Farage Demands an Immediate Election as Burnham “Has No Mandate”
Mr Burnham takes office facing loud calls for a general election. Reform UK’s Nigel Farage says the incoming Prime Minister has “absolutely no mandate of any kind at all” and that voters, not Labour MPs, should decide who governs. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, has stopped short of demanding an election but dismissed Mr Burnham’s programme as “airy fairy” and cast him as a “people pleaser” unwilling to take tough decisions.
Mr Burnham arrives as the seventh Prime Minister in a decade without a national vote, a democratic-legitimacy line his opponents will press relentlessly. Mr Farage — himself fighting a Clacton by-election after quitting as an MP — calls him “the great chameleon of British politics” and warns of tax rises to come. Mrs Badenoch has offered conditional co-operation on curbing the welfare bill while pressing him to rule out further tax rises. Watch whether Mr Burnham addresses the mandate question in his first speech, and whether he signals an early election or rules one out.