Are Farage and Polanski already yesterday's men?

**Jon** (0:02)
This is a global production. Andy Burnham has been setting out his latest policies, this time to help publicans and club owners. Kemi Badenoch has been on the attack. I can just see this summer, when we get to September, and it's going to be dogged by paedophiles being released early, and by rapists being released early, and by violent offenders being released early.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:23)
Every day, Andy Burnham seems to float a new expensive idea. A national care service that costs 18 billion pounds, building as many council houses in the 1970s, costing 13 billion pounds. On Monday, he said he was thinking about increasing the personal allowance. On Tuesday, he was against it. On Wednesday, he was for it again. Does anyone know what he's thinking today? Because I don't.
He doesn't actually know what he wants to do. He is thinking out loud. All we know is that it is going to cost a lot of money.
So I want to be very clear. Andy Burnham needs to rule out tax rises to pay for his spending spree.

**Jon** (1:11)
That is Kemi Badenoch clearly sharpening her attack on Andy Burnham into his fourth day as Prime Minister. She's doing it well, but so too is Andy Burnham. Whisper it. But Andy Burnham, the leader of the Labour Party and Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party are now, according to the latest polling, the most popular political leaders in the country.
Is it just possible that we are witnessing the strange return of two-party politics? Welcome to The News Agents.

**Lewis** (1:47)
The News Agents.

**Jon** (1:49)
It's Jon. It's Lewis. And as we were saying there, we are now getting the first polling of the Burnham era. And of course, this is just very early days, but we make no apology for focusing on it. For one simple reason, which is we've got to remember that Andy Burnham is Prime Minister to arrest and reverse a political problem for the Labour Party, which was basically, it's appalling polling, and appalling election results under Keir Starmer after the 2024 general election. That is why he is there. So even more than usual, midterm, these polls, these early polls will be being polled over by Labour MPs, people within the Labour Party and across, of course, the wider political spectrum. More income polling out today has Labour the closest to reform since April 2025, with reform on 26% and Labour on 24%. The Conservatives are around the same as well. And intriguingly, and this is where the big transformation has taken place, because that's not such a big difference to the headline voting intention that we saw under Keir Starmer.
But Burnham's personal approval rating has jumped to plus 13
Now bear in mind that Starmer's personal approval rating was way, way into negative territory. I mean, seriously, at one point, he was about as popular as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, according to the polling. I mean, seriously, Starmer's post-election high even was plus 11 back in early to mid 2024, July 2024 So Burnham is now more popular personally than Starmer was at the height of his election success. So for the first time as well, intriguingly, we've both got the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition in positive net approval territory with Kemi Badenoch at plus three. Meanwhile, Ed Davey, the leader of the Lib Dems, is minus five, and Nigel Farage and Zack Polanski, the great insurgents of British politics, are down skimming the bottom at minus 22 So one swallow a spring does not make. We're not getting carried away with these polls. But it is interesting that a narrative that we have had since the July 2024 general election, when the two main parties commanded, what was it, 55 percent of the national share of the vote, and your people are thinking, God, is that it? Is two-party politics dead now? Is it really over? Are we now looking at multi-party politics in a system that was designed for two parties? It just feels as though that over the past few weeks, Kemi Badenoch's performance in the Commons has improved massively. Some of the messaging is becoming much clearer about the economy, about lower taxation, about the need to cut welfare spending, increased defense, all of those things. She seems to be much more clear about where she's taking the conservative party.
At the same time, you've got Andy Burnham, who is clearly enjoying a bounce compared to where Kirstama was. And this kind of overriding sense that Kirstama was hopeless, he had to go, there had to be someone new in place. At the same time, as you have had Nigel Farage and Zack Polanski really struggling out there for differing reasons, but both struggling. Yeah, and look, obviously, so many caveats with this. I mean, Burnham isn't even there for a week, and he has to weather his first crisis, his first big mistake, that will come. It's absolutely inevitable. Both things are inevitable, and there will be loads of mistakes that will come. They've done a good job early on. I suppose therefore, it seems to me that there are two big questions about a potential return to a Labour conservative duopoly or something closer to it than we've been experiencing. One is that whether Burnham can sustain, that can overcome those crises that will come, or will he experience what Stammer did, which is, these things come, you're not seen to respond to them terribly well, you're not really being seen to arrest the problems of the country and you just go one long dip. And that's obviously going to be a big problem for the Labour Party. The more intriguing possibility as well, it seems to me, is can, let's imagine for a moment that Burnham and Badenoch do manage to maintain their personal popularity, at least for a while. And there's reasonable grounds to believe that could be the case.