Andy Burnham prides himself on being a smooth political communicator, but sometimes, in a gift to all eagle-eyed politics watchers, his body language gives him away. We saw it a few weeks ago when, while launching his plan for social care, he was asked a question about his position on assisted dying – a delicate issue the new Prime Minister may not have expected to be asked about that day.
He delivered a thoughtful, relatively fluent answer about how he thought social and palliative care should be fixed before the assisted dying debate could take place properly. But his hands told a different story. Over the course of his answer, he folded the piece of paper in his hands over and over again into an ever tinier square, then squeezed it tightly.
A few days earlier was another instance where our new Prime Minister’s body language communicated just as much as the answer itself. It was in Burnham’s first big sit-down interview as Prime Minister, when Laura Kuenssberg asked him if he could rule out calling a general election before 2029. Before she had even finished her question, he was furiously rubbing his chin. “There’s no early general election,” he said, and blushed.
Our new Prime Minister shows us when he is feeling more exposed, or nervous, or putting more effort into a particular answer. He ruled out an early election explicitly in that interview, saying he believed it is in the country’s best interests for him to focus on governing well. But he told us, wordlessly – with that blush, that chin rub – that the question of whether to call a snap election is an important, uncomfortable one for him, and perhaps not quite as settled as he or his aides insist.
The unsurprising truth is that Burnham has been thinking about this question for months, as he should about one of the biggest strategic calls he will make in this job. Even before the Makerfield by-election, he was mulling whether he would need to call a general election within a year of entering Downing Street. He told confidants then that he could see the case for going early, not to add to the country’s perpetual political change but to end it: to secure an endorsement for a transformative, long-term project that could turn around the UK’s fortunes.
He has also told friends he is determined to learn from the mistakes of Gordon Brown, whose experience of “bottling” the decision to call an early general election in 2007 left an impression on Burnham and his chief of staff, James Purnell. Both saw it up close: Brown’s failure to rule it out, allowing expectation to build and build, before he finally intervened to dampen the speculation, losing internal momentum and inviting taunts from his opponents. The early election never happened, and three years later, Labour lost to the Conservatives.
Burnham will be receiving the same advice as Brown did, from his pollster Deborah Mattinson: that a leader is never as popular as they are in the first few months of their premiership. He may never do better than going to the country soon.
But the rub is the same as it was for Brown in 2007: Burnham could lose. After more than a decade of lusting after the top job, is he really prepared to risk squandering it so soon? As Theresa May discovered when she took a gamble on an early election in 2017 and lost her majority, the campaign can change everything and nothing is guaranteed.
Brown did not bottle the decision to call an early general election in 2007 because he had been told he would lose. He was told he would be likely to win, but Labour would lose seats. That is the other risk Burnham faces. He could win, secure a mandate, a fresh five years, but with the collateral damage of dozens of Labour MPs losing their jobs years earlier than planned.
During the Makerfield campaign, just as Burnham was telling those close to him that he could see a case for an early election, Labour MPs weighing whether to back him were seeking reassurances to the contrary. They told me they didn’t want to be turkeys voting for Christmas. In the scrutiny of that by-election, a Burnham spokesperson ended up ruling out the prospect of an early election. Essentially, Burnham has been put in No 10 by his MPs on the tacit understanding that he wouldn’t call one. It would be a huge risk to his standing with his MPs to do it anyway. To cite one of them, who is fairly representative of thinking in the Parliamentary Labour Party: “It would be fucking moronic and we’d lose.”
There are questions, too, about whether the Labour Party as a machine is ready to fight an election: frankly, whether it has enough money to go to the country right now. But in a few months, with an influx of new members and donations, that may have changed.
The case for calling a snap election as a new leader without your own mandate is always compelling, but it is perhaps especially so given Burnham’s precise inheritance. He is bound by political calculations that he would never have made himself. He “wouldn’t have written [the manifesto] like that myself when it comes to tax”, he told me, describing the commitment not to raise the three main revenue-raisers as “restrictive”.
He has inherited some equally restrictive spending cuts that are pencilled in for the end of the parliament, too. Rachel Reeves may have been gambling on a growth miracle by then so that Labour wouldn’t have to fight the next election on an austerity ticket – but Burnham may not want to wait to find out whether that miracle becomes a reality. It is hard to see how Burnham can govern as he wants to without more freedom to manoeuvre.
And don’t forget that Labour has spent the past 18 months despairing that a far-right government was apparently inevitable. Now, Nigel Farage is looking weaker – beatable, even – as he struggles to get out from under the scandal over the £5m donation that has dogged him for months, and Labour takes a polling lead for the first time in 18 months. Given that the threat from Reform looked existential only a few months ago, and the stakes are felt by Labour to be so high, you could even say there is a moral argument for the party to go to the polls when the chances of a Farage defeat seem highest.
If there is one lesson that Burnham has learned from Brown, it is to display no hint that you are mulling an early general election unless you are certain it is happening. Theresa May learned that lesson too, assuring one Fleet Street columnist so convincingly during a private meeting that she wouldn’t be calling an early general election that he told all his colleagues it definitely wouldn’t be happening. Days later she called it. She wasn’t even lying: there isn’t an early general election until there is.
These days, Burnham’s aides repeat what he told Kuenssberg: that it is his “settled view” that the best thing for the country is for him to get on with governing. But this seems to be another example in which it is more helpful to consider his actions, his body language, than his words. Burnham has launched his premiership with a blitz of retail policies on the cost of living, toured the country and hit social media with a campaigning zeal. If he was laying the groundwork for an early general election in the next 12 months, would he be doing anything differently?
[Further reading: Nigel Farage isn’t laughing any more]
Content from our partners
Related
This article appears in the 20 Aug 2026 issue of the New Statesman, Summer Special
Join the debate
Subscribe here to commentThe question that needs to be settled first is whether Labour will finally endorse Proportional Representation or will they carry on supporting FPTP.
Burnham has come out for PR but many of his colleagues are pro FPTP and may scuttle any attempts to bring about change.
Should Labour go for PR it would make absolute sense for them to go into a formal electoral pact with the other social democratic parties, all of whom support PR.
If labour continues with FPTP the social democratic vote will doubtless split and we could see Farage in No 10 on 30% of the vote.
I hope the Labour Conference this autumn will settle the question.
David Cameron called a referendum on FPTP, and the country voted against it. Ah but wait, the country also voted for Brexit, and yet this Labour Government is creeping back towards Europe,