Above is another Beatles video, for those who liked the first one. I will do them so long as people keep responding positively to them, or when I run out of ideas for related videos, whichever comes first. That has little to do with what I’m writing about today though.

I want to keep this post positive, since as I said in the last article, there is already too much negativity in the world, and I want to try and be more focused on how we change things for the better, not just complaining about everything. Having said that, if you want to change the world, you also have to be realistic about the world we live in.

Inevitably, there are stories going around the media saying that Andy Burnham is either thinking about changing the voting system in Westminster to a proportional one, or his backbenchers are going to try and force him to do so. “PR might be happening, fellas!” is the vibe here. I have difficulty believing the validity of these stories for several reasons.

I have some knowledge of how the Labour Party sees changing the voting system via two professional experiences: the first was working on the AV campaign on the yes side; the other was working for the Electoral Reform Society for a few years. Dealing with the first experience first: all of the energy in the Labour Party felt like it was on the No side of the argument at the time. No to AV had a lot of really heavy hitters from the Labour Party who spoke passionately about sticking with First Past the Post. Meanwhile, all of the Labour figures on our side seemed almost apologetic in their support for electoral reform. “I know it looks like we’re backing the Clegg thing, and we hate Clegg after all, but changing the voting system is progressive and all that sort of bullshit, so maybe vote for AV. If you want, that is, I wouldn’t feel any pressure if I were you.”

And let’s remember here, that was about voting for a change to the Alternative Vote, which is an incredibly minor modulation to the voting system as compared to switching to any mode of PR. I don’t believe, looking back on it, that that many Labour figures were against AV per se, so much as they didn’t want to open up the possibility of a change to PR at any point in the near future. Having a change to proportional representation scared them that much.

I get why. PR, any kind of PR, from STV to closed lists, would be the death knell for the Labour Party as we have known it for more than a century. They would have to form governments with other leftist parties, when the opportunity came up, and they would almost certainly split who knows how many ways anyhow. Under the First Past the Post, it has made sense for a broad coalition of people who want different things to stay under the umbrella of the Labour Party. PR would destroy that completely. Why should Blue Labour types stick in a party with far-leftists? Or even the soft left, for that matter? Why wouldn’t all of them just get their own party? Hell, under the coalitions PR creates, they might even get a role in government off a small slice of the vote, and they wouldn’t have to be in a party with a bunch of people they despise to get there.

Working for the ERS brought that home to me. Speaking to Labour MPs and peers about electoral reform, you always got a slightly different version of the same answer. “I, of course, love PR and think it’s wonderful and progressive and all that, but you know, so many people in my party will just never wear it. The unions would never go for it either. But yes, PR would be wonderful.” It was always someone else in Labour who didn’t want PR, not them, of course.

Okay, so now I come onto the positive bit. What can you do if what you really want is a change to the voting system? I would simply vote for parties that seriously want to introduce proportional representation and not give the Labour Party the benefit of the doubt any longer. Don’t worry about tactical voting or anything else - if you think PR is the answer to Britain’s problems, vote Lib Dem or Green, whatever you think of their other policies. Unless a lot of you do this, PR will remain a pipe dream.

The positive approach here is to see that complaining about how the Labour Party won’t change the voting system doesn’t work and is a waste of time. Vote for other parties that will give you what you want. Stop thinking about politics as one team against another and start thinking about how to actually achieve your goals. And as many of you know, I am not a fan of the current iteration of the Liberal Democrats, and I actively dislike the Greens, so I am not trying to convince you of this because I want either of those parties to do particularly well. I have just realised that you have to stop expecting the leopard to change its spots and take your vote elsewhere if you want change. You have the power to do it - much more so than you realise.

Above is a link to a video that is only related to the story below by dint of the fact that they both come from the same place within my brain, namely my inability to keep being so negative about everything. I tried to come up with something I both love and know something about and landed on an analysis of the early Beatles song, “She Loves You” and why it’s so musically inventive and brilliant, with the aid of a guitar and some occasionally wayward singing. Watch if you dare.

It goes without saying that we live in a very negative age. Downbeat stories dominate the news as well as both sides of the political spectrum. The left is obsessed with genocide and the environment of the Earth becoming so toxic, humans die out as a species; the right is obsessed with the decline of the west and the rise of various forces trying to bring that fall of society forward.

With this as the background, along comes Andy Burnham. Now, the “Burnham bounce” in the polls has been small but it has been notable. Labour are definitely doing better under Burnham than they were with Starmer as their leader, at least for the time being. There are many reasons for this - simply not being Starmer is one of them - but there are other causes for the uptick in Labour’s polling under their new gaffer. A big factor that is very simple to understand is that Burnham has been offering a positive vision for what the country could be, in sharp contrast to the relentless negativity of most of his recent predecessors in Number 10.

Burnham’s sunny foot forward hasn’t particularly impressed me in terms of the substance, at least so far, but that isn’t the point I’m making here. It’s that, against the grain of all of British politics for a very long period, Burnham has decided to come out with a smile and an offer of hope. I think that, until the other day, I hadn’t properly considered this. Of course, long-term, this may blow up in Burnham’s face, who knows. Offering to be the guy who finally turns things around means people will get very upset very quickly if you fail to deliver. But I do think his positivity has been a major factor in his initial polling boost.

I decided to take what Burnham had done so far in terms of being positive and apply it to the right of British politics. After some consideration, I came to the conclusion that both Reform and the Tories are lacking the required alacrity at the moment (Restore aren’t worth a mention in this regard). The implications of that are interesting to me.

Reform have a lot to say about why things are wrong in Britain. I agree with some of their assessments, others not so much. I obviously disagree with them about Brexit, which is a fairly big thing. However, I believe that their pitch around what is wrong with the country is mainly what has got them the thousands of local seats and the ability to either be number one or two in the national polls, ahead of at least one of the traditional main two parties, over the last couple of years.

However, a big part of their recent problems is that they lack enough of a positive story about how they want to transform Britain. Sure, pointing out the negatives of recent British governments will have to remain a huge part of their shtick, but I think to get over the hump - to poll in the 30s again nationally - they need some clearly articulated vision of how they can return Britain to greatness. At the moment, that is not developed enough in terms of their messaging.

Meanwhile, I think the Tories are much worse in this department. There is almost no positivity at all to their pitch to the electorate at the moment. They are even more doom and gloom about the country than Reform. Like Reform, this downerism is part of their appeal. What people like about Kemi is that she is able to effectively bash the sitting Labour government. But the reason that does not translate into a Tory polling bounce is that she and her party will need a lot more than that to get into government.

In order to get people to seriously consider them a government in waiting, the Conservative Party needs a vision for how they will change the country for the better. Yes, people tune in to the doom and gloom stuff, and they love it when Kemi socks it to whomever is Labour leader this week in parliament. But again, that’s how she gets to be seen as a solid leader of the official opposition, not as a prime minister in waiting.

I think the party that wins the “battle for the right” in Britain will be the one who manages to communicate some form of positive vision. It will be a balancing act: their potential voters need to know that they understand the issues that affect them, but they also need to feel that the party in question has believable sounding solutions to those same problems. Burnham has demonstrated that being positive is the way to cut through to the electorate in the age of cynical doom and gloom. His opponents need to try and emulate him on that front, if they want to defeat him.

I write this from rural Latvia, on the last leg on my tour of the Baltics. I have spent the previous week in Estonia, mostly in Tallinn but also travelling to other parts of the country. By coincidence, while I was there I read an article about how Estonia had been rated as the best country to move to by the Rumavi Global Relocation Index, beating out Singapore for top spot in the world. I suddenly found myself in a unique position to seriously consider this idea - and much more interestingly, at least to me, to figure out what the ranking of Estonia as the best place to relocate to might mean in a wider sense.

I will start with my thoughts on Tallinn, and further, what is specifically good about the Estonian capital city. I have a decent perspective on this, having visited Tallinn 14 years ago, so I was presented with a reasonable first-hand comparison as to how the place has changed in the last decade and a half.

