“Can Burnham prove he can win a marathon, not just a sprint” – Tom Wilson, Associate Director
In a short period of time, the new Prime Minister has pulled off the previously unthinkable – uniting a divided Labour Party, making the transition from Mayor to MP to Prime Minister, and giving Labour a much-needed morale and polling boost following a drubbing at the local elections in May.
Labour has re-established a consistent, if small, lead in the polls with Burnham’s personal popularity outpacing his party. A blitz of small but popular cost-of-living announcements in his first few weeks in office sustained that momentum over the summer, following a difficult few months for Reform UK and the Greens.
The Conservatives, meanwhile, have not yet settled on an effective method of attack on their new opponent.
However, honeymoons are short and the task of winning the next election is a marathon not a sprint. While these successes have bought Burnham time, the most pivotal two moments for the Prime Minister lie ahead: his first conference season as leader and his first Budget.
The Budget will obviously be pivotal, testing Labour’s resolve for the radical ideas that brought Burnham to power, and its competence on economic management. It will define the scope of what it is able to achieve in preparation for its campaign during the next election in its attempt to secure a second term.
Burnham therefore needs a conference that not only entrenches his positives, selling an upbeat and down-to-earth agenda to the party’s traditional base, but also sets out the huge challenges it faces in a way that earns buy-in for the difficult and politically painful choices coming in October if he is to keep markets on board.
This balance is something that Labour under his predecessor clearly failed at, losing swathes of the electorate in the process. Conference may be Burnham’s only opportunity to put the party back on a good footing for the race ahead.
“Can the Tories continue to pull back from the brink?” – Patrick Reynolds, Senior Consultant 
There is little doubt Kemi Badenoch has impressed with the cards the Conservative Party was dealt following the 2024 General Election.
While she consistently ranks as the most popular leader of a political party, the Conservatives are walking an ideological tightrope as they look to ward off both Reform and the Liberal Democrats in target seats.
Polling guru Professor Sir John Curtice has long been adamant that the Conservatives’ strongest (and perhaps only) asset is its association with economic credibility, which continues to resonate with its voter base. The challenge is convincing those on the fence that the party can be trusted again after such a long stint in power.
Badenoch has clearly internalised this thinking with her recent reshuffle and refusal to countenance a pact with Nigel Farage’s party. With another two years, the Conservatives could conceivably be in a position to contest a general election as the primary vote on the right.
However, if an election happens sooner, they risk significant damage to their already fragile parliamentary standing. Badenoch may use the conference to continue shoring up support for her relatively moderate, less reactionary approach to appeal to those who would be willing to tactically vote Conservative and ward off more radical candidates.
“The Lib Dems have conquered the Blue Wall. Can they now build a genuinely national offer?” – Owen Mitchell, Senior Consultant 
The Liberal Democrats have shown they know how to win, ruthlessly targeting Conservative-held seats and making major gains across the ‘Blue Wall’ in 2024. The bigger question now is how they turn that success into a genuinely national offer. The party has carved out clear positions on issues from social care to sewage, as well as owning the pro-European space. But if the Lib Dems are serious about making further gains in urban areas, the North, Midlands and Wales, they need to show how that offer can appeal to voters beyond their traditional and newly-won heartlands.
With speculation that the next election could come earlier than expected, that question takes on greater urgency. An increasingly fragmented political system also means another hung Parliament is far from inconceivable, potentially putting the Lib Dems back in the position of kingmaker. Given the damage the 2010 coalition did to the party, would they be prepared to enter government with another party again, and on what terms? Conference is an opportunity to show both where the Lib Dems want to go next and what they would do with greater power
“Can Reform cynicism beat Burnham optimism?” – Josh Lambkin, Partner 
Last year’s Reform UK conference raised various questions on whether the party could develop a full policy platform that could speak to business, shore up its membership, and appeal to voters without a political home.
Following a year dominating headlines, Nigel Farage’s party ran an effective rolling operation, reacting to daily news and government blunders to set out its vision for the country. A formalised business engagement function also saw Reform host over 100 roundtables, and this year’s conference will include the party’s first business day.
While a relative lack of detail on these policies could be excused far out from an election, much greater woes have been steadily stacking up over summer recess.
Andy Burnham has flown out the gates and matched the cadence of media proactivity and commentary that had been the purview of Reform under Starmer. His unapologetic and optimistic approach to politics presents a growing threat to Reform’s populist appeal, which Reform will fundamentally need to reckon with sooner rather than later. Internal disagreement on how to tackle Burnham also carries the threat of reviving infighting which characterised the party’s rise over 2025.
Underlying all this will be the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner’s ongoing investigation into both Farage and Richard Tice’s failure to declare significant donations. While it may not feature in any speeches, business leaders and media in attendance will be acutely aware of the issue and actively assessing whether Reform is still on a trajectory to be a major challenger in Westminster.
“The Greens are treading water – can they assert themselves as a party in their own right, rather than a protest vote?” – Joss Hiett, Consultant 
It might seem strange to describe a party as treading water when its membership has surged from around 60,000 in the spring and summer of 2025 to over 230,000 today.
And yet, it is.
The election of Zack Polanski as party leader heralded a shift in the party’s ethos. Instead of a core focus on environmentalism, the Greens now mainly speak about housing, wages, economic justice, and the Gaza genocide – explicitly green issues are secondary to the presentation of the party as a vehicle for democratic socialism.
Until the May elections, this approach worked well – young voters and disaffected Labour supporters joined the Greens en masse, attracted by policies which promised to ease the cost of living, appeared to take climate change seriously, addressed the suffering of Palestinians, and sought to offer a credible, left-wing alternative to Starmer’s Labour.
However, three key issues have sapped the Greens’ momentum since May. Under close press scrutiny, the financial arrangements of the leadership, including Polanski and deputy leader Mothin Ali, have been criticised – as have the personal or political lives of some councillors and council candidates. While few individual incidents have been serious, the party has been put on the defensive for the first time, and the insinuations of impropriety have cast a pall over the party’s shiny image.
Secondly, in local government, internal divisions have come to the fore, with new members and councillors butting heads with the conservationist, more economically centrist or disengaged old guard.
Thirdly, and most crucially, Andy Burnham entering Number 10 has weakened the resolve of many Labour-Green switchers. Whereas many 2025 Green Party joiners would have preferred to risk a Farage government to voting for Labour and Starmer again, they are willing to give Burnham a chance – most notably demonstrated in the Makerfield by-election that brought him in short order to Downing Street.
At conference this year, the Greens have a challenge ahead. They must shore up their existing support, while also establishing a party ethos whose appeal is independent of Labour leadership. They’ve made it clear that they want to replace Labour as the main left-wing party in Britain. They don’t have much time to do so.
