Published June 23, 2026
The impending coronation of Andrew Burnham as leader of Britain’s Labour Party, and hence as Prime Minister, will do more than reset British politics. If he is successful at reversing his party’s low standing in the polls, Burnham could show Europe’s beleaguered social democrats a way back from their malaise and seemingly terminal decline.
The Labour Party under Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership has had a poor electoral record. It won a massive 412 seats in the 2024 parliamentary election, but that’s mainly because the conservative opposition was divided between the ruling Conservative Party and Nigel Farage’s Reform Party. Labour won its huge majority with only 33.7 per cent of the vote, a record low for a majority government. Moreover, turnout declined significantly from the 2019 contest, demonstrating that millions of Britons were depressed by all the alternatives on offer.
Starmer’s Labour went into a political tailspin almost immediately upon assuming office. His favourability rating plummeted to a mere 27 per cent by October 2024 and has remained stuck around there since. The party’s standing has plummeted also, dropping from 39 per cent in the afterglow of its 2024 win to a mere 19 per cent in the most recent YouGov poll. It suffered massive defeats in the 2025 and 2026 English local elections and fell to a humiliating third place in the Welsh regional election, the first time ever that Labour had failed to take first place.
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Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is a globally recognized expert on American elections and policy as well as global populism.
