Henry Zeffman

But with the proliferation of podcasts, you get the equivalent, don't you, of that old line about how many metres in London is anyone ever away from a rat?

That same line might just apply to how far you are away from a podcaster.

LAUGHTER

such as the frequency and proliferation of these things.

And in your question, you get to the exact dilemma, the horn of the dilemma that the Labour Party faces right now.

And it's been wrestling with greater and lesser degrees of sort of volume, if you like, for months now.

And it's come back with the imminence of the elections and the whole row around Lord Mandelson.

What do you do as a political party when you're in government?

And of course, the Conservatives went through these exact dilemmas themselves.

What do you do when you're in government?

You look at the opinion polls and indeed, and let's see how it comes in the next couple of weeks, but potentially the voting evidence that suggests that your party is unpopular and your leader is more so.

But the route to an alternative is fraught with danger, that the danger as a party that you are going to go through a leadership race whilst in office, which your critics will label as dangerous.

self-indulgent and navel-gazing.

It's going to serve a prime minister who didn't themselves win a mandate at a general election.

And that's before the dilemma, if you are a Labour MP, that you might not get the person you want anyway.

And or there are various reasons why the person you do want isn't available or can't run or has a problem, blah, blah, blah.

So what do you do?

And of course, that is a dilemma for any one individual, but political parties are tribes.

They are collections of individuals with overlapping instincts, but also views that can vary.

So how does the collective movement