Will Andy Burnham call an autumn general election and take advantage of his prime ministerial honeymoon, or will he go the way of his erstwhile boss, Gordon Brown, who flunked a decision on an election in the autumn of 2007 and went on to defeat in 2010? The latest polls have generated a swirl of speculation because they suggest that Labour has taken the lead for the first time in nearly 18 months. According to the Politico Poll of Polls, Labour is now commanding an average of 25 per cent of the vote, one point ahead of Reform on 24 per cent.
True, it is an improvement on the 18 per cent support commanded by Starmer in his final days, but honestly, it is a bit pathetic
True, that is an improvement on the 18 per cent support commanded by Starmer in his final days, but honestly, it is a bit pathetic. Labour has just pushed the nuclear button, vaporising a prime minister who won a landslide general election just two years ago and replacing him with a figure who is supposedly far more voter-friendly. That is a move the party can make only once. Moreover, Andy Burnham has yet to be tested in the melee of Westminster because he became PM a few days after the parliamentary summer recess began. He has had the political equivalent of an open-mic night to belt out his big ideas in front of a largely polite audience willing to give him a hearing. He has yet to endure his first crisis. Moreover, his main opponent, Nigel Farage, has been having a tough time over his personal finances, while Reform more generally has been losing support to Restore and the Conservatives, led by a reinvigorated Kemi Badenoch. If a 1 per cent lead is all Burnham can command in those circumstances it does not bode well for his ability to remain in office after the next election.
Put yourself in his shoes: would you want to surrender a 160 majority, which is good for another three years, and call an election which, even in the best scenario, would see you returned as a minority government? Or the largest party in a weak coalition of the left, possibly relying on votes from the SNP, which doesn’t want to be part of the United Kingdom? You know that the issue of your lack of a personal mandate is going to come up over and over again in the coming months, compromising everything that you try to do. But the alternative is quite possibly that you will end up with no mandate at all. What do you do?
It must already be dawning on Labour’s strategists that its change of leader is in danger of becoming a serious flop. Labour should be five or ten points ahead by now. It should at least be heading back within reach of the 34 per cent of the vote it won in 2024 (itself the lowest share of the popular vote of any government in modern times). It should be winning back the masses of young voters who have drifted off to supporting the Greens. Yet instead, the party remains trapped in the slough into which it descended soon after the last election.
To put it into context, Gordon Brown had an 11 per cent lead over the Conservatives when he was mulling a general election in October 2007. Soon after, his honeymoon ended and his lead rapidly turned into a 3 per cent deficit. If that is what lies ahead for Burnham, don’t expect an election but a quick withdrawal into the Downing Street bunker.
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