“Have you been [to Makerfield], Clive?”

“I’m going up tomorrow”

“Come up, I’ll happily take you for a pint”

Culture Secretary @lisanandy calls out Clive Lewis’ ‘breathtaking arrogance’ for assuming what voters in Makerfield think#Peston pic.twitter.com/WDTu7R3994

— Peston (@itvpeston) June 8, 2026

What joy. Labour MPs have already begun publicly scrapping over the party leadership, even though a formal challenge is yet to begin.

Last night, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy and leftie backbencher Clive Lewis treated the country to a particularly enjoyable spat on ITV’s Peston show. Lewis, an Andy Burnham die-hard, told Nandy that ‘the Labour Party is toxic in Makerfield’. An exasperated Culture Secretary, who actually lives in Wigan, pulled her colleague up on the fact that he hasn’t even been to the constituency.

Doubling down, Lewis insisted he doesn’t have to have been to Makerfield to know Sir Keir Starmer is public enemy number one. In what some in the party might even mistake for mansplaining, he told Nandy: ‘You’ve seen the literature! It is Andy Burnham. It isn’t about the Labour Party because it’s the only way we are going to win the by-election.’

Trying to keep her cool, Nandy accused Lewis of ‘breathtaking arrogance’ and warned that ‘you don’t know about our community’. She invited the Corbynista MP to visit her in the area, where she will ‘happily take you for a pint’. But the MP, who previously served a three-month tour in Afghanistan, was having none of it. He said: ‘Andy Burnham is making byroads because he’s the insurgent. He’s got an analysis which is very different from Keir Starmer’s and is resonating.’

If this is the level of discourse before the contest has even truly begun, God help us all. That being said, it does at least provide a good laugh.