Jim Pickard

And it's conceivable that that could split the difference to help Andy through, right?

So, I mean, it's a very fraught backdrop on the national picture that this by-election is taking place with all that in the news every day.

And, you know, the crime that occurred in Belfast was obviously completely horrific and this poor guy losing his eye

and all the rest of it.

But equally upsetting is the subsequent carnage we saw with people's cars being burnt out, homes being burnt out, the local police having to evacuate a two-year-old child from a house because this kid wasn't safe.

And all of that anger...

is a legitimate response to a horrific crime, but it is being stoked by people like Elon Musk, thousands of miles away, and far-right agitators online, wanting this fury in a way that when a white person murders another white person...

They are not quite so exercised.

And how on earth the Westminster establishment deals with that sense of grievance and sense of anger, they don't seem to have worked out how to counter it.

And it feels like a very responsive way that they're dealing with it, just lurching from one riot to another, basically.

Which is the Southampton different one, isn't it?

But he used the word some recompense, didn't he?

I think he can't help himself from... One characteristic of Andy Burnham that you can see throughout 20 years of him as a cabinet minister, a shadow minister who carried on serving under Jeremy Corbyn and then as mayor is he likes to be liked and

And if there's a really tough, difficult decision that he's made where he's allowed himself to become unpopular over the years, I can't think what it is.

And maybe that's unfair.

And I'm open to hearing candidates for that.

But I think when confronted with people wanting money for...

because something bad has happened, I think his first instinct is to say, well, I'll listen to that.

So the one I noticed last week was when, I think on the Newsnight interview again, he sort of implied that the NICS rise that occurred in the 2024 budget, raising £20 billion, national insurance that is, he sort of implied that as something that he would like to look at if he ever becomes prime minister.

He didn't promise to reverse it, but he's getting people's hopes up in a way that