Such is the attention heaped upon Andy Burnham that it’s possible to forget there is an opposition. The UK is not unlike the US in this regard, where daily, often hourly, President Donald Trump generates banner headlines.
The difficulty of making an impact against a government that can make all the running with policy measures and must respond to events at home and abroad cannot be underestimated.
So it is this week in London, where the new Prime Minister addressed the Commons for the first time as Labour leader yesterday, before facing his foes over the Dispatch Box on Wednesday at the weekly ritual of Prime Minister’s Questions.
More announcements can be expected as Burnham gears up for his set-piece party conference speech at the end of the month, followed by the budget. Amid all that, he has to make a favourable impression internationally, not least with Trump but also with other UK-friendly world leaders.
While it’s a critical period for him, it’s also vital for two of his main domestic opposite numbers. Ed Davey, in charge of the Liberal-Democrats, is able to consolidate his position, but for Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage this period also promises to be make or break.
If that seems extreme, what is increasingly focusing political minds is not the now, what is happening daily in the hurly-burly of Westminster, but what is looming – and possibly sooner rather than later.
This is the prospect of a general election, with the nagging thought that Burnham, in an effort to consolidate his position, may press the button and call an early ballot. Lodged firmly in his mind is the experience of Gordon Brown, who, like him, became PM without a popular mandate and could have gone to the country soon after taking power, but hesitated and by the time he did it was too late – his initial support had waned and he was defeated.
Which is why Badenoch is returning to parliament fired up and armed with a new-look front bench team. On the eve of the resumption, while the rest of the UK was enjoying the end of the summer holiday, she was wielding the axe and shaking up her shadow cabinet.
Out went her shadow chancellor, Mel Stride, and shadow foreign secretary, Priti Patel. In their place came Andrew Griffith and Tom Tugendhat. Gone, too, are James Cleverly, who stood down from housing to run for London mayor, and Stuart Andrew in health and social care.
A reshuffle had been trailed but this was more brutal than expected. That’s because this isn’t simply about Burnham and a resurgent Labour – he is enjoying a higher personal rating than his predecessor, Keir Starmer. It’s as much to do with Reform UK and its leader, Nigel Farage.
Badenoch has had a mixed few months. There she was, making inroads against Starmer, when he went, to be replaced by someone more charismatic. The Tories notched up a notable by-election victory in Aberdeen South but that rare recent success was swallowed by humiliation in Makerfield, where their vote collapsed to just 2.2 per cent, only slightly better than the all-time low of 1.9 per cent in nearby Gorton and Denton four months previously.
For a party used to being in Downing Street, regarded as one of the most electorally successful organisations anywhere in modern history, this was deeply troubling. It showed an absence of bounce back, that after Labour’s triumph in 2024, the Conservatives had failed to improve their position. If anything, they were even worse off.
This is because they face formidable enemies in Reform UK, and not forgetting, too, Restore. Far from representing a united front, Badenoch, unlike former Tory chiefs, is having to contend with rivals to her right-wing crown. That makes life doubly troubling and insecure.
While eyes will be on her gladiatorial contest with Burnham at PMQs, they will also be drawn to another event, the Reform UK conference in Birmingham later this week. With Badenoch, there is the feeling that no matter how hard she tries, something intervenes to keep her down. She remains, even now, relatively unknown, unable to dislodge Farage from the spotlight. That’s also true internationally, where the Reform UK founder attracts considerably more fascination.
Not all of it favourable, of course. But as with Trump, that does not appear to bother the maverick Farage. He positively soaks up the attention, delivering on a promise to upset convention.
That said, Farage approaches the new season with trepidation. The self-confident cockiness and poking has been replaced with snarling and, within his own party, backbiting. Instead of heading round the nation, milking applause, Farage spent the summer break fending off a man with a metal waste bin on his head. It was a bizarre spectacle, one that raised serious questions about Farage’s antenna and ability to think strategically.
Farage thought he would call the establishment's bluff by resigning as an MP, to stop a parliamentary investigation into his finances in its tracks and seek the support of his people, as he sees them, in his Clacton constituency. But they stole his thunder by not standing against him in the ensuing ballot, leaving Farage to battle a jokey rag-tag of contenders, led by Count Binface.
As if that was not bad enough, he must now deal with the resumed official inquiry. There is growing dissatisfaction, too, in his own ranks, at the failure to win Makerfield, where Reform fielded a poor candidate, and its inability to be more widely accepted as a would-be government contender. It’s desperate to move on from being known for a single issue, of anti-migration and for one person.
That’s not helped by Farage’s personal future being far from certain. The inquiry may unearth misdemeanours, forcing the Reform UK leader to stand down as an MP and fight another poll in Clacton, this time with the main parties fielding candidates. His first test is this week, when the level of dissent within Reform itself, among his senior colleagues and in the grass roots, will become apparent. He urgently requires a confidence-boosting showing.
Burnham is on trial, then, but so too are Badenoch and Farage. There is much at stake in the coming days and weeks.
