Kemi Badenoch Must Act Fast to Halt Andy Burnham’s Snap Election Plan

Autumn 2007 found Gordon Brown close to triggering a surprise general election.

Labour had already produced its campaign literature, while around 100 helicopter slots at Battersea Heliport were reserved to fly Cabinet ministers into key marginal seats across the country.

Hundreds of party workers had also been instructed to prepare for deployment to Labour’s purpose-built election hub, with just 24 hours’ notice.

Yet the order was never given. With Brown seemingly heading towards an election that could have left them facing defeat, David Cameron and George Osborne mounted a last-ditch counteroffensive. In his Conservative conference address, Osborne promised that, if he became Chancellor, he would lift the Inheritance Tax threshold to £1 million. “Only millionaires will pay inheritance tax,” he declared.

The pledge struck an immediate chord with voters. Polling in the following days showed the Conservatives gaining substantial ground in marginal seats. Soon afterwards, Brown quietly abandoned plans for a snap poll, and the episode sent his personal approval ratings into a decline from which they did not recover.

Now, with another Conservative Party conference drawing near, Kemi Badenoch has a chance to deliver a similarly defining announcement—one that could reshape the political contest.

My colleague Gabriel Millard-Clothier revealed exclusively in The Mail on Sunday at the weekend that the Tory leader is considering the complete abolition of Inheritance Tax.

Publicly, Badenoch would say only: “I’ve asked my team to explore fiscally responsible ways to address this burden.” Privately, however, aides indicated that ending the tax is under serious consideration. “When she announced the abolition of stamp duty in last year’s speech, it was the moment her personal approval rating began to turn,” one ally said. “We think a big policy announcement like this could potentially have the same impact for the party as a whole. It’s a way of communicating, ‘OK, the traditional, solid, tax-cutting Tory party really is back.’”

That is why Badenoch should ask her advisers to complete their work, settle on a final proposal and ensure an Inheritance Tax policy is ready for her conference speech next month.

There is currently a policy vacuum sitting at the heart of British politics. Andy Burnham began his premiership by stating that we would have to wait until ‘later this year’ to hear his ten-year plan for the nation.

And, like the Chief in the Asterix comics who fears the sky may fall on his head tomorrow but reassures himself with the fact that tomorrow never actually comes, ‘later this year’ is proving to be an elastic deadline.

Badenoch has a golden opportunity to fill that Burnham-shaped void with a stance that is bold, radical and populist. She also has an opportunity to put some distance between herself and a Prime Minister who seems increasingly intent on leaning heavily on his party’s socialist traditions.

Perhaps even more crucially, she has an opportunity to define herself against the political threat to her Right.

This week has been dominated by the row over Reform’s acceptance of a combined £72million donation from two British crypto billionaires recently based abroad. But what was even more significant was Reform’s bone-headed reaction to Badenoch’s Inheritance Tax proposal.

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One would expect a party that aspired to replace the Conservatives as the main opposition to an old-school, tax-and-spend Labour government would have recognised and embraced a policy that sought to reduce the tax burden on hard-working families. Instead, the party’s treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick made the incomprehensible statement that he believed the plan was ‘morally wrong’. It was, he said, ‘a tax cut predominantly for the well-off’.

Had Jenrick simply dismissed the proposal as something that did not align with Reform’s current fiscal priorities, that would have been one thing. But to claim there is something inherently immoral in people simply aspiring to pass on more of their wealth to their children was a staggering assertion. And one that is likely to cost him and his party dear.

Whether a policy pledge by Badenoch along these lines will have the same transformative effect on Tory fortunes as George Osborne’s momentous announcement almost two decades ago, is open to question. But now is not the time for timidity.

Because despite the denials, the plan taking shape inside Downing Street is clear. Burnham is preparing to call a snap election in the spring of next year. And, based on the current trajectory of the polls, he will almost certainly win it.

Reform’s collapse in support is accelerating. This time last year the party stood at 31 per cent in the polls, 11 points ahead of Labour and 14 points ahead of the Tories. Now they are two points behind Labour, a slender 4 points ahead of the Conservatives, and trending downwards. In just over a year, they have lost a third of their support, all at a time when Keir Starmer’s premiership was imploding.

Meanwhile, Nigel Farage’s personal approval ratings have become radioactive. According to the most recent poll, 24 per cent of people have a favourable opinion of Reform’s leader, while a staggering 69 per cent view him unfavourably. This represents the worst level of antipathy towards Farage since records began.

On these numbers, the idea of Reform securing a majority at the next election is for the birds. And that’s before you factor in the impact of tactical voting, the likely further erosion of support to Rupert Lowe’s insurgent hard-Right Restore party and the plethora of ongoing investigations into Reform’s increasingly murky finances.

The stark political reality is this: There is only one thing that will stop Burnham from calling a snap election and securing a five-year term in No 10. And that is a recovery for the Tory party along the lines we saw in 2007.

That would not require them to leapfrog Labour immediately.

Even after Osborne’s dramatic announcement, Brown still led in the polls for a time. But the shift in support in battleground seats that the policy precipitated was enough to make him think again.

That’s what the Tories need now. Not a miraculous resurgence. But a policy statement that will capture the attention and imagination of the British people. And that will demonstrate there is a party of the Right that provides them with a genuine and serious alternative to the Burnham government, not just an opportunity to register a protest.

Because Burnham remembers well the moment Brown hesitated – and lost. A member of that administration, he was subsequently asked what he thought about that decision. ‘Momentum is a curious thing in politics,’ he reflected. ‘Thousands of us who’ve worked around these jobs could sit in a room and try to work out how to get momentum and how not to lose momentum, but the truth is it hinges on the most unexpected little moments in politics.’

It will take something significant to force Andy Burnham to abandon his own plan for a snap election. Kemi Badenoch is the only person who could still do it. But she will have to be swift, and she will have to be bold.