did things have to turn out the way they have turned out?

And why is it that Labour MPs are of the mindset that they are?

Well, we know why, because look at the elections of a few weeks ago, and also an acceptance from Keir Starmer's allies as well as his now sceptics of a sense that he has not been able to tell...

good stories well, basically, politically.

And also, look, there might be some positive economic news, but there's the long, long period of it being pretty stagnant.

for 20 years and also small boat uh levels are not not are not in a great place i mean they're sort of ticking up they're not that far away waiting lists are still high even though they're coming down and the you know there's lots of obviously you can turn these numbers on their head but it's just an interesting riff when you can point to quite a few days now in the last couple of weeks and indeed the last couple of months where outwardly there have been indicators that from the government's perspective are positive and yet you look at this backdrop

I think that was a fascinating bit around his pitch on young people.

And that does play to a degree to Labour's fears about losing younger people in the Dutch and the Green Party amongst others.

But I thought it was an interesting...

Less than a cleaner.