The polling that shows even Starmer could beat Reform at the next general election
The polling that shows even Starmer could beat Reform at the next general election – politicalbetting.com
NEW from @Ipsos_in_the_UK / @itvpeston Who do the public prefer in a head to head vs Farage and Reform UK?– A Burnham led Labour govt +16– A Starmer led Labour govt +11– A Streeting led Labour govt +7– A Rayner led Labour govt +6 pic.twitter.com/atWTzMLnMh
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Like Andy
Sell on the Burnham bounce before the Burnham belly flop?
AMC+ (a US-only streamer) has obtained the rights to stream Doctor Who (2005-2022). So that's Nine (Ecclestone) to Thirteen (Whittaker). Doctor Who (2023-2025) remains with Disney+. This is good in the sense that US people can still watch the show in the US, bad in the sense that the rights are now fragmented, thus:
- Doctor Who (1963-1989): ?
- Doctor Who (1995-1995): ?
- Doctor Who (2005-2022): AMC+, US-only
- Doctor Who (2023-2025): Disney+, worldwide ex UK
- Doctor Who (2026-????): to be determined
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs9ZqoqTqB0Forget if it was Horror or Forces TV but I did watch a few old serials some years ago that I'd never seen before. Inferno, I think, had an evil version of the Brigadier, complete with eyepatch. Why not? People get very excited about football, which is 22 very well-paid individuals playing a children's game on a large lawn.
Which is completely irrelevant. In our kaleidoscope politics what is much more important is how many like them and 30% is enough to be the largest party for sure, very possibly a majority.
Betting on most seats for Labour makes sense from a variety of perspectives, they have a huge incumbency advantage for a start. They can lose 150 seats, which is a hell of a lot historically, and still very comfortably have a plurality with the others scattered in a similar way to what we saw in Scotland. But the reasons for betting on this do not, in my view, include this polling.
I'm not a Starmer fan by any means but am even less of a fan of leadership psychodramas and the Labour Party talking to itself. As it is, Labour barely pays any attention to the voters. Now its main priority is Burnham's ego. It's pathetic. No idea if Burnham will win any by-election but it would serve him - and Labour - right if the voters blew him a raspberry.
What willl worry Farage though is while the Labour vote surges on a forced choice of Labour or Farage, the Reform vote is barely up from its headline voteshare. Which suggests Reform won't be able to squeeze the Tory vote in the same way
However poor Starmer's image, Rayner and Streeting do worse. If the Makerfield gamble doesn't come off, the consequences aren't great.
Talking of stopping Reform, what the Jimminy is Badenoch playing at in Worcestershire?
Reform have pivoted towards pensioners since July ‘24 (including a direct attack on people my age), and they will have zero qualms about making unfunded promises about triple lock, WFP etc etc. This will be highly effective and the “stop Labour” will be just as potent as “stop Reform”.
3 years till the GE and the economy is growing - they should try for some patience.
Actually (e) I reckon the much more serious threat may well be Restore, because Rupert Lowe is an entirely different kettle of fish to Nigel Farage and so far everyone mainstream is ignoring them.
Good morning, everyone.
After the Liz Truss mishanter nobody can be that dumb?
In Harlow too the Tories held the council with the Labour vote down 30% and their vote up 13% on 2024 and Reform on 20%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Harlow_District_Council_election
There is very little evidence though last week of Tory voters voting Labour to keep out Reform or even LD, except maybe in patches of London
We will find out but right now I think Labour’s polling is somewhat of an illusion because of how hated Starmer is.
Burnham at least won’t start off that way and I suspect at least initially Labour will tick up.
It’s clearly possible for them to poll between 32% and 40% as they have in an election. With both Farage and Polanski on the way down in approval, Burnham is fortunate in his timing.
However, a combination of personal ambition and impatience driven by Permanews means that Labour are where they are.
Same old same old.
And Farage - I got £5m, bought a house with it while lying about what the money was for is the leader of one of those parties.
I hope he loses.
The sense of entitlement on display by Burnham and his team is breathtaking.
Which is a strong hint to lapsed Conservative wets.
If the Tories work with Reform, the question becomes - why would vote Tory when you can vote for their sister party who have a better chance of winning.
So I doubt the champagne corks will be popping for too long in No 10 if Burnham loses. I still think Rayner is Labours best communicator and I’m a bit disappointed that we won’t get our first female Labour MP if Burnham wins .
See also leftwingers trying to make Communism work.
MPs are least have a broad array of constituents they represent. Party members are an incredibly narrow and unrepresentative subset of the population to choose the PM, which the candidates then have to appeal to. As we saw with Truss. It also creates a sustained period of political paralysis for the government that is unhelpful for the country as a whole.
This is obviously different in opposition when you are choosing a candidate to go before the public to vote on, not inserting a Prime Minister directly. And you can take all the time in the world at no cost.
So have a poll of Labour MPs: Burnham (if he wins) or Starmer. The winner is PM and no need for a drawn out leadership contest.
Or perhaps it’s just how terrible Starmer is.
In London and places like Hampshire and even Harlow (which on the polling should have been a straight Labour v Reform battle) the Tories vote held up better and even saw gains from Labour by the Tories
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/05/14/rayner-cleared-tax-inquiry-24-hours-after-lawyer-letter/
I need to find out who see uses...
Which reminds me, next time I am in Ireland I am visiting here.
The Muff Liquor Company.
https://themuffliquorcompany.com/pages/our-story?srsltid=AfmBOopB8kEedmPTgj-mMBF4knNjT88tO52NEr66nUHHme0G8vGzg8sn
It hasn't really plumetted, has it? 'Dips slightly' might be more honest.
