The real reason Andy Burnham could call a snap election

0:03The Telegraph. Is a snap election on the horizon? That's almost a certainty according to one top pollster. But which party leader would benefit most from an early trip to the polls and could it end up being a disaster for Andy Burnham? Welcome to this special edition of The Daily Tea with me Camilla Tominey. And me Tony Diver. Kerry Badenock, she is the leader of one of the most successful political parties in the history of the world. And she cannot countenance the idea that it becomes the third party. Meanwhile, Farage has set out to become the leading force on the right. And that's his primary mission in everything that he does.

0:38The first thing he says after any election result is, this shows that the Tories have been reduced to a rump. They are nothing anymore. Tony, you and I are going to go into the detail of what we think constitutes an argument for an early election. And we're going to break it down into five stages. But before we do that, I'm going to speak to James Johnson, who is the pollster. He's currently in the US. But let's be honest, James, you've stuck your neck out here. And I know pollsters don't like to make predictions, but you think it's more likely than not that Andy Byrne will pull the trigger on an early election.

1:09Why do you think that? Well, I think the maths just makes it a lot more likely than not. And the reason is, is that let's look back to some of the elections in the last decade, 2017 and 2019, namely. Now, Labour did not win those elections, but it did massively increase what it was polling at the start of the campaign by the end of the campaign. If you look at 2017, under Jeremy Corbyn, Labour sort of went from 25 percent in the polls to 40. In 2019, even up against Boris Johnson, Corbyn managed to rally the Labour vote and add about 10 points. And he did that by picking up votes on the left. In the artificial world of answering an opinion poll, voters were saying Lib Dem or Green.

1:47but when it became a choice of Labour versus the Tories, they pivoted over to Labour. I think we're going to see that happen if there's a snap election, but on crack. And the reason I think that's going to happen on such a higher level is because, firstly, Burnham is appealing to the left. He's much more palatable to them than Starmer. On economics, for example, on the issue of Israel and Gaza, You saw that Burnham sort of tried to lance that left-wing boil quite quickly by taking a relatively pro-Palestine view early on in his leadership. And that will bring some of those Lib Dem and Green voters back on board.

2:24They're also faced by a fight against Farage. And if there's one thing that spooks the left more than anything, it's Farage being prime minister. That's much scarier than the premise of a Rishi Sunak or Theresa May or even a Boris Johnson. Farage is seen as a real sort of embodiment of everything these guys don't want about politics so I think those things mean that the left rallies now that wasn't enough in 17 and 19 under Corbyn as we well know because the right was also united that is the key difference and the fatal difference for the right now they are split between Tories and reform they are more split between Tories and reform than they were even in 2024 when Starmer was able to get that massive majority I see much more chance of the left coming together than the right.

3:07And that's why I think if you're sat in Downing Street and you've got all of these policy constraints that we know that Burnham has, you look at the maths and you think, if I roll the dice now, it's got a much better chance of working out than it would if the right comes together in a couple of years' time. OK. Can I just confirm, first of all, that if there is an early general election, Tony Diver, myself and Tim Sandley will all be on crack, will be mainlining crack to our hearts content to try and cope with what's already been a busy news year let's be honest James but what I can't understand is this I appreciate what you're saying about the right being divided but last time I checked those great advocates for crack the Greens I mean they love it so much they want to legalize it they're also eating Labour's lunch so you're saying the left isn't as divided as the right but what guarantee is there that the left are all going to club together in some kind of progressive alliance in the event that Burnham can't win a majority?

4:03I think there are barriers to reform voters voting Tory or Tory voters voting reform that don't exist for the left. So, you know, it's much easier if you're on the left to go and vote for Burnham or lend a vote to Burnham. I think it was hard for Starmer, to be clear, because, you know, the Green voters, for example, or voters who are voting for independent parties or candidates, they really felt like Starmer had betrayed them on the issue of Israel-Gaza. They don't feel that about Burnham. Now, that's not to say that something couldn't come up and suddenly Burnham ruins that. But at the moment, he's got that relationship with the left that makes it easier to be transactional.

4:37There's also that choice against Farage. Now, when YouGov did this poll where they looked, where they compared, you know, who's the best prime minister between Burnham and Farage? And Burnham leads Farage by about 28 points with the public. That's big. But he also leads amongst Lib Dem and Green voters by as much as 80 points. Now, that is more of a margin, a bigger margin of Burnham versus Farage than amongst Labour voters. So these voters on the left are eminently winnable for Burnham. Now, let's look on the right for a moment. Kemi doesn't much like Nigel, does she? Nigel doesn't much like Kemi.

