A snap election - surely not?

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0:38With Wayfair, one night of Halloween becomes a whole season at home. From larger-than-life yard decor and moody lighting to festive accents for every room in the house, Wayfair has what you need to make Halloween feel like magic all in one place. Because the best Halloween memories aren't made in just one night. They're made all season long. Shop Halloween decor now at wayfair.com. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com. Way fair, every style, every home. There's this idea that the left have now discovered a cheat code, which is let's all vote tactically because people don't want Nigel Farage to be Prime Minister.

1:18Hello and welcome to The State of It, the political podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times. I'm Patrick Maguire, chief political commentator for The Times. And I'm Ben Riley-Smith, the political editor of The Sunday Times. So we are bringing you one of our new regular Friday episodes. And I have to say, it doesn't feel much like a Friday in Westminster, does it, Ben? Because we are right in the thick of the period of September and October where Friday promises only, even for the police clenched for the Sunday Times as well, another non-stop period of work. because I'll be at Labour conference tomorrow.

1:57Ben, I imagine you'll be there on Sunday and we are stepping into the crucible of British politics, aren't we? You know, Andy Burnham returning to Liverpool, his home city, with a message of hope, Ben, that you've been writing about and I've been writing about this week. Yeah, it is the busiest fortnight of the year for Westminster dwellers. We finally leave the bubble of Parliament and head north, normally head north, Labour in Liverpool, Tories are in Birmingham and try to check the pulse of British politics and of the leaderships of the two main parties. I mean, this year is especially interesting, obviously, with Andy Burnham's premiership.

2:36Still pretty undefined. You know, we're two months in. We've got a lot of two thumbs up, upbeat rhetoric, a smattering of policy in those first two weeks. But there's still huge areas that we're still yet to understand where his project lies, what he's all about. and I think after conference we'll begin to see the definition a bit more clearly. It's a chance for all those new cabinet ministers to begin to lay out their stool and particularly Burnham and John Healy, the Chancellor. John's on Monday, Burnham does his big flagship speech 2pm on Tuesday and as you said the message from the Burnham camp is captured in that slogan for conference hope again hope channeling obama clinton as you wrote in your column today and the again bit almost has echoes of um donald trump's make america great again it's that looking back at the past possibly with the rose tinted spectacles and we know andy burnham speaks a lot about look we took a wrong term in the 1980s and maybe we can rejig neoliberalism to with a bit more government intervention to meet people's needs.

3:46But obviously, it's a swipe at his predecessor, who had failed to embody hope in his first two years, Keir Starmer. Yes, it's going to be a fascinating moment. It will. And I think it's going to be, I think, your hope, to use the Prime Minister's favourite word, your hope or expectation that we might get a little bit more meat on the bone, I think we'll probably be disappointed at this conference, because I think it's going to be very heavy as far as the prime minister's concerned anyway it's going to be heavy on world view um i write in my column in the times today it's very appropriate he's going back to liverpool which is the city that made him the politician he is um both in terms of his formative years as a child adolescent young man uh words like hope rebound through uh you know the history of liverpool um you know everything from everton to the catholic church uh and and derek hatton and Neil Kinnock and Michael Heseltine.

4:40All of that adds up to Andy Burnham, the devolutionist who talks about class and solidarity and hope. And we'll hear plenty of that from him in his conference speeches, in his interviews, a defence of politicians having agency, a rebuke to the idea. And this was in the briefing that Number 10 have written for their MPs and aides and ministers for conference, you know, a rebuke to the politics of it's too hard. I have to say, you know, I was speaking to Labour people this week and there's sort of slightly cocked eyebrows at the idea Andy Burnham will give that speech again, i.e. the one we both summarised in terms of Britain took a wrong turn in the 1980s, etc, etc.

