Will Andy Burnham make a better prime minister than Keir Starmer?

There was no honeymoon on offer here: the chamber's first verdict on the Burnham premiership, delivered within a day of his handshake with the King, was a fairly emphatic no confidence, by nearly two to one, that he represents an upgrade on the man he replaced. For a party that changed leader and prime minister in the same month without a general election, that is a pointed reception.

The clearest fracture ran through age rather than party loyalty as such: voters in their mid-40s to mid-60s, the cohort most likely to remember Labour governments come and go and to feel the weight of "challenges on the economy, housing, and public services" in their own lives, were the most hostile, while the very youngest and the retired were noticeably more open to Burnham. Women, too, broke against him more heavily than men, hinting that scepticism about a swift, unelected transition of power was not confined to any single demographic redoubt.

The result echoes a familiar British unease with mid-term leadership changes engineered in Westminster rather than at the ballot box, the same discomfort that has trailed party coronations since at least 2007 and 2016: voters may accept a new prime minister, but they rarely arrive pre-convinced he is better than the one he replaced.

What little enthusiasm there was came qualified rather than glowing. The floor's most-respected Yes case argued only that Burnham "surely could not be worse than Starmer" and might be "fractionally better", while the top No voice dismissed the whole prospect as continuity with menace, warning he would be "Starmer on steroids & crack" and "the install to put the last nail in the UK coffin".

A change of face, then, but on this evidence not yet a change of mind.