Jim Pickard

If he ever does become prime minister, gets in there, realises there's basically no money, is he going to let down all these people whose hopes he's been inflating in recent days?

But he may also think, well, Keir Starmer came in in 2020 with this list of 10 really left wing concrete pledges that he was going to do.

So maybe he thinks if Keir Starmer can destroy 10 firm pledges, then he can make half a dozen very, very vague suggestions of help.

are saying about this and gilt investors are also pretty downbeat on the prospect of a burn in premiership for this precise reason yeah but the only thing i would say is that if you compare even his partial promises he's made and his sort of whiff of more nationalization which again is not a concrete promise at all i think it

The way it compares to the actual Corbyn agenda from 2019 is incredibly thin gruel.

If you are an actual left-winger and if you listen to Andy Burnham and you hear him say, I want to end 40 years of neoliberalism, I mean, that is going to massively get up the hopes of left-wing people, left-wing voters, and nothing he is promising is anything like as radical as most of the Corbyn-McDonnell agenda from 2019.

Oh, hell, absolutely.

Yeah, so I don't think there's a dichotomy between these two things.

I think the people around him have lost the fight and plenty of people in Downing Street and senior ministers think he's done for.

But he himself, as far as I know, is this incredibly competitive person who looks at Andy Burnham and thinks, you know, I was a shadow junior minister under you 10 years ago and didn't think you were that great.

Winning Greater Manchester and possibly Makerfield is sort of like...

Keir Starmer loves football analogies.

He would say that as being like a lower division.

Andy's a star player in a lower division.

But has he really proved himself in the Premier League in the way that Keir Starmer is at least in the Premier League?

And I think he wants to take on this upstart and get in the ring with him and have a proper fight.

So I don't think he's lost the confidence.

But, you know, we've seen from past prime ministers, I don't think Boris Johnson lost faith in Boris Johnson.

It was it was everyone else who pulled the rope.

So, yes, Keir Starmer had in junior ministers and whips and bad carriers on Monday.