Yesterday, the Sun reported that Andy Burnham will call a snap general election if he becomes prime minister. The Former Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman has warned that this is a risk, not an opportunity, and a reason to stick with Keir Starmer.

Meanwhile, Reform UK’s Nigel Farage is ahead of the game. Last year, he told his party to get ready for a 2027 general election. One can see why he’d welcome an early contest. Irrespective of whether it pays off for Labour, Reform would make a major advance: either all the way into government, or into becoming the largest opposition party.

However, there’s one party for which an early contest would be a calamity: the Conservatives. For all the praise that Kemi Badenoch has attracted as a parliamentary performer, her party’s poll ratings have not recovered. The party is still well below the abysmal 24% secured by Rishi Sunak at the last general election. Plug those numbers into any electoral model and the Tories are set to lose something like half their seats.

Worst of all, the party would lose its status as the Opposition. Even if Badenoch retains her own seat, it’s hard to see her leadership surviving such humiliations. The real question would be whether there’s a party left for anyone to lead. Farage is still pursuing a strategy that aims to wipe out the Tories. That is, demoralising his rivals to the point at which they’d either bend the knee or flee to the Liberal Democrats. Either way, the idea is to leave him in sole charge of the Right.

As things stand, however, the Conservative Party is refusing to die. The defections to Reform earlier this year did not strike a mortal blow, and the same appears to be true of the local election results. That’s allowing Badenoch to continue with her own strategy, which is to position her party for a change in the political weather.

In contrast, Reform will be hoping for a faster general election. There is still plenty of time before 2029 for cracks to appear among the senior ranks and for rival party Restore Britain to eat into Farage’s Right-wing support. The same goes for a brewing national economic crisis that could favour the Conservatives’ emphasis on lower spending. Badenoch’s party would also benefit from fading memories of the Johnson, Truss and Sunak years.

In short, the Conservatives are playing for time, while Reform is impatient for change, which is why a snap election would have such a dramatically unequal impact on each party. Of course, there’s not much that Badenoch can do to stop Burnham from going to the country. But she can prepare for the consequences. If a snap election produces a hung parliament, even a diminished Conservative Party could find itself in the role of kingmaker. The Tories should position themselves as the honest brokers of a new era of coalition politics, because that future could be about to arrive.

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Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.

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