5:11There's an elite problem there. They're not just going to club together and become mates. I think, by the way, in my scenario that I've talked about, the realisation that the left could win comes quite late because it happens after a campaign is called. And by that point, if the right's really spooked, it takes a while to get things together. Perhaps can we not want to get to the debates before doing a deal? Then you're only two weeks before polling day. And there's another thing that makes me think it's difficult, Camilla, which is that when you look at the numbers, Tories are going to be arguing that they're competitive in some seats.

5:44Reform are going to be arguing that they're competitive in others. If you look at the last election results, the Tories might have a good case. But if you look at some of the polling and the MRP polls, and we know Reform love putting these on their leaflets, then Reform are going to have a pretty good case. So I think in many of these seats, it won't be clear to voters, it won't even really be clear to Westminster, who is the best placed candidate to beat Labour. And that muddles the picture a lot more and makes a coming together on the right more difficult. But then the polling on Burnham's favourability compared to Farage suggests that Green Party supporters and indeed Lib Dems don't actually like their respective leaders, Zach Polanski or Ed Davey that much?

6:23I think they're thinking about who can be prime minister. And I think that's the key difference. And this is the thing that I would keep emphasising. People have criticised my view on this for saying, look, Burnham hasn't had much of a bounce. He's polling in the mid-20s, even still in the low 20s with some pollsters. What are you talking about, mate? And my answer back is like, this is not about the bounce, actually. The level of the bounce now doesn't really impact my view. It's about what could happen. And that's what I see looking forward, is that the polling right now is an artificial measure of a kind of popularity contest to various parties.

7:01But when it becomes, in voters' minds, this is about who's going to be Prime Minister, that, to me, seems to be advantage Burnham at this point in time. All right, so final question, Jamie, before me and Tony, the political editor, get stuck into this. What's the truth of the matter, then? who needs which voters? The Tories need to get reform back but also win over some Lib Dems who don't like reform. Reform need to get restored back and some Tories but haven't disgruntled Tories already started voting for Nigel so then he needs to pivot to the Red Wall. Labour needs Greens and Lib Dems. Greens need Labour and Lib Dems.

7:40I'm confused. Who needs what? I think you just nailed it, Camilla. Did I? You know, this is the issue that we have. And by the way, this is, again, why things are better for Burnham, because on the left, basically, when you have three main parties, or four if you throw the Lib Dems in, when you have at least three main parties contending for actual being in government, two of them being on the right, it becomes a question of who can get their coalition together the most. Can the left become more united or can the right become more united? Now, that logic, Burnham just needs to get Lib Dems and Green voters, completely falls apart if he's just up against the Tories, because you can't get to 40 % like that.

8:20And, you know, this is a 30%, 32 % strategy. If Burnham can get to 30 % and the Tories and reform are squabbling in the early 20s, then he's home and dry. So I think at the moment it is a race to unite each side, and, you know, reform needs to win Tories back. Tories need to win reform voters back. You know, we get lots of talk by Tories about trying to win the centre, and these centre ground voters. But actually, they've lost their core vote and you can't really branch out unless you've got that core trunk of support back. So my view is that this is a race to consolidate each side and Labour's winning that race, or at least has the potential to win that race should an election be called.

9:00James Johnson of JL Partners, thank you very much indeed for joining us on The Daily Tea. Thank you.

9:13OK, so Tony, that is James Johnson's verdict. You grimaced a bit when he was talking about the Tories because you think the Tories are underpriced. I thought the Tories were underpriced for a long time, but I thought he, in his analysis, slightly underplayed another thing which I think is very significant for the Tories, which is this attempt by them to shift towards trying to attract centrists and Lib Dem voters. Yeah, exactly. Because we always talk about the Tories in terms of them versus reform and is there going to be a deal and who's winning over the right-wing voters more. And there is an interesting story to be told there, of course, and we tell it a lot.

9:43But I think actually there are a lot of Lib Dem voters who, yes, maybe when faced with the choice of Burnham versus Farage, as James points out, would go for Burnham. But you throw Kemi into the mix, if she can make a decent pitch to those voters, then do they perhaps go for her? And if Kemi is as adamant as she says she is that she won't do a deal with reform, it's basically the only place that she can go to try and hoover up some of those voters who left the Tories in droves back at the 2024 election because they were fatigued with the Sunak government and the Boris government and everything that came before.

10:14But actually they think there is a bit of sort of soft Lib Dem support that they might be able to tap into in the south, in places where reform has made no inroads whatsoever. Also, if you are that kind of I'm leaning towards the Lib Dems kind of blue wall previous Tory that's a bit upset about Brexit, even if you had reservations about leaving the ECHR, if you voted for Baden-Ock, you don't need to be facing anyone at a dinner party saying you're a racist and a bigot because there are now people to the right of the Tories that can hold that man. So if you're one of those secret, I'm secretly right wing, but I'm going to pretend I'm a bit more left wing, then maybe the Tories then become a comfortable fit for you.

