CANBERRA — When a new British prime minister speaks to their Australian counterpart for the first time, it’s a reset of Australia’s oldest and deepest relationship.

The agenda seems obvious: Intelligence sharing. Tariffs. Hot war and simmering conflict.

If the conversation turns to sport, cricket has often been the obvious choice.

But as Andy Burnham began his introductory calls to world leaders, he and Anthony Albanese got to rugby league.

On their July 23 leader-to-leader call, the two men talked animatedly about the sport they have each spent a lifetime inside.

Albanese told Burnham he would love to see the Kangaroos, the Australian national side, tour the United Kingdom soon.

“I used to love watching the old Kangaroo Tours to the U.K.,” Albanese told POLITICO, reminiscing about “Mal Meninga’s try at Old Trafford in the green and gold” in 1990, in Burnham’s home town of Manchester, one of “those small grounds where the fans are right there on the tiny dead ball lines.”

By the end of the call, according to Burnham’s office, he agreed to support Albanese’s team, the South Sydney Rabbitohs. “I’m happy to barrack for Prime Minister Burnham’s Leopards in return,” Albanese said.

It wasn’t just small talk.

The AUKUS military alliance requires London and Canberra to operate at a level of trust that treaties and memorandums can’t manufacture. Delivering nuclear-powered submarines to Australia to ward off Chinese aggression will take decades of shared industrial secrets, shipyard schedules and nuclear technology.

Personal chemistry between leaders is not a substitute for institutional machinery, but it is the lubricant.

Burnham and Albanese have a shared, unfakeable claim to a working-class sport at exactly the moment both left-wing leaders are trying to hold onto working-class voters in the face of a right-wing populist challenge.

Burnham told POLITICO that deep love of the sport is “one of the many reasons the friendship between our two countries runs as deep as it does.”

“In the North of England, rugby league is in our blood. It is played and watched week in, week out, rain or shine, and I know that is a feeling shared in communities right across Australia too,” he said.

The code of collective action

Burnham’s urgent political mission is to stem the flow of working-class voters who have switched from Labour to Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform UK, in many post-industrial Northern towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and nearby Cumbria and Cheshire, where rugby league is played.

Reconnecting with these communities is critical for Burnham’s hopes of saving Labour from defeat at the next U.K. general election, which is not due until 2029 but could potentially come sooner.

And the culture of rugby league is one that aligns closely with Labour’s left-wing history and its mission in these very same parts of the country: The sport only exists because of a fight about money and class

In 1895, clubs in the north of England broke from Rugby Union over the refusal of the sport’s authorities to compensate players for wages lost to injury or time away from work.

Wealthy players didn’t need the support, while working-class players decided their only option was to quit, and set up a rival code that allowed them to receive a wage for their efforts.

Players in Australia — formed out of British colonies and still firmly in the British Empire — soon followed suit, and the split never healed. Neither did the class coding.

Union, which was devised in a historic, prestigious private school, remains a fixture of British and Australian fee-paying schools.

Australia’s opposition leader, Angus Taylor, a Rhodes Scholar and former McKinsey consultant, plays Rugby Union. Albanese, who grew up with a single mother in social housing, played league.

Burnham’s Northern assets

League “has a very particular culture,” said Tony Collins, emeritus professor of history at De Montfort University and the author of several books on the sport. It understands itself, he said, as working-class, democratic and inclusive — and reflexively anti-establishment.

That is a useful thing for a politician like Burnham to be fluent in. Their League connections present them, he said, as ordinary blokes voters could have a pint with. “It’s the man in the pub thing,” Collins said.

Burnham’s northern identity is one of the few assets his party has that Farage cannot replicate.

The British leader has decades of involvement in the sport, serving as honorary chair of Leigh Centurions (Now Leigh Leopards), a team dating back to 1895. In 2018 he served as president of Rugby Football League, the sport’s governing body, an appointment he described as “one of the greatest honors I’ve ever been given.”

Burnham’s advocacy for greater investment in community-driven sport mirrors Albanese’s passion.

“Rugby league is about community. It’s about local identity,” Albanese said, and those who see the sport, its teams and its players as commodities to be traded or cut “don’t understand the sense of belonging it fosters.”

The pair talk about rugby league in the way Labor leaders were once able to talk about their own parties: mass movements marked by their sense of tightly-knit community.

Albanese’s 118-year grudge

Named for hawkers who walked Sydney’s streets selling wild rabbits to those too poor to afford other meat, Albanese’s Rabbitohs were founded in 1908 by working men from the city’s factory belt.