My impressions of Tallinn in 2012 were partly shaped by how I came to Estonia in the first place. I was staying in Helsinki and discovered that boats across the Gulf of Finland to Tallinn were cheap, so my wife and I headed over there for a visit. I was immediately stunned by the Old Town, which is magnificent. Not quite as great as Dubrovnik or Krakow, but it isn’t ridiculous to compare the oldest parts of Tallinn with those places. Tourism seemed very nascent at the time in the city, and everything felt extremely cheap. The sector in Estonia in 2012 mostly seemed to revolve around Finns coming across the water for the day, getting pissed and then loading up on booze to take home, which at the time was significantly cheaper than it was in Finland.

Now, Tallinn has transformed. It is a major hub for business travel, with the Estonian economy having transformed over the past decade. Brand new hotels are filled with people from around the globe, looking to invest in the country. The Finns don’t day trip in the same way - or at least, for the same reasons - any longer because if anything, Helsinki now feels cheaper. This on its own is a very, very good thing. That a country that was third world level poor due to Soviet socialism, coming out of that completely within a handful of decades to become a leading, growing economy, is a miracle we should all welcome.

The issue is, some of the soul of Tallinn has been lost, at least in my opinion. It has been slightly affected by what I call “Corporate Expenses Blight”: when a city is overrun by people there on business travel, which drastically affects the feel as well as the price of the place. When it gets really bad (Baku, Azerbaijan is the worst example of this I have ever personally experienced), it makes the whole town basically unaffordable unless you are insanely rich, on company expenses, or are savvy enough to go beyond the usual places and find a part of town where the corporate tourists simply never go to, which is usually fairly tricky if you’re only there for a few days. Tallinn has a much more mild version of this blight than many other places, but it is perceptively present. For example, you have a plethora of restaurants which serve “international fare”, which is usually some combo of burgers, pizza and pasta, all of it fairly generic, at prices which seem a little steep for what is on offer. This is worse by dint of the fact that the service is often poor (not just in Tallinn, but in every place affected by Corporate Expenses Blight). The restaurants cater to international visitors who don’t care what things cost (because their companies are paying for it all) and probably won’t be back, so creating an atmosphere that people wish to return to is not the priority.

And look, I know someone if going to tell me that there are great, local restaurants in Tallinn, in some part of town that isn’t within the touristy bits. In fact, I’m certain that’s the case. Again, it’s just that finding those places if you aren’t blessed with shedloads of time is very hard.

To stress, I still enjoyed Tallinn very much. And I even had some terrific meals there. It’s just that it is going through an adjustment phase that I believe it will come out the other side of, mostly because of what it has to offer. The combination of a beautiful city, by the seaside, with an open, growing economy, mean that it will only improve as time wears on (unless Putin invades, of course, and then all bets are off).

Of course, there is a lot more to Estonia than Tallinn, just as there is much more to the UK than London. And when you travel around the country, several things become apparent. The first is that the travel infrastructure is not there yet. The road system is poor in terms of getting around Estonia quickly. To the Estonians credit, they are in the process of changing this: wherever you go, you will see large scale projects around building motorways and the infrastructure to scale them up to western European standards. There is so much building go on across Estonia, it’s exciting to witness. Unfortunately, in the present, that makes getting around Estonia even more difficult than it would have been anyhow, with motorists having to drive around massive building structures at 50 kilometres per hour for miles on end.

I would also say that rural Estonia feels more stuck in time than either rural Latvia or Lithuania. As soon as you get out of Tallinn, rather predictably, the cost of everything plummets dramatically. Yet I also noticed that the ability of locals to speak English was notably worse in Estonia than in either of the other two Baltic countries. In Latvia and Lithuania, even when you were somewhere very remote, the level of English speaking is often astonishing. Estonia was the one that stood out for me in terms of rural places having much less English speaking ability.

I hasten to add, being able to speak English is not the be all and end all of a country’s ability to be plentiful in the long term. To think so would be to display astonishing Anglosphere arrogance. However, if the aim is to describe Estonia as the best place you could possibly move to in the world for non-Estonians, it’s a factor to consider.

In fact, looking at this idea that Estonia is the best place to move to, I have to say I find it a little tricky to accept. You have Tallinn as a place to live, which again, has loads of positives but the touristy feel of the centre of town would get to you after a while if you lived there. You could retort that London has way more tourists, but in fact, if you avoid a particular slice of the West End, you can steer clear of most tourists, should that be your wont, and still have most of a massive city to enjoy. Tallinn is mostly the Old Town with some bits that are more suburban around it. Tallinn is small, in other words, at least compared to other capitals. Forget about London, Helsinki feels massive in comparison.

Then you have the rest of the country, which still mostly feels like it would be a huge adjustment to live in if you have not grown up in the Baltics. So, where exactly is it in Estonia that is supposed to be great to move to in 2026, if you’re not Estonian? And again, to stress, Estonia is on the up and is building for a prosperous future, but still. Maybe in 20 years, Estonia could well be the best place to live in the world. That seems totally possible. But now? No chance.

So why is it being described that way? If you asked me the best place in the world to move to, I’d say the United Kingdom. Sure, we have our problems, but the country has been a mess before and shown remarkable resilience at bouncing back. London is a nightmare for young people to rent in, but the opportunities are still pretty massive there. For instance, do I think any of my children would have better opportunities and a better life in Estonia, as it currently stands, than the UK? No, I don’t.

I believe there is a desire to see things as worse in countries like Britain, France and Germany than they really are because of the stagnation of those countries economies. Slovakia remains notably poorer than the United Kingdom, yet Slovakia feels hopeful, optimistic when compared with the UK, mostly because Slovakia is much richer than it was a decade ago, where the British economy has flatlined. Vibes count for a lot in the 21st century, in other words.

Is Estonia the best country in the world to move to? I doubt it. Could it be the best someday? I think it might possibly be, yes. Is there a difference between those two positions? Yes, a world of one.

I thought for a long time that Russia would at some point invade a country to its west. I started thinking this in 2008, when Putin’s forces invaded Georgia, stating that the Georgian government was enacting a “genocide” of Russians within its borders. Just thinking back on this makes me realise how much Putin has shaped 21st politics and political language, which is both depressing and terrifying in equal measure.

I remain in the Baltic countries, shifting to Lithuania. I really, really like Lithuania. The Lithuanians are like Latvians if you gave them a Xanax and three beers. They are chilled out people, and that vibe is fun to ride while you’re in the country.

I visited one of the foremost tourist attractions in Lithuania, the Hill of Crosses, just outside the town of Šiauliai. It is very literally that, a hill that is covered in crosses from top to bottom, side to side, and around its edges. There were coach loads of people turning up from what was clearly a cornucopia of nationalities. The exact number of crosses upon the hill isn’t known, but is estimated at around 100,000.

Strangely for such a tourist destination, there was very little in the way of the trapping of international tourism as such. No people selling miniature crosses from stands, a total lack of vendors of any food and drink. It was sort of refreshing to witness on that account alone. But there was more to the place than just that.

The Hill of Crosses was started in 1831, after a Polish-Lithuanian uprising against increasing Russian imperialism inspired the place. The families of the rebels who had gone missing, presumed dead, would put up crosses in lieu of being able to bury their loved one. During the Soviet era, from the middle of WWII until Lithuania gained its independence once again in 1990, the USSR’s government hated the site and tried in many ways to destroy it, or at the very least, stop people from going there. Yet these efforts failed.

The place is now a site of pilgrimage for Christians, but it represents a whole lot more than that. It is reminder of Russian imperial aggression, something that has existed for centuries. It is also a potent symbol of why socialism never works as intended and always, always melts into an authoritarian nightmare.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, I was briefly shocked by the number of people willing to go onto the airwaves across the west and declare the attempted annexation of an independent nation to be the fault of the Ukrainians themselves, or failing that, at the very least the fault of the west, who had “pushed” Putin into an impossible situation. This was analogous to saying that a man who had murdered his wife in cold blood was justified in doing so because his wife had given him a dirty look several minutes beforehand.