5:26But, you know, it is his party in both senses of the word. Number 10 also see it, I think, as an opportunity for him to properly introduce himself to the Party. Don't forget there are lots of people working in Number 10 as well who haven't had the time or aren't familiar with the real power brokers of the Labour Party as a machine, the unions etc. So you've got a new Number 10 team trying to bed into the party structures. It's all happened very quickly. They've only had two months and a week and a half in Parliament to do any of this stuff. So the sort of small p internal politics of this will be really important And, you know, you never get a second chance of making a first impression.

6:07And there'll be lots of people in the Labour establishment who are looking at how number 10 conduct themselves and this conference. And because, you know, for journalists, Ben, and for lobbyists and whatever, it is a nonstop procession of meetings, coffees, maybe a few drinks in the evening as well. But for the Labour Party at large, it is as much about horse trading and deal making and brokering agreements or mediating disagreements on quite knotty issues of policy and representation and who's going to be vice chair of the NEC, all of that sort of thing. And the other element is obviously not just introducing him to a party that's still getting to know, but to the public.

6:53Because if you left our bubble of following these things very closely and talked to the average punter about who Andy Burnham is and what he stands for, there would probably be an awareness that he's got kind of warm glow and an everyday man appeal about him. But beyond then, he's pretty loosely sketched out in the minds of the public. So his big set piece and the coverage that conference is going to get is going to help flesh that out for sure. I mean, the other thing that we're going to be talking about, no doubt. And to be honest, Janice is obsessed about this, but particularly now it feels like a right time to be talking about it is whether or not Burnham will go for an early election.

7:31Well, exactly. Yeah. And The Times had this fascinating YouGov poll. MRP is the pollster slang for it, which is essentially not just looking at how popular each of the parties are, but trying to map that onto our first past the post system and working out what it might mean to seats. And it's really interesting because you could read it two different ways. So certainly what it shows is reform is less strong and is less on course to get a majority than it was last year. So they're down 123 seats. Remember, you need 326 to get a tiny majority. But it also shows that Labour is not on course to hold a majority.

8:17so they've got their seats going down from 411 which is what it was in the 2024 election to 241 so the largest party much bigger than reform much bigger than the tories which is kind of a good thing compared to where they were last year but ultimately pretty short about majority i don't know patrick if you think those numbers makes it more or less likely that bernerman is in a circle we'll think about going from the early election well i think you're right that you can read it two ways. The first is, oh, the right is terminally split and lots of Labour people will look at it. And lots of Tories, to be fair, will look at it and say, you know, Nigel Farage has a slow puncture, it's basically over, et cetera, et cetera.

8:58The other way to look at it, if you are a Labour MP, particularly in the North West, is, oh my God, I'm probably going to lose my seat to reform. If you're a Labour MP in one of the seats where the Tories are in second place, Morgan McSweeney always used to say, And Morgan Srini was endlessly disliked and derided in his time as Chief of Stafford, focusing too closely on reform and sounding too amenable to Nigel Farage's ideas on, say, migration. He would always say to people privately, the Tories haven't gone away. You know, of almost 100 marginal seats, the Tories are in second place in 80 of them.

9:34So, you know, if you're a Labour MP in the north, you're probably looking at reform saying, oh, God, you know, actually that MRP says they're quite a narrow second in my constituency in lots of places. If the Tories are bad, that's bad for that's alarming for Labour MPs in what were once conventional two way marginals. So, you know, I don't think Labour MPs are going to necessarily thank number 10 or necessarily ready for number 10 to turn around. Say Andy Burnham gets what he wants out of this conference, as one of his aides said to me yesterday. He wants to leave conference and everybody knows what he stands for.

10:13You might like it, you might love it, but you have a clear sense of which direction he wants to take the country in. Say that goes really well. Say the Labour Party win in Hoban and St Pancras over the Greens on the 8th of October just subsequently. you know do we say great let's go I don't think many Labour MPs would necessarily be be thankful for that I mean the flip side and they were discussing this in number 10 yesterday Andy Burnham's political secretary Hayden Munro was talking colleagues through some of the polling and the thing that people keep coming back to is the tactical voting factor right reform are now the most disliked party in British politics and there is there is a slight feeling and you know And when I listen to people talk about this, there's this idea that the left have now discovered a cheat code, which is let's all vote tactically because people don't want Nigel Farage to be prime minister.

