Why Andy Burnham’s social strategy is getting so much attention

I’ve heard a lot of conversation around Andy Burnham’s social strategy over the last few weeks, and to be honest, I get why. It’s new, and is appearing to land in a way that hasn’t really been seen before in politics. As someone who’s worked in the public sector previously, it’s been interesting to watch, and it feels like a good case study to showcase how a digital first strategy can transform government comms. 

For as long as I can remember, looking at a Prime Minister’s social media has felt like watching a glorified press release. It’s always felt super polished, heavily edited, and deeply controlled, and didn’t seem like it was made for social media at all. We’ve seen a subtle change over the last few years, but the content we’ve seen has always felt just a little bit guarded, and if I’m honest, dry.

Burnham and his team are completely challenging the traditional political media playbook. While the content will absolutely be meticulously thought out, based on data, and edited, what we’re seeing right now feels different and digital first.

Lots of politicians claim they want to “engage” on social media, but sometimes that just means broadcasting a scripted message and ignoring the replies.

What Burnham and his team are doing is actually a huge step towards authentic engagement and it feels like a two way conversation. It feels like his team understands that people don’t want to just watch a piece to camera, or read a caption that’s gone through a million rounds of amends.

Two recent examples that showcase this approach are:

• When a user named Saz commented asking him not to visit Heron House, No. 10 North on a specific date because it was her wedding day, he literally replied: “Noted Saz.” Have you ever heard of a Prime Minister jumping in on a viral joke like that in the comments? It shows two things: his team gets internet culture, and it feels like Burnham actually trusts his communications team enough to let them have fun.
• When Burnham teamed up with Bemi Orojuogun (Bus Aunty) to announce the £2 bus fare cap was an effective use of platform native humour. It got over 2.1 million views and nearly 79k likes because it felt natural to the platform, not forced, and again, his team understood the brief and what the audience would love. Had Burnham heard of Bemi before? We’ll never know. Did that stop him doing a video with her (where he’s holding the camera, by the way)? No it did not. 

The other thing that feels different is that a key pillar of his strategy seems to be the “demystification” of politics and politicians. Everyone was obsessed when his first speech outside Number 10 put “lectern guy” out of a job, which is another new take on how his strategy is to “remove the barrier” between himself and the public.

His recent speech and video on social care is a good example of this. There was no official lectern or wooden plinth separating him from the camera or the audience in the room, and he was clearly emotional talking about it. Any comms team worth their salt would have wanted to include that emotion to keep it authentic, however there’s a high chance they might have been told to be more professional, stoic and that we need a firm hand to lead the country. Despite what they may have been told, they kept it in anyway. This means that Burnham and his team is managing to cut through all the sign off from PR, private secretaries and advisors to get this style of speech through.  The emotional delivery landed well and helped to position him as an accessible, mission driven human being, rather than a media trained politician. 

Another part of his strategy is using everyday humour to land serious political points. That video where he talks about what people call a bread roll (or should I say “barm”)  seems like just a bit of fun at first. But then he spins it straight into one of his core messages: what makes sense in one place doesn’t in another, so why do we treat politics like that? It’s a clever way to explain decentralising power from Westminster without it being boring.

Looking at this approach also makes me realise how much has changed in political communications, and there’s a really interesting comparison here between Burnham and Tony Blair. Back in the late 90s, Blair’s approach to closing the gap between Number 10 and the public seemed radical, but because that was pre social media, he had to try and do that through traditional channels like press conferences, morning shows and working with the media. 

Burnham on the other hand, is completely bypassing all of that and is going straight to the public’s social feeds. A prime example of this was when, instead of holding a traditional press conference and taking questions from Westminster journalists to launch a 10 year programme for government, he wrapped up his speech and left without facing the music. Instead, his team pointed people towards an online Ask Me Anything session on Reddit with question sticker CTAs on Instagram. 