Then, I got used to this position. I figured if the war dragged on, people who put forward this ridiculous idea would start to feel stupid. It would be obvious to everyone in a short period of time that the war was and is 100% Russia’s fault. But that never happened. To this day, four and a half years after Russia invaded Ukraine for what amounts to no reason, there are still people across the west, some on the left and some on the right, who will churn out the “NATO made Putin invade Ukraine” line on cue.

One of the meanings that the Hill of Crosses has for Lithuanians is that it was and remains a potent symbol of anti-Russian imperialism. The country was part of the Russian Empire and after WWII, the Soviet Union, for centuries. In Soviet times, the Hill was seen by both Lithuanian nationalists and the Russian authorities as a potent symbol of Lithuanian independence and nationalism. That’s why the Soviets did what they could to stop people from going there. They even cleared the site a few times, thinking that would do the trick, but no, people just found a way to bring new crosses there.

I have long thought the “It’s all NATO’s fault” argument for the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine was downright stupid, but coming to the Baltics really hammers home just how dumb an idea it is. Everywhere you go in the region, the anti-Russian feeling is ubiquitous. Below is a picture from outside the Russian Embassy in Tallinn, Estonia. Police have to guard the site 24/7 to keep it from being stormed.

It is a deep seated thing in the Baltics that these countries enjoy their independence from Moscow and experience patriotism in large part by celebrating their freedom from the Russian noose. Every country here has the equivalent of a “Museum of the Russian occupation”; this is something deeply embedded in the Baltic culture now. Even for Russian speakers here, they want no part of Putin’s demented empire.

I think we probably need to start teaching the horrors of the Soviet Union to schoolchildren in Britain as part of the cirriculum. Kids need to be taught about the devastating loss of life, the quest for power which led to empire building, and the environmental devastation wrought by successive leaders of the USSR. I think that may get us at least partly out of where we are now, where so many kids are being spoon fed Kremlin propaganda about how the Soviet Union was a happy, utopian place of smiles and teddy bears, while the right buy into Kremlin propaganda about modern day Russia being some sort of free, Christian, Chad-perfect environment.

Being reflexively anti-west is one of the modern left’s worst traits; being reflexively on the side of any government that seems unwoke on paper, at least so long as they aren’t Muslim, is one of the modern right’s worst mannerisms. Perhaps if we all agreed that liberal democracy is a good thing, we could find some common ground? Or at least stop worshipping the gangster who runs Russia with an iron grip, using the country as a kleptocracy that benefits a group of men who could all fit into a reasonably sized room? I will leave that thought with you all to digest.

I want to make it clear that I don’t want any of you to unsubscribe to this Substack. I’d love you all to stay and for you to be joined by your friends here. It’s just that two things have happened to me over the last couple of years that have distanced me from some of my subscribers: I lost faith in British politics to correct itself before something drastic happens, and I lost faith in the ability for the UK to rejoin the European Union any time soon. The two factors are not entirely unrelated.

On the latter: some of you who have subscribed for years will know that as late as early 2024, I still insisted that the UK could rejoin the EU in a short time span, maybe less than five years. I thought that public disaffection about Brexit would inevitably be seized upon by a significant section of the British political class. To say that hasn’t happened would be a monumental understatement, along the lines of “World War One was problematic in several ways”. There are many reasons for this, but I have written about this subject before, at length if you’re interested, and so I’m not writing about it here, again.

Hell, I’ve just spent more than a year and a half researching the Reform party, talking to their activists and candidates, trying to get under the skin of what the whole thing is about, and even a lot of them don’t like Brexit. There is such a widespread dislike of Brexit and how it has turned out, across the political spectrum in Britain. It wouldn’t take a genius to work out how to turn that energy into a way back into the EU over the next few years. Yet the current political class in Britain is not only lacking geniuses, it is mostly free from competence. Don’t believe me, or think I’m being bitter, or at least unnecessarily harsh? Several people I know from first-hand experience are completely and utterly useless have got SpAd jobs in the Burnham government. You know, the government so many of you are hoping will be miraculously good and save the country somehow.

Anyway, what does any of this have to do with Latvia? It’s where I am at the moment. Not for any politically intriguing reason, I hasten to add: I’m simply here on a family holiday. In Riga, the capital, at least for now. We picked it for several reasons, one of which is that it’s about five to seven degrees colder here than in London, and we wanted to get away from the heat.

Several first impressions of Latvia to recount. First off, the country is lovely and Riga is a fantastic city. It’s got an interesting history and culture, and it displays those things well within the capital. The city is remarkably clean and safe. Driving here is, how shall I put this, idiosyncratic. I don’t mean that as code for “Latvians drive like maniacs” - in fact, they are very sane drivers from what I’ve seen so far. No, I just mean the way they lay out traffic signs and the streets themselves take a little getting used to. They also really love one way systems - not just in Riga, but everywhere I’ve been in Latvia so far. And I do mean love them: most of the streets seem to be one way only in places.

One other thing to mention: Riga feels expensive. Not more expensive than London per se; probably on equal footing, price wise. Now, younger readers may find this hard to believe, but it wasn’t that long ago that travelling anywhere in continental Europe, apart from the Nordic countries, and particularly within former Eastern Bloc, felt cheap - and sometimes, remarkably cheap. Even ten years ago, I would have expected to come to somewhere like Riga, Latvia and feel somewhat rich. No longer.

That is the consequence of two factors merging with each other. The first is that the economies of the former Second World have grown substantially over the last two decades, and particularly over the last ten years. This is mostly down to two things: one, these countries joining the European Union, and specifically, the European Single Market; two, most of them running with fairly right-leaning, free market economic policies that have sought to take further advantage of the market access EU membership brings. In Britain, because of the bizarre politics of Brexit, almost no one wants to admit that both of those things are behind the growth of eastern economies: if you’re on the right, it was the Hayekian economic policy that did it, nothing to do with the EU; if you’re on the left, it was all down to EU membership, with capitalism deserving no credit.

This growth of eastern economies has merged with the other factor, namely that Britain’s economy has flat lined since the 2008 financial crash. And flat lining has meant, in real terms, that Britain has become substantially poorer in a global sense. At the time of the crash, America and Britain had a very similar GDP per capita. Now, the US is almost twice as rich per person as compared to those in the UK. The reason Latvia feels as expensive as Britain is because it is: wages are catching up between the two countries now, particularly when you take London out of the equation.

I used to travel to New York regularly in the 2000s as part of my job at the time (so much so, I even had at one point a NYLON relationship with a woman). New York felt cheap to me back then - everything seemed to be about half as expensive as London. Now, going to New York feels like going to a different economic planet. Or, more prosaically, it feels like how a Latvian must have felt coming to London in 2014.

I am happy for the Eastern Bloc countries - particularly ex-Soviet ones like Latvia - growing the way that they are. After the hardship these nations faced for a very long period, some good times are long overdue for them. But the numbers are startling from a British perspective. GDP per capita in Latvia now is around $30,000. In 2006, it was $13,000. British GDP per capita is now around $58,000, which sounds really good, until you realise that our GDP per capita at the time of the crash was about $50,000.

So, while former Eastern Bloc countries are still technically less wealthy that the UK, they have grown substantially over the last decade, while Britain has, in real terms, declined. That is key to how Latvia feels as compared to the United Kingdom. If your economy is visibly growing, that makes your culture positive; people feel like things are going to get better rather than worse, and they also feel like working hard pays off. In Britain, things are getting worse, and most people believe they will get even more so. This is why politics in the UK seems so intractable now; that negative feeling can take over everything.

Yes, part of Britain’s troubles are down to Brexit, particularly how badly it was handled by the Tories when we left. But there are so many other problems we have to deal with - and would have to deal with, even if we were still EU members. In fact, part of the way we might rejoin the EU is by Europhiles admitting that’s true and then trying to work on solutions that involved both fixing the problems the country faces while rejoining the European Union. And sadly, that feels a very long way away from happening.

