As Andy Burnham prepares to enter Downing Street, his advisers will be weighing up the merits of an early election. He’s under no obligation to go to the country until August 2029, but those around him with an eye on the polls and the state of the economy may take the view that now could be his best moment to strike. And they wouldn’t be wrong.
At the back of the incoming prime minister’s mind will be the painful lesson Gordon Brown learnt in the autumn of 2007. Burnham and several of his would-be ministers and advisers – including James Purnell, and Ed and David Miliband – were Cabinet members at the time Brown made the fateful decision to forgo an early election, ultimately leading to a defeat after a full term in 2010.
Back in May 2007, just before Brown became prime minister, a revitalised Conservative Party under David Cameron led Labour by 37 per cent to 35 per cent. Brown’s immense reputation as chancellor at the time and his solid start turned the polls around, putting Labour on 41 per cent – five points ahead of the Tories – by August. Brown was encouraged to call a snap election to give him the chance of five whole years in power.
But after weeks of speculation, Brown ruled out an election in early October. This was a disastrous decision. It became clear that he didn’t have the qualities to lead (a perception the Conservatives tapped into with the nickname “Bottler”) and he was soon engulfed in a firestorm of external events: the financial crisis, the MPs’ expenses scandal and growing concerns about rapidly rising immigration. His ratings nosedived and he never recovered.
Rewards and risks
Weighing up a decision about his own snap election, Burnham will be mulling over several big questions. Will he secure a sufficient poll bounce even to make an election viable? How serious are the problems facing the country, and can policy progress be made in the time left in this parliament? Are external events likely to make governing easier or harder? What is the relative strength of his political opponents?
The rewards of a successful early election campaign are clear: unassailable power within the Labour Party for the foreseeable future; a clear mandate for change from voters, making it hard for the House of Lords to toss out controversial policies that have public validation; and, most of all, five whole years with which to make progress in changing the country – in turn making reelection more likely.
However, any early campaign would bring massive risks. Regardless of any Burnham bounce, Labour’s terrible record to date and the fractured nature of politics mean they will never establish a clear poll lead in advance of a decision to call a general election. Labour MPs will worry that an early election would see a significant number of seats lost, even if victory were secured. And while recent polling by my former agency Public First showed that 57 per cent of voters thought Burnham should call an immediate election, 32 per cent would rather that Labour see out this term – with many understandably finding the endless political chaos tiring.
Realistically, the best Labour can hope for in a snap election is largest-party status in Parliament, putting them in the driving seat of a Left-wing coalition. But it’s hard to imagine Labour’s prospects improving in office, and delaying an election would probably see Burnham go the same way as Brown.
Quick bounce
Because new prime ministers tend to replace unpopular ones, new leaders usually secure at least a small bounce, although this isn’t guaranteed: Rishi Sunak briefly gained around three points, but the overall response was negligible. Burnham is a more attractive prospect though.
It took a couple of months for Brown to register a significant bump in the polls, and we must assume it will take Burnham a similar amount of time. Back in May, I suggested in these pages that Labour would probably jump five to seven points with Burnham in place. A new poll by Survation – run when it was clear Burnham was going to replace Keir Starmer – suggests this is exactly what’s happened, with the pollster putting Labour up five points and level with Reform on 24 points each.
For a poll bounce to be considered real, we’ll need to see this across multiple polls and sustained for some weeks. Nonetheless, my guess is that Burnham will indeed draw level with Reform by the end of summer. My view is that Labour will jump in the polls by something like five to seven points. According to YouGov, Labour is currently on 19 per cent, essentially tied with the Tories (on 20 per cent) and below Reform on 25 per cent. I suspect that Burnham will have a strong start, and will lift Labour to Reform’s level by the end of the summer.
This is for three reasons: first, because Burnham starts in a reasonable place with the public. In June, shortly after his by-election win, a YouGov poll put his favourability ratings at –4. Even casual poll observers will know this is a strong showing: YouGov had Starmer on a rating of –45, Nigel Farage on –40 and Kemi Badenoch on –15. A slightly more recent poll by Public First gave Burnham a narrowly positive rating of +2.
Second, and more importantly, Burnham is more charismatic and personable than most front-line politicians operating in Britain today. He gives good interviews, looks and sounds normal, and seems intelligent.
Third, it seems likely that Burnham will unveil a policy package in the next few weeks that will immediately score well with the public. His eve-of-power speech on Friday confirmed expectations on his policy priorities: devolution; public ownership; council-house provision; and an end to free-market economics. In focus groups, large-scale devolution secures support if it’s presented as taking power away from Westminster politicians, for example. Elsewhere, a tax on homes worth more than £2m is supported by voters by more than three to one; building more council homes locally is supported by voters by more than two to one; and putting water and energy under public control (whatever that means) is supported by even greater numbers. Actually delivering these policies is an entirely different matter, of course, but this is decent campaign fodder.
By the end of summer, Burnham should therefore be in a position to at least consider an early election.
