// BBC UK NEWS — CRONACA
Burnham and Badenoch revive red versus blue politics as Reform land 'gobsmacking' donation
Burnham and Badenoch revive red versus blue politics as Reform land 'gobsmacking' donation
Look closely at the posters, placards and online posts. Your eyes aren't deceiving you if Labour's red seems a little deeper and the Conservatives' blue a little truer.
Politics seems to have found a new rhythm, one that feels a little familiar, despite Reform's jaw-dropping new donation putting it back in the headlines today.
For the avoidance of doubt, the scale of that £36m gift to Nigel Farage's party is like something from a different political universe.
"It's a gobsmacking sum," a senior figure involved in running successive election campaigns for one of the big parties tells me.
But one cabinet minister is enjoying what they see as a newly obvious difference between Labour and the Tories. "It's clarifying," they say, a clear gap between Labour and the Tories' "sense of purpose and values".
A member of Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch's top team tells me, "normal jogging is reasserting itself", hopeful they're at the start of a more straightforward, routine moment in politics after years of craziness, with smaller parties vying to shove the traditional tribes out of the way.
The standout moment was at the despatch box this week when Prime Minister Andy Burnham declared that national security couldn't come at the expense of social security - a phrase immediately seized on by the Tories, interpreting it as the PM saying he'd never cut welfare spending to pay for defence.
One senior conservative said: "It was a real line in the sand, we could never have imagined Sir Keir Starmer saying that."
The party seems cock-a-hoop at a line they can use again and again, asserting the prime minister cares more about welfare than guarding against war.