Will this updated red and blue battle be real?
Rhetorical lines have been drawn this week, but real solutions and arguments are emerging and the sense of cheer around this place may not last long, especially when it comes to finding money for the prime minister’s big promises.
Downing Street sources privately admit that defeating the welfare bill in the way that Alan Milburn suggests (his report is expected but not confirmed) will require billions spent up front, money the government may struggle to find.
Likewise, building the council houses Burnham wants to cut housing benefit costs will require big checks.
It’s one thing to promise these Labour-friendly dreams. It is another matter, perhaps at a party conference, to answer the much more difficult question of how the government plans to pay.
It will be difficult for a mid-term prime minister to find money in the short term that could only bring savings in the coming years.
But Burnham’s Labor party is happy to talk about the economy and how it wants to help families in need, still citing Liz Truss’ chaos and keen to highlight the first steps the Prime Minister has taken to ease the pressure.
Given that the country’s borrowing costs and debt are extremely high, conservatives are also happy to present the classic left-right argument.
It is also true that they both enjoyed a moment of real pressure on their reform opponents, who have slipped back in the polls, besieged by claims and counter-claims about party funding.
While the huge donations made this weekend show that Nigel Farage is still capable of breaking political conventions, the money of crypto billionaire Ben Delo and cryptocurrency investor Christopher Harborne is completely off the charts for our politics.
Speaking about the original donation, a senior figure told me: “If you think of £36 million, one person donated more than the entire Labor Party’s 2024 election budget, more than the Conservative budget and about six times what the Reforms actually spent.
“This is the kind of donation that could change the way politics is funded in the UK.”
During the last general election campaign, the Labor Party raised around £9 million, with the Tories, Reform Party and Liberal Democrats collecting less than £2 million.
These extra millions give Farage enormous and immediate spending power, with perhaps even more to come in the future. Although you can bet that other parties will be outraged by the scale of this big money coming from people with deep pockets, not least because Cause received an unconditional pardon from US President Donald Trump for violating the Bank Secrecy Act.
It would be foolish for either of the two major parties to assume that this apparent return to traditional two-party politics will last long. But it is strangely new to find ourselves at a moment when both Labor and the Conservatives are generally happy.
As the new Prime Minister’s universe settles into place, a key Labor Party figure remarked: “We ate a funny bouquet and it was very tasty. What will happen next?