In recent weeks, much of Westminster has been telling itself a comforting story. The Labour Party and, to a much lesser extent, the Tories are back. Nigel Farage and Reform UK have stalled. Zack Polanski and the Greens have imploded. Two-party politics is being restored. And the political establishment can finally breathe again.
And, to be fair, the latest polls give them reason to believe it.
Yesterday, Ipsos put Labour on 32% — its highest share with the pollster since the 2024 general election — giving it an eight-point lead over the Tories, who have themselves overtaken Reform UK to reclaim second place in this particular poll.
Part of the explanation — as I pointed out a few weeks ago — is that Andy Burnham is gradually rebuilding Labour’s coalition, winning back Green voters and people who supported Labour in 2024, before drifting away under Keir Starmer. This is helping push Labour above 30% and fuelling speculation of a snap general election.
At the same time, the Tories appear to be stemming some of their electoral losses to Reform UK. This time last year, YouGov reported that 28% of the people who voted Tory in 2024 had switched to Reform; today, that figure is down to 23%.
These shifts are small. But they are still being seized upon by a political and media establishment that remains heavily invested in the Uniparty and is desperate for a return to the familiar ‘Labour versus Tory’ contest.
This narrative suits several interests: pro-Tory newspaper editors eager for a Tory revival; the Tory elite class that retains considerable influence across British media; and Labour strategists who understand that a partial Tory recovery further divides the Right. For different reasons, they all have an interest in pushing the narrative that normal service is being resumed.
But just as Andy Burnham was beginning to rally the Left, Kemi Badenoch and the Tories were starting to show at least some signs of a recovery, and the establishment was being given reason to relax, Burnham just reached for the very issue that shattered the political establishment and its comforting assumptions before.
This weekend, Andy Burnham opened the door to Brexit Wars II and handed Nigel Farage his biggest opportunity for twenty years.
Yesterday, in the Sunday Times, Burnham called for an “honest discussion” about restoring the free movement of European Union migrant workers and nationals between Britain and the EU — only months after telling the good people of Makerfield that “the last thing we should do right now is rerun those arguments”.
That’s right. Free movement — the issue that drove an enormous wedge through British politics during the 2000s and the 2010s, pushing millions towards Brexit — is back on the agenda. And within hours, Labour minister Angela Rayner reinforced the message, declaring that nothing should be “off the table”.
Read between the lines.
Labour is rolling the pitch for a snap general election, potentially before the year is out. Burnham is reaching out to Britain’s left-leaning, socially liberal, urban middle-classes with an offer designed to draw them back into Labour’s coalition.
Much closer ties with the EU, if not rejoining. Doubling down on mass immigration by restoring the free movement of EU workers into Britain. Establishing new migration routes, including from Afghanistan and Gaza. Softening immigration restrictions. Adopting an electoral system of proportional representation, which tends to produce more left-wing governments. And prioritising social care.
Taken together, they’re all part of Labour’s effort to squeeze the Greens, the Liberal Democrats, win back disillusioned 2024 Labour voters and consolidate the Left before a divided Right can unify and pose any kind of electoral threat.
But while the liberal middle-classes are cheering, for Andy Burnham, Labour and the entire establishment there is a clear and present danger lurking beneath the strategy.
By concentrating on middle-class liberals who look, sound and think like them, Labour politicians risk repeating the same mistake that brought the establishment crashing down before Brexit: mistaking their own comfortable consensus for the settled will of the country. Beyond it are millions of voters who feel ignored, betrayed, and angrier than they were a decade ago.
I’m talking about millions of people who still want much lower immigration, controlled borders, and a government that treats their desire for these things as entirely legitimate and respectable, rather than something to be overcome.
Ignoring and insulting these voters was the establishment’s first big mistake. As a young academic, in 2013, I wrote a book warning that their anger and alienation would soon fuel a major backlash against Westminster.
That backlash arrived with Nigel Farage and the UK Independence Party’s breakthrough, in 2014, and then shook the establishment to its very foundations when the silent majority voted for Brexit, two years later.
That book highlighted the trends that would go on to reshape British politics. It explained why millions of ordinary people felt ‘left behind’ by the narrow liberal consensus that still dominates BBC-Westminster Land.
Economically, people left behind by globalisation and multinational corporations that undercut British workers. But culturally, too, they felt cut adrift by mass immigration, state multiculturalism, and a socially liberal establishment that was openly dismissive of their strong attachments to family, community, and country.
The establishment failed to see that revolt coming because its members increasingly live among, worked with and listened to people who share their assumptions. From inside their cosy liberal enclaves, their outlook looked like common sense. But they mistook agreement in SW1 and Oxbridge for agreement across Britain. The end result is what we saw in 2016: millions of voters overturning this narrow consensus.
Andy Burnham is now repeating that same mistake.
By pushing to restore free movement, he makes Labour and much of Westminster look, once again, like a political class addicted to mass migration.
Rather than get millions of British people off welfare and back to work, including one million youngsters who have been thrown onto the scrapheap, they reach for even more migrant workers from overseas. Rather than fix Britain’s broken economy, they would rather have British workers undercut by even more foreign workers.
In doing so, Andy Burnham is now handing Nigel Farage his biggest opportunity for a decade - a huge opportunity to speak for British workers who have had enough. Only this time around, ten years from the vote for Brexit, there are three crucial differences.