YouGov’s tracker data has consistently shown that government approval has remained very low for years – the Labour government first elected in 2024 never even managed to get a net positive rating on coming into office, and it has been downhill since for the most part.
With Andy Burnham coming into office, he has been seen as a strong performer in government, and his personal polling ratings reflect this. Burnham’s most recent favourability ratings see him at net +13, the highest rating for any Prime Minister since the early days of the Covid pandemic. This is vastly better than his predecessor, who resigned amid a rating of net -45.
Yet, government approval has not increased substantially since. Our tracker suggests that since Burnham has come into office, government approval has risen from 17% to 22%, while disapproval has dropped from 61% to 55% – certainly progress, but not a drastic change as some may have expected considering Burnham’s popularity.
So why so little difference? To test this, we asked respondents one of three government approval questions: our generic tracker question on whether they approved of “the government’s” record to date; whether they approved of the Labour government since July 2024; or whether they approved of Burnham’s government since July 2026.
We find that the results for the generic government approval wording matches near-exactly those for the Labour government since 2024 wording, coming in with a net approval of -36 and -40, respectively. This strongly suggests that the public’s view of the government is currently defined by their views of the Labour government as a whole, from Keir Starmer’s landslide win until now.
Comparatively, when invoking Burnham himself in the question wording, net approval jumps over 40 points to +6, with 33% approving and 27% disapproving. This reflects the strength of Burnham’s personal brand shown elsewhere, and suggests he has made a solid start to the job. However, this clearly makes the point that Burnham’s policies and intentions so far have not made a large dent into government approval at large.
Voters of all major parties in 2024 hold a substantially higher rating of Burnham’s government. While just 17% of 2024 Conservative and 9% of Reform UK supporters approve of Burnham’s government so far, this compares to 7% and 2% on the generic government approval question. Among those who voted for Labour in 2024 there is a jump of 19 points in approval, from 39% in the generic question to 58% when talking about Burnham – similarly, Lib Dem voters see an increase from 27% to 47%.
Currently, it is clear that Burnham is an asset to the Labour Party’s fortunes, though this does not yet extend to government approval ratings. Time will tell whether Burnham will be able to lift the government’s support up, or whether he will be dragged down to its level.
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