10:52I'm talking about your sort of Chesham and Amersham Tories who went yellow in a fit of pique, but probably a naturally very true blue. Yeah, your sort of classic David Cameron boaters. Where are those people going? Because also the other thing about those people is they're very sensible. They don't like clown-like leaders taking part in circus skills sessions. They want serious politics. They want Cameroonies in suits. Well, that's why I'm going to be very interested to see what Kemi does at this year's Tory conference. Because actually a lot of the stuff that she's been putting out recently has been very right-wing.

11:24It's been very reform-focused. It's been scrapping all the net zero targets, leaving the ECHR, getting much tougher on migration. lots of these policy issues are you know pretty much issues that reform owns now will we start to see some stuff which is sort of red meat to the left probably not on brexit i think the distinction she's drawing is she's trying to say we're reform but with an excel spreadsheet rather than the back of a fag packet she's saying we want to do the same things that reform want to do but hey trust us because we've been in government before and we're not all hand to mouth like this lot.

12:03Oh, and by the way, they're fighting like rats in a sack, whereas we are positively a nest of singing birds, brackets, even though we might not be. But if you don't sing from my hymn sheet, you're out anyway. But should we go through the five reasons we think Burnham may call an early election? This is how we've broken it down. Some of it's going to echo what Jamie Johnson said, but I think we should drill into the detail. The first problem facing the new prime minister is the fact that he doesn't have a mandate how important do you think that is Tony? Well I think it is important of course whenever we talk about this question there's one big thing from the manifesto which really stands out which is the commitment to the fiscal rules which means and the commitment not to raise income tax VAT or national insurance now a lot of the stuff that Burnham wants to do is quite expensive and that commitment in the Labour manifesto in 2024 knocks out the three big ways that you were able to raise money and so if he wants to be really ambitious on spending which it seems that he does in some ways, then at the moment, all he can do is fiddle around the edges, maybe equalises capital gains tax with income tax, maybe does something on dividends, maybe introduces a couple of new sort of sin taxes on industry.

13:09But that doesn't raise you the really big money that you need to do big things. And you have to go for those broad bases of taxes to do that. At the moment, he's completely committed not to doing that because he's sticking by the 2024 manifesto. So a new manifesto will allow him to do that. And potentially his political calculation is the more money he has to spend, the more stuff he can do and therefore the more likely it is that he would win a second term. So that booklet with ironically Keir Starmer in a power stance saying change he didn't expect himself to be changed did he Tony? It's looking a bit embarrassing now.

13:40I've got a copy on my desk in case we need to auction it at some later date but basically that's acted like a noose around Burnham's neck to a certain extent. For instance we also heard didn't we in recent days something along the lines of he would like to drill more in the North Sea, but he doesn't like the idea of the optics because he doesn't like it looking as if he is breaching his own party's manifesto. So at every turn, this guy is hamstrung by it. Is that also why he started flirting with the idea of loosening the fiscal rules because that's the only thing he can get away with? Basically, in the absence of taxing people more, you just borrow more.

14:16Yes, he definitely is looking at that. And actually, interestingly, what he's doing on that is within the fiscal rules that Labour set, actually, Rachel Reeves set herself slightly more relaxed fiscal rules than she was willing to use. Socialists always do, Tony. The stuff that he's doing was within Rachel Rees' fiscal rules, but she and Starmer agreed that they wouldn't use the absolute maximum borrowing capacity that they had available to them based on those constraints, because they were concerned about the impact that it would have on the bond market. Andy Burnham, it seems as much less concerned about the bond market, and he is able to borrow more within those constraints.

14:46But if he was to scrap that completely or change the fiscal rules or win another election on a mandate to do that without spooking the bond markets, which would be a difficult thing to achieve, then he would have a bit more wriggle room to do some more borrowing. Although he's faced surprising little finger-pointing nobody-voted-for-you type rhetoric, has he? That's interesting, isn't it? Normally, look at Liz Truss. No-one voted for this. It's all a disaster. You have no right to be here. How many Tory prime ministers are we going to rinse through? Get out of office. He's been relatively unopposed on the whole you didn't get the country voting for you only Makerfield.

15:24That's right, but that might be because he's agreed to stick to the manifesto. At the moment, he's just kind of continuity Starmer, isn't he? Yes, he hasn't, like Truss, gone in with a bulldozer and said, let's tear everything up and start again. Let's smash up the system. OK, so him having a limited mandate is an inconvenience, but maybe not necessarily a complete obstacle. He could limp on through to the next general election and then have his own mandate and put all of those copies of the last manifesto on the fire. All right, so that's reason one. I think so. Reason two, which is something that Johnson heavily leaned into, a good reason to have a general election now is because the enemy are at sixes and sevens.