Yesterday was the official start of Burnham’s premiership. His first order of business was assembling his cabinet. After weeks of speculation from the media on this front, it was interesting to see who our new prime minister picked to help him run the country. First, there was the slew of resignations: Rachel Reeves, David Lammy, Steve Reid, Peter Kyle, Lord Hermer, Liz Kendall, Hilary Benn, Darren Jones, all Labour big beasts, all of them returning to the backbenches. Worth saying here that Burnham created some powerful enemies on his first day in the office with that list; this may well tell further down the road for him. He also pissed off the left, which he clearly felt he had to, but I will expand on that in a bit.

There are positives to say about the cabinet Burnham chose, mostly because it could have been so much worse. He didn’t pick Ed Miliband to be his chancellor, something that would have been a fatal error. That would have been Burnham’s “Suella Braverman as Home Secretary for the umpteenth time” moment, where you knew he was 100% doomed to fail. He avoided that, which is to Burnham’s credit. John Healy as chancellor isn’t a bad pick when you consider it could have Miliband or Cooper. Or would have involved moving Shabana Mahmood out of the Home Office, which would have been a terrible idea.

Jonathan Reynolds as Business Secretary makes sense. Lucy Powell as education secrtary will be more of the same middling soft-left rubbish as we had with Phillipson, but again, it could have been so much worse. That’s the basic message from yesterday: this could have been so much worse. That does not mean it is good, I hasten to add.

Do I see this Burnham government coming good and delivering enough change to win the next general election? No, I do not. But I feel less negative about it than I did on the weekend, which is something. Burnham has given himself a chance by assembling a half-decent under the circumstances cabinet that probably won’t blow up in his face in a fortnight, which counts as a half-decent start.

It is worth pointing out the weak spots from yesterday’s appointments before moving on to the bigger picture, however. Wes Streeting as defence secretary is faintly ridiculous. It feels like a punishment move by Burnham, one that is in very poor taste given how important this position is in the current international climate. Rayner as housing secretary feels like a joke. Miatta Fahnbulleh as energy secretary means that we will have continuation Miliband in that department, which is unfortunate to say the least.

As mentioned above, Burnham has created a problem for himself with the left already. The left are fond of backing Labour leaders until said leader does something to annoy them, which is inevitable. The British left is the epitome of a group of people who are never happy. There was no way he could have made Miliband chancellor, but it is worth pointing out that many on the left will be crushed by him not doing so. They will also be enraged at Mahmood remaining Home Secretary.

This might all be fine if Burnham was showing signs of following a strategy that would let him eat into the northern and Midlands seats Labour are currently likely to lose to Reform at the next election - but I don’t see that. It will take a lot more than “I like the Stone Roses” to win back the large sections of the country Labour have lost under Starmer’s two-year premiership. His first move, the VAT removal on energy bills, is pretty thin gruel. Yes, I should be patient and see what he comes up with up to and including Labour’s conference in September, but the stuff Burnham has talked about since he became heir apparent has been uninspiring, and that initial policy feels like more of the same.

In summary, I give Burnham credit for not stumbling out of the blocks, which I will admit I thought likely to happen. But there is a long way to go before a Bunrham premiership feels like something that has a real chance at success.

Adjacent to what I’m about to write about, above is a video I made about why I think Reform and the Greens will be one and two in the polls by the end of 2026. The video focuses on all aspects of British politics that I think gets us to that point by Christmas; this article will strictly address why I don’t think Burnham as prime minister will work out in the way his supporters believe it will.

I have been very down on the prospects of Burnham’s premiership being any good, on here and on social media more generally. People have asked why I feel that way and further, have asked for substantial evidence of why I feel that way. I will attempt to do my best here to back up why I have this feeling about Burnham.

Pretty much everything Burnham has said or done since he became the heir apparent, shortly after winning the Makerfield by-election, has given me a bad feeling about him. Here are what I think are the highlights:

1. Putting out that statement on Gaza, essentially apologising for Starmer’s position on the war, was a real own goal. It resulted in what anyone with a pulse could have predicted: it annoyed the left, who felt it did not go far enough, while upsetting everyone else who felt he was inching back into Corbyn territory on foreign affairs. Again, he was under no pressure to say anything about it at all.

2. Holding his first big interview since it being confirmed he would be our next prime minister with Gary Lineker. Look, I like Lineker, even though I disagree with him on Israel-Palestine and feel like he went overboard on the issue, but there is no way Burnham should have done that. He should have either avoided any media at all pre-appointment, or talked to a serious political journalist, like Andrew Neil or at least Cathy Newman. Doing the interview with Lineker made Burham feel lightweight, which is a real issue for him as I think that feeling of him being a lightweight is probably his Achilles heel.

3. The general briefing that seems to be going on behind the scenes is bad, revealing both how tenuous Burnham’s grasp on the party really is, as well as how his indecisiveness is hurting him even before his premiership truly begins. Allowing the speculation on who is getting which job in the cabinet has been chaotic.

4. Hiring an ex-Hope Not Hate director as his strategy chief! This gives you such insight into where Burnham is going to go wrong. He’s a creature of the Labour machine and struggles to see beyond it. This appointment is the essence of that.

I could go on and on because, as I said, everything Burnham has done since the Makerfield by-election, and I do mean absolutely everything, has been a poor move. In a sense, Burnham is Starmer with better presentational skills. And not even that much better presentational skills at that.

But weirdly, I don’t think this goes far enough in talking about Burnham’s faults. For I think Starmer was in many ways a much better politician than Burnham has ever shown himself to be. After the Hartlepool by-election, Starmer was impressive in reshuffling his cabinet to make the party more electable. He was ruthless in kicking Corbyn out of the party, knowing he needed a big thing to demonstrate to the country that Labour had really changed (this is something Kemi Badenoch has not yet realised she needs to do and no, removing the whip from Gavin Barwell is not going to cut it).

I don’t see evidence that Burnham has the ability to do anything like those two things. In fact, he seems likely to try and pander to every wing of the Labour party, getting constantly stuck in dead ends as a result. That’s what he’s showing us now. Okay, maybe he gets better, settles into the job a bit. But he has no time to get things wrong whatseover. The Autumn Budget will be upon him faster than he thinks and that has every possibility of derailing his government, mere weeks into its existence.

Look, for the sake of the country, I hope I’m wrong about this. I hope Bunrham is transformational as a prime minister, because God knows, that’s what we desperately need right now. I just don’t see any evidence that is going to happen - in fact, all the proof we have points the other way.

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The video above outlines the three scenarios that I think Farage faces in light of him calling the Clacton by-election and the other major parties refusing to stand in said contest. Please watch, if this is of interest to you. Also, check out my forthcoming book, “The Rise of Reform”, which details this political rollercoaster we’re all following and that you can pre-order here.

It is not often that I agree with Owen Jones, but last night was a big exception. Yesterday evening, OJ put out a post on X saying that he felt the Greens should stand in the Clacton by-election. He said: “The Greens should stand against Nigel Farage in Clacton. They’re the only major party willing to take on the substance of Farage. The other parties built up Farage by copying his toxic agenda. The Greens should use the by-election as a national platform to make that case.”

He’s right on the point of substance. And the Greens have defied him and announced that they will not be standing a candidate in the by-election. This is a mistake by the Greens, one that I think demonstrates their lack of intent as a party. Clacton was a huge opportunity spurned for the Green Party.

I know why some of you will say, “Of course the Greens aren’t standing, it would have been stupid of them to have done so.” You are saying this most likely because you aren’t yourself a real Green supporter. You might vote for them if they were the best placed “progressive” candidate in your area, but you aren’t fussed, so long as Reform doesn’t win. You probably think on some level that the Greens owed it to the “progressive alliance” not to stand in Clacton.

