Senior figures believe an early vote would give Labour its best chance of another majority. SNP sources already have a price in mind.
Downing Street advisers are pushing for an early general election next year, The Telegraph has been told.
Several senior members of Andy Burnham’s team believe that calling a vote in the spring would give Labour its best chance of another majority. A second source said those in favour included advisers in No 10 and some of the party’s own MPs, encouraged by the central estimate in YouGov’s latest MRP model, which puts Labour’s vote share two points ahead of Reform UK.
The case for haste rests heavily on that model. Based on interviews with nearly 17,000 Britons, with fieldwork conducted between 23 August and 18 September and first published in The Times, YouGov’s central projection puts Labour on 241 seats, the Conservatives on 130 and Reform UK on 123. It is a statistical projection, not an election prediction: the model estimates how constituencies would fall if an election were held now.
On those central numbers, Labour would be 85 seats short of the 326 needed for a majority, and 170 down on the 411 seats it won in 2024. The party would need support from others to command the Commons. The model projects the Liberal Democrats on 71 seats and the SNP on 40. Together with Labour those three parties would hold 352 seats, a combined 26 above the majority line, though the projection says nothing about whether any such arrangement would be made.
Labour won 411 seats in 2024. Two years later, some figures around Downing Street are already considering whether to ask voters for another mandate.
Behind the push, according to The Telegraph, is a grievance about the manifesto Mr Burnham inherited. Supporters of a spring election believe the 2024 document, with its strict red lines on taxation, the fiscal rules and Britain rejoining the EU customs union and single market, has left the Government with “one hand tied behind our back”.
“There are lots of things we can do within the red lines of the manifesto, but that is not the Prime Minister’s manifesto,” one senior government source told The Telegraph. “I am sure there are lots of things Andy would want to include in a manifesto that he wouldn’t be able to do at the minute.”
The same source said there was “diverse opinion across Government” over the timing of the next election, but that Labour would be “naive not to be contemplating all scenarios”.
Supporters accept that an election cannot simply be called at will. Figures favouring an early vote believe Mr Burnham would move only if the crisis in the Middle East was resolved, pushing down the cost of energy, and if the Government was seen to have delivered popular policy changes.
Even then, the model leaves Labour dependent on others. On YouGov’s central projection, SNP support could become crucial to Labour’s ability to command a Commons majority. Sources close to Mr Swinney have already named their price: another independence referendum.
According to The Telegraph, those sources said Mr Burnham would have to give Scots the “right to decide their own future” by transferring the necessary powers to Holyrood, leaving the Scottish Parliament, where pro-independence parties hold a majority, to decide when any vote would be staged. Mr Swinney has said publicly that he wants a referendum by 2031.
Liberal Democrat sources did not rule out a confidence-and-supply arrangement with Labour, or even a formal coalition, but said the party would not be “distracted by hypotheticals”, according to The Telegraph. Sources close to Sir Ed Davey, the party’s leader, have likewise not ruled out lending seats to Labour to keep Mr Burnham in No 10 after the next election.
The YouGov model puts the Conservatives on 130 seats, seven ahead of Reform UK on 123. An early election, The Telegraph reports, could let the Conservatives argue that such a result would establish them as the main Right-wing party in Britain.
The calls come days before Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool, where Mr Burnham is expected to set out his “ten-year plan” for government. The Prime Minister has repeatedly ruled out an early election, and figures close to him believe that going to the country early and losing Labour’s majority would be seen by Mr Burnham himself as an electoral failure.
The conference will be followed by the Government’s first Budget on 28 October, which The Telegraph reports is likely to contain tax rises. Speaking at the United Nations this week, the Prime Minister said he would remain “conscious of the extent to which [Labour] has raised revenue” in its last two Budgets, but wanted to ensure the Government had got “the balance right” between taxation on income and wealth.
Richard Thomson, National Director of the Great British PAC, said:
“Andy Burnham’s people want a spring election.
“They think it’s their best shot at a majority but look at the numbers from the polls. Labour is 85 seats short. That would be a hung parliament. And hung parliaments have a price.
“If he goes now, or in the spring, he will almost certainly be forced into bed with the far left. The SNP. Maybe the Greens. Parties that do not put the United Kingdom first.
“The SNP’s price is already on the table: another independence referendum. What would Burnham give them to stay in Number 10? Would he gamble the Union to keep the keys? If he does, he won’t just be another weak Prime Minister. He’ll be the last Prime Minister of Great Britain as we know it.
“A coalition like that would be worse than this current government. The British people did not vote to watch their country bargained away in a back-room deal.”
Downing Street, for its part, insists the matter is closed. “One person in Downing Street makes the decision and he has ruled out an early election,” a No 10 source told The Telegraph.
