I’m calling it. He’s going to go early.
There will be a general election next year and I think the Conservative leadership are now convinced of it.
I know, I know, all eyes are on the Budget on Wednesday and we’ll get to that, but that’s one of the reasons for deciding he’s going to do it.
Let’s look at the evidence, and the first point I want to make is Burnham will try it, because he has said he won’t.
It’s odd given the lengths he’s gone to since becoming Mayor of Britain that our new Prime Minister has offered so much evidence that he is, in one very negative arena, the very same as Starmer. You can’t believe what he says.
In Makerfield he publicly refuted the idea of his opening up the Brexit debate again. Clearly he needed to say that so that his Reform challenger (Can anyone but Reformer’s remember his name?) didn’t get the boost Burnham’s recent pronouncements on the subject would have given him at the time. Party and Burnham before country.
Now he’s flirting with re-joining, dallying with free movement, prancing about with single market entry, ‘negotiating a new deal’ (they’ll see that coming in Brussels) but back when it really mattered to his big plan (becoming PM, not for Britain) he said the opposite.
‘Our Andy” had a big reputation for flip-flopping in the past, but now I think it’s become his ‘tell’ – if he says something is off the cards – he’s definitely considering it. This should not be a surprise. When he arrived in Downing Street earlier than he actually wanted if you remember, he still hadn’t worked out what to do. I’m not sure that’s changed much but we’ll have to wait for the ‘ten year plan’ .
At the end of September he gave a series of local radio interviews where, as the ever dutiful Guardian reported:
“He initially said he was “not particularly” tempted by the idea of an early election, but later became firmer, saying he would “knock that dead” and he was “not going to do that” because he was focused on getting on with the job.”
Well, I don’t believe him.
When it comes to the Budget the City doesn’t seem to believe him either. Working, on the thesis that the duller the Budget the more he’s going for it, early.
“The City is increasingly expecting Mr Burnham to go to the polls next year, with some interpreting John Healey’s expected low-key maiden Budget on Wednesday as a sign the Prime Minister is laying the ground for a snap election. “ reported the Telegraph yesterday.
Now it is a fact that Number 10’s spinners have spent the last few weeks telling anybody and everybody that the Budget will be designed, not to spook the markets, not to unsettle the economy. Gordon Brown has been offering advice so it may even be impenetrable.
What is absolutely won’t do is confront the major problems besetting the British economy, that’s because it’s not deigned to buy growth but buy time.
Much to the howling horror of Reformer’s the pollsters, who they’ve all decided are ‘out of touch’ because Reform have lost their lead and are interchangeably third or second very close to the reviving Conservatives, Labour’s ‘Burnham bounce’ is still there.
The numbers, even if not for a majority are better for Labour, now back in the lead.
Numbers matter. There’s a sizeable chunk of the Labour benches who’d be very short-lived MPs if there is a 2027 General election (‘not another one?’) and that will pray on the Prime Ministerial mind, as would the result of the election a decade (I know right) before that saw Theresa May lose a majority if not the election.
However, numbers on Wednesday matter more. John Healey’s mission is to show the promise of things to come whilst not rocking the boat too hard. There must be minimal foot-holds for Badenoch to take it apart in the Chamber. No smiles wiped off the front bench in a Badenoch barrage.
Never mind Government borrowing is now at £3trillion, never mind that welfare (including pensions) is ballooning and Labour MPs won’t let their PMs do anything about that. Just as long as the numbers for 3-4 months will ‘do for now’ – hiding debt via PuFins, disguising tax rises and burying anything tricky in the dark recesses of the red book, the mission is to get to Christmas with little dent in their overall polling or Burnham’s ‘love me’ offensive (which after a while really is offensive)
All the big stuff he wants to do, is set for 2030, after an election. None of it was in the manifesto he inherited, and he wants to ditch some of the barnacles on that boat.
Why wouldn’t you think, ‘do it, and do it now’. He gambled his career in Makerfield, and won. Now he might well gamble the country thinking he can win again. He’s made enough cooing noises about ‘working together’ to Ed Davey’s Lib Dems, and received both cooing back and a promise never to work with Polanski’s ever more toxic form of Gaza-greenery, that if he wants to walk the electoral tightrope, and lose a few MPs on the way, he does at least have a safety net.
The Tories and Reform aren’t ready. I mean they will be, of sorts. This what Kemi Badenoch said to me before Conference:
“Yes, we are more ready now, [than in 2024] and yes, there’s always you know the more time you have, the more you can do. Obviously, if there’s an election tomorrow, we will be, you know, in a different place from if there’s an election next week. It’s.. it’s that sort of thing… You’ve just got to be ready”
Reform aren’t ready because despite the rear-guard actions of their online troops, there are some serious issues inside that party and they have been festering for months. To be fair to him, and for very different reasons, Farage predicted a 2027 election some time ago. He was completely wrong about the circumstances but maybe not the date. The Tories aren’t ready because it is still frankly too soon since 2024. The signs are better for Badenoch than Farage whatever his acolytes continue to claim, but she and the entire shadow cabinet know, 2029 is the plan, and 2027 isn’t. Burnham knows that too.
That’s got to be tempting for him.
Were the Tories to emerge back as the only really viable opposition in two years, and with Reform still a force right now, why wouldn’t Burnham chance it to drive the wedge into the right and gain the main chance?
Fortune favours the brave – and the politically sneaky. And to be fair, it’s his call. The PM can pop to the Palace when he likes, it is all in his hands.
And if I’m wrong. If Kemi Badenoch is wrong (and I get the very strong impression from those around her she thinks he’s going to go for it) it doesn’t actually matter.
Engineers are often instinctively those who think by the old adage “failure to plan is to plan to fail” there is no loss in having candidates in place, policy fine-tuned to unveil, if it isn’t needed in the end well you had to do these things anyway, so having them done earlier isn’t going to hurt.
There is going to be a laser focus on this issue, mark my words, and in the same way Michael Portillo once gave away his leadership intentions because (sign of those times) he had telephone lines installed into a head-quarters, the Independent’s Will Hazell reports an interesting snippet, as political editor Caroline Wheeler revealed on X:
“Election fever has already spread beyond Westminster. Last week a Lib Dem councillor told HQ that he had tried to order some new Correx boards – the plastic placards used in election campaigns – only to be told the company could not fulfil the order for another month because it would be using all of November to complete a large order for the Labour Party.”
Could be nothing of course but plans for an early election are hard to hide completely, but like I say, I don’t think he’s hidden it. Burnham’s going to try it, and if, in the end he doesn’t, well, so what?
As my favourite line from the Harry Potter films has it:
“Hang on! It’s going to be a bumpy ride”