Jim Pickard

There are Lib Dems who think that under a different leader they could somehow totally reinvent themselves and suddenly make the British electorate go centrist.

It does feel a bit wishful thinking to me at this present moment.

I think there's been a sense of despondency within the PLP and across the Labour Party for quite some time, but there's never been a common agreement about what the solution for the party's plight is.

Now, we've been talking about individuals, we've been talking about Burnham, we've not been talking about policy.

And there's a policy question there, which is, should the Labour Party stop trying to chase defectors to reform?

And should it start worrying about defectors to the Green Party instead?

Now, the problem with the results as they've come in overnight is that they don't show a clear trend of Labour losing voters to one party or another.

There was a very interesting study.

Data I saw from More in Common suggesting that basically the vote is scattering to the four winds, which makes it so much harder for the Labour Party to search inside its soul and say, should we be more left wing?

Should we be chasing more blue collar, northern white voters or not?

So they're in a bit of a pickle that they don't really know which direction to go in.

And therefore they ask the question of,

Well, maybe Keir Starmer isn't getting it wrong in policy terms, but we just need someone with more charisma.

And they think, well, Angela Rayner has more charisma, but there are issues with her as well, such as she seems to be very unpopular with a lot of the public.

Do we go back to Ed Miliband?

There are issues with that, i.e.

he's already lost the general election.

Do we go for Wes Streeting, the health secretary?

Well, the Labour membership don't particularly like him.

him, or at least they think he's a little bit too Blairite.