As the sugar rush of Andy Burnham’s barnstorming address to the Labour Party’s annual convention wears off, Britain’s unpopular Conservatives are beginning to think he might just have given them a shot at redemption.

The prime minister had his party base enraptured in Liverpool on Tuesday as he vowed to exert some agency over Britain’s most controversial policy dilemmas, from a ballooning pensions bill to the Brexit vote he said he might reverse.

Labour members lapped it up, and No. 10 Downing Street was buoyed by snap opinion polling that suggests there’s wider public support both for making savings from pensioners and rejoining the European Union. Meanwhile the Conservatives, whose own conference in Birmingham starts this weekend, saw their opponent setting out a left-wing agenda that they think can be beaten.

A senior Conservative official said that with right-wing competitor Nigel Farage’s Reform UK mired in a series of funding scandals, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch now harbors hopes of turning the next general election into a more traditional contest along left-wing and center-right lines.

The Tories would go into that vote vowing to be the party of economic growth, business and sound money, the official said. For executives at some of the UK’s largest companies there were certainly indications, in Liverpool, that when Burnham talks about helping business, he’s not talking about them.

The person familiar with Tory thinking indicated the Party would dust off its tried-and-tested playbook and accuse Labour of not having a viable economic program while planning to increase taxes, borrowing and immigration.

There are members of the Conservative party who think those arguments will be hampered by the long hangover from Liz Truss’ brief, market-roiling premiership in 2022 — when an ill-fated mini-budget let to a bond market revolt and sent mortgage costs soaring. The damage to the Tories’ reputation could take more than one electoral cycle to mend, according to several officials.

But others now counting on Burnham’s boldness to accelerate their return to power. One Tory official said the new Labour leader’s pledge to reform Britain’s electoral system could be a major own goal. The Conservatives will be able to argue that if voters choose Labour, Burnham’s changes will put an end to the two-party system that typically results in majority governments, and leave the country with permanent coalitions that include parties on the left-wing fringes.

The Tories have adamantly ruled out entering electoral coalition with Reform, and don’t want to move to a system where they could have no choice.

Badenoch’s party has taken comfort from what they see as the shine starting to come off some Burnham’s conference announcements. His radical plan to introduce socialized care for the elderly is partly unfunded, and faces possible delays, Bloomberg reported Friday.

Meanwhile, both UK and EU officials have privately expressed skepticism as to whether it’s realistic that Britain rejoins the EU, especially on the favorable footing it enjoyed before it left.

Burnham waded into some difficulties when he backed the owners of Manchester City Football Club, despite a seismic ruling that it had breached financial rules. Downing Street had to clarify his remarks to stress the government’s neutrality on the issue, highlighting the new prime minister’s occasional tendency to get himself into trouble in media interview — the flip side to the “honesty” he’s promised British voters.

The challenge for Badenoch is that many of her own Conservative supporters doubt whether she, or the current crop of frontline Tory politicians, has what it takes to win a general election.

Badenoch is viewed in Westminster as having improved her performance in recent months, especially during her weekly encounter with her opponent at prime minister’s question time. However, while her personal ratings have improved, the Tory party as a whole is still behind Labour and Reform in most opinion polls.

Tory officials see Burnham as a highly impressive speaker, saying he has an X-factor that will make him hard to defeat in an election.

Many in the party also privately agree with the bold steps he took in Liverpool. Few Tories see the triple lock mechanism that boosts increases to the state pension is sustainable in its current form, and many want a closer relationship with the EU, an official said.

Some Tories want Badenoch, who only held a shadow cabinet reshuffle recently, to change her top team again. Claire Coutinho, a rising star in the party, is being tipped to replace newly appointed shadow chancellor Andrew Griffith before the next election. With Griffith occupying a junior ministerial position in the Treasury under Truss, Labour think they have found their attack line.

All that leaves many Tories going into their conference downhearted. They see the most likely outcome for the next election, which has to be held by mid-2029, as a Burnham victory in coalition with other progressive parties. If he changes the electoral system, that would make it very hard for the Tories to win a parliamentary majority in future.

That also makes the next election the most important in decades, one Tory official said.