To think Andy Burnham needs to start to show us he can talk about more than "the north" and "buses"

[joeymaynardssandwiches]

I want to get behind Andy Burnham, I feel he's got the potential to be a great counterpoint to the rise of reform. And I do know it's "silly season" in politics and with parliament closed I guess there's a limit on what initiatives can be announced

But so far it feels like he hasn't broken away from being a northern caricature who just bangs on about buses.

I'm a "northerner" (who always thought of Manchester as the part of Midlands ) but I can only do my job in the south and I can assure Andy there are big pockets of deprivation in the south too.

And I am all for public transport, and investment in it. But it just feels like a real "low hanging fruit" approach for his first few weeks and I want to hear him talk about thornier and less uncontroversial issues.

And admittedly I haven't been reading every news story in depth as I have been busy with the kids so he may have discussed other things. But that is my overriding impression at the moment and it feels a bit frustrating

I see politicians use viewing figures as a gauge but one of Starmer’s issues was over exposure.

He’d get loads of btl comments but pretty much all taking the piss. That or saying go away. Sometimes you can overdo it and people quite like to be left alone.

shocked at their ability to exit fast

That should have been no surprise to anyone. Of course the international elite are internationally mobile! I despair at the quality of these 'top Treasury and HMRC nabobs'.

I completely take your point - politicians definitely can rack up superficial views, where the engagement is mostly negative, but Andy Burnham’s social media team will have ways of tracking that: you can tell if it’s good engagement or not from the comments, but also from things like the share-to-view ratio. The data must currently be showing the strategy is working in terms of positive engagement - hence him leaning into it. Also, the kind of creators he’s collaborating with right now with huge follower numbers of their own wouldn’t be collaborating with him (and didn’t with Starmer) if they thought he’d be cringe for thier own brands. So, I do think for now the evidence is that people (or people on social media at least) really do like his communication style there. How long that’ll remain the case, we don’t know though!

But also, I was responding specifically to a poster who said Andy Burnham wasn’t doing a good job of communication - and that just genuinely surprised me, as it seemed really at odds with my own impression, and all the polling I’ve seen.

You do realise that not everything has to be personally relevant to you? Why are so many people on threads like this going on about where they live and what they want?

I would much rather have a PM making considered, iterative policy changes over time than one that comes in all guns blazing without a clue.

I don’t have children, so the need for good schools, childcare provision, uni fees, child benefit etc. have absolutely no relevance to me. Does that mean I think Andy Burnham is spending too much time talking about these issues? No. Because I am a citizen living in a society, and I want everyone within that society to flourish. Not just myself.

Talking about an excellent social media presence, this came through my Facebook this morning. I didn’t know that Italy was doing so well!

The thought of having someone running the country who is just plain talking and common sense thinking. I actually feel emotional imagining it.

Starmer leant into it too. So they didn’t sound that savvy.

Burnham isn’t as bad, I mean I don’t see his stuff tg but it’s not as grating. It might feel successful as polls bounce but it’s pretty easy to become the guy who loves TikTok and plays guitar if things start swerving away from him.

@NOTANUM
The wealthy people who are happy to contribute to the society are an asset . Mainly because they are honest.
We don’t need tax avoiders.
And we most certainly don’t need the type of a billionaire whose business practices are so dodgy that people regularly die while in his employment.

So Italy is doing well but Labour are terrible, yes?
Here are some facts for you. All from 2026.
GDP growth: UK 0.6% Italy 0.2% ( first quarter for both)
Unemployment. UK 4.9% Italy 5.7%
Inflation UK 2.9% Italy 3.2 %

She has been in power for around four years, which is not long compared to other countries but long enough for things to be better for Italy than they are now.
Typical right wing populist full of empty words.

Despite banging on about the immigrants, her track record with regards to “stopping the boats” is much worse than Labour’s.
People arriving in small boats in 2025 UK 41472 Italy 66316

Badenoch is the same, full of empty words but no evidence of concrete policies to tackle the issues.

Really ? Do you honestly feel this Government is good at Communication/PR?
How many threads do we see with posters criticising the Labour Gov but then another poster replies - actually they have done all this, then lists the Governments 'achievements' - none of which has been communicated widely.
I have no doubt some Ministries are making progress but the only dept communicating it's progress seems to be Shabana Mamoods. Far too much time is spent on Farage 'if you vote Reform - you'll get....'. Take the emphasis off Farage and concentrate on the Government's progress - Labour are the ones in power. Farage has 7 (?) MP's - interestingly the Lib Dems have over 30. Why is the emphasis always on stopping Farage? Do a good job of being in Gov and people will vote for you.
Show leadership - don't feel you can't make difficult decisions, stop making 'party unity' a priority. And get better at Communicating!

@EasternStandard
There is nothing wrong with a fair tax system.
How else would you fund NHS, education and public services in general?
Would you rather have a system like US where decent healthcare is a privilege many people can’t afford?

Not at all. Hopefully three years of Burnham’s guitar playing TikTok will see people voting for jobs again.

I don’t think Labour historically have been good at communicating what they’re doing well at all, in fact I think it was one of Keir Starmer’s biggest failings. But I do think Andy Burnham is doing much, much better at it. And if you’re judging by the polls rather than Mumsnet threads, then that is far from a minority opinion. His engagement on social media is exceptionally high for a politician. I’ve also seen political commentators of various political leanings noting how strong his personal communication style, so, yes, it does seem surprising to me that that’s something you don’t think he specifically is doing well at.

My problem with all this talk of Labour growing the economy is I just don’t believe whatever stats or data they are using. I listened to something a while back where they said the data drawn at the beginning of the year always shows growth, Its something to do with them allowing for January and rejigging it.

I need to look into this 0.6% figure you’re quoting.

