To be frank, Kemi Badenoch has had a good few months. She has got much better at PMQs, and Keir Starmer has provided an open goalmouth the size of well, England’s goalmouth in last night’s World Cup game against Argentina. She has been on a roll.

Strategic mistakes will undermine potential glimmers of Tory electoral recovery

She is also getting lucky with Reform. A rattled Farage has made a huge error in resigning his parliamentary seat and standing for re-election against Count Binface. He could lose although the backlash from the awful murder of Reform supporter Ann Widdecombe will resonate. The issue of the safety of MPs such as Farage which he has constantly raised has come to the fore tragically and may help him get through although with diminished authority.

So, what is Badenoch doing with these rare glimpses of sunlight. Squandering them. In a clumsy attempt to unite the Right back under the Tory Party, she announced through a rambling, badly written article, a decision to get tough with wannabe parliamentary candidates who disagree with her. Basically, any Tory who supports staying in a reformed ECHR or keeping to 2035 net zero targets is not welcome. That’s me out then!

Why the attack on freedom of thought? Why ignore the potential seven million voters who feel electorally homeless as the Tories have drifted to the Right and the LibDems miss an historic opportunity to fill the gap?

It is stupid politics to try and win over Reform voters in this way which is Badenoch’s obvious aim. Many of them will drift back to Labour if Andy Burnham is any good and Tory defectors to Reform, particularly prominent ones, are paying a heavy price anyway. Just ask Robert Jenrick…

Badenoch is turning her back on mainstream Tory voters just when she needs them. She is curtailing freedom of thought and speech within her party, narrowing its base in the process. The result? So far, for all her run of good luck and a little skill, the Tories have barely moved in the polls.

Perhaps it is time to call in Vice-President JD Vance to free the centre-right from Badenoch’s hard right-wing political correctness. Now, that would be a sight and sound to witness…

I participated in a breakfast last week with those close to the ‘action’ in Westminster. A highly interesting conversation ensued about the immediate future of UK politics, against the backdrop of the Labour Party’s shenanigans. I thought it was diplomatically worth sharing.

There was a consensus that Burnham would win in Makerfield and that Starmer was toast regardless of his public determination to hang on. The feeling was Burnham should initiate a leadership contest on Friday morning. He would never be more powerful than at that moment and therefore what was the point in waiting. Timing is everything in politics. This was all before the resignation of the Defence Secretary, John Healey, which happened later in the day but I doubt it would have made a difference to anybody’s analysis.

We then moved onto the qualities required in a Prime Minister and how Burnham and Starmer fared on these criteria. Oh dear…

The four qualities identified by the lead speaker were ‘Politics, Policy, Leadership, Communications’. Whilst there was some sympathy for Starmer’s plight (nobody could quite undersand the depth of his personal unpopularity and put it down to the poison of social media), everyone agreed with the view that No. 10 was a shambles. Starmer was hopeless at the politics of his job, had no discernable policy agenda to reflect what he wanted to achieve in office, exhibited no leadership with his endless U-turns and was a poor communicator. No surprise there, then. Score: 0/4.

Overblown potential…

But, Burnham did little better. With his back history of vacillation (not a details person…), with endless U-turns in the past few weeks on WASPI women, bond markets, rejoining the EU and when he might call a General Election, he was perceived to be weak on politics, hopeless on policy and leadership (essentially blowing with the wind), but good on communications. Score: 1.5/4.

So, we are going through all this turmoil for a mediocre replacement for Starmer. You might ask is the hassle worth it…?

On other topics, there was a feeling the Tory frontbench was generally way below par and that with strong recent PMQ performances, Badenoch was safe for a good while. She has no opponents of any merit internally despite missing the open goal of focusing solely on the economy, the Tories best route to regaining power in the medium-term. We were also given a reminder that the Tories had more influence than their current opinion poll ratings suggest; largest party in the House of Lords and still a sizeable local government player. There is a platform to build on should we forget…

With regard to Reform, most thought it had peaked some while ago and that Farage might not be well. Without wishing ill will, this is the only hopeful strategy of the main parties… He has been rather absent recently which surely has nothing to do with him explaining his undisclosed £5 million gift from an offshore crypto billionaire…

On other parties in this new five party system, Polanski has partly blown it for the Greens and Ed Davey’s LibDems elicited almost no comment which says it all really.

So there you have it. The future success of political leadership in the UK is all about PPLC and, on this basis, voters have little to choose from.