Let me tell you something: the progressive alliance is a fantasy. It does not exist, except in the minds of a certain set of mostly middle-class people of the left. The Labour Party certainly doesn’t buy into the idea in any meaningful sense. They want the other parties of the left to dance to their tune and stay in line - which is exactly what the Greens have done in Clacton. “Standing in Clacton will just legitimise Farage. The Greens need to do what’s right for the progressive rainbow coalition,” I can hear some of you say.

By not standing in the Clacton by-election, the Greens have spurned the chance to do two big things. One is that they could have got themselves acres of media time and space over this summer, space that will no longer be available to them. The second is that getting to have a Reform versus Greens by-election was perfect for the narrative the Greens supposedly want to establish, that the old two party system is dead. They could have said that the Greens are the only ones truly standing in the way of a Reform government. That, as you can see in Clacton, the Greens are the only party willing to stand up to Farage.

They also could have, if they’d run a great campaign, got over 40% of the vote in Clacton and really put the chills up Farage and Reform. But no, they couldn’t upset their progressive alliance friends who were all begging them to stand aside. It shows how unserious they are in their mission to overtake the Labour Party as the main centre-left party in Britain. This was a one in a thousand shot at establishing that narrative and they totally blew it.

Yes, the Greens not standing in Clacton makes life more difficult for Nigel Farage. But not much more difficult. Imagine for a second if the Greens had a really great by-election campaign and managed to galvanise the anti-Farage vote to a degree that they actually won the contest. That would have been massive for the Greens and catapulted them into the stratosphere. And this result was not beyond imaging, not at all.

The Greens have shown that when push comes to shove, they won’t risk pissing off the Labour Party. That is why they almost certainly will not replace Labour as the main centre-left party in Britain any time soon. At some point, they had to fly in the face of what Labour wanted. Clacton was the perfect opportunity and now it’s gone.

It is obviously difficult to say how Burnham will perform as PM, at least in the abstract. I mean, there is a chance, however slim, that he will turn the British economy and political culture around almost entirely, become wildly popular in the process and then win a huge majority at the next general election. I concede that, yes, this is technically possible. Having said that, it’s tricky to see how he does this given three important things: one, the times we live in and how difficult it is for anyone to govern; two, Burnham’s own history and evident character, which does not suggest he’s cut out for this challenge; and three, the assumptions which drive the current Labour Party, almost all of which are incorrect.

Let’s deal with each of those factors separately. So, first off, the times we live in. Yes, it is very difficult to govern and people have huge expectations of their elected officials and no patience for non-delivery of said expectations. Burnham also inherits a mess from Starmer; a government that has done almost nothing for two years. This means it would be extremely difficult for anyone to be prime minister right now.

Turning to Burnham specifically, I just don’t think he’s up for breaking our run of terrible prime ministers stretching back to the EU referendum. Yes, he’s a much better communicator than Keir Starmer (which isn’t difficult, to be fair). He’s much more likeable than Starmer on a basic, human level. Yet it is worth remembering that he was a fairly mediocre minister, bouncing between three departments within a three year span of Brown’s government. Burnham left parliament in 2017 for what was a fairly cushy job as mayor of Manchester. People have marvelled at how the mayoral system has nurtured some big political stars since it was created, but I’m not surprised in the least that this has happened. It’s a job where you have a large staff, not a massive amount of stress for such a big political job, and you constantly get to spend other people’s money. It’s difficult to screw up, in other words.

I could go on about what I think Burnham’s shortcomings as a politician are, but it seems needless given the third and final reason I see him succeeding as PM is such a strong one. It comes down to the party he is in and loves so dearly. Labour is deeply wrong, about pretty much everything these days.

There is talk of Streeting becoming chancellor of the exchequer. One of his big ideas is to equalise capital gains tax and income tax so that they are the same. This sounds great to unthinking socialists. By making them equal, that would be so much more tax revenue, they believe. And why should people who invest pay less tax than people who work for a living? That doesn’t seem fair, they conclude. Of course, it’s a monumentally terrible idea that will have a deleterious effect on the economy. And Streeting is supposedly on the right of the Labour Party.

Equalising captial gains taxes takes away a large incentive to invest. If your return is going to be the same as income tax, which is already massively high for big earners, then what is the point of taking the risk. If no one invests, new businesses don’t get created and we end up with much fewer jobs as a result.

It is a great example of how the Labour Party is wrong about everything and why. Labour just thinks in terms of “How do we get more money, from either taxes or borrowing, to keep this dysfunctional, welfare dependent state going?” They cannot see outside of this equation. They cannot see that the benefits system is dysfunctional and bloated, or that throwing money at the NHS doesn’t work as planned. I don’t believe Andy Burnham has the ability see outside of this and even if I did, I know almost no one in his cabinet will be able to see outside of this way of looking at the world.

In summary, Burnham will be left with the same problems Starmer faced, and the exact same PLP with which to try and solve the problems. To my mind, that has him stuffed from day one of his premiership. However good he is as a communicator. I feel fairly certain that Burnham will fail; that he will disappoint current supporters on the left, centre-left and right of the Labour Party. He will because he’s trapped by circumstance. No matter how much better on social media Burnham will be than Starmer - and he will be exponentially better at that part of the job - he is becoming prime minister in the set of circumstances that he is, and that’s what will do for him, I’m afraid.

P.S. - those hoping that Burnham leads us back to the EU or to a proportional voting system for the House of Commons are very, very likely fooling themselves.

As most of you know already, I have a book coming out in September called “The Rise of Reform: The inside story of Britain’s political disruptors”. It follows a year and a half of me interviewing Reform MPs and donors but also, more interestingly in my opinion, hundreds of Reform activists and candidates across Great Britain. The research at least gave me a good idea of what makes them tick, their strengths and weaknesses on the ground, and why so many people have gravitated towards them since the 2024 general election. Anyhow, you can pre-order the book here.

I thought what might be good is to talk about that latter point, why so many people are joining, standing for, or voting for Reform. I am aiming this at my core audience, most of whom are anti-Reform. I think there is a disconnect within the liberal, pro-European community in Britain on what the appeal of the Reform Party is. They understandably recoil from the whole thing, describing it as racist and/or fascist in nature, with befuddlement as to how anyone could be “taken in by Farage”. I will try and go over the basics of why Reform appeals to so many voters in this article.

For one, you need to take a step back and see how most people in the UK, particularly those who do not pay insane attention to every last occurrence in British politics, see the current political situation. This is particularly true of voters who live outside of London, even more so if they live in a non-affluent part of the country.

They see a decade at least of total and utter failure by the Tories, with Liz Truss and Boris Johnson standing out in particular as terrible, followed by the utter failure of Starmer’s government. Perhaps you quibble with this account, but this is how most British voters see it. So much of Reform’s appeal is “We gave the Tories and Labour a go, they failed miserably, why not give Farage a go?”

So many of you will now say, “But Farage was the guy who sold us Brexit more than anyone else did. Surely if people feel angry at the way things have gone over the last decade, then Farage should get the lion’s share of the blame, right?” That may be the way you see, but that simply isn’t the way most of the country sees it. Very few people are happy with the way Brexit has gone, that is true. But people who feel like we shouldn’t have left the EU mostly don’t vote for Reform and are more angry at the Tories anyhow - they called the referendum and then got us our current shitty deal with the EU, so that is understandable - and so that doesn’t materially hurt Farage. As for people who are disappointed by Brexit but feel that’s because we didn’t get “real Brexit”, or that Brexit was at least done badly, these are Farage’s core people - and there are loads of them across the country. They look at Brexit’s failure and think, “Of course Brexit didn’t work, we had the Tories in charge and they didn’t believe in it. Brexit would work with Nigel in charge.” It’s another take on “Why not give Farage a go?”