16:04In fact, not just that. They're at war with themselves, Tony. And this is true, isn't it? Only at the weekend, we had Cammy Bade not giving an interview, I think, to Ian Dale at the Edinburgh Fringe, saying a pact with reform would be monstrous. And I was thinking, what more monstrous than four more years of Labour or a progressive alliance of the Lib Dems, Labour and the Greens? Have you lost your mind? Well, yeah, I think this is the strongest argument that James has got, actually, on this point about the left versus right, because basically the thing that's holding this kind of fictitious left-wing coalition together is everyone's hatred of Nigel Farage, right?

16:38That's the thing which is potentially going to unite the left. And because we've seen vote, and you and I discussed this the other day on this podcast, But we've seen that voters hate, voters on the left at least, hate Farage so much that they're willing to tactically vote. And they're willing to tactically vote far more than they ever have done before. And there are online tools that you can use to try and work out in your constituency, based on all the data, who is the best party to vote for. That is a force in British politics that we've not seen this strongly ever before. And that is the thing that basically holds all of these, this sort of loose coalition of lefties together.

17:07Well, that and like pro-Palestinian sentiment and a bit of trans support, I guess. Well maybe but a lot of people who care about those things, Green voters, that's the reason why they left the Labour Party is because they don't think, granted Burnham has been tougher on Israel than Starmer was. He makes a good point that people on the left are going to be more motivated simply to stop Farage than people on the right are going to be more motivated to simply stop Burnham. People on the right were very motivated to stop Corbyn but they considered Corbyn to be a socialist maniac whereas Burnham seems quite fluffy and cuddly by comparison.

17:41Yes, exactly. And so if you're on the right, then you're thinking, oh, it looks like these people are going to band together in some way, shape or form at the next election, even if it's not through any kind of formal pact or deal, it's just through people voting tactically. So maybe we need to get our act together and do the same. Some people on the right think that. Clearly, Kemi Baden-Ock doesn't. And if you're Burnham, you're thinking, great, well, while the fox is among the chickens on the right, I'm just going to go for it. Yeah. By the way, there will be actual human foxes standing in all of these elections, along with bins and fish fingers and goodness knows what else.

18:11But then isn't Badenock and indeed Farage, aren't they both missing a trick here? Why are they gifting their socialist enemies all of this kind of sukkah to the idea that the right is disunited? Why is Badenock constantly making these public protestations against Farage? Why is Farage constantly making these public protestations against her? And equally, why are they also at war with Restore? Although we'll have a separate discussion about that because that could be politically sensible, particularly for Farage in order to try and keep the Tories on side. Why are they doing this? I mean, the Tories' role is to oppose, to oppose the actual sitting government, not the people to the right of them.

18:51It's almost a gift to Burnham, this, to be this publicly squabbling. Yes, I agree. But isn't it kind of personal for both of them? For Kerry Badenock, she is the leader of one of the most successful political parties in the history of the world. And she cannot counterins the idea that it becomes a third party, basically for the first time ever. No. Meanwhile, Farage has set out to become the leading force on the right and that's his primary mission in everything that he does. The first thing he says after any election result is this shows that the Tories have been reduced to a rump. They are nothing anymore.

19:21We are the new party of the right. I mean, for both of them, being the second party in British politics and certainly the biggest party on the right is like their personal mission in life. Yes. And whichever one is the junior partner in whatever kind of deal they do is accepting basically that either if you're Kemi, you've driven the Conservative Party, the great historic Conservative Party, into the ground, or for Farage, that you failed. And the reason that you came back to politics before the last general election was ultimately a waste of time because you've not managed to kill off the Tories, as you always said you would.

19:50If you were going to play 3D chess, there is a way that the electoral math works out that could see the Lib Dems being the playmaker here. Because if the yellows are as emboldened as the greens and the reds to keep the turquoise out. And the yellows look at the roll of the dice and by some miracle the Tories are underpriced and it might make more sense to do a deal with the Tories to keep reform out than with Labour and because the Lib Dems are looking after Waitrose man and woman and therefore can't go in with the Greens because the Blue Wall will recoil and say, oh my God, they're all a bunch of drug legalising anti-Semitic maniacs, then the future of this country's governance could be in the hands of Ed Davey, in the big clown-like hands of Ed Davey.

