Editor's Desk 
Labour would be the largest party in the House of Commons but fall 117 seats short of an overall majority if a general election were held now, according to a seat projection published by UK Polling Report, as Prime Minister Andy Burnham ruled out going to the country before 2029.
The projection puts Labour on 209 MPs, 202 fewer than the 411 the party won at the 2024 general election, and short of the 326 seats needed to command a majority.
Reform UK would come second on 149 seats, with the Conservatives on 133 and the Liberal Democrats on 72. The SNP would take 44 seats, the Greens seven and Plaid Cymru four.
The seat numbers are drawn from an average of opinion polls that puts Reform on just under 25 per cent, Labour on 22 per cent and the Conservatives on 20 per cent.
Reform therefore leads on votes but trails on seats. UK Polling Report’s analysis attributes that to the first-past-the-post system, which rewards Labour for a wider geographical spread of support.
Burnham, who entered Downing Street on 20 July as Britain’s seventh prime minister in a decade, was asked about the polling in an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.
He ruled out an early contest. “There is no general election,” he said. “And the thing I would say to you is 20 million people voted for a manifesto. We’re in a parliamentary democracy, so that is what people voted for, and I will honour that manifesto.”
Pressed on whether that was a firm commitment, he said: “Well I’m going to rule it out. There’s no early general election. I don’t think people want it.
“The opinion polls might say some people do, some people don’t. I just think what I most need to do is get Britain focused on getting the country back where it should be, getting it working.”
The findings come less than a week into Burnham’s premiership. He became Labour leader on 17 July following Sir Keir Starmer’s resignation, and was appointed prime minister the following Monday.
Burnham has said he will honour Labour’s 2024 manifesto commitments not to raise VAT, income tax or national insurance. “I stick by the manifesto and the promises that it made,” he said before taking office. “So, let me be absolutely clear about that, but there is some room within that manifesto for movement on tax.”
He has since removed VAT from electricity bills, a measure most businesses do not qualify for.
Reform’s standing in the polls has already prompted calls for closer examination of its economic programme by companies. Liam Byrne, the Labour chairman of the Commons business and trade select committee, said in December that businesses were right to be worried about Reform UK.
“If Reform is set to become the predominant party of the right, then businesses absolutely are going to need to understand where they’re coming from,” Byrne said. “Particularly when the economic evidence says that populist, interventionist administrations are pretty catastrophic for the economy.”
Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice has rejected that characterisation, saying both Labour and the Conservatives had “wrecked the public finances” and that his party would cut spending, borrowing costs and regulation before cutting taxes.
A general election is not due until 2029. Burnham’s first Budget is due in the autumn.
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