11:09I think that's sort of the danger of that is Labour, Labour get back into a place, I think, where they're practising bloc politics. And maybe the future is is block politics. But it's worth considering Labour hasn't won an election, you know, on a conventional left versus right battle of ideas thing. You know, possibly, you know, possibly 1945, maybe 1966. You know, Labour wins elections when the public are fed up with the Tories. And when it's a direct argument about tax and spend, it's tricky for them to do that. So for it to be, you know, if the idea is our tactical voting is fine and, you know, with the Nats and everybody else and the Lib Dems, we can pin something together.

11:57I mean, I wouldn't necessarily bet on politics unfolding like that quite so predictably. But, you know, that was the thing they were talking about in number 10. I don't think they came to any conclusions. and we're just looking at the polling, both the Guardians, Servation MRP, our YouGov MRP that we did with Sky News and just looking at the impact that tactical voting might have. But the danger for Labour is people sit through those presentations and listen to those discussions and then say, it's fine. We cannot possibly lose because the right is split and Farage is unpopular and Kemi hasn't had time to bed in yet, that would probably be a pretty disastrous mistake.

12:39I think it's so easy to loosely talk about the possibility of an early election. And I think there's no doubt that figures in number 10 are mulling it over. And when you look at everything that's happening publicly, they clearly want to be in a position that should everything line up, they could have a conversation about it. I think you just need to genuinely think if you are the prime minister, deciding to take this phenomenal gamble with this premiership where everything's just lined up at the right point to get you into number 10. What are you genuinely risking? And I think the MRP is interesting in terms of the numbers.

13:18That is estimating that 170 of the 411 MPs who got elected are going to be out. So you're essentially saying to colleagues, I'm willing to risk one in three of you not being here when I come back. and I talked to a former Keir cabinet minister now on the outside who was saying just how exercised a lot of Labour MPs are against an early election. The obvious reason that a whole load of them are probably going to lose their seats. But then I think the fundamental is Labour almost never has a majority of 170-odd, that is what Andy Byrne is sitting on. And he's sitting on it for another three years and that is real tangible legislative power that can make you refashion the country.

14:01until 2029. And why are you risking gambling that? If you look at the MRP poll, the result would be not a smaller majority, zero majority. And you would have to somehow negotiate a coalition, not just with the Le Dens on these numbers, but also with the Greens. And you'd be in that terrible place that Theresa May was after the 2017 election, where one or two or three or four or five MPs of any of your group can say, right, I'm going to push an issue to the hilt and I'm going to bring the government to a standstill. And obviously, if you woke up on the morning of the election and we heard Labour has lost 170 seats and will now have to scrabble around the background deals to try and inch over the line, it would be disastrous.

14:47That wouldn't be a huge mandate for Andy Burton's premiership. So I just think he is in this position, through luck or skill or a combination of both, that that he can force through a whole raft of changes to deliver the devolution agenda he's talked so much about he's written a book outlining it all in the blueprint there's so much stuff he can do within the flexibility of um the manifesto and then if you just follow through the argument of oh he's bound in by the red lines on tax because he can't increase income tax or national insurance all the AT rates. Therefore, he will want to go to the country so he can increase tax.

15:29Imagine going to the country and saying, great news, guys, vote for me. I'm going to whack up your income tax. I'm going to whack up your national insurance so I can pay for more welfare. I mean, every Labour prime minister has run a mile from trying to put that proposition to the electorate, other than Jeremy Corbyn, and he got hammered in 2019. So I don't see how those numbers convinced Downing Street that they should definitely follow starting government. Completely, completely. And I think in other papers this morning, seeing suggestions that senior advisors in number 10 are pushing Andy Byrne to call a snap election.