20:46Because I wouldn't put it past them. I wouldn't put it past the Lib Dems, political opportunists as they are, power hungry, secretly power hungry. We see it in local councils. They love power, even though they pretend they don't. to just go with whoever they think is going to secure them some degree of policymaking. Well, yeah, and that puts us back in 2010, doesn't it? That brings us right back to the result of the 2010 election. But I mean, we talked to the Lib Dems, of course, we talked to MPs in that party, and it sounds like there are discussions internally for now within the Lib Dems about what they might do, whether or not that's actually viable, whether they would enter into coalition talks.

21:23I mean, the Lib Dems viewed their political project as being completely destroyed by the tuition fees debacle and Clegg's decision to get in with Cameron. But, you know, maybe they would consider making the same mistake twice or making the same decision twice if they thought that it would give them a shot at having some ministers in the cabinet. I don't know. What do you think? You cover that election. I mean obviously the Lib Dems ended up being completely humiliated by that coalition because they had to abandon their student tuition fee scrappage scheme and they haven't really been forgiven for it and they seem to kind of turn their back on their own liberal and democratic principles although they turned their back on those when they tried to reverse the referendum so I don't know but I just think it's interesting that the Lib Dems are often overlooked They have got a great many seats in Parliament that everyone seems to forget about.

22:13And they are the party that can most easily lean leftwards or rightwards and just about get away with it. But let's see. So I think limited mandate isn't as strong an argument for an early election as the right are divided. I think the right are divided is a strong argument. Now, the third reason that he could call an early general election, which is linked to the second reason, is the other problem with the opposition or indeed the saving grace for Andy Burnham is that the opposition is not ready the Tories aren't ready the Greens aren't ready Reform aren't ready Restore aren't ready and when I say ready I mean selected all of the candidates they can vetted them all got boots on the ground the only people ironically and again we're playing to Davies strengths here who are ready apart from Labour are the Lib Dems because the Lib Dems are born ready.

23:01They're always ready. They're at a council near you, fixing potholes and emptying the bins. So they've got a ground army ready to go. Other parties, not so much. That's quite a good reason, if you're Andy Burnham, to catch your enemy unawares. Yeah, I mean, from an organisational point of view, you're definitely right. And actually, Kemi said over the summer, during the summer break, that she'd started selecting. She's invited people to come and be Conservative MP candidates. She's looking for people who are outside of politics and people in business or in the trades or anything, basically, that's not Westminster.

23:35She's clearly thinking about it and spending quite a lot of her time trying to put together a candidates list and actually annoying a lot of people in the process. See Grant Shapps, who's not been allowed to stand. Well, will she be able to be that picky about Grant Shapps or indeed Penny Mordaunt, who's got a question mark over her head because of her support of transgender rights and maybe other matters. She's doing this whole thing of we don't want any more closet Lib Dems. If you don't support my manifesto to leave the ECHR, abandon net zero and all the rest of it, then you cannot stand. But if she were really forced, if she was forced to select candidates by autumn, I think you'll find a few closet lefties slipping through the net, wouldn't you?

24:16I mean, they'll be selecting whoever they can equally for reform. Bless them. I mean, they have a problem often selecting candidates that don't later transpire to be, as Cameron once described UKIPers, as fruitcakes and loonies. So that's a problem. Yeah, that is a massive problem for reform. And the Greens, by the way. Let's not forget the Greens will unearth some really choice people like the bloke who had to be abandoned as a councillor because he committed environmental crimes or something, let alone those on the nutbag fringe of the pro-Palestinian debate. Yeah, and I think the Greens probably have a harder problem with this than reform does now.

24:52I mean, the thing is, reform for a long time was a party, it was a real fringe party that people didn't want to be associated with, certainly didn't want to commit their time to running for. And that's, I think, probably why you ended up with a slightly rag-tag bunch of candidates, many of whom, as you say, later turned out to be very suspect. No way to describe Robert Jenner. I think look at the support that reform has in some parts of the country now. I mean, look at Essex. You drive through Essex now and it's basically sort of wall-to-wall turquoise posters. That's not a party that is sort of distasteful to the average voter.

25:25It's not a party that people would be ashamed to put their name to or which people sort of quietly support but don't want to do so loudly. I think reform has probably overcome that problem now and we'll see the quality of reform candidates increase. Yes. I wonder where that does leave Restore because obviously they had Marlon West, who is the father of a grooming gang survivor. and he stood in Greater Manchester, OK, didn't win, Labour won, that probably quite predictably, but he did get more votes than the Conservative candidate, which is interesting because Greater Manchester had historically attracted quite a few Tory votes.

25:59So Restore could stand the odd celebrity candidate and probably do quite well, in inverted commas, but they're going to have their own vetting issues, aren't they? They're probably going to make reforms vetting problems look like a walk in the park. I mean, at the moment, I think it's hard not to agree with Farage that Restore are going to struggle to win a seat outside of Great Yarmouth, which is, of course, Rupert Lowe's seat. He does have a core of support there. He's got a strong personal vote. He is liked. But that is his own particular kind of constituency. Yeah, but then what do we make of that rhetoric within Reform HQ, 3 % is the magic number.