Now, as long time readers know, I do not agree with this assessment of our current predicament. I don’t think Brexit was done incorrectly, or that we didn’t get a “real Brexit” - I just think Brexit was a bad idea and was never going to turn out the way its cheerleaders said it would. But I also get why those who think “Brexit would work with Nigel in charge” arrive at that conclusion, even if I don’t agree with it. If you look at the current political situation, across all of the political parties, it is strangely the take that makes the most objective sense, at least if you don’t look any deeper into the issues. That’s because the Labour Party, the Tories, the Lib Dems, the Greens, basically everyone in British politics essentially agrees with the “Brexit would work with Nigel in charge” narrative, at least in practice. They unconsciously support it every single day.

Labour do so by saying that we should never rejoin, not only the EU but the single market or the customs union as well. You cannot say “Brexit is responsible for the mess we are in, but we won’t do anything about that, sorry, we are stuck where we are forever.” It makes you look weak and stupid, which is one of the major reasons why Starmer and his government looks weak and stupid. Labour are propping up the “Farage = Brexit’s salvation” equation, held by so many people in Britain, in exactly this way. After all, if Brexit is irreversible and Labour have no ideas on how to make it work (and in fact say it was a terrible error), then why not give someone who always believed in Brexit a chance to make it work?

The Tories prop up the Farage narrative unconsciously by having a strategy that is essentially “Farage is basically right about everything, you just need us boring people to carry out what he wants to do instead of Farage and his mates”. And this is a very, very, very weak strategy that has not shown any sign of working so far. The Tories in fact gained the few seats they did at the 2026 local elections in England in spite of this strategy.

The Lib Dems support the Farage Brexit narrative by saying that Brexit is irreversible, at least for now, and all we can do is try and minimally restrict the damage that is does by reverting to something every Remainer thought was a terrible, unacceptable compromise back in 2019 (Theresa May’s Brexit). Again, if we have to be outside the EU for some reason, and every single political party in Britain agrees with this idea, then why not have someone take charge of it who really believes in it?

If no political party can make the case for at least rejoining the single market - and no nationwide party is making this case, just to be clear - that means fighting against Farage’s narrative is totally impossible. You cannot say he is not fit to run the country because of some terrible thing that you yourself do not want to change in any material way. That simply makes no sense.

There are many reasons why people are voting Reform, some of them more complicated than others. But the “Farage = Brexit salvation” one I think is core to the whole thing. Again, if you want to read more about this, I go into great detail in the book, which you can pre-order here.

Given the Lib Dems and the Tories are almost certainly nailed on to lose their deposits, both polling at around one or two percent in the constituency, they seemed superfluous. But what did I take away from everyone’s performance last night? And how do I think it will ultimately affect the by-election result?

I’ll start with the Green candidate, Sarah Wakefield. Now, I really dislike the Greens’ politics and I disagreed with pretty much everything Wakefield said last night. But I thought she did perform well. Politics is about reaching your potential audience, and I don’t see how Wakefield could have done any better with the platform she was given. She got in a few good lines here and there and gathered some decent moments to clip. She also got to argue with Kenyon, which must have been one of her prime goals coming into last night.

The Tories and Lib Dem chaps were utterly forgettable, sorry to say. I mean, they were pretty much making up the numbers and are both essentially paper candidates, so I suppose they performed as well I could have expected.

Then we come to the main two challengers. Either Andy Burnham or Robert Kenyon will be the MP for Makerfield come June 19th, and everyone knows it. Therefore, the performances of those two were the ones to watch.

Burnham was, well, Burnham. He was fine but nothing more. He was polished but unexciting. I still don’t really understand his campaigning strategy, but I sort of get the sense that neither does he. I guess I should add here that I have never been privy to the magical spell Andy Burnham seems to cast over certain sections of the centre-left in Britain. I’ve always thought him competent but unexciting, fairly cynical in his political choices. Solid enough, the kind of guy who would probably run a department like Transport well, but certainly not a visionary of any description. And, Burnham’s performance was exactly that, solid but nothing to get excited about.

Where my most controversial comments will come is in what is to follow, namely my breakdown on how I thought Robert Kenyon performed. Some of you will no doubt think that because I have a book on Reform coming out, I’m inclined to give him an easy ride. But I promise, I am being as objective as possible here.

I can see Kenyon’s performance from a liberal-left perspective. And yes, from that vantage point, it was a car crash from the Reform candidate. He wasn’t polished, and he was clearly trying to remember his lines at different stages. Yet go back to what I said about the Green candidate’s performance: what’s important in politics is to reach your target audience. I said in my appraisal of Burnham above that I still don’t really understand Burnham’s campaigning strategy, but I completely get Kenyon’s. Lean hard on the “normal bloke, not a career politician” shtick, with the intent being to have him seem like the rebellious outsider to Burnham’s establishment hackery. Reform knows they have to squeeze both the Restore and the Tory votes hard, and that was the clear focus of Kenyon’s pitch last night. As such - from his and his party’s perspectives - it was a success for him, I believe.

Further, I think the reactions from the left and the centrists has been interesting. By being so snobbish about Kenyon (like when he is referred to as a plumber in unmistakably pejorative tones), I think they are making Reform’s point for them. Believe me, the stuff the left and centre go on about regarding Kenyon - his lack of political experience, his working class blokeishness, his colourful social media past - will not be seen as negatives by his target audience in Makerfield. Most won’t care at all and to some of them, all of those things could be seen as positives.

I guess what I’m saying here is that the reaction to Kenyon’s campaign and performance last night has once again demonstrated that the left and centre have yet to learn some very important lessons. I think a lot of you reading this are certain that Andy Burnham is going to win the Makerfield by-election and cannot in fact fathom Reform doing so instead. While Burnham is certainly the deserved favourite, it would not shock me at all if Kenyon won on June 18th.

If you like this topic, it’s one I explore in deeper depth in my upcoming book, The Rise of Reform: The inside story of Britain’s political disruptors. You can pre-order it here. Think of what follows here as an update to what’s in the book on Restore in light of recent events. Of which, regarding Rupert Lowe’s ragtag team of misfits, there have been plenty.

The by-election in Makerfield, engineered by portions of the Labour Party to provide a path to Number 10 for Andy Burnham, has provided an unexpected opportunity for Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain Party. Restore are an odd thing. It was a sort amorphous NGO for a while, described as an umbrella organisation for people who didn’t think Reform was right-wing enough, including several Tories as board members. It is now officially a political party, but has only been one for a matter of weeks (they were deemed registered as a real party at the end of March 2026). In the local elections, Lowe ran his candidates not under the Restore banner, but as members of “Great Yarmouth First”, a party that only exists in one tiny part of Norfolk.

Yet now they are being openly supported by Elon Musk and seem to have caught the attention of the wider MAGA crowd in America. This has led to speculation that Restore could do well enough in Makerfield to deny Reform a victory, with some even going as far as to posit that Restore could win the bloody thing (editor’s note: they won’t win the by-election).

Given what’s at stake here, which some see as the very ongoing existence of the Labour Party, now apparently reliant on the political talent of Andy Burnham to simply survive, the cheerleading for Reform has created some unnatural bedfellows. Left-wing commentators and left-leaning media outlets have jumped all over the “Could Restore do better than expected?” bandwagon with astonishing aplomb. Given that they are always going on about how Nigel Farage is Hitler reincarnate and Lowe and his bunch are significantly to the right of Farage, particularly in all the ways that should leave progressives terrified, this seems strange. But I would point out that expecting ideological consistency of the left at present is a fool’s game.

It’s like the left thinks that if Restore does well in Makerfield, then they will simply disappear into the ether afterwards. As if Restore breaking through wouldn’t be a terrible thing, at least if you are in any way liberal. I suppose their hatred of Farage just does run that deep. And it’s clearly personal as well, given Lowe’s politics.

In fairness to the lefties, I don’t think Makerfield will lead to a significant change in Restore Britain’s fortunes, whatever happens. If they do poorly, losing their deposit (which I still feel is likely), then it will demonstrate that they do not have the means to becoming a true electoral threat to anyone, at least within this parliament. Yet if they do well, particularly if Burnham wins, they will be seen to have split the right vote at the worst possible time, when vanquishing the Labour Party, possibly for good, was at hand. So, basically, short of miraculously winning the Makerfield by-election, all outcomes for Restore are bad ones.