The club went on to win 20 premierships between 1908 and 1971 — still a record — the year Albanese’s mother took her starry-eyed 8-year-old son to watch the sport’s Grand Final.

Albanese played the sport for practical reasons: he could reach the training ground at inner Sydney’s Redfern Oval by bus — his family could not afford a car.

His days ended after school as he climbed the Labor ranks, becoming one of its youngest officials and an MP from his early 30s. Then came Rupert Murdoch.

In 1996, the newly-elected Albanese rose in the House to condemn a Federal Court decision clearing the establishment of Super League, a breakaway Murdoch-funded competition.

Calling it a battle between the community history of the game and the “private domination of this game by an individual,” Albanese risked his political career in labeling Murdoch’s venture “un-Australian”.

Famous for brow-beating Labor politicians, Murdoch’s newspapers controlled more than 70 percent of Australian news print circulation and set the daily agenda.

While Super League eventually collapsed back into the non-profit National Rugby League, the Rabbitohs did not survive the wreckage. Administrators cut the club in 1999, seeking a leaner competition and clubs with bigger fan bases and deeper pockets.

Albanese used his office to cultivate a backlash that became the largest sustained sports protest in Australian history.

As a Rabbitohs board member, Albanese tabled motions in Parliament, helped organize rallies and joined nearly 100,000 people marching through Sydney demanding their team back.

“This debate goes to the very heart of the alienation which people are feeling about our society,” he told the House in Nov. 1999. He was in the Federal Court in 2001 when it ordered the Rabbitohs readmitted to the competition, finding their exclusion breached the Trade Practices Act.

Authenticity dividend

While many would find it hard to outdo life membership of their favorite team — an honor Albanese received in 2013 — he took his fandom a step further: marrying a Rabbitohs fan who shouted the club’s battle cry from the audience during a speech by Albanese.

A first date with pension fund executive Jodie Haydon followed just before Covid lockdowns, and the pair married in 2025.

Businessperson Peter Holmes à Court in 2006 bought a 75 percent stake in the Rabbitohs with actor Russell Crowe, with Albanese’s blessing. He argues the prime minister’s obsession is the rare kind voters detect as genuine.

“His love for the Rabbitohs is absolutely authentic,” Holmes à Court told POLITICO. Instead of seeing a politician looking for photo opportunities, with Albanese his team pride is “like an organ, another arm.”

Albanese’s fandom occasionally overwhelms his official role.

In March 2026 he joined an on-field invasion draped in club colors after the Rabbitohs’ Alex Johnston broke the NRL’s all-time try record, telling Nine Television “it was worth it to be part of history.” In July he told comedian podcaster Nikki Osborne that a Souths win is “always a good aphrodisiac.”

“Anti-snobbery is the new movement, right? You can’t be too woke, but you also can’t be too elite in a populist revolutionary world,” Holmes à Court said.

Albanese rallies to the defense of his sport at the dispatch box on the floor of Parliament, and promises to use his relationship with Burnham to “discuss getting more kids off screens and onto sporting fields in our two great countries.”

Burnham keeps it similarly practical: “Together we are delivering good jobs through our AUKUS programme, ensuring young people get a good start in life, and driving down the cost of living. I know as two progressive Labour leaders we have a close friendship ahead of us.”

Albanese won’t be getting his desired Kangaroos tour of the U.K. this year.

England’s team is headed Down Under instead, for the Rugby League World Cup, beginning Oct. 15.

LONDON — Over the past decade, Nigel Farage has ripped political conventions apart, dictated the debate on Brexit and immigration, and driven his party into contention to win the next general election. 

But now the hard-right Reform UK leader faces what may be the biggest challenge in a career suddenly engulfed by troubles. 

From a far more potent rival in new Prime Minister Andy Burnham to a resurgent Tory party, pressure over his finances, and a dubious gamble on a special election, Farage and his team are feeling the heat. And their poll ratings have started to slide. 

“Farage is facing something of a perfect storm,” said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London and an expert on the right in Britain. “But while he’s on the ropes he’s by no means on the floor, let alone out for the count.”

Farage insists he won’t be “cowed” by what he describes as intimidation and says he is preparing for a general election as soon as this autumn, although Burnham has said he has no imminent plans to call one.

It’s an open question whether the Burnham bounce in the polls and the dip in Farage’s fortunes mark a decisive shift in momentum in British politics or merely a blip. What is clear is that the challenges facing Reform are substantial, and growing. 

Farage’s side admits that Burnham has lifted the Labour government since he took office on July 20 and hurt Reform with a blizzard of policy pledges and energetic social media videos that have dominated media attention. 

