Good news for Burnham: Mystic Nadine Dorries says he’ll be out in nine months

Dorries wrote: “I would argue that no one wanted the job more or was better prepared than Boris” (half right there, Nadine!). “But even he was shocked by the enormity and weight of the decisions he had to take in his first days.

“Andy Burnham is no Boris. And he is about to discover that it won’t be him dictating the narrative but ‘events, dear boy, events’.

“Yes, he’s got the approval of Labour MPs (for now) and the unions (ditto). They’ve all bought into his nebulous message of hope without once asking how he will achieve it.

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“It is just possible that if he had had a period of grace, say three months in which Starmer had stayed in post, to transition from provincial mayor to prime minister, he would survive longer than the nine months I predict it will take to all fall apart. We could be facing an election as soon as next May.”

But why, you may ask, is this good news for Burnham? Because as sure as night follows day, Nadine Dorries’s political predictions go spectacularly belly-up.

Back in February 2025, she was confidently predicting how Kemi Badenoch would be gone as Conservative leader by that summer, writing on X how “Kemi Badenoch will not be leader by the time we are packing our factor 50 and heading to the beach this summer. She will be long gone”. 

Dorries even knew who “the movement fixers” – the shadowy Tory figures who stitch up the top jobs – had lined up to take their place. They are “Alex Burghart and Claire Coutinho,” she said. “It’s just a game to these guys. Power and politics, it’s like a drug, they are addicted.”

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Eighteen months on, Badenoch is arguably more secure in her job than ever.

Back in June 2024 during the general election campaign, Dorries made the curious claim that Rishi Sunak was about to resign and be replaced by David Cameron, making him the first prime minister to rule from the Lords since the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury in 1903. 

“I have always said that Cameron was popped into the Lords and into a senior ministerial post for a reason,” she mused. “Rumours around tonight that Sunak’s about to fall on his sword.” Sunak did not fall on his sword and David Cameron is doing whatever it is that David Cameron does these days.

And in early June 2022, Dorries declared that Boris Johnson was safe at No 10 despite growing disquiet about his Partygate lies and other matters. “Look, 180 MPs are what would be needed to secure a vote of no confidence in the prime minister. That is never going to happen,” she said, insisting Johnson would survive. Six weeks later, scores of ministerial resignations meant he was toast.

All hail Mystic Nads, the political version of Michael Fish circa October 1987! Burnham must be delighted, and settling in for a long stay.