Some in the Labour Party are speculating that they may have a pathway from an historic electoral meltdown on May 7th to winning an election outright in just a few months’ time.
The case goes something like this:
Andy Burnham is successfully returned as the new Member of Parliament for Makerfield on June 18th. Even if he squeaks in by a whisker, the narrative will be that Labour has found a way of turning back the turquoise tide from sweeping right across the Red Wall.
Burnham swiftly announces he will force a leadership election and Starmer, finally realising the game is up, agrees to stand down as soon as the party contest concludes. Other possible candidates – already struggling to secure the required 81 signatures from fellow MPs – look at the polling suggesting Andy Burnham would sweep the board among Labour members and step aside. Burnham is coronated and enters 10 Downing Street before the summer break.
Our new Prime Minister gets an immediate boost in popular support. One opinion poll (normal health warnings apply) suggests a Burnham-led Labour Party could attract 30% of the vote, 3% ahead of Reform.
Over the summer months, sensing that the opposition parties are enormously underprepared to go to the polls and wishing to pursue a policy programme at direct odds with the Labour manifesto of 2024, Andy Burnham heads to the Palace and calls an election for the autumn.
If you think this scenario has a fair chance of panning out, you will be tempted by the 7/1 on a 2026 General Election currently on offer.
Of course, there are other feasible means by which we may end up going to the polls later this year. Perhaps a bloodied Sir Keir Starmer plumps for the nuclear option and calls a snap election essentially out of spite. Maybe the uneasy low-level factional conflict in Labour breaks out into full-scale civil war and we stumble into a dissolution of Parliament almost by accident.
So sure, it’s feasible that we have a General Election later this year, but I don’t find the 7/1 attractive.
If Burnham does make it to Downing Street in the next few weeks, the opposition parties will – in the time-honoured tradition – all call for an immediate election. Such demands will likely fall on deaf ears. Five of our last seven prime ministers have come to office mid-term without a public mandate; among them only Cameron and Starmer began their periods in office on the back of winning a nationwide vote. In other words, nothing especially unusual will have happened.
A case can be made that by virtue of Burnham not having even been an MP in 2024, the new government really is so new that a public mandate is needed. But it won’t be difficult to shrug off such a claim. It’s an observation, not a constitutional protocol.
There are a whole range of reasons to believe that it will be 2029 until we get the opportunity to elect a new Parliament.
Governments don’t tend to call early elections merely on the basis that they think they can win. The real question is whether they think they can improve their position from the prevailing status quo.
Theresa May’s ill-fated decision to seek a public mandate in 2017 was only partly based on the enormous opinion poll lead she had (pre-campaign) over Jeremy Corbyn. At least as big a factor was the tiny majority she commanded in the House of Commons at the time. Sensing that she would need a measurable rather than marginal majority of MPs on her side to pilot through any sort of Brexit deal, she pulled the trigger. It backfired – but it didn’t look like madness when she did it.
Labour currently has a majority of over 150. Even if Burnham felt he could win an October election, it would seem extraordinary to trade this in simply for the chance to claim a mandate that is not strictly necessary. He might be inclined to go for it if opinion polls suggested that victory was a foregone conclusion. A majority of, say, 80 to 100 secured on your own merits may give you greater political power than a majority of 150 which you inherited. But to have any confidence that the risk was justified by the reward, one would need a slew of opinion polls placing Labour around 10 points ahead. We are many miles away from that being the case.
Therefore, Burnham would be more likely to covet the bird in his hand than focus on the two in the bush. A three-year stint at the top job with a super-majority in the Commons is not something to gamble with.
There are other reasons to believe that an election could still be three years away. Burnham is the favourite to prevail in Makerfield (especially given the possibility that Restore could peel off a measurable cluster of votes), but he is far from nailed on. I still think Rob Kenyon could well pip him to the winning post. Defeat at the hands of Reform would mean a reversion to the situation of the last 12 months or so – namely, that Labour knows it faces evisceration next time we go to the polls, so waits until the last possible moment before submitting to its inevitable fate.
Although unlikely, there are scenarios in which Burnham returns to Parliament but fails to oust the stubborn Starmer. If the current Prime Minister really is minded to fight any leadership election, there is some sort of possibility – albeit a long shot – that he’d win it. Starmer’s support among Labour members is surprisingly robust given his disastrous numbers.
Taken together, all of this means that the generally available 6/5 on a 2029 UK election is the smart bet. Nothing is certain or surefire in the current crazy world of British politics and such a wager does tie up your stake for as long as three years. Nevertheless, a chance to more than double your money seems like the right punt.
Mark Littlewood is a former director of the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Director of PopCon.
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Coronated???? Do you mean crowned?🙄
There are two questions: Will Reform or Labour win the election, and if Labour wins, will a national election follow soon.
The first question is easier to answer. Paddy Power odds give Labour a clear lead and the local polls agree. There are 12 candidates altogether with Labour leading followed closely by Reform. The problem for Reform is that Restore and the remaining liquorice allsorts candidates share the same passion: “Anyone but Farage”. Andy wins.
The second question is a bit more difficult with Andy asking himself: “How can I stop Nigel? Going by the councils results, he has created a momentum, and on top of that, I can’t think of anything spectacular I can do to impress the voters. On the other hand, there is a good chance that the new Reform councils will make a hash of it by 2029”. Election in 2029, odds-on favourite.
One popular MP does not a party landslide make.
The other matter is what will happen to the opposition, assuming that Burnham becomes an MP. Another 3 years for them to battle it out could easily result in another 5 year Labour Government to 2034.
Burnham’s problem is that all his Far Left policies are not endorsed by the electorate as they are not in the Labour manifesto. It is likely that would be like water off a communist’s back and he will plough on to inflict ever more damage to our fragile economy and take the tax burden to unheard of levels. He could risk an Autumn election before things get any worse if he thinks he has the popularity but Makerfield will prove that one way of the other.
Since Labour policy will not change (for the better) whether Burnham carries on until 2029 or wins a snap election, and given the 150 seat majority, there doesn’t seem much to gain and all to lose.
I, too, think that he would cling on to his three years. The only reason that he might want to call an election is that he will obviously be more popular in the beginning than in the end, But, it’s only a chance to turn three years into five so it’s probably not worth the risk. He might well turn three into zero.
No of course he wouldn’t call an election.
He would cling onto power tooth and nail, like all the other charmless, incompetent bullshitters before him.
In any case, the only thing of any value accepted by the cultural Marxists is power. Why would they risk giving it up?
Yes – an all the additional damage they can do in the meantime.