I participated in a breakfast last week with those close to the ‘action’ in Westminster. A highly interesting conversation ensued about the immediate future of UK politics, against the backdrop of the Labour Party’s shenanigans. I thought it was diplomatically worth sharing.

There was a consensus that Burnham would win in Makerfield and that Starmer was toast regardless of his public determination to hang on. The feeling was Burnham should initiate a leadership contest on Friday morning. He would never be more powerful than at that moment and therefore what was the point in waiting. Timing is everything in politics. This was all before the resignation of the Defence Secretary, John Healey, which happened later in the day but I doubt it would have made a difference to anybody’s analysis.

We then moved onto the qualities required in a Prime Minister and how Burnham and Starmer fared on these criteria. Oh dear…

The four qualities identified by the lead speaker were ‘Politics, Policy, Leadership, Communications’. Whilst there was some sympathy for Starmer’s plight (nobody could quite undersand the depth of his personal unpopularity and put it down to the poison of social media), everyone agreed with the view that No. 10 was a shambles. Starmer was hopeless at the politics of his job, had no discernable policy agenda to reflect what he wanted to achieve in office, exhibited no leadership with his endless U-turns and was a poor communicator. No surprise there, then. Score: 0/4.

Overblown potential…

But, Burnham did little better. With his back history of vacillation (not a details person…), with endless U-turns in the past few weeks on WASPI women, bond markets, rejoining the EU and when he might call a General Election, he was perceived to be weak on politics, hopeless on policy and leadership (essentially blowing with the wind), but good on communications. Score: 1.5/4.

So, we are going through all this turmoil for a mediocre replacement for Starmer. You might ask is the hassle worth it…?

On other topics, there was a feeling the Tory frontbench was generally way below par and that with strong recent PMQ performances, Badenoch was safe for a good while. She has no opponents of any merit internally despite missing the open goal of focusing solely on the economy, the Tories best route to regaining power in the medium-term. We were also given a reminder that the Tories had more influence than their current opinion poll ratings suggest; largest party in the House of Lords and still a sizeable local government player. There is a platform to build on should we forget…

With regard to Reform, most thought it had peaked some while ago and that Farage might not be well. Without wishing ill will, this is the only hopeful strategy of the main parties… He has been rather absent recently which surely has nothing to do with him explaining his undisclosed £5 million gift from an offshore crypto billionaire…

On other parties in this new five party system, Polanski has partly blown it for the Greens and Ed Davey’s LibDems elicited almost no comment which says it all really.

So there you have it. The future success of political leadership in the UK is all about PPLC and, on this basis, voters have little to choose from.

It is one of the most damning quotes in recent UK politics. It will do for Labour in the end.

Pat McFadden, the calm, ‘safe pair of hands’ minister was caught saying in a WhatsApp conversation (about his backbenchers) with Mandelson, ‘every meeting I have is ‘who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others’.

This could be the largest fallout from the Mandelson fiasco after the defenestration of Keir Starmer.

It goes to the heart of the stupidity and fecklessness of Labour. It shows a complete misunderstanding of the priorities of the public, of the need for lower taxes on business to create wealth, of the need to get more people into work for their own good and the health of the economy, of what we can afford as a nation. In short, it is infuriating. All is forgiven. Bring back Tony Blair… except he is about as Labour nowadays as Kemi Badenoch.

Labour ministers go on about the need for growth. Either they or their backbenchers or both have no idea what growth means, why it is important, and how to achieve it. Incredibly this was inferred by leaked WhatsApp messages from Darren Jones, Rachel Reeves’ No. 2 at the Treasury, also to Mandelson which surfaced yesterday.

Burnham is no long-term solution to the country’s challenges…

If Burnham becomes the next PM (increasingly likely), the bad traits of a Labour government will get worse. Like the rest of his colleagues he will bang on about ‘working people’ (don’t we all work in any type of job) and be less disciplined on welfare and public expenditure generally. He has already shown irresponsibility towards bond markets. He won’t get the unsustainably of the welfare budget. He is a weak populist and like the worst of his party, almost certainly in hock to the trade unions.

Burnham might justifiably call an election as soon as he moves into No. 10 but he probably shouldn’t. The choice would be too awful for moderates and independents to contemplate, reflecting the current mess called UK politics.

There is only one political organisation occupying the centre ground in UK politics. It is not the LibDems who vacated it years ago. It is Tony Blair and his Institute for Global Change. It is time the Tories embraced its commonsense centre-ground analysis of the world’s problems. You don’t have to agree with Blair’s choice of clients or his slavish obeisance to America to agree with much of the Institute’s output.