If Lowe is serious about building Restore into a right-wing alternative to Reform, the already existing right-wing alternative, then he is probably going to have to spend another decade at least digging away at it. Perhaps if there is a Reform government after the next general election and they disappoint everyone, then that might be Restore’s moment to shine. Even then, it will be difficult for Lowe, regardless of how much Elon Musk goes on about how great he is. It is not clear that he will have the means to take on the Tories and Labour, never mind Reform UK. Most people in Britain still don’t even know who Rupert Lowe is, never mind have a strong opinion about him. Sure, being an MP already is helpful to his cause, and he seems pretty entrenched in his seat, but that means he can continue being a one man band for as long as he fancies it, nothing more than that.

As I say, more on this in my book The Rise of Reform: The inside story of Britain’s political disruptors. You can pre-order it here.

I know there will be a lot of people reading this who will be cheering for Andy Burnham to win the Makerfield by-election, which takes place on June 18th. Some will see him as the man who will take Britain back into the EU (which I don’t see myself); for many others, it’s simply that he’s up against Reform. If their thoughts go further than that, it’s around the hope that Burnham could replace Starmer as prime minister and from there, possibly save the Labour Party. Many of you don’t care specifically about the Labour Party so much as you hope Labour are in decent enough shape to beat Reform at the next general election. Or at least, keep Reform at bay so some sort of rainbow coalition can take charge.

However, if I had to place a bet on the by-election today, it would be for Reform. Like 55-45, so a very close run thing, but that’s what I think. I believe the Burnham factor has been overhyped when looking at the constituency. Don’t get me wrong, I feel certain that Burnham will do better than any other Labour candidate possibly could - I would be 99% sure of a Reform victory, if it was anyone else standing - but I don’t buy just yet that it will be enough to overcome Reform’s structural advantage in the seat.

But that’s not really what I want to talk about. For I think that even if Burnham wins the by-election and becomes prime minister, I think that Labour will still be doomed to lose at least the next general election, if not the rest of the general elections that will be held for the remainder of your lifetime.

There are several reasons I think this. One is that Burnham has been massively overhyped over the last six months to a year. Somehow, he became this king over the water, the saviour of the left, for not much other reason than he was the best person available at the time. I don’t think Burnham is that great, in other words, and I believe his limitations would show up fast if he became PM.

The other is that I think that even with a very good leader in place instead of Starmer, I believe the damage has been done for Labour already. They have lost too much of the working-class for good, across huge swathes of the country where they would need those votes to stand any chance of winning a general election. I also don’t believe Burnham would make the Green surge go away. Sure, he would get a honeymoon period in which the Green polling numbers would go down and Labour’s would go up accordingly, but that wouldn’t last very long at all. As soon as Burnham did anything the left doesn’t like, and that would happen within weeks of him entering Number 10, the Green numbers would surge again.

If Starmer stays in Downing Street, Labour are totally doomed. They would absolutely lose the next general election with Starmer as leader, very badly in fact, probably going down to fewer than 100 seats. If Burnham loses the by-election and they get either Rayner or Miliband in as Starmer’s replacement, I think an even greater level of cratering of the Labour vote could occur (I don’t believe that Wes Streeting has any viable way to Downing Street, so I won’t even talk about the ramifications of a possible Streeting premiership).

Burnham becoming leader is almost certainly Labour’s best chance of turning things around. But I just don’t believe it is much of a chance, really. I think Burnham gets caught in the same traps as have snared Starmer, if he becomes PM: a parliamentary Labour Party that is hopelessly divided and doesn’t want to do anything even vaguely centre-right flavoured, that urge to do something radically socialist which a), won’t work and b). will be wildly unpopular is a greater risk for Burnham than it has been under Starmer. I am trying to envision a way a Burnham premiership goes really well, bringing Labour back from the brink to win the next election, but I genuinely can’t see it.

I know many of you don’t want to hear this, but I think it’s true: the Labour Party is hopelessly doomed, regardless of what they do from here.

Before I begin, I have a book coming out in September called “The Rise of Reform”. It is about what has happened with the Reform Party over the last couple of years, and how they have got to where they are now. It features interviews with Reform MPs and dozens and dozens of Reform activists. You can pre-order it here.

There are many things to talk about regarding the set of elections that were held Thursday last week. For instance, I could discuss what it means now that we have nationalist parties in control in both Scotland and Wales. I could go into the wider ramifications of the Labour collapse and what it means for the future of the British left. I could also just talk about why I think Reform did so well.

However, what has been sticking in my brain since Friday evening has been how the Conservative party managed to do, and more specifically, how Kemi and other members of her party have responded to that set of results since they became clear. Somehow to me, that’s the most interesting thing.

First off, the reaction from Kemi Badenoch has been, well, I can’t sugar coat this, batshit mental. ‘ The Conservatives are coming back,’ she said, hailing the whole thing as a “great success” for the Tories. To say that this is a delusional take is an insult to the whole concept of delusion. Again, to stress, this is an absolutely unhinged, mad raving loony take on what had just happened.

To illustrate this, I will dive into just how bad the results were for the Conservative party on Thursday in raw, numerical terms. They actually did worse than you even think they did.

The Tories started off the day defending 1,134 seats across England. In the end, they won 230 extra councillors, almost all of them in London, but with a few scattered around the south of England more generally (I can’t confirm 100% yet, I need more time with the data, but I haven’t found a seat they managed to capture north of Watford yet, as in, a ward they didn’t have before Thursday). This was offset by the fact that they lost an astounding 793 seats, which is an eye watering 70% of the seats they were defending. All for a net loss of 563 wards.

To put this in perspective, Labour lost “only” around half the seats they were defending. Or course, they lost a lot more than the Tories did, but given Labour are in government, they have half (or at least a quarter of) an excuse for the poor performance. For the Tories to net lose more than 500 seats in a set of local elections during which Labour lost almost 1,500 is completely unprecedented, as in, this has genuinely never happened before, and suggests the Conservative party is in existential peril of a profound kind.

That’s before we get to the fact that most of the Tory gains were in places where the Labour vote collapsed and there was no Reform threat (thus, London). Or we get to the fact that the Tories came fourth in Wales and fifth in Scotland. I’m tempted to say that the Conservatives have basically become a party like the Lib Dems, in that they have pockets of support throughout the country and that’s it, generally randomly distributed, but I actually think that’s unfair to the Liberal Democrats. At least the Lib Dems are making headway in this new political terrain and their fortresses are relatively solid. The Tories are not only slipping backwards at alarming speed, they are convincing themselves that they are on their way back up while it’s happening. If they at least came to grips with the peril they are in, they might be able to find a way out. But they don’t even realise that they are sinking, fast.

In summary, Thursday was terrible for Labour and great for the Reform Party, whatever the media might want to tell you otherwise. Yet I think the thing political historians might look back on with the most interest in 50 years time when looking at this set of elections is how the Conservative party got utterly decimated and then somehow convinced themselves that it was a “great success”.

First off, above is a video on a completely different topic to what this article covers (it’s about woke in relation to Marxism), but I thought I’d put it here just in case anyone was interested. Please, have a quick look.

I thought a lot about whether to write this piece or not, given my history with the Lib Dems. I have often got things wrong about the party, mostly through being too close to it. You see, I was once a Lib Dem member (more than ten years ago now, but still) and even was the Executive Director of a Lib Dem adjacent think tank. A lot of Lib Dems really don’t like me any longer because I said some mean things about them in the Spectator a while back. I don’t blame them, really, that’s just how political tribal loyalties go.

Anyhow, I decided to write this because in amongst all of the predictions about how the local elections are going to go next week, how the Lib Dems will fare has barely been discussed anywhere apart from blogs from Lib Dems themselves. All of the headlines have been about how Labour will be destroyed, Reform will do incredibly well, the Greens will gain a huge number of seats, and the Tories look to do either very poorly or disastrously badly outside of their remaining bastions of support, most of which are, ironically enough, in London these days.

