Craig Hughes

Well, then all of a sudden the party will be kind of eaten from both sides, the traditional working class vote, but also from the soft left vote that it's spent years trying to court.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, it's one of the few policy measures we've actually heard from Gerry Hutch, who's had the unusual ploy of not having any policy measures during his campaign, other than don't vote for any of the government parties or Sinn Féin.

So yeah, a novel choice by Mr. Hutch, who of course claims to be a man of the people and of the inner city, but of course has lived in the leafy suburbs of Clontarf and the more warmer confines of Lanzarote for most of his time.

So there's of course the big conflict there.

He's a bit unusual, different this campaign to last.

He seems to be out actually more at events.

He's been making videos outside the Children's Hospital.

The path to getting elected is obviously much more difficult for him in a by-election than it would be in a general election.

But I do get the sense that this is more of a long-term project for him and that we could see him on the ballot paper again in the general election if unsuccessful here.

Yes, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in the young age of 75, has been drafted back in as a special envoy, as is Baroness Harmon, of course, a former minister as well, to another advisory role.

You know, it's facing into another extraordinarily difficult week where his leadership is expected to be challenged.

We had one backbencher saying that she intends to agitate for a leadership challenge this week.

Now, for Keir Starmer, he's managed to kind of falter through a series of scandals and controversies, you know, be that from the most recent one, Mandelson, and then, of course, with these devastating local election results.

he needs to really stem the tide here.

It's three years out from a general election.

A lot can change then.

He inherited, I suppose, a very difficult set of public finances that were always going to take time to turn the tide on.

But there doesn't seem to be patience within his party for that.

So this is going to be a very monumental week for him.