Economy, asylum and the NHS
One of his primary considerations will be the factors outside his control – the domestic problems facing the country, which he will struggle to improve very much in three years; and the global events that could have a significant effect on our shores. It’s not for nothing that former British prime minister Harold Macmillan said it is “events, dear boy, events” that undermine politicians’ ability to govern. Given the current figures and portents, it’s hard to see how Burnham could be even vaguely optimistic.
Immigration is an immediate issue, with Burnham expected to support Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s Immigration and Asylum Bill, which will theoretically make it harder for failed asylum seekers to block their deportation. It will also increase the number of “safe legal routes” for asylum seekers, which will supposedly reduce the number of boats arriving.
However, it’s hard to see how this will make any difference in either the short or medium term. The long heatwave means calm seas. Given that illegal migrants are now boarding boats that can carry nearly 150 people, several thousand arrivals are likely to reach English shores on Burnham’s watch very quickly.
In the medium term, only meaningful changes to human rights laws are likely to reduce the flow of boats and enable the rapid, large-scale rejection (and return) of asylum seekers who have arrived this way. As a result, for all Burnham’s likely short-term poll bounce, at least some voters will peel away quickly – back to Reform, most likely – when little discernible progress is made.
Burnham will be even more worried about the cost-of-living crisis – which has so damaged the ratings of recent prime ministers – and the economy. But here, things look even worse. According to Bloomberg, Burnham will be told by civil servants on Monday that he “faces a worsening economy, rising borrowing costs and interest rate hikes in his first six months as PM”. He will also reportedly be warned of a potential “oil price shock” if the Iran war escalates.
While there were hopes at the end of winter that inflation would fall to just 1.7 per cent at the start of next year, the Bank of England suggests a rate closer to 3.5 per cent is more likely. Its worst-case scenario suggests inflation would breach 6 per cent – three times the Bank’s target. In focus groups, voters always complain about rising food costs, and the Bank suggests food inflation could reach 4.6 per cent by September, from 2.2 per cent today.
On the economy more generally, Britain’s medium-term growth outlook has been repeatedly downgraded. Since 2018, forecasts for real GDP growth by the end of this parliament have fallen. Expectations of around 2.2 per cent annual growth have been revised down over successive forecasts, to around 1.6 per cent in the Office for Budget Responsibility’s March 2026 projections.
In 1980, Ronald Reagan – during his successful campaign to become US president – famously asked American voters whether they were better off than they were four years earlier, when Democrat incumbent Jimmy Carter took power. It’s a fundamental question that remains at the forefront of politicians’ minds today: are voters better off than at the time of the last election? If the answer is “no”, the incumbent often loses. In this case, it’s hard to see how Burnham will be able to ask this question of voters with much hope about their likely reply.
On the NHS, Labour is claiming success. In May, new statistics revealed English hospitals had hit a key target for reducing the time it takes for patients to get treatment. The figures showed that nearly two thirds of patients were treated within 18 weeks. However, despite this marginal success, since Labour took office the NHS England waiting list has fallen by just 4.5 per cent – a reduction of around 15,000 patients a month. If this rate continued for the rest of the parliament, the waiting list would fall from 7.6 million to around 6.7 million by the next election. That would be the lowest level since May 2022, but still far above the pre-pandemic level of around 4.5 million. In focus groups, particularly in less-affluent areas outside big cities, voters remain hugely despondent about the state of the NHS. There’s no way they’re going to feel a significant difference at hospitals and GP surgeries by 2029; the NHS will remain a Labour problem.
The continued wars in Ukraine and Iran have particularly damaged Britain’s economic position. Even if these conflicts are settled, they will surely be replaced by something else – just as Brown found when he faced one crisis after another. Military experts are already talking up the prospect of a Russian challenge to Nato’s eastern borders, and the possibility of a Chinese attack on Taiwan is ever present.
If Burnham was hoping that calmer times would deliver a better climate for governing Britain, it seems he will be disappointed. It seems very unlikely he will be able to go into the 2029 election with a great story to tell.
Burnham’s vision
Burnham’s own policy plans – for things he can control – are thin to date. His speech on Friday gave a mere taste of what he’s likely to do in government, and we don’t yet know his Cabinet picks.
One of his closest allies, Louise Haigh – the former transport secretary – insisted to the BBC’s Nick Robinson last weekend that the incoming prime minister has “a plan” that he’s been working on for at least a year. He stressed this himself in his Friday speech, but he’s expected to put proper flesh on the bones with a major policy speech within days.
Time will tell, but from what he’s said so far, his policy priorities lean towards the structural and the long term. This is perfectly reasonable, but with such an approach voters are unlikely to see any meaningful change on the ground for years.
To date, the only thing Burnham has talked about in any vague substance is devolution. Here, Burnham has essentially suggested that he wants to replicate the model he thinks delivered so well for the Greater Manchester area. We know most voters think Manchester was a success and, more broadly, that large-scale devolution is a good idea. So it certainly feels possible – likely even – that voters will respond well to his early announcements. But he will find that they tire of the time lag involved in making any discernible difference.
