Will Burnham call a snap election?

Political Fix

The episode explores the intense speculation in Westminster regarding whether Prime Minister Andy Burnham will call a snap general election.

Key takeaways

• Polling suggests an early election could result in a hung parliament, potentially stripping Labour of its 170-seat majority.
• The prospect of a new mandate is driven by the need to implement difficult tax changes that were not part of the 2024 manifesto.

Main topics

• Snap election speculation
• Labour Party conference

Notable quotes

It was a real episode of diplomatic speed dating by the Prime Minister.

Conclusion

The discussion highlights the high-stakes gambling inherent in Burnham

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:02) Andy Burnham's riding high. Is calling a snap election his next move? Hello and welcome to Political Fix from the Financial Times with me, Lucy Fisher. Speculation has reached fever pitch in Westminster about the prospect of an early poll. We'll delve into what's really going on as the Labour faithful prepare for their annual conference starting this weekend. We'll highlight what to expect from Liverpool as fresh pressure for Britain to rejoin the EU erupts. this time from Tony Blair. Plus, we'll review Burnham's first proper foray into international summitry after he survived his first tête-à-tête with Trump without major incident. Here in the studio to discuss it all are George Parker, our political editor. Just about recovered, I think, George, from your 48-hour round trip to New York with Burnham. It Speaker 5 (0:52) was a gruelling mission, I have to say, Lucy, and I think we had 24 hours on the ground in New York. It was a... It was a real episode of diplomatic speed dating by the Prime Minister and we were lucky enough to be participants in watching it. Speaker 2 (1:05) Well, can't wait to get into all that with you and what he told you on the plane. And hello as well to our Deputy Political Editor, Jim Pickard. You weren't on the plane, but like me, we managed to catch some of what Burnham was up to on the telly. We Speaker 3 (1:18) were there in spirit. Speaker 2 (1:21) Shall we talk first about this issue that's been bubbling along for some weeks in Westminster, but really seems to have come to the fore ahead of Labour's conference, which is the prospect of a snap general election. George, you're on the sceptical end of this happening, but it is being discussed. Set the scene for us of why all the parties are talking about it. Speaker 5 (1:42) Definitely. And we've had some lively debates, you and I, Lucy, and the rest of the team about this. I think you're more on the... He might do it. He might just do it under the spectrum. Speaker 2 (1:49) I'm more on that I'm picking up that people in Downing Street and in the party are looking at the parameters in which to call an election. I still think I probably agree with you. It's less likely rather than more likely. Speaker 5 (2:01) It's worth remembering you picked up the fact that Rishi Sunak was going to go early, so I always listen to you on this. Speaker 3 (2:06) I think he'd be a narcissistic maniac to do this. Speaker 5 (2:09) Right, OK, Jim's out there. Right, so we've all done a story quoting a cabinet minister saying it would be utterly insane to do this. But the backdrop to it is that there is a lot of talk going on. And as you would expect, there are people in the Burnham circle, as you picked up, Lucy, that are looking at what would the polls need to do to make this a gamble worth taking? And it would be a huge political gamble. There are various things that will bring this into focus. One is the fact that this is Andy Burnham's first Labour conference. Andy Burnham was in the Labour cabinet in 2007. When Gordon Brown had just become prime minister, there was all that speculation about whether he'd have an early poll. And he marched everyone to the top of the hill, marched them down again. And then the Tories soon enough were handing out bottles of Newcastle Brown with bottler brown labels on them, which I still have in my house somewhere, I think. And Andy Burnham was seared by that experience and could see how damaging it was. So, you know, he will want to stop speculation running out of control. It should be said, he said that he's not planning to have an early election. Then you've got the Holborn and St Pancras by-election coming up just after. the Labour conference on October the 8th, where the polls seem to suggest that Labour will beat the Green Party. So that will, again, ignite speculation that maybe now is the time to go for it. So the downside, as Jim just alluded to, is the fact that all the polls suggest if he went early, he would lose his majority. Labour have a massive majority of almost 170 at the moment. Even on the most benign polling and the best case scenario where the campaign goes well, the polls suggest he would lose his... majority. There'd be a hung parliament. He could be depending on support of the Liberal Democrats to get his business through, maybe the Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru and the Greens and who knows, even the SNP. So for all those reasons, I still think it's unlikely. Labour wins a landslide majority once in a generation. They've got a landslide majority at the moment. They can govern for nearly another three years. My instinct is that he'll keep going for a bit longer. Speaker 2 (3:57) Right, Jim, can I make the case for why they could be looking to go for it before you? poor or do it all over it. So we know that reform potentially has this enormous war chest of £72 million. So there would be a reason potentially for going early this autumn, this spring before they can really start to spend that to come up with a very sophisticated campaign. The