Despite the bright start to Andy Burnham’s premiership, and Reform UK’s sudden disarray, a shadow still hangs over British centre-left politics. Labour has a small poll lead, a cautious air of confidence and a leader who seems energised rather than overwhelmed by trying to solve the country’s problems. Meanwhile, Reform is having a terrible 2026: mired in deepening funding scandals, losing winnable byelections and, thanks to the drama and novelty of Burnham’s leadership coup and new government, no longer the freshest story around.
Yet Reform UK’s support has either held up or fallen only slightly in most polls since Burnham entered Downing Street. Even in the Makerfield byelection, where he beat it more decisively than expected, Reform’s vote share and total support actually rose. Nigel Farage may have spent the year uncharacteristically avoiding journalists, or in his prickly rather than jolly public mode, but the overwhelming majority of Reform supporters, almost a quarter of the electorate, remain faithful.
Meanwhile, their preoccupations continue to shape politics and how the media processes it. Immigration, crime, the benefits system, “wokeness”, net zero policies: all are constantly presented as out of control and contributing to national decline. From our overcrowded prisons to our almost exhausted North Sea oil- and gasfields, what are widely considered to be the most politically realistic options for the government are generally what most Reform voters would like to happen.
The likelihood that permanent crime crackdowns and further large-scale fossil-fuel drilling – which the government looks increasingly likely to approve – will be disastrous for a country with an ever more obvious climate crisis and unprecedentedly large prison population, by historical and European standards, does not disturb this deep-rooted rightwing consensus. The pressure on Burnham to go along with it as prime minister will be never-ending. Yet the risks of governing under Reform’s shadow, while less discussed, are much larger.
So far, Labour’s fragile poll recovery has mainly been built by taking support back from the Greens and Lib Dems, as the dip in their poll ratings since a Burnham premiership became likely has demonstrated. This change would almost certainly be undone if Burnham decided to follow a Reform-defined agenda. Keir Starmer’s abrupt announcement that he will leave parliament is the ultimate result of him making exactly that mistake in Downing Street – and has given the Greens’ leader, Zack Polanski, a chance to reverse the momentum shift from his party to Labour by standing as a byelection candidate.
Meanwhile, with Reform, Restore and the Tories all competing to be the most rightwing, and this country’s many reactionary media outlets doing the same, many right-leaning voters are even more convinced than usual that no Labour government is acceptable. So the appeasement of conservative Britain, designed by Morgan McSweeney and carried out by Starmer, not always with conviction, was never likely to win many converts for long. In a deeply divided country, the days of Labour premiers attracting and holding on to large numbers of rightwing voters, as Tony Blair, Harold Wilson and Clement Attlee once did, are gone, at least for now.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
