Last week’s Labour conference can easily be divided into two eras – Before and After. Prior to Andy Burnham’s barnstorming keynote speech, the almost omnipresent signs telling delegates to “HOPE AGAIN” received something close to eye-rolls.
Few present would have described their mood then as entirely hopeful, though people I spoke to in the opening days of conference universally agreed that Labour was in a far better place than a year ago, and – perhaps as you’d expect among the Labour faithful – that Burnham had got off to a good start. But the mood was described variously as “bloodless”, “sanguine”, “pensive” and “anticipatory”.
Burnham’s speech needed to do a lot. It needed to justify the hype building up to it, the conference claims that it was time to hope, and to set out what Burnhamism would actually mean. It is safe to say that it lived up to expectations, especially for those in the hall.
The speech – an emotional yet policy-dense affair, which over the course of an hour connected the prime minister’s flagship policy on social care with his family history – put early criticisms of Burnham to bed.
No more could it easily be said that Burnham was just being a people-pleaser, announcing popular but easy policies and ducking the tough issues. He announced an intention to end the triple lock on the state pension, a hugely popular policy long regarded as a sacred cow, and use the savings to help fund a national care service.
As if that wasn’t enough, Burnham simultaneously reopened the debates on electoral reform and on reversing Brexit, both at once. These are some of the most serious and divisive debates in British politics, and the prime minister picked a side – if not a final destination – in all of them.
The path has been set. The question now is how Labour plans to actually walk it.
As the dust settled in the days following a speech that even Labour’s fiercest critics – including some in the Mail, the Telegraph and even GB News – reluctantly admitted was a triumph, the realities of actually delivering on it began to set in.
One thing that soon began to dawn on fans and critics alike was that the prime minister had not thrown caution to the wind entirely: on almost every issue, he had left himself room to evolve. His announcement on water companies was that he would remove the legal barriers to nationalisation, rather than that he’d nationalise some or all of them now. On the future EU relationship and electoral reform, he was announcing a plan to look at proposals before the next election, rather than to endorse any particular plan right now.
Crucially, though, much of the most ambitious content of the speech was not to be delivered just yet. Burnham had previously made it clear he regarded the promises of Labour’s 2024 manifesto to be binding on him, having promised to stick to its pledges not to raise the three main UK taxes: income tax, national insurance and VAT.
In his conference address, Burnham reiterated that he would keep the manifesto commitment to stick to the triple lock throughout this parliamentary term. His new two-and-a-half lock system would not be introduced until after the next general election. Similarly, Keir Starmer’s red lines on Brexit would be honoured – any change here would be for the next manifesto, as would electoral reform.
There are good reasons to honour the manifesto: at a time when trust in politics is at a low, U-turning on the manifesto that brought you to power could be fatal for a new prime minister, especially one who wasn’t even an MP at the time of the last general election. More than that, these are complex policy areas.
As Burnham said in his speech, politicians have been unwilling to tackle hard problems, or to show their workings in public. Instead of trying to spring massive solutions to decades-long problems from nowhere, Burnham is actually laying the groundwork to have and win the argument for his proposals. Crucially, the prime minister seems to believe he needs a direct mandate from the public, in the form of an election win, for his most ambitious plans.
But naturally, people could not help but notice that Andy Burnham – who just days before had said the next election would not happen before 2029 – had announced three policies intended for Labour’s next manifesto, rather than for this government. Reform is in the midst of a deep crisis, but with £72m to dig itself out over the next few years. Burnham is riding a wave of popularity. The Conservatives are in a relatively distant third place. Surely, on some level, this was a prime minister setting out the stall for an early election?
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A somewhat less high-profile address to the conference a few days before set out why this is unlikely to be the case. John Curtice, the undisputed doyen of British political polling, spent 90 minutes explaining in characteristically blunt terms what the current polls mean for Labour.
Curtice had some good news: the party had recovered substantially in the polls over the last year, and was once again in first place. Reform had started collapsing long before Andy Burnham entered No 10. And while Keir Starmer was the least popular leader in UK politics a year ago, Andy Burnham is the most popular right now, by a substantial margin.
The trouble is that has only translated so far into a broader political change. The public still thinks Labour is doing as badly on the economy and on the NHS – two of the most vital issues for deciding an election – as they did a year ago. The Burnham bounce has not yet translated into any change in perception as to how the government is actually doing.
When this is translated into projections of what parliament might look like if there was an early general election today – through the now infamous MRP poll projections – Labour ends up being clearly the largest party.
This is a distinct improvement on the situation a year ago, which generally had Reform just short of a majority, but Labour’s seat total would probably be around 240 to 270 – well short of the 326 needed for a majority. As Curtice set out, any governing coalition would need both the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, and perhaps even the SNP. Such a coalition would be fractious and extremely weak: the odds of passing sweeping, contentious reforms would be virtually zero.
Curtice was not quite out of cold water to pour on Labour early-election advocates in the room. Might tactical voting make the MRPs an underestimate? Perhaps, he conceded, but polling on this question suggests voters are only fractionally more likely to vote tactically for Labour against Reform than they are for the Conservatives. Morgan McSweeney’s tactic of relying upon the left to unite against Reform seems fundamentally flawed.
No one – reportedly not even his closest friends – knows how John Curtice votes. Usually, he sets out what he thinks the numbers say, what that means, and leaves the decisions to others.
But when asked whether there was any case for Andy Burnham to call an early election, he was unusually unequivocal. “No,” was the first word of his response, and an accurate summary of it.
Labour risks being trapped in a majority-mandate paradox. At the moment, the government has a working majority of 166 – the kind of majority that can deliver the sort of legislative reform that changes the face of the nation. But the prime minister does not believe he has the mandate to do so, and the manifesto he inherited rules out almost any kind of radical change.
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Burnham could obtain that mandate if he called an early general election, but every data point available suggests that if he did, even a victory would not grant him the kind of majority he would need to deliver it. Change requires a majority and a mandate, and fate seems to have landed Burnham in the position of being able to pick only one of the two.
That might, in reality, explain why Andy Burnham appeared to give a pre-election speech when a vote might be as late as 2029. The prime minister may be playing the long game, especially as the next year or so is likely to be tough: government spending is tight, Donald Trump’s wars are driving up inflation, and the AI bubble could pop at any moment.
Government means firefighting to tackle all of those things. Keir Starmer rarely managed to raise his head above that day-to-day struggle.
By setting out three grand plans, Burnham has ensured the groundwork will go on, even if he has crises to handle. He’s also given the government something to talk about – and a reason for voters to stick with them – through what could be hard times to come.
Andy Burnham clearly has the next election in mind, and a burning ambition to win it. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s coming any time soon.