16:02I have to say, you know, speaking to several senior advisors in number 10 yesterday, I didn't get any sense that anyone was willing to own up to being those people because more often than not, you speak to, well, almost always you say you're going to call an early election. And look, maybe they are the greatest lies of all time. but given all the available evidence and you know variations on the word mental and an expletive recur throughout these conversations be they with cabinet ministers or or advisor number 10 the flip side by the way of all of this and in a funny way it connects to what I was saying about conference being a sentimental journey for Andy Burnham uh you know speaking from the heart about the city that made him, et cetera, et cetera.

16:48Often people ask me, you know, who is the person with the most political influence inside this number 10? To which I say, that's a category error because now it's the prime minister. You know, the prime minister is the most important person in terms of the politics of this government. That seems like a crazy thing to say, but in the Labour Party for the past six years, that's not been the case. So if Andy Burnham wakes up, you know, let's say in a couple of weeks, say it's the Merseyside derby in November, let's say implausibly Everton win 5-0, he goes out and he has six points and it's the greatest day of his life, you know, Labour have won in Hoban and St Pancras, you know, there's another couple of points on Labour's polling, you know, he's looking at the Tories and reform, they're split and you know he wakes up on that Sunday and he rings James Purnell and he says book the lectern because nothing can go wrong for me look it probably wouldn't happen exactly like that but you know we can't underestimate or under index Andy Burnham's personal agency in this because he is the guy that runs the politics of this government in a way that just wasn't the case with Keir Starmer.

18:05If Keir Starmer had come into work after Arsenal winning the North London derby saying, let's have an early election, the reaction would have been, so since when did you have opinions about politics or since when did you know that we could call an early election? Whereas with Andy Burnham, it's sort of, oh God, he is inevitably talking about politics and it's my new shy and getting involved and intervening again. And you do have to have that footnote, obviously because if you were going to call an early election you would be telling everybody you're not going to be calling an early election to run for your rivals and we were there in 2017 when Theresa May publicly embassy said she wouldn't and then did and we were there a bit with Rishi Sunak where they implied they were going to wait uh all the way until the winter of 2024 and went in the spring but it's a problem because if they weren't going for one the answer would be no if they were going for one the answer publicly would be no because they want to keep it under But I think it feels to me the chips are very heavily weighted on not going for one right now.

19:01At the same time, you have Kemi Bodnock and Nigel Farage. I mean, Nigel Farage has been talking about an early election, has been demanding an early election since the transition of power. You know, hashtag general election now was the was I think the first press conference reform did have to make a feel. And Kemi Bodnock has been talking about an early election this week, saying Andy Burnham is a gambler. He fancies his chances. And so do they. that is not just lines to take for the media and trying to go to Andy Burnham or set him up for failure. Inside the Tories, there are big preparations for a snap election happening.

19:38Ditto inside reform with their 72 million quid and drawing up a list of target seats and all that. So you have the main parties of the right gearing up for an election and trying to go to Andy Andy Burnham into calling one. But yeah, I know it's Westminster's favourite discussion this week, but I think we are nowhere near the point where it is anything other than a quick aside and a blunt, possibly two-word answer inside Downing Street. But Andy Burnham will fancy his chances, but so did Theresa May, who was 20 points ahead in the polls. Gordon Brown was in a much stronger position in the polls, And even then, it was the polls that convinced him in marginal seats to convince him not to do it.

20:26So, look, I know we'll put this probably won't be the last podcast we do on an early election. You know, maybe we'll do it again on Tuesday. But I think for now, the answer is a pretty firm no. This message is brought to you by today's sponsor, Walden University. Set a course for change. Now is the time to make a real change in your life, career and community. At Walden University, we give you the support and flexibility to get the W. Walden's online programs are designed for working professionals like you. You'll gain hands-on skills to take on real-world challenges and succeed. Your future is waiting, and Walden is here to help you achieve it.