26:34And if Restore surpassed that in their key seats, Restore can't win, but neither can Reform. well i mean i don't think that that trade-off between the two parties exists completely in isolation does it all depends on what happens to the tories yeah i mean three percent of the vote can't change what reform the outcome for reform that heavily compared to the huge block of support that the tories have and the impact that that could have so i don't know i mean it's as you say it's like 3d jets all of these people maneuvering will all change the outcomes of the other as we head towards the next election but if it happens quickly as as james clearly thinks then those decisions going to have to be made pretty soon.

27:11And also just to state the bleeding obvious, but obviously it's harder when you've got fewer MPs. That's the point I'm making about the opposition not being ready. As far as Andy Byrne is concerned, he's already got 400 plus MPs who can stand again and only needs to find 250. Whereas for reform, obviously, you're having to find more than 600 decent people who you can run. OK, you know that a lot of the seats, it's just a lost hope. But you have to stand the candidates there. And then you have to consider that you're not in a position to do a 2019 and stand down some candidates in seats that you think the Tories are going to win unless they do do a pre-election tactical voting pact.

27:48And then, yeah, I mean, Restore might turn around and say, well, we're only going to slate 50 candidates. We just don't know. I don't know what the infrastructure is around that party. But the enemy not being ready could be quite a compelling argument, Tony. Yeah, I can see it. The only thing I would say to that is I just wouldn't underestimate the Conservatives and their ability to organise. I mean, you know, they are, the Conservatives are not amateurs here. They are not restored. They haven't just entered the political game. They've got a lot of money. They've got a lot of infrastructure. There's a lot of people, I think, who if the, you know, if Kemi stood on the roof of the new headquarters in Westminster and blew the trumpet, there'd be a lot of people who came out of the woodwork to try and help them.

28:24She'd love to get on that roof and blow a trumpet, wouldn't she? Like maybe in like some kind of like union outfit. Yeah, yeah, I can see it. We should suggest it. Somebody call Gerry Halliwell, because this is an image that we would put on the front of this newspaper. OK, so fine. So we've got limited mandate, possibly right, hopelessly divided. Yes, good, compelling reason. And the opposition not being ready. Fair enough. Let's discuss this one. Eyelash McGraw and his popularity, the burn and bounce. It's so high. He's riding so high that he must go to the country because everyone loves him so damn much.

28:57Yeah, I mean, this one, I think James is right to say this one is a bit of a red herring and it's best not to think too much about it because you can look at it both ways, can't you? You can use Gordon Brown as an example or you can use Theresa May as an example. Those are two sort of... Two charismatic people who, funnily enough, went to the polls and the polls said, no, thank you very much. Yes. Well, we also have to remember, was James not the polling special advisor in the Theresa May Downing Street? I think he was. OK, carry on, Tony, yes. He was perhaps one of the people who was advising her to call an early election back in 2017, which worked out.

29:29Sorry, I don't want to slander James here. Perhaps he joined after that election. But the point is... I know one person who did recommend it, because he's told me, and that's David Davis. And he later admitted that was a bad idea. It wasn't a great idea. Because he wanted her to secure a majority to really push Brexit through. And obviously the dementia tax did it for her. Nothing has changed. Everything's changed, Theresa, including your majority. Yes. Yes, and that is basically point number one, isn't it? That's the limited mandate point. She went to the country. She was doing all right in the polls.

29:58Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, her chiefs of staff at the time, thought that she was going to be able to push through, perhaps slightly increase her majority, and she would have a new mandate per Brexit deal, which is also, in a way, what Burnham is seeking, but on different issues. But then you've got the Gordon Brown example. You have to remember that Andy Burnham served in the Gordon Brown government and watched this happen, which is there was a whole will-they-won't-they over whether or not he was going to call an early election. Yeah. Didn't. Butler Brown. Then he became Butler Brown, and that was ultimately, someone argued, what did for him when the next election came around was that he was seen as a coward.

30:27It didn't help that he insulted one of his own constituents. It didn't, no, it didn't. But you could look at both of those examples and draw completely opposite conclusions about what to do but both of them are ultimately based on looking at what's happening in the polls now and not thinking about what would happen over the course of a campaign when, as we know, and as James points out, they can change dramatically, especially on the left. Well, if Burnham was a rubber ball in Ross Abbott's comedy show and that's a reference you won't recognise, Tony, because you're too young. But anyone born before 1980 will.