That's good to hear. Sounds like all is fine and dandy with the Burnham Gov's communications. They are riding so high in the polls, it'll be a shoe in for another 4 years at the next election ? No work needed - just keep on with the er ...stuff you are doing.

I’ve just looked it up and it’s called seasonal adjustment.

GDP naturally has seasonal patterns. Christmas, for example, causes retail activity to surge in December and then fall back in January. The ONS therefore adjusts the raw figures to remove predictable seasonal effects, so that Q1 can be compared fairly with Q4. That’s standard statistical practice.

Interestingly, the ONS has actually acknowledged a genuine issue that’s relevant to what you’ve heard. It says that UK economic activity has developed a stronger pattern of growth at the start of the year in recent years, and that seasonal adjustment has had to adapt to this changing pattern. It says it can take 3–5 years of data to establish a new seasonal pattern properly.

And historically, Q1 certainly hasn’t always shown growth. The ONS says that before the pandemic, raw (unadjusted) GDP typically fell sharply in Q1; in the two pre-pandemic years it averaged −3.4% in Q1. After seasonal adjustment, however, Q1 growth averaged +0.3% in that earlier period.

What’s particularly interesting about 2026
The ONS’s current figures show:

• Q4 2025: +0.2%
• Q1 2026: +0.6%
• Q2 2026: +0.4%

So it’s not simply a case of “Q1 always grows because of the way they adjust Christmas.” Q2 has also subsequently grown.

However, there is a legitimate debate about the reliability of the recent Q1 numbers, because the seasonal pattern of the UK economy has changed and the ONS itself says the models are having to adapt to that. The ONS is specifically monitoring this and says its latest statistical tests found no statistically significant residual seasonality in the aggregate GDP figures.

This is also an interesting point;

GDP per head tells a less impressive story for Britain
The same ONS/OECD comparison has UK GDP per head growing 1.1% in 2025, compared with 0.7% in Italy.
So Britain still comes out ahead, but by much less. And UK GDP per head actually fell in Q4.
That’s because Britain’s population has been growing relatively rapidly. Total GDP can increase while the improvement experienced by the average person is considerably smaller.

So the rapidly growing population has an impact with those figures.
The UK’s total GDP growth has been better, but there are serious weaknesses underneath it — particularly productivity, GDP per capita, business investment, government debt/finances and the labour market.

So no concrete policies, no facts, just banging on about a TikTok showing Burnham playing a guitar with heroic Ukrainian soldiers during his visit to celebrate their independence. Thank you for mentioning this, I was not aware of this video. We need more politicians like this.
Back to Badenoch. Wasn’t she on social media a lot recently as well? It was because she supported a convicted Nazi in local elections. Maybe suggest to her trying to play the guitar instead.

Yes policies of course, but you are clearly a dedicated Labour supporter so you’ll back them whatever.

And if you’re saying you need more of those videos we’re not going to agree. I’m glad it worked for some though.

I hadnt heard about her supporting a Nazi so I had to go and look that up too!

The man was Joshua Bonehill-Paine, a former neo-Nazi activist who was selected by the Conservatives as a candidate for Somerset Council, in the Crewkerne South ward, for next year’s local elections.
His past is considerably more serious than simply having made some controversial comments.

He was:

• jailed after publishing antisemitic material connected to a planned neo-Nazi rally;
• subsequently convicted of racially aggravated harassment of the then Labour MP Luciana Berger, who is Jewish;
• involved in a campaign of extremely abusive and misogynistic material directed at Berger.

Badenoch’s reasoning appears to have been:

1. She believes he genuinely repudiated his former extremist views. Bonehill-Paine has said that he changed after prison and subsequently became involved in counter-extremism and anti-antisemitism work. Badenoch’s argument was that someone who has been part of extremism can have particular insight into how people become radicalised.
2. She strongly believes in rehabilitation and second chances. Badenoch has explicitly framed the controversy around the principle that people should not be permanently defined by their criminal past. She compared it to the wider question of whether offenders can genuinely reform.
3. She seems to have deliberately taken the “don’t cancel him” position. She said that if we’re serious about stopping extremism, we need people who were once “part of the problem” but have changed to become part of the solution.

Im absolutely amazed Labour and the Greens didn’t grab him as a candidate!

This is still overall better than Italy. So how is Italy better then?

I think if you are comparing countries it is relevant though because Italy would be receiving the same advantage from it being the start of the year. So long as you aren't comparing UK in January to Italy in October the point stands.

Why would Labour and Greens choose someone like this? You must be very desperate to pick a convicted Neo Nazi to represent your party. Are Torries in such a bad position that no decent people want to represent them?

You are just trying to pick a fight again. You threw some stats my way and I said I don’t believe them. Statistics are there to be skewed.

All the talk by the London Mayor about crime being down for example. Bullshit. There might be some crime that has fallen, murder for example, but I don’t believe for a second that all crime is down - I bet it’s up and by a large margin. They’ll do anything to make us believe things are getting better. I don’t believe it. I have recently been a victim of redundancy that were a DIRECT result of Labours policies.

This idea that you can grow the economy by increasing welfare pay outs, alongside raising taxes to middle England, letting the wealthy and well educated leave the country, closing businesses down with increased NI and business rates, and encouraging job losses due to the punishment handed out to business. Add into that the unfettered drip of unskilled labour through migration, most of whom will fight to stay in the country by lying then bring tens of extended family over, most of which will also sit on benefits and we are completely screwed down the line.

Labour and the Greens are not adverse to anti semitism themselves? No?

So in short you have no facts to back your statements. I am afaird that I need more than “feels” to get behind a politician. You are a typical right wing MN poster. Banging on about how bad Labour is but failing to provide one solid fact to show that Torries/ Reform would be better.