--- title: "The ‘Burnham Bounce’ Rises, and the Bills Are Still Due" description: "The new prime minister rides a surge of goodwill into Labour’s conference, with Reform close behind and a hard budget ahead" author: "Arthur Wren" published: 2026-09-29T04:01:30.046Z modified: 2026-09-29T06:30:22Z url: https://rews.cc/a/the-burnham-bounce-rises-and-the-bills-are-still-due-330ab2 language: en tags: ["politics", "britain", "economy", "immigration", "labour", "us"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # The ‘Burnham Bounce’ Rises, and the Bills Are Still Due *The new prime minister rides a surge of goodwill into Labour’s conference, with Reform close behind and a hard budget ahead* By Arthur Wren · September 29, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/the-burnham-bounce-rises-and-the-bills-are-still-due-330ab2 ## In brief - Reform UK trails Labour narrowly despite a criminal investigation into party donations; Reform denies wrongdoing - Burnham called this month’s balaclava-clad anti-migrant protests ‘unacceptable’ but conceded real worries on immigration - Early Burnham policies: a £2 bus-fare cap, lower rates for pubs and venues, tax cuts on electricity bills - Inflation is rising on Middle East energy prices weeks before the government’s first budget - Burnham rules out an early election; the next vote must be called before August 2029 Call it, as some have, the ‘Burnham bounce.’ Since Andy Burnham, the former mayor of Manchester, took over in Downing Street this summer — Britain’s seventh prime minister in a decade — the governing Labour Party has risen in the polls. This week, at the first Labour conference of his premiership, Burnham must show the rise is something sturdier than relief. The troubles that wore down his predecessor, Keir Starmer, are still there: immigration, an economy hit by the Iran war, and rising tension abroad. Optimism alone will not fix any of them. ## Squeezed on both sides On the right stands Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, narrowly behind Labour in the polls despite months of allegations about party money. The latest scandal has brought a criminal investigation into Reform’s donations; the party denies wrongdoing and says it will “cooperate fully with the investigation.” The anti-migrant party, which won heavily in England’s local elections earlier this year, was quick to jeer when Burnham ruled out an early general election. “It’s obvious that Andy Burnham doesn’t want talk of a General Election overshadowing Labour’s conference,” Farage posted on X on Friday. “Reform are ready for an election whenever it is called.” The feeling Reform trades on is already in the streets. Earlier this month, major anti-migration protests swept parts of Britain’s coastline, with hundreds of balaclava-wearing demonstrators blocking roads and clashing with police. Burnham called the scenes “unacceptable” and “not something we have seen in this country before,” while allowing that “there are real worries about immigration in all parts of country.” Both statements can be true. Only one of them is a problem a government can actually answer. On the left, Burnham must claw back the progressives who left Labour for the Greens under Starmer, angry over net zero and the Gaza conflict. The size of that wound will be tested next week, when the Green leader, Zack Polanski, contests a parliamentary by-election in Holborn and St Pancras — the London seat Starmer held for more than a decade. ## Small change, big bills Burnham opened his premiership with a clutch of measures aimed at hard-pressed households: cutting bus fares in England outside London to a maximum of £2 (about $2.60), lowering business rates for pubs and music venues, and tax cuts on household electricity bills. Critics were unmoved. “I find myself asking, is that it?” the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, said in July. The larger pledges — more social housing, greater public control of essential utilities — must all be funded under the same constraints that tied Starmer’s hands. How, exactly, remains an open question. The question gets its first answer in a few weeks, when the new chancellor delivers the first budget of the Burnham government. It comes at a bad moment. Official data show inflation rising again, pushed up by energy prices from the conflict in the Middle East. Burnham has promised “difficult decisions”; he called the inflation figures a “concern” while speaking of the “resilience” of the British economy. “It is going to be challenging, because the picture around the world is challenging, particularly the situation in the Middle East, and we will look carefully at all those things.” Inside the party, Burnham is still strong. He won the backing of 379 of Labour’s 403 MPs, and British media report a chirpy mood with little appetite to attack the new leader. But the first cracks are showing. Peter Kyle, business secretary under Starmer, told the BBC the government is not focused enough on economic growth: “I don’t think there is and that isn’t a criticism – it is pointing to the potential that we have as a country and as a government.” Ministers must “feel the need for economic growth,” he said, as keenly as they feel the promise to end rough sleeping — a pointed reference to Burnham’s first speech as prime minister. Angela Rayner, the housing secretary — Labour’s deputy leader under Starmer until her 2024 resignation — has spoken out against a planned change to visa rules that would hit foreign social care workers. For now, colleagues still close ranks. Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, went on the radio to say the prime minister is “impatient for change, and he thinks big about the sort of change that the country needs.” Below the leadership, patience is thinner. Grassroots Labour groups want Burnham to ban arms sales to Israel and impose “wide-ranging” sanctions. The foreign secretary has already gone further than most, [telling the conference](https://rews.cc/a/miliband-calls-israel-s-conduct-a-stain-on-the-world-and-ple-f7d5c5) that the party’s critics on Palestine “were right.” And the protest group Defend Our Juries staged a [silent vigil in Liverpool](https://rews.cc/a/a-silent-vigil-in-liverpool-a-vanishing-olive-harvest-in-al--18ef41), calling it an “integrity test” for the new prime minister. Then there is the question of when to face the voters. Burnham has shut that door for now: “No election anytime soon. I’m focused on the job as prime minister, doing what I said I would do.” The next election must be called before August 2029. A strong win would cement his authority and hand him a mandate for the policies he set out at the start. Refusing to go to the country invites the fate of Gordon Brown, whose standing collapsed after he ducked a widely expected election in 2007 — a “humiliating retreat,” David Cameron called it then. Going early would put Labour’s slide in the polls since the 2024 election up for judgment, with Reform waiting to collect. It is, as one analyst put it, a Catch-22. John Curtice, professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde, told Times Radio on Thursday: “The Labour Party are back in the lead. But are we in a situation where it would seem to make sense for Andy Burnham to go to the country anytime soon? Definitely not.” Burnham, for now, agrees. “The time has come to draw a line, get the country looking forward, pulling together, people feeling a bit of hope in their lives again,” he told the BBC. Hope is the easy part. The bills arrive with the budget.