He is putting his career on the line facing election in a seat which is no longer safe and in any other by-election circumstances I expect Labour would lose it right now.
That is brave, not entitled.
I expect he will win, both because he is genuinely popular locally and Starmer is loathed nationally, but that is politics not entitlement.
Politicians are supposed to put themselves forward for elections. People who only ever play it safe are how we end up with failed leaders like Starmer who only walked in to Downing Street with his Ming Vase because everyone else imploded.
To be fair to Burnham he hasn't asked for a safe as houses for Labour seat to stand in like Walker, he is looking to stand in a seat in an area where Reform won the local elections. So if he wins the by election he can say clearly he is the man to save Labour
Not universal, of course. I've recently been really enjoying the History of China channel which talks a very calm and engaging approach to history, as does, of course, The Histories. [NB not associated in any way, but links below if anyone wants to see for themselves].
https://www.youtube.com/@History_of_China/videos
https://www.youtube.com/@JustAnotherHistoryChannel/videos
Starmer blocked him from running in the NEC which discredited Starmer by making him look frit, made Burnham look like he was trying but Starmer is the one blocking him, meant he faced no actual jeopardy of losing the by-election, and making the failure in Gorton entirely Starmer's fault.
It also meant that Starmer had played his ace of veto in the NEC so that he had lost the credibility to do it again now.
It was quite clever rope-a-dope, not a crash.
Also, he has blown what should have been a home run seat for him to get back into parliament, and had to scramble around and only been offered a much more competitive race. It could really blow up in his face. Where as if he had kept his powder dry he would have walked Gorton and Denton.
https://t.me/noel_reports/46352
It's notable that a number of members of the Trump administration have started to say positive things about how Ukraine is fighting the war. Just yesterday the Army Secretary Dan O'Driscoll was talking favourably about how one of the Ukrainian command and control systems integrated data from the battlefield more effectively than US systems. I take this as a sign that the US can see that the war is trending in Ukraine's direction, and they want to be associated with that success.
Yes, politicians are supposed to put themselves forward for elections. He did. He stood for Mayor of Greater Manchester repeatedly and was repeatedly elected. That cuts both ways. At some point there is also a duty to the office and to the voters who elected him to do the job rather than treating it as a holding pattern for Westminster.
What grates is not Burnham standing for Parliament per se, but the assumption from parts of Labour and the media that there is a throne waiting for him the moment he chooses to reclaim it. That is where the sense of entitlement comes in for me.
If he wants to come back and fight his way through a leadership contest on merit, fair enough. But the constant “waiting for Andy” psychodrama around Labour has become faintly absurd.
Also, thinking about the recent BMG poll in inews, which directly contradicts the above and says Farage beats everyone
So another southerner who once visited Manchester to go to an Oasis gig?
As for your penultimate paragraph, he is coming back and fighting his way through a leadership contest on merit.
Psychodrama is as much the media's need to be talking 24/7 as anything else, there is always psychodrama in politics.
As far as his actions though, he is doing what you said "fair enough" to - and he is doing it the hard way, seeking a midterm by-election to do so.
Secondly best PM questions are inherently flawed, these questions are asking something different.
See the polling for the 2015 GE election.
Also 1987 and 1992 too.
However, Labour is desperate. And for once they’ve looked at the polling and chosen the only man who seems to be a genuine improvement on Starmer from the data they have available.
They do seem to want to do something with that massive majority.
For the majority who don't want a Reform government this will become a more urgent than usual question. Reform is tied up with Trumpism, dog whistle ethnocentrism, noisy nationalism, 'ICE UK', plutocratic cash from abroad, people who post vile stuff on X and scapegoating. In addition offering belief in simple answers to complex problems. It is different in kind from the older knockabout of Tory v Labour etc.
Avoiding Reform government at this stage involves other more or less house trained parties getting strong support. Refinements come later.
Burnham, who I don't personally care much for, looks like being the best prospect of Labour beating Reform in actual seats, such as mine.
The greatest danger if he succeeds in the current project is a repeat of the ludicrous messianism we have seen before with Boris, Corbyn, Truss and of course Farage.
Big Roop could really fuck the Fukkers here if he chooses to contest the seat and stand one of his undiagnosed dementia stricken militia.
On the entitlement - is there evidence that Burnham shares the view that it's his crown, waiting for him?
Green vote already looks like it’s on the way to collapse. So Burnham needs to make a push on immigration.
We know Labour has the total capability to poll 32 to 40%. Their vote is currently split but how much of that is genuine hatred of Labour or just “get Starmer out”?
The MAGA thing is all about Power Worship. Russia *used* to be STONK!
I would imagine the parade thing hit home with MAGA - they love their parades and displays.
Voters *love* to have the opportunity to vote directly for the Prime Minister in their constituency.
Better than Starmer? Possibly - he can hardly be a worse communicator, he may have a clearer idea of what he wants to achieve. He may also veer further left and scare off the more centrist current voters like myself (though that would probably require either Ed Davey to come up with a more convincing reason to vote Lib Dem than keeping badgers off banknotes or Badenoch to both have some interesting ideas and put very clear blue water between the Conservatives and Reform and explicitly rule out any support to or from Reform to form a government).
Communication wise, Streeting is... well... Streets ahead, but I'm not sure he actually has a policy agenda. He'd be the most interesting though and the only one that might actually enthuse me to vote Labour, if he has a vision.
As for a coronation, Streeting's resignation letter was very clear about the need for a wide contest. He's going to look a right numpty if he rows in behind a Burnham coronation.
I do, in many ways, hope Burnham manages to lose the by election. For the lolz, but maybe also so that Labour take a good long look at themselves and do actually have a proper contest that involves setting out some ideas for governing before someone takes the top job.