Since we are in a World Cup, the facts this morning are these:
Labour 1. Conservatives 1. Reform 0.
Just remember that, if as I have, you’ve endured endless trolling about being dead, finished, rejected, useless. Those are the facts. Not promises, boasts or guesses, but hard results.
As I said he would Andy Burnham won. He didn’t squeak it. Restore in the end were as irrelevant as the Tories. Had Rupert Lowe’s gaggle of race baiters whom Nadine Dorries babbled online were a Tory Trojan Horse got double their seven per cent vote Andy Burnham still would have won.
Oh I know, in National polling Reform are still ahead, fourteen years, army of Lib Dems, got no policies, blah blah and more blah.
Labour 1. Conservatives 1. Reform 0.
And here’s the thing I’m not, I am absolutely not, gloating. There’s nothing to gloat about. Just grinding out wins wherever you can.
The Conservatives have a mountain to climb, apologies to still make, policies still to unveil, expectations to match and myths to quash. I know this, they know this, we should all admit and acknowledge it.
What we we do need to say, is the idea we are dead, or finished, the idea the very poor 2 per cent we chalked up in Makerfield – with by the way a very decent candidate – is of national significance, or that the Makerfield by-election is a reflection of wider electoral politics is now, demonstrably, nonsense.
Labour remain unpopular, Reform can’t win by-elections, and the Tories are still damaged goods, still distrusted, but are in better shape now than they’ve been for two years. You take a risk when you write about why you like a leader. She still has all the flaws she always had. But I hardly ever, bar the boys-who-hate-Kemi-club, meet people now who aren’t converts or were always on board.
Her speech to the City yesterday was not just proof we aren’t dead, but that we are revived and reviving real Conservative politics. One can keep ignoring what the Conservatives are doing or saying, and claiming they aren’t doing any of it, or a ghost army of Lib Dems is holding them back but eventually the hare can’t ignore the tortoise, and if they do, they are going to fail.
Sorry Reform folks, but your guy seems tired, fed up, and evasive and has recently been asking the Bank of England to adopt a more financially friendly attitude to crypto currency- which actually might be the right thing to do – but I can think of five million reasons that doesn’t look right.
Aberdeen South, a seat that Labour, the SNP, and Reform – who switched a lot of money towards to try and ensure the Tories didn’t win – was not a topic for a month. Makerfield, Makerfield, Makerfield was the talk. Well just to be clear the Tories won it, and even last night I was told ‘looks sadly unlikely’. Andrew Bowie and Claire Coutinho deserve praise, on top of Kemi’s ongoing resonance with the public for making Aberdeen South a referendum on the North Sea. It worked. Kenyon did not.
Reform told us just a month ago that they were a national Party but the Tories were nowhere. As it turns out, that’s not true.
Is this then the moment to celebrate if you are a Conservative?
No.
Really don’t. It would be to adopt the blind hubris of our opponents.
The immediate news is cheery, but it’s a patch of fleeting sun on a still arduous and uncertain climb up a mountain, where our rivals have only been checked, not fallen.
Burnham isn’t going rush to Downing Street. When it starts to look all but inevitable, he can afford to wait. So can we. He’s not going to be better than Starmer – he could easily be much worse – but that’s not how it will seem to many at first.
Reform, the Tories, even Polanski – who is discovering the Gaza gang in his mob really don’t like the LGBTQplus ‘RSTUVWXYZ’ bit of the operation – will probably, or should anticipate, a hit from this.
Burnham will get a Labour bounce.
I think it will be short-lived but it will happen and will hurt all parties not just the Conservatives, but however long it takes him to get to Downing Street that polling adjustment will happen when and if he becomes Prime Minister.
I don’t think that will be swift. When all the momentum is with you (not Momentum who are a bunch of socialist clowns) then you can dictate the pace of your coronation. Burnham isn’t going to rush.
Likewise the Conservatives can’t dictate the pace of their revival. The electorate still need to trust them, and they don’t, yet. They have in Aberdeen which is really encouraging, another great candidate by the way, where Reform’s choice in Makerfield was not – but one swallow does not a summer make.
Voters want to see more policy and they are right. But this morning, there’s a brief moment to point out to Reform supporters – can it for a bit, you might need to reflect that you’re not all that.