Conservatives are still in disarray. They haven't picked lots of their candidate. Yes, Kemi's starting to get on the front foot, but it would be a good time potentially to... catch them unawares. And in fact, you don't hear anyone in Tory circles leaning into the idea or pushing Burnham to call an election now, trying to suggest that he has an illegitimate mandate to be in Downing Street, which they could have potentially tried to campaign on if they wanted a poll right away. George, you already pointed out the Gordon Brown backdrop to this, which will be very much forefront in the mind of James Purnell, former cabinet minister in the Blair Brown government, who of course is now... Burnham's chief of staff. And then there's the problem that one Labour figure put to me of the manifesto. They said that the 2024 manifesto, which binds Burnham, particularly on tax, just isn't fit for purpose. If you stick to it, you just can't fulfil the promises that you've made to the country. I know it doesn't sound a very appetising prospect to call an election to sell more tax rises to voters. To put it Speaker 3 (5:23) mildly. To Speaker 2 (5:24) put it mildly. But you can think that in a sense, to really affect the kind of change that many people think is needed in Labour circles to halt the prospect of the public rolling the dice on radical insurgents like reform might need, you know, a more ambitious programme than Burnham will be able to manage with the current manifesto. And of course, Labour, you know, slightly do have such a large majority that they can afford to squander a Speaker 5 (5:52) few seats. Oh, yes. Speaker 2 (5:54) I mean, there's something in it that they have to be considering. That is Speaker 5 (5:58) the case very, very eloquently. Of course, they're considering it. Speaker 3 (6:02) And I would be mad and complacent to think that they're not running the slide rule over the pros and cons. I just happen to think that the cons vastly outweigh the pros. And if you think about it in kind of, if you put yourself into the suit, sorry, if you put yourself into the T-shirt and suit of Andy Burnham and you think to yourself, you know, what are the pros and cons? The con is so enormous, which is that your party's been in the wilderness for 14 years, and then your predecessor came along, won this ginormous majority, and not seen since the days of Tony Blair that, you know, remember that's basically nearly 30 years ago. And then you've stepped in this cocksure northerner, and you've come along and you've said, you know, I think I can do pretty well myself. And then your majority goes from 170 down to whether it's 50. whether it's five, whether it's minus five, or minus 50, or minus 150, you will look pretty stupid. And you will look to the Labour Party, to the Labour MPs, to the membership, like the guy that squandered, in retrospect, what was an incredible inheritance, if you wanted to just get on and deliver a centre-left agenda for the Labour Party. And I'm told by ministers... who are dismissing the whole idea of an early election, that the message they're getting from Downing Street loud and clear is we should be delivering, we should be focusing on policy delivery. You know, we've only got three more years to go. A lot of this stuff takes a lot of time. We need to crack on with that. I think in terms of the historic analogies, the Gordon Brown one, everyone in the Westminster bubble thinks, oh, Gordon Brown's such a loser for not going to the polls in 2008. He might have lost. We have no idea whatsoever. What would have probably happened is he would have... certainly come back with a diminished majority and his reputation also reduced. Yes, he would have bought a bit more time, maybe, but we don't know. And then I think in terms of the more recent examples. Theresa May is the one where, of course, she had a majority somewhere in the double digits and was absolutely humiliated by going early to the polls and losing that Tory majority. The second one that we should mention is, of course, that Boris Johnson went early and the opposite happened, which is the Tory party went from being really unpopular under Theresa May to scoring their own landslide, or at least their own decent majority against Jeremy Corbyn. But I think the thing to remember about both of those recent Tory examples is that there was a major reason for doing it in terms of policy, which is they couldn't get through Brexit. They had to unstick Parliament. They were going round and round in circles. And by basically blowing the doors off and having a general election was the only way they could see to get through. I Speaker 5 (8:35) remember, by the way, that Theresa May's Conservative Party at the time she called that early election in 2017 was polling at 50%, not at 23%. So that's one difference. But the other thing I would just pick up is this, Jim's point about... How do you explain to the voters why you're doing this? You've just been elected for a five-year term. There's been a change of prime minister, but Speaker 3 (8:54) whatever, Speaker 5 (8:55) just get on and govern. Why are you doing it? And you alluded to this. You're doing it possibly because you need a new mandate to do some really difficult stuff. And this is the bit where I just think political logic falls down. You hear people saying this. We want to run an election based on the idea that we need to put up your taxes to pay for defence or social care. The moment the Labour Party has a campaign where there's a... shred of difference between them and the Tories on tax. They will be absolutely sitting ducks for the whole campaign. The whole campaign will be a Tory campaign where Labour will put up your taxes, we'll cut welfare and cut your taxes. Speaker 2 (9:29) I completely agree with that, George. But in