Reform UK has leapfrogged Labour to regain the lead in the polls just hours before Andy Burnham delivers the biggest speech of his premiership.
A new YouGov poll has Nigel Farage’s party up four points to 25 per cent, edging ahead of Labour on 24 per cent.
The Conservatives slip two points to 19 per cent, while the Liberal Democrats are on 12 per cent and the Greens 11 per cent.
The poll was conducted on September 27-28, as Labour gathered in Liverpool for its annual conference, and provides an awkward backdrop to Mr Burnham’s first conference speech as Labour leader and Prime Minister.
Just a week earlier, YouGov had Labour on 23 per cent with Reform and the Conservatives tied on 21 per cent.
So much for an uninterrupted Burnham bounce.
Reform deputy leader Richard Tice wasted little time celebrating, posting simply:
“Burnham Bounces down.”
Reform chairman Lee Anderson was equally restrained:
“Here we go!”
Labour chairman Bridget Phillipson sought to play down the significance of individual surveys, insisting:
“Polls come and polls go, the important thing is we are authentic about ourselves.”
She has a point. One poll is one poll, and the movements are subject to the usual sampling uncertainty. But politically the timing could hardly be less convenient.
Mr Burnham is preparing to use his Liverpool address to argue that Britain needs an altogether more ambitious Labour government – and that voters must be prepared for some uncomfortable choices along the way.
Under the conference banner “Hope again”, he is expected to declare:
“Hope comes from honesty and from saying the things politicians usually avoid.”
And there appears to be plenty he wants to talk about.
His central message will be a rejection of what he calls “politics-as-usual” and of the economic and political assumptions which have dominated Britain for decades.
He will tell delegates:
“We can’t carry on as we are. Politics-as-usual has taken Britain backwards. More of the same isn’t good enough and isn’t going to get us where we need to be.”
The Prime Minister is also expected to attack the concentration of power in the hands of “vested interests” and promise a break with what he describes as the “flawed thinking of the last 40 years”.
That rhetoric will be accompanied by some potentially substantial policy changes.
Most politically explosive is the future of the state pension triple lock.
The mechanism guarantees that the state pension rises each year by whichever is highest: inflation, average earnings growth or 2.5 per cent.
Labour’s 2024 manifesto promised to maintain it.
Mr Burnham is now reported to be willing to review the arrangement for Labour’s next manifesto as part of the difficult arithmetic surrounding his plans for social care.
That distinction matters: reports ahead of the speech suggest he will signal a willingness to reconsider the triple lock rather than announce its immediate abolition.
The reason is Mr Burnham’s ambition to create a National Care Service, with social care eventually provided on principles similar to the NHS.
Speaking about his plans on Sunday, he said:
“It will be a system of that kind, so everyone contributes, everyone’s covered. But not precisely, necessarily, in the same way that we currently pay for the NHS.”
It is an enormous political and financial undertaking.
Mr Burnham has acknowledged that reform could require higher taxation and involve decisions that are “difficult or unpopular”.
And that may be precisely what his new politics of “honesty” is designed to prepare voters for.
The Government is also expected to promise greater public control over essential utilities, including energy and water. Among the announcements trailed ahead of the speech is Great British Grid, a publicly owned company within Great British Energy intended to speed up connections and help bring down energy costs.
Mr Burnham therefore faces an intriguing political test.
His argument is that voters are tired of politicians ducking difficult choices and may reward a government prepared to tell them uncomfortable truths.
His opponents will argue that the “honest conversation” is simply advance warning of higher taxes, reduced pension guarantees and a larger state.
And the latest YouGov numbers underline why the argument matters.
Reform has endured weeks of damaging headlines over political donations, while Labour has enjoyed the enormous publicity platform provided by its conference and a relatively new Prime Minister.
Yet Reform is back on 25 per cent and back narrowly ahead.
There is another important qualification.
YouGov’s recent MRP modelling paints a rather different parliamentary picture, projecting Labour as the largest party in a hung parliament if an election were held under the circumstances modelled.
In other words, Britain’s increasingly fragmented party system means that a one-point national polling lead tells us considerably less about who would control the House of Commons than it once might have done.
But today’s headline belongs to Reform.
Andy Burnham wanted his first conference speech as Prime Minister to be about hope.
Richard Tice has already supplied the opposition’s three-word response:
“Burnham Bounces down.”
And now Burnham has to convince voters that political honesty – including honesty about what his ambitions might cost them – can bounce Labour back up again.
