When Andy Burnham gave his lachrymose conference speech in Liverpool last month, Kemi Badenoch and her closest aides were tensed for one particular announcement amongst the plethora of Left-wing policy pledges.

'We thought that he might use the moment to call a general election,' says a senior Conservative source. 'We were poised and ready to roll – and still are.'

Mrs Badenoch used her own conference moment in Birmingham last week to emphasise her disdain for Nigel Farage's Reform UK, saying to loud cheers: 'To those who say "unite the Right", we are not uniting with THAT.'

But there is one thing the parties do agree on – the need to be battle-ready in case Mr Burnham pulls the trigger on a snap poll before Christmas.

To that end, the Tories already have a campaign 'grid' – setting out the order of visits to battleground seats by Mrs Badenoch – and a draft manifesto which could be polished and printed within a fortnight. 

Candidate selections are well-advanced, while election meetings merging staff at Tory HQ with the Leader of the Opposition's advisers have been taking place since the summer.

Although the strategists were originally planning for an election next May, they now think it possible that a poll could be called as soon as December: although Mr Burnham said on the eve of his conference that he was ruling out calling a snap election, no one in the Tory team believes him.

The senior source said: 'Kemi's view is that Burnham said that the [pensions] triple lock was safe, then decided he would ditch it, and he has also changed his mind on Brexit. So why should we trust him on this?'

Over at Reform, Mr Farage is moving to plug some of the gaping holes in his front bench – starting with a senior Armed Forces figure who will be announced within the coming weeks – and is even preparing to launch his own eight-page newspaper. 

The Reformer will be distributed to 15million households across the country, necessitating what party sources claim is the biggest newsprint order anywhere in the world this year.

The move is both a reaction to, and the product of, the party's controversial funding model: in September, Mr Farage celebrated a whopping £72million windfall from cryptocurrency billionaires Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne.

Aides say this has given him a war chest sufficient to bypass the traditional media outlets which have raised the most persistent questions about the party's donors – including why Mr Farage failed to declare a £5million donation from Mr Harborne. 

The donation is being investigated by the parliamentary commissioner for standards, who is expected to report imminently.

Both Tory and Reform camps think that Mr Burnham is tempted to spring an election while he is enjoying a bounce in the polls and his rival parties on the Left are in disarray.

That suspicion only increased in the early hours of Friday morning, when Green Party leader Zack Polanski failed to win the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, while battling civil war in his party over anti-Israeli conference resolutions. 

Mr Polanski blamed his defeat on the fact that the voters in Sir Keir Starmer's old seat wanted to 'give Burnham a chance' – a honeymoon mentality with an inherently limited shelf-life.

On the same day, the irrelevance of Sir Ed Davey's Liberal Democrats was highlighted by the fact that he suffered an attempted coup against his leadership without anyone noticing or caring, when one of his MPs, Charlie Maynard, resigned from the party's frontbench in an attempt to force a contest to replace him. 

It means that Mr Burnham dominates the Left, at a time when the Right appears hopelessly split.

The latest polling shows Labour moving closer to the 30 per cent figure, while the Tories and Reform are scrapping it out in the low-20s. 

If an election was held tomorrow, the most sophisticated seat projections put Labour on 313 seats – down 99 on 2024 – the Conservatives on 123 – up 2 – and Reform on 95. Labour would be just short of an overall majority, but could form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

Although Mr Burnham would lose Sir Keir's thumping majority, the pro-poll advocates within Labour argue that waiting longer will give the Tories or Reform time to get their act together, while a victory now would give Mr Burnham his own mandate and free him from the restrictions on raising taxes in the 2024 manifesto.

A senior Tory source said: 'We think the election will come sooner rather than later, possibly before the end of the year. The manifesto is in good shape. 

'It will not be a Christmas tree, like some previous Conservative ones – trying to find a policy to please every special interest group – but will have a clear, compelling message. We are ready to go.'