Jim Pickard

Yeah.

I'm going to sell Andy Burnham.

You might have heard of him.

I also sold him a month ago thinking that he might lose in Makerfield and now obviously it looks like he's going to win.

I still think he's worth selling because this is the most popular he's probably ever going to be because he's had a decade of being able to blame central government for everything whilst taking credit for the local decisions he makes.

And if and when you become prime minister, which is quite likely at the moment, he's going to have to confront a horrendous set of public finances, which also did for Rishi Sunak and is about to probably do for Keir Starmer.

And without loads of money to lavish on stuff, it's really hard to stay popular.

And on top of an already difficult set of public finances, we have the impact of Iran.

on those public finances, which means that tax rises likely in the autumn budget.

So I just have this vision of Prime Minister Andy Burnham coming in and being all charming and then putting up taxes and everyone shouting at him.

Lucy, who are you buying or selling?

Thanks, Lucy.

Thanks, Lucy.

Yes, some pints.

Lucy, how dare you?

It was 3am.

So the theme is pretty much what we've been anticipating for months, but seeing it crystallise in front of our eyes is obviously fascinating.

As of lunchtime on Friday, reform is over 400 seats up, Conservatives around 200 down, Labour down 3%.

somewhere over 250.

And the Greens have got modest gains, but then the Greens are still waiting for the inner city London seats to come through.