Most of the predictions for how the Lib Dems will do see them performing, by any objective standard given the shape of British politics now, fairly poorly. A lot of the predictions have the Lib Dems only gaining less than a hundred seats nationwide, and some of the worst ones for the party have the Liberal Democrats actually losing seats overall.

I am not here to make a prediction on how well the Lib Dems will do. But I do know that if the Liberal Democrats really underperform to the levels indicated by the predictions, then they will have to take a long look in the mirror and think about their next steps. Because I think that level of underperformance, at an election where Labour will be looking to lose almost 2,000 seats and the Tories could lose up to 1,000, will be a major inditement of Ed Davey’s “let’s just do stunts and be the party for people who eat at Gail’s” strategy.

Whatever one thinks about Reform and the Greens, everyone who pays any attention to British politics knows what each of them are about. One can say that a lot of it is vibes based as opposed to policy based, but that is just politics in 2026. The Lib Dems did well at the last election by being a place for disaffected Tories and natural Labour voters in Lib-Tory swing seats. The Lib Dems were seen as a safe haven for a certain type of voter, one who just happened to live in areas that were conducive to the Lib Dems wracking up constituencies under First Past the Post.

I don’t think the Lib Dems can play this trick any longer, mostly because politics has changed around them over the last two years. I think they have to be about more than just “We don’t like Trump and Reform, but we aren’t as loopy as the Greens”. I just think the space for what they managed in July 2024 is evaporating around them, fast. How they do on May 7th will tell us a lot about whether I’m correct about this or not.

If the Lib Dems do have to become something more than they are, what should they become? I think there are two choices, one of which I would like and agree with, and the other is what I think the Lib Dems would feel a lot more comfortable becoming.

The first is that the party becomes a pro-European centre-right party. They try and loop in disaffected Tories with an economically right-leaning agenda, while campaigning openly to rejoin the EU. So, this would mean the Lib Dems go more right on the economy and more “left” on Europe.

The other is that they really try and eat into the Green vote assuming that it is not on stable ground and in fact, an implosion of the Polanski surge is impending. While I’d prefer the pro-EU centre-right strategy, and it would get me seriously interested in the party again, I think they would probably want to go more explicitly leftist to knock out the Greens. It’s where the activist base seems to be.

That wouldn’t be a party for me, but I do admit that it might possibly work for the Lib Dems. All I do know for certain is that the Lib Dems will probably have to go one way or the other after May 7th. Standing in the middle of the road isn’t going to work for them any longer.

As most long-time readers will know, I have a book coming out in September called “The Rise of Reform”, one which uncovers a great deal about Farage’s party that many people will not know. It features exclusive interviews with the big players in the Reform Party, but more crucially, lots of conversations had with not only Reform people on the ground but local folks talking about how they feel about Reform on the doorstep. You can pre-order the book here.

You can also click on the picture above to see a video in which I discuss the May elections in more depth than I cover here. This article is really about Reform in Wales and more specifically, in North Wales.

An MRP poll for Wales dropped over the weekend, done by the polling company, More in Common. It has Plaid Cymru on 30 seats (out of 96, to remind you), Reform on 28, Labour on 24, Tories on 7, Greens on 4, Lib Dems on 3. The first thing to say about this is that the Labour number seems very high to me. Particularly given one of the constituencies, Flint Wrexham (or Fflint Wrecsam in Welsh) has Labour getting two seats, with one each for the Tories, Reform, Greens and Plaid. I say particularly because I was on the ground over this past weekend in that very constituency and that seems wildly out of step with what I found on the ground.

I was with some Reform campaigners at one point, them going door to door to canvass. Depressingly, a lot of people said they wouldn’t be voting at all. And they weren’t saying it in a resigned sort of a way, but rather that they felt like saying they won’t be voting was a statement of intent. As if they saw not voting as an expression of their democratic rights, ironically enough.

There was a lot of open support for Reform on the doorstep in the constituency, with another chunk leaning Reform. There were a fair few people saying they were going to vote Plaid. But in terms of people voting Labour? I heard not one person say that they would be voting for the Labour Party the whole time I was there. In fact, the theme across all of the people I saw canvassed in North Wales this past weekend, all of those non-voters, the Reform lovers, the Reform haters, was a searing rejection and even sometimes hatred of the Labour Party.

A selection of the comments on Labour:

‘They are all the same, every one of them. I might consider Reform. But I still think I won’t bother. I will tell you one thing though: I shan’t be voting Labour, that’s for certain.’

‘They have betrayed the working classes of Wales and the whole of Britain. I would never vote Reform, but I would never vote Labour again neither.’

‘I’ve voted Labour at every election, my whole life. But now, I would never vote for them, not a chance. That Starmer, he’s completely useless.’

‘Starmer should be in prison for what he’s done to this country already.’

I could go on and on, I gathered so much anti-Labour material in North Wales. And this is in a place that currently has a Labour MP and, to remind you, an MRP poll said that Labour would get a third of the seats. In order to do that, they would have to get around 35% of the vote, at least. I don’t see them doing that, frankly. Perhaps somewhere else in Flintshire there are hoards of people who love Starmer and the Labour Party more generally, but I think that seems remote.

I just don’t see Labour getting 24 seats in the Welsh Assembly elections. I think Plaid will get more than 30 and Reform will get more than 28. I also think the Greens and possibly the Lib Dems will do slightly better than the MRP suggests. I’m only going by what I’ve seen on the ground, and what I’ve gleaned from discussions with people in Wales about what they think is happening there. Maybe Labour are going to rally to 21% in Wales, but that just feels far-fetched to me.

To be clear, I’m not complaining about More in Common’s methodology. This must be a really challenging set of elections to poll in the most basic terms, never mind trying to create a seat projection out of it all. I guess we’ll see in May if there are a lot of “silent Labour voters'“ out there - or not.

How about what will happen on May 7th in the rest of the country, Scotland and England? See the video at the top of the page if you want to hear my insights there, or simply click here.

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The book is available for pre-order now here . I promise you that the book will be at the very least interesting and tell you some things about British politics you might not have known about.

The rise of the Reform party since the 2024 general election is, I believe, one of the most unbelievable stories in the history of British politics. Off the back of a landslide victory for the Labour Party, Reform have led in the polls (or at least no one has been ahead of them in any) for almost an entire year, and if things go well for them on May 7th, Reform could have more councillors nationwide than the Conservative party.

Some like to compare it to what happened with the SDP in the early 1980s, the clear implication being that Reform will crash and burn like the Social Democrats did. I believe the available evidence suggests otherwise, whatever happens with Reform from here. The SDP’s poll lead was extremely brief, with them taking their first lead at the end of October 1981, their final one in April of 1982. Throughout this six month period, the SDP did not maintain a solid lead, with both the Tories and Labour overtaking them several times. They did get over 50% in one poll, in December 1981, the one everyone points to when they want to make an “SDP, flash in the pan” style argument, where the Social Democrats had a 27% lead over both the Tories and Labour. Yet they never managed to either sustain these polling figures over a longer period of time, nor really translate their brief window of popularity into solid electoral gains. Reform is already different in both respects.

What I’ve tried to do with “The Rise of Reform” is something that a lot of people will declare is simply impossible: to create an objective detailing of the rise of Reform over the last couple of years and evaluate this in the most journalistic terms possible. Having watched Reform activists go door to door canvassing in different parts of the country during my research, I know first hand how Marmite the party is. Many will say that Reform are so love it or hate it, there is no way to create an objective telling of what they are up to and where they might go from here. Yet that is what I have attempted with the book.

Again, here is the link if you wish to pre-order. If you’ve enjoyed my writing over the last however long, please give it a whirl. It’s been a strange, entertaining, sometimes difficult ride following Reform over the last year and a half, and I think I’ve managed to capture all that within the book’s pages.

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