No. 10 (North and South alike) will be heartened by polling suggesting that the more the British public sees of Andy Burnham, the more they like him. Leader approval research by More in Common shows Burnham on a rating of plus 19 after just over a week in the job – almost double Keir Starmer’s high point at the end of 2024.

That these numbers are soft should not need saying. The metric that matters is not the public mood during the Prime Minister’s honeymoon but what they think of him once he’s a known quantity, has had to make hard decisions, and is asking for another five years in his own right. That is when we will learn how much of an electoral asset Burnham is to the Labour party. 

I write here to make another point entirely: just look at those Nigel Farage numbers. The same polling gives the Reform leader an approval rating of minus 32. This makes him far and away the most unpopular party leader in Britain, with even the Greens’ Zack Polanski eight points ahead of him. This is Farage’s lowest rating of this Parliament, a relative concept since not a single More in Common poll in the past two........

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