Matt Forde

These are calculated chess moves, aren't they, depending on when you think you can win and when you think you can't.

Something you said I think is really interesting is that think of the language we're using around Andy Burnham, King of the North, coronation.

Tony Blair said something really interesting a few years ago about whenever a leader comes in, the sort of seeds of their downfall are always quite visible, that whatever the things are, you know, these things will escalate eventually.

You can always sort of see what the pitfall might be.

And I just wonder if...

having that sort of regal language around him, however lighthearted and however sort of flippant it is now, if there's a sense that he didn't have to stand in a leadership contest, the king of the north, the coronation, whether actually that could calcify into something a bit more negative around him, whether we start to see him as a kind of distant individual rather than one we're quite close to.

Yes, and identity is easier in a smaller place.

Manchester has a very clear identity around whether you're Man City, Man United, the Stone Rosals, the Hacienda Oasis, whatever it is.

Britain is obviously, by definition, a wider net, a more diverse thing.

So does he pivot to UKism?

Does he try and scale up Manchesterism?

Or does it still get called that?

Would it be divisive?

Do people down south want Manchesterism, whatever that may mean?

And what do you make of it being an ism around a place rather than Thatcherism, Blairism, where the politician's name is the foundation of the ideology?

With him, he's rooted it in Manchester rather than Burnhamism.

It does sound like some old medieval policy for witches.

We've moved on, yeah.

And actually, interestingly, and this is a crucial difference between them is, Starmer was very resistant to even accept that Starmerism was a thing or that it would...

You know, he was one of those politicians that you meet and some of them exist in the Labour Party.