Back from the Summer holidays. A time of at least attempted peace and quiet but not if you are a UK politician…

A good deal has changed in the last couple of months. A new PM in the shiny, positive form of Andy Burnham, continuing headwinds facing Reform UK and the Greens, mostly self-inflicted, and a spring in the step of Kemi Badenoch and her merry band of Tories. All against the backdrop of a challenging international environment.

Here are a few thoughts and predictions.

• Andy Burnham is certainly a better communicator than Starmer and has made a better start to his premiership than many would have predicted. He mostly looked assured in his first PMQs last week and took three hours of questions from MPs the day before without putting much of a foot wrong. The result is that Labour are back at the top in opinion polls albeit by a whisker. However, Burnham is constrained from really making a difference by government finances and the Labour manifesto which stupidly prohibits major tax increases. The cost of government debt is soaring (interest costs of over 5%) as concerns mount about fiscal headroom against a deteriorating global backdrop. If opinion polls remain favourable expect a 2027 election. It is Burnham’s only option to deliver more radical solutions to the nation’s problems.
• Reform UK will not go away. People are too disillusioned by mainstream politicians’ failure to deliver but they are certainly weakened. Most polls have them now in second or even third place behind the Tories and Farage continues to be the ‘nearly man’ of British politics electorally even when driving the agenda. Watch out for more scandals but no room for complacency for the major parties as many of these will cement the support of hard core Reformers just as with Trump and his MAGA crowd. Proportional representation must look an increasingly attractive proposition for Reform…
• The Greens have imploded somewhat due to the extreme leadership of Zack Polanski and the rise of Andy Burnham. In a bid to regain momentum, Polanski is their candidate for the Holborn and St Pancras by-election as Starmer (and who can blame him) clears off out of UK politics. On balance, he will probably lose which will do for his leadership and make a 2027 general election more likely.
• A false dawn awaits the Tories. Whilst Badenoch’s momentum continues, support for her party has flatlined. The public has not forgotten their often disastrous period in government and still doesn’t trust them. Badenoch’s move to the Right is simply wrong as is appointing a supporter of Liz Truss’s budget as Shadow Chancellor, although choosing the moderate Tom Tugendhat as Shadow Foreign Secretary is a shrewd move. She won’t apologise for the mistakes of her predecessors and any prospect of winning a general election is 5-10 years away at best, assuming proportional representation has not been introduced by then. The next election is now Labour’s to lose although it will be a tough battle.
• The LibDems are nowhere. History will judge this period as a huge lost opportunity for them.

So there we are. For participants in the Westminster game, there is all to play for although the poor bloody electorate will see little, if any upside…

P.S. Trump’s presidency is an increasing disaster. Outside his international follies, look at the size of government debt and the rising cost of servicing it. At $40 trillion, how long can the protection of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency suffice? Fuelled by his policies, a huge financial crisis potentially beckons. More on that later alongside thoughts on the rise of the far-right in Germany after elections in Saxony-Anhalt… A lot to catch up on…