Worth listening to…

But Blair has particularly come to the fore this week with his take down of today’s Labour Party. Here is, I confess, a partly AI generated summary of his critique edited by my good self ( I don’t need to read through all the 5600 words…):

• The “Radical Centre” Blair argues is Labour’s only viable path warning that shifting left to appease internal critics is a perennial, dangerous delusion
• Governments which succeed don’t start with a personality contest, or a political question, as in: how do we ‘save the country’ from Reform?” Blair writes. “They start with an idea, a project, a governing purpose, an analysis of what is wrong and a plan to put it right.”
• Labour doesn’t have a coherent, worked-out overall plan for running the country in a fast changing world
• The government has been tone-deaf to the business community in its initial policies—such as expanding workers’ rights, above-inflation minimum wage hikes, and net-zero carbon pledges. Such initiatives stifle economic growth by failing to make the private sector feel supported
• Welfare reform is crucial. The rising bill for incapacity and disability benefits is unsustainable, and the triple lock should be the first to go
• The AI revolution needs to be applied to the whole of government and not be treated as a ‘niche industrial sector’
• The government needs to keep a grip of immigration to head off the far-right
• There needs to be a reset on ‘net zero’ policies to tackle the expense of the UK’s energy supply
• Rejoining the EU is no more a solution than leaving it. A wholesale recalibration of our relationship with the EU is needed, however.

So here we go. What sensible moderate Conservative supporter would disagree with this analysis even with regard to the Labour Party. Of course, Labour’s leadership contenders reply with barbs about inequality showing they don’t have the backbone to take the necessary measures to reduce inequality. The country needs to be better governed with a firm, long-term plan to turn the country around (from not as bad a position as many people believe!). It starts with patient forward thinking policy development focused specifically on the economy.

Today’s Tories seem incapable of the hard work required in Opposition to present a viable case for governing three years from now. It takes time which Thatcher and Blair used effectively. Perhaps they should team up with the Institute for Global Change for a bit of grown-up politics free from worrying about month-to-month opinion polls…

Shame on the Labour Party. Despite Starmer’s refrain of putting country before party, it has done the opposite. In stabbing Starmer in the back wholly unnecessarily, we have a zombie government led by a zombie prime minister at a time of national peril (Ukraine, Iran etc). Labour is simply no longer fit for office whoever leads it. This situation could go on for months if Starmer is determined not to stand down.

And what a motley crew of candidates seeking to replace him. The hugely overrated Burnham versus ‘I have just blown up my career’ Streeting versus the preposterous Rayner or incredible Ed ‘failed last time but that shouldn’t count’ Miliband.

None of them are fundamentally up to the job…

The favourite, assuming he survives a Reform by-election challenge in Makerfield, is Burnham. Why? Manchester’s success is largely down to the actions of the former Leader and Chief Executive of Manchester City Council not the mayor. Burnham’s national policy pronouncements are also hardly impressive; rowing back on blowing up the bond markets or watering down any urge to embrace the EU. He wants to renationalise a swathe of industries and will undoubtedly move the Labour government to the Left although further delegation of powers to the regions does makes sense. He is not a details man.

Burnham will make no meaningful difference to Labour’s fortunes except to at least initially be less unpopular than Starmer. One doubts he will overcome the electorate’s frustration over the chaos at the heart of government.

It is a common belief that the beneficiary of all this is Reform but I don’t agree. Farage has his own troubles and not just the investigation into a £5 million gift. He has a natural ceiling of support which is not far from where his party is now and the current mayhem presents a clear opportunity for the Tories if they were willing to take it. Badenoch has performed well recently and should make sure the Conservative Party contests Makerfield vigorously despite the certain wipeout.

The Tories then need to remake their case for economic competence stating clearly how they would manage public expenditure, introduce business friendly policies and realistically talk about tax aims. The conversation with voters must be clear and honest and include accepting responsibility for past mistakes and perhaps hinting at greater cooperation with the EU, starting with defence which is surely palatable to all Tories… Ultimately, ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ should be their one and only refrain since Labour under a Burnham government or Reform under a Farage government would both be reckless financially. It will still take a good while for the electorate to warm to the Tories of course after their incompetent past but at least Labour is now in the same boat!

The gap in today’s British politics is ideal for a centre-right party to differentiate itself with policies that reward aspiration whilst firmly but sensitively reducing the size of the state. Are the Tories disciplined enough to do this in the face of populism? Today, I doubt it but one lives in hope…