21:07Take the first step to make your impact. Visit waldenu.edu. Walden University. Set a course for change. Certified to operate by Shev. Who says Halloween only lasts one day? With Wayfair, one night of Halloween becomes a whole season at home. From larger-than-life yard decor and moody lighting to festive accents for every room in the house, Wayfair has what you need to make Halloween feel like magic all in one place. Because the best Halloween memories aren't made in just one night. They're made all season long. Shop Halloween decor now at Wayfair.com. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com. Wayfair, every style, every home.

21:46Saturday, September 26th, two of combat sports' most dangerous strikers collide. Bare Knuckle. Liverpool's own Darren the Gorilla Till goes to war with Cuban powerhouse Yoel Soldier of God Romero. Plus, the Bare Knuckle Middleweight Championship of the World is on the line when the reigning champ Dave the Redneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger Jack the Meek Pleaver Colon. BKFC 94. Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com.

22:22Why don't we briefly touch on another of Westminster's favourite topics, which is party infighting. Because I don't know what your sense is, Patrick, but it seems to me Andy Burnham is pretty strong internally. I mean, so strong that not a single Labour MP ultimately tried to go toe-to-toe with him to force a leadership contest. and his cabinet seems very happy. I talked to one member for our piece last weekend who said, look, I've seen more of Andy Burnham in two months than I did of Keir Starmer in the last six months. And that return of political argument to the top of government, that seems to be refreshing.

23:01It seems like he's pretty widely supported in the PLP because there was such despondency about Keir Starmer and where the Labour poll ratings had got to in those latter months. But I think the element of discord to watch out for playing out across conference is going to be this small group of sacked Keir Starmer cabinet ministers who are pretty bruised by the whole occasion. And each to bearing degrees may be open to either showing a bit of ankle in terms of policy disagreement or being actively critical in public over the coming days. So Darren Jones is probably top of the list, the former Chief Secretary of the Treasury and Chief Secretary of the Prime Minister.

23:41He's done an interview with the New Statesman revealing that Andy Burnham allies sounded him out about whether he wanted to call for Starmer to resign and seems to be playing that role of chief critic, possibly with an eye that if he ever wanted to be Labour leader, knowing how things go in cycles, he can be Mr Moderate. You're right. Darren Jones, I think he specifically denied in his New Statesman's view that he wanted to be the government's chief critic. But, you know, one new Statesman interview, two op-eds in The Times, a 40-minute interview with Mehdi Hassan's new Zetio UK outlet on YouTube, which I noted came out today.

24:21Pretty hard to deny. If he's not the chief critic, he's certainly got a lot to say. I think he's doing Laura Koonsberg's show on Sunday, which is the kind of tee-up conference on the BBC. That's certainly a pandemic in the week. So he's getting out there. The big person to keep an eye on, by the way, and I suspect we'll be hearing from them after the budget rather than at conference at any length, is Rachel Reeves. You can see from the people we've mentioned, Darren Jones, Rachel Reeves, Steve Reid and others, they are all from, they're not exactly the same ideologically, but they're broadly speaking from the right of the Labour Party, have reason to be annoyed with Andy Burnham.

24:58in some cases don't necessarily disagree with what the government is doing. Like Steve Reid, big devolutionist, will have concerns about the execution, etc. You know, you have more conventional left-right disagreements like Peter Kyle, very model Blairite, also will have views on what the government is doing on AI as a former science and technology minister as well. So that will be the mood music of conferences much as anything else. And it will it shows you where the government is likely to be vulnerable, not just internally, but from criticism from from its opponents as well. And I'd say, look, there is a lot of enthusiasm among sections of the Stamrite wing of the Labour Party.

