Best to be honest: the more I see of Andy Burnham, the more I like him. He was in Ukraine the other day, with the troops, and someone handed him a guitar and he did a bit of Rusholme Ruffians by The Smiths: I might walk home alone but my faith in love is still devout. And I thought: at least it’s genuine, unlike that time Gordon Brown said he loved The Arctic Monkeys. And if someone likes The Smiths, I will probably like that person a little bit more than I did because that’s how popularity works: we like people, and connect with them, when we think they might laugh, and rage, and sing along to the same things we do.

But it’s got to be said that the popularity contest in British politics has become very weird in recent years, and especially in Scottish politics. We are still likely, now as then, to connect with politicians based on a range of factors – what they do, what they say, how they say it, how they look, even the music they strum on a guitar in Ukraine – but the most recent patterns are curious. And it raises questions, like why are political leaders so unpopular, and why do we keep electing them anyway?

The polling website pollcheck.co.uk gives you some idea about what’s been going on. There’s a tracker that follows the leaders’ approval ratings and UK-wide, Mr Burnham came into office at 4 (hardly Mr Congeniality but still a plus) and has bobbed in and around the zero point in his first few weeks and is currently at 14. It still means about a quarter of voters have an unfavourable view of him, but Keir Starmer had the worst favourability on record, so as recent Prime Ministers go, it’s not at all bad for Burnham.

The PM’s standing in Scotland on the other hand is a little more mixed. There was polling by the research agency Diffley this week which showed he has a positive favourability in Scotland too, albeit at a slightly lower level: 9. This compares to the First Minister John Swinney on -6,........

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