Henry Zeffman

when it's confronted by exactly this dilemma, particularly when it's plunged into a situation, as looks likely in a couple of weeks, of the emotional reality of defeats in various directions and how, as individuals, at a human level...

Do they respond to that?

And you can get situations, we saw this at various points under the Conservatives, where of course there can be plotting and there can be scheming and there can be collections of people and there can be WhatsApp groups and there can be op-eds in the newspapers and all of that, but you can also get sometimes just a collective bubbling sense of a desire...

for something to happen, which can then no longer be in the control of any one individual, and it can then just happen.

You know, the herd turning, as Boris Johnson put it, when the herd turned on him.

Equally, sometimes the herd doesn't turn, and therefore the status quo is maintained, as is often the chat around the longevity or not of that status quo.

Sorry, yes, yes.

Emotion, sorry.

And from the perspective of Labour MPs right now, anticipating that, and let's see how it plays out in various parts of the country, the human and psychological reality of those who helped you win your seat

often in places where Labour have not won seats in a very long time, and then seeing that person who gave up their time to stuff the envelopes, to knock on the doors, to prep you for the hustings, then losing their seat on, say, the local authority that they may have held...

for years and years and years, or where the balance of power changes so that an administration that's been Labour-held for decades no longer is.

Again, let's see what happens, because the power is in the hands of the electorate.

But this is the fear that they imagine at the moment.

The reality of that, if that's how it plays out, and then where that sits in your gut and your heart as you get back on a train to London.

with your view as to why that has happened and then you bump into your colleague in Parliament and they have a similar emotional feeling but potentially caused by a very alternative political force depending on where in the country they are from.

And how does that, if it does,

coalesce and coagulate in those hours and days after the elections when the prime minister will be endeavoring to use the full weight and choreography and glitz if you like of the state by having the state opening of parliament the king's speech with all of their uh sort of fine finery and regalia of that moment and also him setting out

what he aspires for his government to attempt to achieve legislatively, i.e.

new laws, in the next parliamentary session, using the full force, if you like, of what the Prime Minister has at his disposal to say, basically, in that scenario, here comes the sort of relaunch, this is what it looks like in its next iteration, if he's there to try and deliver it.

Yeah, but a bit of summer over the weekend.