Jim Pickard

Where is this fantastical constituency somewhere in Britain where a very popular candidate

Former cabinet minister Andy Burnham is popular enough at a time when Labour's really unpopular.

It doesn't seem to be in Greater Manchester.

It doesn't necessarily seem to be in London either.

And so the path back, even for Burnham, is fraught with problems as well.

I think one of the things that the unions will be likely to discuss on Friday is will they somehow engineer it for Burnham to come back?

But that is only part of a much wider mechanical series of complicated overlapping issues and problems.

And then some of them are also thinking, what if we go through all of that and he becomes the leader and it turns out to not be that great?

So I'm going to sell an industry.

I'm going to sell the opinion pollster industry, not because I don't think they're lovely, intelligent people.

I think their job is getting harder and harder as we move from a duopoly of two parties towards a multiplicity of potential outcomes.

And I'm obsessed by the fact that two weeks out from the 2024 general election, the pollsters were giving Labour a 20-point lead in

which on the day turned out to be 10 points.

Now, if they turn out to be 10 points wrong on reform in terms of general election voting, can you imagine how wild the result potentially could be?

I'm not saying that's likely, but I'm just saying so much uncertainty is baked into all of this.

And if you have reform, Greens, Labour, Conservatives, all a few points away from each other, they're going to have such a nightmare predicting the next election.

Lucy, who are you buying or selling?