Zoë Grünewald

I'm not happy.

I want to destroy things too.

I want to put a boot into the establishment.

And I think that's why there is some appeal to this.

And one of the things I would say is I found it very interesting.

I don't know if you saw the Conservative press release after Sue Ella Braverman's defection, where they were pretty unpleasant.

They said...

It was always a matter of where, not if, Suella would defect.

The Conservatives did all we could to look after Suella's mental health, but she was clearly very unhappy, which is an extremely low blow, very unpleasant.

I think this shows you how nasty politics is getting because...

The Conservatives almost want to play into that.

We can be cruel and unpleasant too.

If that's what voters are looking for, we can do that.

Well, look, there are people who are going to say that Starmer had a difficult decision to make either way, because on the one hand, if he had...

allowed Burnham's candidacy, it would have cost Greater Manchester an awful amount, millions to hold a new election, that it risked, you know, the Labour Party's stability if there was a leadership election, that, you know...

There can be a seat for Burnham at the next election if he wants it, but it's better for him to see his mayoralty through.

All those kind of things.

Except, of course, you need to think of this decision in context, which is that Keir Starmer has been constantly plagued with accusations of ruthless control over the party for his own and the people around him's sake and not for the good of the party or the good of the country.

And I think whatever the rules are about abandoning your mayoralty halfway through,

The optics of this are terrible.