Burnham Tells Labour HQ to Prepare for a Tory Recovery
Labour is being told to look right again. Downing Street sources say Andy Burnham has ordered party headquarters to "rearm" against the Conservatives, after a stretch of treating them as a lesser worry.
A shift of focus after two years
For more than two years, Labour's strategy has been built around Nigel Farage's Reform on one side and the Greens on its left flank. No 10 sources now want that balance changed. One of them said the Tories were trailing in the polls, but their trajectory was upwards and they could bounce back before the election.
The numbers behind the worry come from More in Common. The Conservatives won 24% of the vote at the last general election and later fell to 18%. Last week they were back on 25%. For 18 months they had stayed below the 24% they won in that defeat.
A senior Downing Street figure was clear that Burnham does not want officials to take their eyes off Reform, which has slipped in the polls while its party finances are under scrutiny. The point is to plan for a Tory resurgence as well.
Seats that could swing to the Tories
Several cabinet ministers hold seats where the Tories are the main rival. They include the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, the chief secretary to the Treasury, Emma Reynolds, and the Europe minister, Hamish Falconer. Labour MPs across Hertfordshire, Kent and parts of London, including Finchley and Harrow, could also be at risk.
One minister with a slim majority said they had been raising the issue inside government for a while. Their view is that MPs fighting Reform have often assumed colleagues in more traditional Tory seats had it easy, but that by the next election it could be the other way around.
A group of London MPs has already pressed Burnham on the point. They warned that Labour headquarters was being caught out by its focus on Reform and the Greens. In some polls, the Conservatives have overtaken Reform for second place.
What Labour is considering
Labour is weighing whether to warn that a Tory-Reform pact is a real possibility. The reasoning, as MPs put it, is that voters would only return to the Tories in earnest if they believed the party could win a majority. They might stay with Labour if they feared Farage getting close to power.
Another idea is to attack the Tory brand more broadly, including the shadow cabinet. Kemi Badenoch's personal ratings are relatively strong, but the party lags far behind. Among those who told More in Common that Badenoch is doing well, only a third said they would back her party.
Labour officials insisted that, as the official opposition, the Tories were still in their sights day to day. They accepted the wider strategy had to step up. The party is understood to be preparing to put more resources into taking on the Conservatives from January, ahead of the May elections. One official called those elections a real test of whether the Tories have pulled themselves together.
The pollster's view
Luke Tryl, director of More in Common, said Burnham was right to broaden Labour's focus. "Starmer was fighting on one front, but Labour now has two fronts on its right flank," he said.
Tryl named voters sorting themselves by party as the biggest risk. In his account, Reform wins right-leaning votes from Labour in the red wall, while the Conservatives take them in affluent parts of England, including the south-east. Labour's support at the last election was shallow but broad, he said, so more seats than people think could become Labour-Tory fights.
Tryl added that Reform has shown it can squeeze the Conservatives, but only up to a point, so they will still be on the pitch at the next election.
Source: the Guardian