Would Andy Burnham improve Labour's electoral prospects over Keir Starmer?

A close-run no, in the end, but the aggregate barely hints at the fracture beneath it: this was less a verdict on Burnham than on two quite different readings of what Labour needs. Men here backed the Manchester mayor by a wide margin, while women rejected the idea nearly four to one — as sharp a gender split as this kind of personnel question tends to produce.

That divide likely tracks the record being weighed. Burnham's pitch rests on transport and welfare wins in Manchester, credentials that seem to have landed with male voters weighing electability in blunt, strategic terms; women, more attentive perhaps to the living-standards criticisms and the carried-over Starmer-era policies like under-16 social media curbs, were far less convinced a change of face would change Labour's fortunes.

Age added its own wrinkle rather than reinforcing the gender story: the youngest and the 55-64 bracket were both cool on Burnham, while 25-34s and the over-65s warmed to him, a pattern that resists a tidy generational narrative. The result lands amid a live Labour succession fight, and rehearses a familiar question in British politics — whether a change of leader ever really changes the electoral maths, or merely changes who gets blamed for it.