A few weeks ago, I wrote about how long Andy Burnham’s tenure in Downing Street might be.
My overall judgment is that Britain has become almost ungovernable. As Tony Blair once lamented, prime ministers think they are pulling levers when they are actually pushing string. (The irony is that many of the Blair reforms have made this worse by shifting power away from Parliament and into the hands of the judiciary and a plethora of quangos, but that is another story.)
Burnham has a certain breezy optimism combined with an easy manner (both of which utterly escaped his immediate predecessor). His immediate impact on the polls has been measurable (Labour is typically now a couple of points ahead of Reform). His own personal ratings are solid (not especially heroic – but any senior politician with a net positive rather than net negative approval rating is doing well in the modern era).
The new Prime Minister may also turn out to be a lucky general. Nigel Farage and Reform are going through a sticky patch. Even if the electorate haven’t followed the stories around the party’s finances and those of its leader in any great detail (and even if Reform-leaning voters are largely unmoved by it), the whole saga has chewed up a lot of bandwidth and has put the insurgent turquoise army rather more on the back foot than the front.
Nevertheless, I suspect Burnham’s honeymoon to be a brief one. It may last the summer and even the party conference season but reality is going to come at the new Prime Minister fast.
Already there are signs that Burnham’s grip on government is not a firm one. An eye-catching announcement that a tax break for pubs could be paid for by cancelling the digital identity scheme ran into the buffers once it became clear that the ID plan hadn’t even been budgeted for.
The ongoing controversy about early release of prisoners has seen Burnham lean one way and then another – pontificating about what he would like to do – rather than getting a firm grasp on what he actually is going to do.
On immigration, there appears to be a two-pronged approach. On the one hand, relying on Shabana Mahmood to sound tough. On the other, to point out that this year’s numbers aren’t quite as horrific as last year’s. That might get you through a short grace period but not much beyond that. It doesn’t amount to a strategy.
Looming largest of all is the abysmal state of the public finances. The Prime Minister has seemingly walked back a pledge (or at least an aspiration) to start raising income tax thresholds. He has also started to rack up spending commitments with no obvious means of paying for them. The precise nature and size of the much-needed hike in defence spending remains ambiguous. Come budget day on October 28th, the Chancellor, John Healey, is going to have to square an implausibly large number of circles. He is likely to fail. Any fiscal policy with a decent chance of success (dramatic reductions in welfare spending) will come up against the staunch opposition of hordes of Labour backbenchers. An economically viable and politically deliverable package may simply be impossible.
In my last column on the likely longevity of a Burnham premiership I said I was keeping my eyes peeled for odds on him not making it to 2029 and that I’d be tempted if I could secure 3/1 or better. A book has now opened and – notwithstanding the mini-Burnham bounce – I find the odds very attractive indeed.
You can secure 6/1 that Burnham departs next year on the betting exchanges and 3.7/1 that he’s ousted in 2028. I intend to have a significant nibble at both of these.
To remind you of my approach to betting, I’m not trying to work out what I think is likely to happen. Instead, I tend to seek long odds, knowing my bet will probably be a loser but place a wager anyway because the chances are, in my estimation, better than the market suggests.
There are two ways Burnham could be gone in 2027. The first is that he does indeed call a snap election later this year but loses it. I think it unlikely – but far from impossible – that he will take this risk. Of course, he will only take it if the polls indicate that victory is very likely. So, both running and losing is an unlikely combination, but I might put it at 10%.
The other method of departure is that a multitude of problems gradually build up and one by one explode in his face. As a result, dire poll ratings by this time next year are combined with abysmal by-election performances and catastrophic local election results. The Labour Party (having decided to dispense with Starmer on exactly these grounds) apply the same logic and decide to spin the wheel once again. I’d put the chances of this happening at maybe 20%. Overall, the 6/1 on us having yet another prime minister in the next calendar year seem tempting.
However, this would entail things going wrong fast. If Burnham does take rather longer to sink into the quicksand, I can also see the attraction of the 3.7/1 that he is out as Labour leader in 2028.
All in all, if I had to stake my life on the matter, I’d take the 1/2 that he stays as Labour leader until 2029 or beyond. However, you can imagine a multitude of ways in which things turn sour for him long before then. The 6/1 and the 3.7/1 available on Andy Burnham becoming yet another short-lived prime minister are surely much more attractive bets.
Mark Littlewood is a former director of the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Director of PopCon.
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(UKR)