Reform’s leader, meanwhile, has been beset by questions over whether he broke parliamentary rules by not declaring a £5 million donation. Last month he quit parliament to trigger a special election in his constituency of Clacton on the east coast of England, vowing to take on the establishment he says is trying to stitch him up over the furor. 

But with none of the mainstream parties willing to play ball, the contest has assumed an air of farce: Farage’s only well-known opponent is a candidate who goes by Count Binface, a serial joker who dresses up as a trash can. 

As if that weren’t damaging enough, the Conservative Party that Farage has spent much of his career tormenting is staging its own recovery in the polls, as leader Kemi Badenoch strengthens her position. Even the number of migrants arriving in small boats has fallen, robbing Reform of its signature attack line to use against the government. 

The result is a notable slide in the polls both for the party and for Farage himself. 

Polling pains

According to POLITICO’s polling partners, London-based Public First, Farage’s net approval rating has dropped from -16 in early May to -21 at the end of July. Among people who voted Conservative in 2024 — a key target group for Reform — his rating has fallen by 15 points over the same period.

“Reform has lost significant support among the people who historically voted Conservative since the local elections,” said Seb Wride, head of polling at Public First. “Rather than being able to get on the front foot during the early weeks of Burnham’s leadership, the Clacton by-election is making Reform seem less relevant, and Labour has been able to largely ignore them while defining what they stand for under new leadership.” 

In a slew of headline voting-intention polls in recent days, Burnham’s Labour has pulled level with Reform and in some cases taken the lead, ending 15 months of consistent national poll leads for Farage’s party. 

“We have been here before. We have dealt with difficult moments before,” said Gawain Towler, a board member of Reform UK and the party’s former communications chief. The attacks on Farage over his financial arrangements are unfair, and come from questionable sources, he said, though they have caused damage even so. 

“There has been an impact and the Burnham bounce does also have an impact on the polls of course. The two things are happening together,” Towler said. “But what’s interesting is the impact these attacks are having on our supporters is very little because they expect the establishment to behave like this.”

The great establishment stitch-up

Public First’s analysis suggests there is truth to the idea that Farage’s core support has solidified as a result of his recent difficulties: During the same period that his overall approval rating has fallen nationally, from early May to the end of July, it has risen by 13 points among people who voted Reform at the last election in 2024. 

According to Towler, there is evidence that “the Establishment” is going after Reform with a series of underhanded leaks and attacks. That narrative — of a vengeful elite intent on punishing the people’s champion and the underdog — has proven powerful for populist leaders such as Farage, Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen in France and many others. 

Like Farage, however, Burnham is portraying himself as an outsider who is on the side of ordinary voters against the elite. The next election, whenever it comes, may be decided by which of these two can best embody the insurgent spirit.

“Nigel Farage is the most scrutinized politician in British politics and he has been for quite a long time — because of what he represents,” Towler said. “He is the leader of a political party, one that threatens not just the political establishment but the establishment across the board.” 

Towler argued that the British establishment is trying to shake Reform’s confidence and soften it up for an election campaign, likening the assault to the prelude to the World War I Battle of Messines, with “heavy artillery for weeks and weeks, trying to break morale.”

“If they manage to take Farage out, there’s a general election tomorrow. That’s what they’re trying to do,” he said. “They’re trying to break our morale as a party and I think you’ll find we have more morale, and we’re made of sterner stuff than they suppose.” 

Walking away

Queen Mary’s Bale said that while Farage is in difficulty, his situation is “serious but not terminal — not yet anyway.” If polls worsen and the financial scandals deepen significantly, that could change, he said. “If he decides to throw in the towel — and given his record and his thin skin, nobody should rule out that possibility — Reform is in serious trouble.”

Farage has history of walking away. He quit as leader of his previous party, the UK Independence Party, after losing his bid to win a parliamentary seat in 2015, only to be persuaded to return a few days later.

He also stood down as Reform leader and announced he would be retiring from politics in 2021, but jumped back into campaigning when former PM Rishi Sunak called a general election in 2024. 

That comeback decision, according to Towler, was the moment Farage reconciled himself to the hard reality of challenging the political establishment to win power.

“He knew it was going to be really hard. He knew that not just him, but a lot of other people around him — his friends, his long-term friends and allies and supporters — are also getting attacked,” Towler said. “And this will continue. We know it will continue. But we then say, hold on, this is our country. We can’t give up. How can we possibly give up?”

This week’s gathering of G7 leaders in Italy looks more like the Last Supper than a display of Western power.

© Vlasov Sulaj/AP