30:56Let's see how big the bounce is. So, nearly half of Britain's, 46%, have a favourable opinion of Andy Burnham, with his latest net favourability rating of 13, the highest for any PM since Boris Johnson in the early stages of the COVID pandemic. Oh, how things changed for him. So, he's on plus 13. By comparison, Badenock is on minus 16. Britain's seen Nigel Farage unfavourably by 67 % to 23%, so 67 % at its worst, 23 % at its best. Zach Polanski's gone down in everyone's estimation. Just 19 % of Britons now have a favourable opinion of the Green leader, down seven points from his peak in April.

31:38Well, you know, find out where you're living, is it on a boat or not, and for God's sake pay the correct amount of council taxes, my best advice. The bounces, I mean, where are they now in the polls, Labour? They're a few points ahead. It's not like they've suddenly gone to 15 points ahead because the king of the north has come south, is it? No, no. We are seeing a slightly different cluster to what we saw before. I mean, reform, there are some polls now which put Labour ahead of reform, although that doesn't look like that's happening particularly. Well, one did, but it's not happening in all of them.

32:09It doesn't look like it's happening particularly reliably. But even if you say that reform are still ahead, you've got a kind of three way race now for first place between reform, Labour and the Tories all clustered pretty closely now. Whereas it wasn't long ago that we were talking about reform being streets ahead and then it was really a battle for second place between the others. So the polling has changed a bit and Burnham can probably take some credit for that. And nothing's gone disastrously wrong for Burnham. I mean, look how quickly support drained away from Keir Starmer after the 2024 election, that summer of the Southport riots and everything that came there.

32:43Suits and spectacles, Lord Alley. Exactly, Lord Alley and everything that came after that. There was a perception that he wasn't really the kind of man on everyone's side that he portrayed himself to be during the election and support dropped quickly. I don't think Burnham's support has dropped as quickly as that. But then the public hasn't seen enough of him yet. You see him appearing for his first PMQs, how he conducts himself. obviously we've had the recent visit to Ukraine to see Zelensky criticism of the fact that he didn't wear a shirt and tie I mean you know whatever this is all going to depend on his parliamentary performance which we have not yet witnessed and we haven't witnessed it in recent years of course it's not like a backbencher coming to the fore because he's been up in Manchester for all that time so we've not really seen him give a kind of theatrical flourish for more than a decade down in Westminster and it could go two ways for him Either the bounce, the ball will fall off over a cliff.

33:39Oh, God, he's terrible. He's not serious enough. OK, he looks better than Starmer and he's got more charisma, but so does this glass. But actually, he's unserious and not coping at the dispatch box. Or he might get a double bounce. He might be so good and so difficult for Badenock to manage because she could be horrible to Starmer because Starmer was horrible to her. Whereas Burnham is unlikely to be that nasty and that patronising into mansplain. And therefore, she's going to be in a difficult position because her best pivot is school mum and taking the mickey. And if she can't do that because it looks like she's thumping a puppy in the face, this is tricky.

34:16Tony, geez, this is hard. Yeah, it is tricky. I think you're right that Burnham is very unlikely to run the same kind of PMQ strategy that Starmer did. And actually, if you look at Burnham, if you look at the sort of maker field Burnham and beyond up to where we are now, You see, he has not run a negative campaign. He didn't run a negative campaign in Makerfield, even though it was him versus reform, and that was potentially the easiest way to unite voters in his favour. He didn't really do that. There weren't all these mysterious stories about reform and what they've been up to, the sort of attack stories that appear in the media.

34:48We didn't really see very much of that. And since then, when kind of opposition politics comes up, he tends to talk about how he wants to work with opposition parties on social care, on Ukraine, on defence. Yeah, Burnham, it's like I'm a lover, not a fighter strategy. Yes. Yes. He's doing the sort of hold them tight boxing technique. Spread the love across the country and indeed the misery with migrant accommodation to the middle classes. But yeah, you're right. It's like we're all in this together. Are we, Andy? Are we really? TikTok Andy. So how does that play out in PMQs? Because Kenny stands up and chooses the most sort of divisive issue where there is a huge gap between what the government and the Tories think and hammers that for five questions, Burnham can't reply to every single question to say he wants to work with her.

35:36So what does he do? What if he does something really disturbing? What if he starts answering questions? This is something we haven't witnessed in PMQs. God forbid we get some new information out of PMQs. Literally, I mean, Lindsay Oil was having to say to the former Prime Minister, can you just answer the question? It is called PMQs rather than PM Muse. you musing things and talking about your father being a toolmaker and the letter you received from Sandra in Sandringham. So this is going to be tricky. So we'll see where the Burnham ball bounces once he appears back in SW1. Final argument for a general election, and let's not forget, Andy Burnham is positioning himself as a PM of the people, the people's PM, like the people's princess, only with even more eyeliner.

