is a commentator, a Senior Researcher for the City Hall Conservatives, and a former Association Chairman.

When footballer Luis Figo transferred from Barcelona to their hated rivals Real Madrid in July 2000, Barcelona fans were furious.

At his first game back at the Nou Camp as a Real Madrid player, fans held up a banner proclaiming “We hate you so much because we loved you so much.”

Andy Burnham has rarely been compared to Luis Figo, but he might think about how this story applies to him. Currently he is far more popular than Keir Starmer, but there is a very good chance – even a likelihood – that he will be less popular in time precisely because public hopes and expectations for him are higher.

The very things that the public like about him – his down-to-Earth demeanour and perceived authenticity – will not help him as the economy crashes and he proves unwilling or unable to take the difficult decisions needed. Burnham’s blokiness will become a liability, when it becomes clear that he’s failing at the job he so desperately wanted.

Nevertheless, even Andy Burnham being deservedly unpopular would not guarantee Labour losing the next General Election. There would remain a pathway for Labour to win a majority or form a left-wing coalition with the Greens and Liberal Democrats.

Mutualistic Symbiosis describes the ecological situation in which two species live in close, physical contact and both species benefit from the interaction in an interdependent relationship. A well-known example is the relationship between clownfish and sea anemones. The anemones’ tentacles are poisonous to most predators, although the clownfish is immune to the poison so is able to swim amongst these tentacles and avoid those predators. Meanwhile the clownfish eat the anemones’ parasites and its waste provides nutrients to the anemone.

Much like the anemone and the clownfish, Labour and Reform need each other – although I’ll leave it to readers to decide which party looks harmless but is poisonous and which looks cute and is covered in a thick coating of mucus.

If the Summer 2029 General Election is seen as Labour vs Conservative then the Conservatives will win. By 2029 the UK economy will be on life support (or would be if only we could afford both the life support machine and the electricity to power it). It will be clear that, to coin a phrase, “Labour isn’t working” and that only the Conservative Party has the credibility and willingness to make the unpopular but necessary choices required to turn things around. The Conservatives would be well placed to squeeze both Reform and the Liberal Democrats as the overwhelming theme of the election would be which party is best placed to fix the economy. Under such circumstances it is hard to imagine Labour holding onto power.

However, what if Labour’s polling has sunk so low that there is no realistic belief that they could possibly be re-elected? What if the election is framed as a choice between two possible right-wing futures: Conservative or Reform? In that case all the polling evidence suggests that significant numbers of Labour and Lib Dem voters would vote tactically for the Conservatives and Kemi would be in Number 10, engineering the turnaround.

Both Parties clearly believe – correctly – that a Labour vs Reform contest is one that gives them the best chance of winning. The Labour Party knows that there are a deep well of voters who would be willing to vote Labour if that is what is required to keep Reform out of power. Whatever horrendous mistakes Labour has made over the last two years and will continue to make over the next three, a significant majority of the British people view the idea of Nigel Farage as Prime Minister with horror and are very likely to vote to stop that happening.

Reform’s senior leadership knows that that is the case.

The wiser heads amongst them will recognise that Nigel Farage’s popularity is not going to surge ahead of the next election. However they will judge that if Labour fails to stop small boat crossings and significantly reduce immigration, if unemployment, inflation and interest rates soar and if Reform is seen as the only realistic alternative to the continuation of a failing Labour Government then there is a chance that sufficient number of the British people will swallow their objections and vote Reform. Those in Reform who are students of US politics are likely to recall that in 2016 Donald Trump was the least popular Presidential candidate in history, but that in Hilary Clinton he faced the second least popular Presidential candidate in history. Being seen as the only way to end a ruinous Labour Government represents Reform’s best chance.

Fortunately, however much Nigel Farage chooses to claim the Conservative Party “is dead” and however often Labour (and their Lib Dem handmaidens) tries to claim Reform are their primary opponents, the polls are increasingly telling a different story. Assuming Labour continues to take a wrecking ball to the economy, regardless of how much the clownfish and the sea anemone try and work together, the Conservative Party has an excellent chance of winning the next General Election, whenever it comes.