𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

If you see a jet plane zooming into land in a marginal constituency there is a high chance Nigel Farage is on board. The Reform UK leader is in full-throttle election mode – even thought the country does not have to go to the polls until August 2029 and Andy Burnham has stamped on the idea of an early contest. I saw the veteran Brexiteer in action in Redcar this week – a seat Boris Johnson snatched from Labour in the 2019 Get Brexit Done election. Rishi Sunak lost it to Sir Keir Starmer in 2024, and it is precisely the type of Red Wall constituency that Mr Farage hopes to conquer.

“Are you ready for a snap election?” I asked, after he had spent a happy time in the seaside town, getting to hold an eight-day-old baby and pose for photographs with constituents with expressions of welcome, affection and hope. “Look at me,” he said. “I’m on the road!”

He had been in Doncaster days earlier and there are a string of destinations he looks forward to hitting imminently. So, when does he think the Prime Minister will send us all to the polling station?

“May,” he said. Really? In seven months time? “It’s coming in May,” he repeated, with the confidence of a man predicting the sun will rise tomorrow morning. “You watch.”

There are clear incentives for why Mr Burnham would go to the polls but they can be summed up in four words: It’s downhill from here. With astounding success, he shed his image as one of New Labour’s ultimate insiders and recast him as a maverick Mayor who would much rather be at a turntable in a Manchester nightclub than in a Westminster voting lobby. But that outsider status fades every time he steps through the door of Number 10. With average interest rates on a new five-year fixed mortgage deal hitting 6% for the first time in three years, it is Mr Burnham who will get the blame when cash-strapped families have to cancel holidays and take their children out of clubs.

People will forget about his VAT cut on electricity bills when the overall winter price hike leaves them reeling. There is no cash to splurge in this month’s Budget and the ongoing freeze in the point at which you have to pay tax means Britons are watching the Treasury guzzle a greater share of their income.

The latest YouGov poll puts Labour on 27%, significantly ahead of Reform (22%) and the Conservatives (20%). The longer he delays calling an election, the greater the risk that Kemi Badenoch will succeed in detoxifying the Tories and Mr Farage will use the recent mega-donations to build a communications and policy machine of formidable power.

Mr Burnham’s deeply passionate conference speech sounded like an oration setting the stage for an election. If he wants to transform social care, the voting system and the country’s relationship with Europe, why wait until 2029 to get a direct mandate from the country? How different would Gordon Brown’s time as PM been if he had fought and won a general election when Tony Blair stood down in 2007 rather than limp on until 2010?

The risks of calling an early election remain enormous. Voters would suspect he wants to hike taxes; hundreds of MPs could lose their seats and seething Starmerites would accuse him of throwing away a landslide majority if Labour loses power. But as he makes the journey from Downing Street to Makerfield, he may decide that if he wants to turn his visions into reality he must take the greatest gamble of his life.