Andy Burnham Seen As Better Prime Minister Than Other Potential Labour Leadership Candidates
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Andy Burnham leads the pack of potential future replacements for Prime Minister Keir Starmer in new Savanta polling of British voters about leadership qualities, The House can exclusively reveal.
While there is currently no vacancy either in the Labour leadership or 10 Downing Street, Labour insiders have speculated that a battle for the top job could come sooner rather than later, given the challenges faced by Starmer and his government.
Leadership candidates must be sitting MPs, which Greater Manchester mayor Burnham is not. But his return to the parliamentary party via a by-election has been floated as a possibility by allies, and he has not denied that he could seek a Westminster seat.
Angela Rayner was tipped to be Starmer’s most likely successor before she resigned as deputy leader and deputy prime minister. She now sits on the backbenches.
Former Labour leader Ed Miliband, meanwhile, has been the subject of recent reports claiming he is interested in running for the leadership, though his team has rejected these as “nonsense”.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting is considered to be the most likely candidate from the party’s right flank.
In polling of 2,086 UK adults conducted between 19 and 22 September by Savanta for The House, 28 per cent said Burnham would be better than Starmer as PM, with 14 per cent saying he would be worse and 28 per cent saying he would be neither better nor worse.
By comparison, just 15 per cent said Rayner would be better, while 38 per cent said she would be worse; and 16 per cent thought Miliband would be an improvement, compared with 32 per cent who thought he would be worse. Streeting scored the lowest “better than Starmer” rating, at 14 per cent, though only 19 per cent said he would be worse.
The polling results also reflected the poor personal ratings Starmer has seen in office, as 61 per cent of respondents said he was doing badly, including 39 per cent who said he was doing “very badly”. Just 16 per cent thought he was doing well.
On leadership attributes, Starmer scored poorly across the board. Only 24 per cent of voters said he was a strong leader, while 65 per cent disagreed. Just 22 per cent deemed him “in touch with ordinary people”, 27 per cent considered him trustworthy, and only 20 per cent described him as charismatic.
Burnham scored higher on key leadership traits, with 32 per cent of voters saying he was a strong leader, compared with 22 per cent who said he was not. A total of 35 per cent believed he was in touch with ordinary people – 13 points higher than Starmer – and 32 per cent saw him as charismatic, a 12-point advantage.
However, a large number of voters said they did not know enough about Burnham to judge his potential leadership qualities: between 43 and 47 per cent of respondents selected “don’t know” on measures of his strength, trustworthiness, capability and charisma.
The findings suggest that while Starmer is struggling to make a positive impression on voters, his potential successors have not yet made a big impact on the public as a whole.
Chris Hopkins, political research director at Savanta, said: “Labour’s leadership is in a sorry state, with many polls showing record levels of dissatisfaction in it, and the leader, given how relatively short their reign has been so far.
“Starmer’s greatest asset remains his large parliamentary majority, but rumours of disquiet risk turning into full-blown rebellion if improvement is not made.”
He added: “The other advantage for Starmer is that there is no obvious alternative for Labour MPs to rally behind; at least, while Andy Burnham remains outside Parliament.
“In public opinion terms, he’s the only one with decent name recognition, untarnished by the current regime, that could provide a challenge to Starmer, but with no obvious route to power, Starmer continues to feel relatively untouchable for the time being.”
The full tables are available here.