25:46I know that's imperfect, but from the dispossessed of the Labour Party, they don't feel they owe these people anything. You know, they and also there are principal disagreements on a lot of things. So one of the measures of success of this conference will be how much time people spend, how many pages of the Times and the Sunday Times and other outlets are devoted to Darren Jones and Steve Reid and others, and how whether their criticisms have a ring of truth. I have to say, though, I think the most damning criticism of Andy Burnham so far have come from it. People who are on his own side or were on his own side.

26:22Andy Haldane saying it was a tax and spend Labour government with better TikTok videos is a good example of that. Because there is a risk for the Storm rights. I think that's why it's interesting. Rachel Reeves has kept quiet and will keep quiet for an extended period of time. Going quickly. And Darren Jones went very, very quickly. He went on day one of Andy Burnham being prime minister. Can't get much quicker than that. Yeah, exactly. Colleagues look at you and say, what the hell are you doing? Steve Reid kept his powder dry for a while and wrote an article from Times about devolution, which is an issue he knows a lot about, and London and the politics of London.

27:00So that was, not everyone loved it, but I think it was sort of okay. Steve is chiming in on something he understands, knows and cares about, as opposed to waking up the next morning and having to give them a kicking, although Darren Jones insists he was merely doing what was right. But yeah, they will be the ensemble cast of this conference, and let's see whether they can make their voices heard. I think you're absolutely right. What Rachel Reeves does next and how willing she is to be critical on economic policy is absolutely fascinating. I mean, our understanding is she's not coming to conference, So whatever hub user will be kept private during conference.

27:41I would be surprised if she makes a big intervention in the run up to budget because she's been there in the run up to those massive fiscal events, trying to somehow keep a lid on speculation. I think the question is, you know, after October 28th, Budget Day and Christmas, does she begin to speak again about the economy? um lara my colleague at sunday times reported she's going to be giving some lectures in america um often those things do find their way into the public domain even if they're in private um but economic policy is such a challenge for this government as it was for the last government and if you had a former labor chancellor beginning to raise questions or throw rocks over the garden fence even about the level of borrowing about whether enough is being done to trigger growth.

28:35It's interesting her position on the EU has been much more openly supportive of getting closer than John Healy's, her successor in the Treasury, has been so far. So if she begins to say, look, we really need to embrace many more deals, that could become a new point of tension. So yeah, what she does. And also, obviously, whether she stays in Parliament or not, you know, Rachel Rees is a much more political piece than Keir Starmer is or was. You know, she made the decision, unlike a lot of her moderate colleagues, to stay an MP during those Jeremy Corbyn years when a lot of centrist figures, Tristram Hunt and the like, decided, look, we're not going to get the leecher back anytime soon.

29:13I'm going to go off and do other things. So now that she is out of cabinet, turned down that chance to be education secretary under Andy Burnham, does she see her coming years before the election and after the election rebuilding a parliamentary committee in the way that Jeremy Hunt is doing, having been chancellor? Or does she say, look, I'll probably draw a line under it now and head off? well one person who isn't drawing a line under it and heading off anytime soon even if I increasingly hear people moan about him and think he's a little bit underwhelming in the rest of government is John Healy and you'll be interviewing him on Sunday for Sunday's paper Ben and we'll be able to listen to it too on this podcast in a special episode another special episode we're spoiling our listeners on Sunday but I think that's more or less all we've got time for we don't want to exhaust our vocal cords before conference.

30:03We'll be doing a live episode of The State of It on stage at Labour Conference on Monday, so make sure you listen to that and there'll be extra episodes throughout the week as well as we react to whatever Andy Burnham and the gang are saying in Liverpool. So much to look forward to. I'm off to wash my two machine washable M &S suits and non-iron shirts ready for my favourite week of the year. So we'll leave it at that. Thanks, Ben. Thanks, Molly. And thanks, Harry. Make sure you like and subscribe to the State Fit wherever you get your podcasts from.

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31:28From the Times and the Sunday Times, join me, Hannah Previtt. And me, Dominic O 'Connell, for conversations from the world of business and entrepreneurship. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts or find our channel on YouTube by searching Times Business.