Andy Burnham has not yet entered No. 10, but the Conservatives and Reform are already preparing for the possibility of an early general election. Resources are being redeployed, attack lines sharpened and campaign plans drawn up for the aftermath of Labour’s coronation. Nigel Farage wants a snap showdown. Kemi Badenoch insists defence must be properly funded before the country is returned to the polls.
The rapid elevation of the MP for Makerfield poses tricky questions for his opponents. Burnham has built a following without a clearly defined ideology or coherent policy programme, leaving strategists in Reform and the Conservative party – like much of Britain – unsure which version of him will walk into No. 10. Yet despite that uncertainty, preparations are being made fast.
Some former Tory MPs applying to stand again will not make the cut as Badenoch tries to break with the past
For the Conservatives, the core argument will be that Labour’s problem was never merely its leader, but its backbenchers and their stubbornly left-wing instincts. ‘We will ram home that nothing’s changed and these are the same failed politicians who’ve been failing for the last two years,’ says an insider. The Tories will also argue that Burnham will be surrounded by familiar left-wing faces such as Angela Rayner and Ed Miliband, whose time in cabinet, they will say, is already a proven failure. Burnham is undoubtedly an upgrade on Keir Starmer when it comes to personality. But the Tories will cast his ‘I wear T-shirts and love football’ shtick as a distraction from the central point: like his predecessor, he enters office without a plan.
Badenoch will begin by pressing Burnham on the welfare vs warfare dilemma that has haunted Labour since they took power. Later into the parliamentary recess, the focus will shift to the economy. As the incoming PM calls for red tape to be tightened around business and the City, Badenoch will expand on proposals to unleash £450 billion of investment by adjusting capital requirements for banks and reducing regulation. An insider says: ‘It’s going to be a very economy-heavy summer, not least because it is the key question that Andy is going to have to deal with.’ Miliband is currently the favourite to be Burnham’s chancellor, a pick one Tory aide says is ‘like Christmas come early’.
As mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham could freely decide how to spend the region’s annual £3 billion budget. In Downing Street, he will face far harder choices, which the Tories will delight in exploiting. ‘We will continue to be very clear that the Labour party is now the welfare party, and he’s still got the same MPs who will never accept benefit cuts,’ a Tory strategist says.
Burnham will probably enjoy a brief honeymoon in public opinion, but the Conservatives are already turning their minds to election readiness, even if staff are not convinced an early poll is imminent. A Tory source says: ‘We will be ready in every seat for a general election and I think as an established party we have the sort of institutional muscle memory of how to respond when there’s a snap election – so we will be ready.’ The party has 15 bills it says are ready to be put forward, while CCHQ has received more than 2,000 applications for its ‘far more rigorous’ enhanced five-stage candidate process. Some former MPs applying to stand again will not make the cut as Badenoch tries to break with the Tories of the past.
In the first quarter of this year, the Conservatives raised £4.2 million from donors. CCHQ staffers are confident they can swell the party coffers further. Badenoch will host the Tories’ annual summer party this week. The jamboree will be the biggest ‘for quite a few years’, with more than 350 attendees expected. Some donors from the Boris Johnson and David Cameron eras are said to be returning to the fold. ‘We’ve actually got some Reform donors we’re in discussions with, who are obviously having doubts and thinking about coming back to us,’ claims a Tory source.
Over at Millbank Tower, Nigel Farage is ‘speeding up preparations’ for an election. Candidate applications are in and the party wants to complete vetting by the end of summer. Aides insist they are not threatened by Burnham because he ‘just talks in weird, abstract terms that don’t mean anything, such as “Manchesterism”.’
While the Tories concentrate on defence and the economy, Reform will seek to exploit the divisions among the incoming Labour leader’s supporters over immigration. During the Makerfield by-election campaign, Burnham suggested he would support Shabana Mahmood’s migration reforms. Yet many of his allies on the Labour backbenches regard those reforms as irredeemably right-wing. ‘He will struggle on migration and HMOs and it will be interesting for us to fight him on that ground where he’s very constrained – even more constrained than Starmer was,’ a source close to Farage says.
Reform’s slogan during the local elections was ‘Get Starmer Out’. Now that’s been achieved, what will the follow-up rallying cry be? The source adds: ‘We’ll work on our messaging over the coming months but our main call at the moment is for an election, which we’re speeding up for and we’ll be ready for.’
Senior Reform figures insist the party is not alarmed by Burnham’s sizeable victory in Makerfield, but remains buoyed by the party’s local election performance. They are dismissive of accusations that Reform has a woman problem, a line pushed by Labour attack dogs, who point to the social media comments of the Makerfield candidate, Robert Kenyon. For Reform, candidate selection must be balanced with broader matters of party management. ‘At the end of the day,’ says one senior source, ‘what Westminster doesn’t get is that Robert Kenyon was selected because we had to show the membership there’s progression in the party and that you can actually go from branch chairman or a normal member to a parliamentary candidate. You have to see that.’ After a slew of Tory defections earlier this year, Kenyon showed that Reform has not forgotten its base.
The attention of SW1 is, inevitably, fixed on Labour. But the right is tooling up too. The Conservatives and Reform are using the lull – and the lack of scrutiny – to prepare for battle against what may well be one of the most left-leaning governments Britain has seen in decades.
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