Hi, I'm Anouche and on today's special episode of the new statesman podcast, I report from

the Wakefield by-election campaign trail. I speak to Anan Menon, the politics professor

and director of UK and a changing Europe who grew up in the constituency and gives me

the lay of the land, and then I chat with Rachel Cunliffe, my colleague, about what the

by-election means. So, I'm currently sitting in a gloriously sunny day. Honestly, I'm

not skyving off work, but it just happens to be a scorcher the week that I've been reporting

from this West Yorkshire city on the by-election that's coming up next week, and we're in the

gardens of the Hepworth gallery, which is a very smart gallery on the outskirts of the city.

I caught up with Anan Menon, the politics professor and director of UK and a changing Europe

earlier this week. He actually grew up in Wakefield, so he set the scene about the area

for me.

Thanks so much for joining us. No worries, Anouche could do with you. I'd rather do Wakefield

than the protocol any day of the week. Oh good, I'm glad to hear it because this is

all about Wakefield. It must be weird, first of all. I did want to ask you about this

sort of hearing London-based journalists suddenly trying to characterise your city. How has

that been, and have you heard any clangers?

Well, I heard it clangered from, I hope you don't mind me mentioning this, from a colleague

of mine, Rob Ford, actually, who in one of his fantastic Twitter threads describe Wakefield

as being in South Yorkshire, which was great fun, but actually it's really nice. It's really

nice. I mean, it's nice and it's interesting. I mean, it's nice to hear Wakefield be mention

because one of the defining features of Wakefield was that no one visited it and no one

talked about it, certainly pre-Hetworth. And secondly, it says something interesting about

...