Similarly long-term in scope is his proposal to deliver the biggest council-house-building programme since the Second World War, and his suggestion of greater public control over the water and energy sectors. We don’t know what this would look like, but it could potentially see the state taking a greater role in setting charges. Both of these would secure public support for the announcement – as both poll well – but it’s hard to see anyone seeing any benefit at all this side of a 2029 election.
Elsewhere, we have heard that Burnham is considering a large-scale change to the tax system to charge “wealth” rather than “income”. There is speculation that this will mean a major shift towards taxing the value of people’s homes – which, naturally, will hit the prosperous South East, with its disproportionately high property costs, hardest. While opinion research suggests that shifting the balance of tax towards wealth is popular, there’s a reason no prime minister has ever followed through in earnest: because dumping substantial new taxes on people whose only “crime” is to have stayed in their own home for a long period tends to be viewed as outrageously unfair in practice. This all sounds like a particularly stupid idea, given that the only reliable Labour voters now are to be found in the South East of England and, above all, London.
Significant wealth taxes should be abandoned; they will never fly in practice because they always seem unfair in the end. He has a greater chance of sustaining support for his other policy options. However, given their structural nature, he will need a long time for them to be felt on the ground – which means he would be better off using their basic conceptual popularity to secure a mandate for them, with a view to rolling them out over a full term after an election.
Capitalise on opponents’ weakness
Finally, what of Burnham’s opponents? Reform are by far his biggest opponents and they’re struggling badly. There has never been a better time to take them on, as their struggles look set to continue. The scrutiny over Nigel Farage’s personal finances has been rumbling along for several weeks now and shows no sign of stopping. This naturally appears to be affecting Farage’s ratings, and indeed Reform’s general polling performance.
But there’s more to Reform’s current weakness than the recent focus on Farage. As Burnham found in his Makerfield victory – where he swept aside a Reform candidate consistently on the back foot for deeply unpleasant historic comments – the party is still a chaotic mess. Despite speculation around an early election, the party has made little progress in attracting genuinely high-quality politicians to its roster of candidates. Prospective Reform voters seem destined to have to vote for the set of assorted eccentrics that Ukip and the Brexit Party offered.
The Greens are arguably Labour’s next-biggest problem. Here, the picture is equally encouraging. While political commentators tend to overdo the argument that a higher profile is destructive to some political movements – because of the scrutiny that profile invites – this is true in the case of the Greens.
If Reform’s candidates lean towards eccentricity, the Greens’ candidates lean towards lunacy. Hardly a week goes by without a Green candidate being quoted saying the most extraordinary things. One of their key problems is they’re a party whose core constituent parts simply cannot live together, with socially conservative ethnic minority voters trying to co-exist with gender-based activists, whose only shared policy is hostility to Israel. This isn’t going to hold.
Despite the rise in Kemi Badenoch’s ratings, meanwhile, the Tories remain weak. It’s possible they will tick up somewhat in the polls as Reform struggles, but not enough to restore the party in the short term to the level it was at even before the 2024 election. As such, while there were a great many Tory-Labour marginals even in the 2010s – given that there were so many voters who were split between the parties – these days are long gone, and Burnham faces little threat here.
Burnham faces much bigger problems in Scotland and Wales. For all the SNP’s appalling coverage in recent times, with its own chief executive jailed for expenses fraud, they’ve bounced back in the polls. In the recent Scottish elections, the SNP dominated yet again. In Wales, Plaid Cymru is now the leading Left-wing challenger party to Reform, such is the disappointment with Labour’s record in government there.
Things can only get worse
If I were advising Andy Burnham, I would say loudly and clearly: “Get ready to call a snap election.” If Burnham can govern basically, competently, and avoid the sort of early political mistakes made by Starmer – making changes to winter fuel payments and releasing large numbers of prisoners early, for example – he should secure the decent poll bounce that will make an election at least a possibility. He will genuinely benefit from the fact he isn’t Starmer, just as Starmer benefited from not being Sunak.
Things are simply not going to improve for him in the remaining three years of this parliament. There is little chance he will be able to point to anything but the most marginal policy progress – and it’s perfectly possible that things will look even worse than they do now. Britain feels like it’s one economic shock away from complete meltdown.
Having said all of this, Burnham’s instinct is likely to be against holding a snap poll.
One can hardly question his appetite for risk. He took on Reform in Makerfield – a seat that was, on paper at least, Reform’s to lose – and won comfortably. He now sits in what could be a marginal seat for the foreseeable future. But it’s one thing making a personal decision about Makerfield, and another making a decision that will affect the entire Labour Party, whose support Burnham will need if he wants to call an early election.
Most politicians inexplicably tend to think tomorrow will be better than today. They assume they have greater control over events than they do. Many Labour MPs will genuinely think that things will improve for Britain, that their policies will make a difference, and that voters will notice and be grateful. It will be extremely difficult to persuade them that this – right now – is as good as it’s going to get, and that sacrificing dozens of MPs now is a risk worth taking, given the possibility of losing far more at the end of the parliamentary term in 2029.
I suspect that Burnham is destined to repeat Brown’s mistake of 2007.