Labour Leads New Seat Forecast as Liverpool Conference Opens
Prime Minister and Labour leader Andy Burnham opened Labour's annual conference in Liverpool on 27 September 2026 with a More in Common MRP projection putting Labour on 250 seats and Reform UK on 147. The Guardian
The new seat numbers
MRP is a polling model that uses a large survey to estimate the winner in each seat. This finding reverses the pollster's July projection, which had put Reform on 293 seats and Labour on 110. The swing is 143 seats away from Reform and 140 seats toward Labour in about two months.
The latest More in Common survey polled more than 15,000 British adults ahead of the conference. It put the Conservatives on 125 seats, the Liberal Democrats on 63 and the Greens on three. On those numbers Labour would sit 76 seats short of a majority in a hung parliament, where no party has outright control. Yahoo News
A separate YouGov poll published on 24 September also indicated Labour would win the most seats as delegates headed to Liverpool. Bloomberg
The week in Liverpool
The conference was scheduled to formally open at 11.20am on 27 September and run from Sunday 27 September to Wednesday 30 September in Liverpool. The party billed the gathering as the 'Hope Again' conference. Labour Party
Burnham told The Guardian's political editor Pippa Crerar he wanted to show the public he was willing to take 'difficult but real decisions'. He is scheduled to deliver his conference speech on Tuesday afternoon. As the conference kicked off, he announced a new Help to Buy scheme. Sky News
The fringe programme sets out events across the four days. More in Common's published Labour Conference Programme listed a 'The Future of the BBC' event for 13:30 to 14:30 on Sunday 27 September in the Derwent Arena Room, Secure Zone, ACC. More in Common Separately, More in Common's final projections ahead of the 2026 elections had the SNP maintaining a clear lead on the Holyrood constituency vote with Reform UK as the second-largest force.
The broader context here is a lead without full control. Labour sits first on seats in both the MRP and the YouGov reading, but the MRP still leaves it well short of a majority. That arithmetic shapes every spending commitment, every housing offer and every line of the Tuesday speech.
What this means for the week ahead is Burnham must reach two groups at once. One is the hall in Liverpool. The other is voters who backed Reform in July polling and have since moved in the model. Help to Buy is an early sign of the offer. The language on difficult decisions is a sign he wants to be seen as credible. Expect tight message discipline until Tuesday.
In my view, the swing between July and September matters more than the headline lead. A 140-seat movement in a model in eight weeks points to voters who are still shopping around. The question is whether Liverpool locks in that shift or interrupts it.
