You’re now a target for Andy Burnham’s secret weapon – being a bit nicer

Andy Burnham should be particularly effective in this environment. He is comfortable speaking directly to a camera, does not always sound as though every sentence has passed through a committee and he can move between seriousness and humour without appearing entirely unnatural.

His first days in Number 10 have already placed considerable attention on whether the informal and direct “Brand Burnham” developed in Greater Manchester can survive the pressures of national government. His promise to make politics more about “problem solving than point scoring” also provides an early indication of the tone he wants to establish.

We all know that social media algorithms reward conflict. A video attacking another party, ridiculing one of its politicians or stitching together their most embarrassing moments will often receive more comments and shares than having an argument on a specific policy area.

However, this kind of combative political engagement does not necessarily change voters’ minds.

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In my work listening to young people and examining how political content travels online, I have spent a great deal of time looking through comment sections. One pattern appears repeatedly. When a political party launches a personal attack on another, its supporters tend to dig in or launch an attack in the comment section rather than change their minds.

An attack on Nigel Farage is interpreted by many Reform supporters as an attack on them and the concerns that led them to Reform. An attack on the Green leadership can be interpreted by Green voters as confirmation that Labour is arrogant, regards itself as entitled to their support and is unwilling to engage seriously with their frustrations.

The content may energise Labour’s existing supporters. It may produce thousands of approving comments from people who already agree. But it can simultaneously increase the emotional distance between Labour and precisely the voters it may eventually need.

Recent research suggests that this is more than an impression formed from reading comment sections. A British experiment involving 1,664 voters tested the difference between positive campaigning, policy criticism and personal attacks. It found that personal attacks produced a “double backlash”: voters thought less of the politician making the attack and, in some cases, more of the politician being attacked.

Most importantly, the damage was concentrated among non-partisan voters and supporters of other parties. Loyal supporters were largely unmoved. These are exactly the people a party needs to reach when it is trying to expand its coalition. Criticism focused on policies did not produce the same backlash, suggesting that voters can distinguish between legitimate political disagreement and personal hostility.

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That finding closely matches what young people told Peter Hyman and I while we were researching Inside the Mind of a 16-Year-Old.

We held workshops with more than 700 young people across the country and asked them directly what politicians get wrong when communicating with their generation. Their complaint was not that politicians disagreed too strongly. It was that political communication was too often negative, performative and felt empty.

“All they do is bash the other side. What are they actually for?” one young person asked.

Another said: “Politics feels like a never-ending fight, not a place for solutions.”

Others described politics as “blame, fear, outrage, nothing uplifting” and complained that politicians “insult the opposition without providing any of their own policies”. Their advice was clear: “We don’t need you to go viral, we need you to be honest.”

This does not mean that young people or voters generally want boring or overly cautious communication. The political creators they admired were often funny, sharp and opinionated. Young people do not necessarily want less political argument. They want an argument connected to explanation, ideas and a sense of where the country should go.

This is where one of Burnham’s political tendencies could become a major strength.

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Burnham does not always feel the need to name an opponent, mock them personally or turn every policy disagreement into a fight between political personalities. He is often more comfortable talking about the problem, explaining what he believes and describing what Labour intends to do.

That approach can occasionally frustrate people who want a more aggressive political performance. Yet in the electoral landscape Britain now faces, it could be extremely valuable.

The country no longer operates through a straightforward contest between two large political tribes. The 2024 general election showed how fragmented the electorate had become. Labour secured 33.7% of the national vote but won a large parliamentary majority. Reform won 14.3% and the Greens secured 6.7%, but those votes translated into only five and four seats respectively.

Labour’s majority was enormous in parliamentary terms, but its electoral coalition was much less solid than the seat total suggested. It included committed Labour supporters, people primarily motivated by removing the Conservatives, and voters prepared to support whichever progressive candidate was best placed to win locally.

YouGov found shortly before the election that 22% of voters intended to vote tactically. That included 39% of Liberal Democrat voters and 29% of Labour voters. Among those voting Labour tactically, 89% said their objective was to prevent a Conservative victory.

This willingness to lend votes has not disappeared. YouGov polling in 2026 found that, in a constituency where Labour was best placed to defeat Reform, 57% of Green supporters and 58% of Liberal Democrat supporters would consider voting Labour tactically. Labour voters expressed a similar willingness to support another progressive candidate where that person was better placed to stop Reform or the Conservatives.

Under first past the post, Labour will therefore not simply need people who enthusiastically identify as Labour voters. It will also need people who are prepared to lend Labour their vote in a particular constituency for a particular reason.

In one seat, that may mean persuading Green and Liberal Democrat supporters that Labour is the credible option for defeating Reform. In another, it may mean convincing people who have previously voted Conservative or considered Reform that a Labour candidate understands their community better than the alternatives.

We saw this dynamic in Burnham’s own Makerfield campaign. Before candidates were named, a Survation poll put Reform 11 points ahead of Labour in the constituency. When voters were instead asked about a contest involving Burnham personally, Labour moved three points ahead. The identity of the candidate changed the relative position by 14 points. Burnham went on to win the by-election with 54.8% of the vote, compared with Reform’s 34.5%.

Those voters had not necessarily abandoned their previous politics or become lifelong Labour supporters. Some had concluded that Burnham was someone to whom they could lend their support.

More in Common’s subsequent research offers further evidence of Burnham’s ability to reach across Labour’s fractured coalition. It found that he had positive net approval not only among people who remained loyal to Labour, but also among 2024 Labour voters who had since moved to parties on the left and those who had moved to parties on the right.

In a hypothetical election with Burnham leading Labour, the party gained support from current Green and Liberal Democrat voters, as well as smaller numbers of Conservative and Reform supporters. This does not prove that his less aggressive communication style caused that appeal. His Manchester record, political positioning and distance from the previous leadership are also likely to matter. But it does show the breadth of the coalition available to him.

When Labour speaks as though everyone who votes for another party is beyond reach, it makes winning those voters back much harder. People are more likely to reconsider their choice when they feel invited rather than judged. Labour’s task is to give them a reason to switch, not make them feel embarrassed about how they voted before.

Burnham’s reluctance to call out every opponent by name may look understated in the combative world of social media. In reality, it could help Labour achieve something far more important than winning the day’s argument.

It could make millions of people who do not yet consider themselves Labour voters feel that voting Labour is still an option.