36:23so would you believe it Tony Brenda from Bristol is so 2017 she's over there are new kids on the block and they're all agitating for a general election according to Politico 57 % of respondents explicitly want a general election to give Burnham his own mandate oh I see this is a left wing thing give him a mandate so he can tax us more 51 % agree that the UK urgently needs one to sort out who's in charge Well, I suppose you could argue for a general election if you think the public backs it. We're just giving the public what they want. Yes, although, I mean, the Prime Minister doesn't really need an excuse to hold an election.

37:03The Prime Minister doesn't need to justify why he's holding an early election, does he really? No, maybe he doesn't. You can just call one. I mean, it's the opposition that needs to argue for an election if they want one. Yeah, and they don't want to argue for it because they're not ready for one. Yeah, we're in a slightly topsy-turvy world. But, yeah, I am quite surprised by that. I'm surprised that so many people want there to be a general election. I mean, it's interesting the way that this is phrased. It'll be interesting to find out if this was actually in the question that people were asked, want a general election to give Burnham his own mandate.

37:31Yeah, that's loaded. Because presumably a lot of the people who want a general election right now will be Farage voters. Yeah. Because reform are topping the polls and they want to see Farage in number 10. Those people wouldn't be supporting, you would imagine the only people who want Burnham to have his own mandate are Labour voters, in which case 57 % seems very high. Yeah. Yeah. But if you combine the people who want Burnham to be given his own mandate, i.e. Burnham's friends and family and supporters, and then you add in the people who want Farage to be PM, and you add in, actually, conversely, the people who don't want Farage to be PM and are confident that if they tactically vote, he won't be.

38:06No, they defeat him once and for all. The entire country wants a general election, Tony, I suppose. Apart from the Tories. Apart from the Tories. The only people who don't want an election are the Tories. And we keep on saying to the Tories, don't we, do you want a general election? And some of them go, yes, we do, like Chris Philp. Yes, I'm happy to have one. Are you, Chris? If there was one, we'd be ready. Whereas Baydog is like, I'm not sure we need one, to be perfectly honest. Yes, the trick we sometimes see from the Tories is they say, if the government does this thing, they'll have to call a general election, but they always choose something that they're never going to do.

38:35Yeah, if the government decides to tear down Buckingham Palace and replace it with a theme park, we are going to have to have a general election. It's one of those things that sounds tough, but it's not actually very tough at all. so where's your money at the moment where if you're a betting man tony which i know you're not because you're purer than the driven snow as political editor of this august news organization that you certainly don't place bets on anything because you're here to write and report but if you were to place a bet would you bet on an election first of all before christmas i don't think we'll see an election before christmas Fine.

39:11So you're not dipping into the diver wallet for that. I don't think it's that soon, no. Okay, how about this? A general election before spring or in spring next year? I think that's more likely. But... What, 50-50? But this is the thing. This is why political predictions are so difficult. Yeah, it's a mugs game. It matters what happens between now and then, doesn't it? I mean, I can see a scenario in which they call a general election in the spring. So you wouldn't rule it out. I mean, Farage is convinced there's going to be a general election next year. You're right, but it's also in Farage's interest to keep talking about the general election.

39:44I don't know. I can see a world in which it happens, but I wouldn't say it's especially likely. All right. So unlikely this year, possibly likely next year. And how about the kind of generic election before we think we should have an election, i.e. at any point before 2029? Yeah, I think that's pretty likely. Most prime ministers do, don't they? Most prime ministers don't decide to run right up until the end of the term because then you lose control over when you call it. And if there was some, you know, catastrophic outbreak of foot and mouth disease or something three days before polling day and you get blamed for it, then there's nothing you can do about it.

40:17So I think that's pretty likely. But that's not really a Burnham specific thing. That's more just a general. So just to go back to James Johnson's suggestion on crack. I mean, you and I would be freebasing the stuff. We've had another Prime Minister, another one. We've got Harry and Meghan back in the UK. An outbreak of foot and mouth, Tony. I've spoken into the universe now. Jeez, come on. Yeah. And if there was another pandemic and an earthquake somewhere near the Peak District, yes, so much could happen. So I think basically the conclusion of this podcast is 50-50. We could have a general election.

40:53Yeah, interesting ideas, James, but we've got no idea. I think we've concluded that it would be ludicrous to rule it out, but we can't strongly rule it in. Therefore, we are on... What are we on, Tony? We're on five to six out of ten chance that there may be an early election. Yeah, I think that's probably about right. Thank you for that. I'm glad we've wargamed this entire scenario. It's a lukewarm prediction in the soggy centre, that's what we are. Thank you, Tony. You'll be back with yet more analysis the next time somebody in Westminster does something of any interest at all. Thank you.