This massively changes the press conference and traditional media set up. On one hand supporters see it as a way to reach people where they are as it gives ordinary people a direct line to ask questions. On the other hand, critics and political opponents are arguing that an online forum like this allows his team to filter down which questions get asked, answered and how, which obviously avoids any unscripted follow up questions that Burnham might normally receive from journalists. 

Even though I do like what’s been going down on his social recently, this has made me wonder what this means for traditional and local media which used to be seen as the ultimate “trusted” source. 

Something else which has caught my eye is seeing this approach cascade out to other ministers. Burnham is clearly building a very social first Cabinet because he knows just how much this channel matters as a way of communicating with every day, normal people. And you can already see his team setting a standard that others are latching on to.

Look at Chancellor John Healey, for instance. He’s recently adopted the sit down “documentary” style video format on TikTok, a trend that is very popular at the moment and once again showing that his team are keeping an active eye on trends across different platforms. It accomplishes the goal of showing the real people behind these roles and makes them appear more relatable.

The fact that this style has been seen, not just on Burnham’s personal channels, but other cabinet ministers’ shows just how much of a culture shift is happening in terms of how Westminster communicates with the rest of the country. 

I have seen comment after comment saying how “refreshing” this is, how much people are loving it and asking him to “keep up the good work” and I was curious to see if the stats backed up, so I took a quick look through Starmer and Burnham’s Instagram accounts.

• Views: On Keir Starmer’s last 15 posts before he announced his resignation, he was averaging around 254k views per post. Burnham is pulling in roughly 850k views on average, with massive spikes of up to 1.9M and over 2M with Bemi the bus lady. That’s a 600k view jump per post on average.
• Likes: Starmer was hovering between 1k and 10k likes. Burnham is regularly pulling 12k, 18k, 30k+ on standard post, and around 75k on Bemi’s.

Sure, some of that is down to him being new in No. 10, and of course, they’re ‘vanity’ metrics,  but you don’t sustain those numbers just on novelty. You keep them because people actually want to watch what you’re putting out. It’ll be very interesting to see how long this continues.

Of course, the backlash is already starting. There are a fair few comments that say things like “£1 million spent on social media junkies”  and accusing him of wasting taxpayers money “getting down with da kids”. 

There are also some other valid criticisms being raised that are worth thinking about, and it ties back to what I mentioned before about bypassing traditional media. Some political commentators are arguing that by relying so heavily on his own videos and social channels, he might be evading proper scrutiny and real debate. 

However, in my opinion, if  a government isn’t creating engaging content that doesn’t directly communicate with people where they spend their time, in a way that they understand, it can’t explain its decisions. Investing in a sophisticated strategy with a well briefed digital team isn’t vanity or a “waste of taxpayers’ money”, it’s how you build trust and maintain a public conversation through authentic engagement. It’ll be interesting to see how his team navigates the criticism around bypassing the press when the summer recess ends and Burnham is more in front of parliament than he is currently. 

It’s been a busy few weeks for Burnham and his team, and I’m sure they’re just settling in so I’ll be intrigued to see what will come next. 

There is one thing though, that I’d maybe consider, given how well the ‘Noted Saz’ remark went down. Right now, almost every post is getting a hefty amount of positive comments, but also a ton of “all sounds great, but can we have XYZ”. People clearly feel comfortable asking for stuff in the comments because they feel like they can, but there is space to go back to some of these comments so people feel heard. 

For example, a lot of people are constantly asking about lowering student loans and making climate change a top priority. I wonder if there’s a space to go back to some of these with Burnham’s policy, or keep note of the topics with the highest volume and do content that directly answers those questions. Maybe it’s to come later down the line, but that would really take this social strategy to the next level and make it truly two way.

Basically, all of that to say, in a time where it feels like a lot of politicians are  terrified of making a mistake, having a Prime Minister follow a social first strategy is great to see from a comms perspective, and is clearly cutting through the noise for a lot of people, and credit is absolutely due to his team for pulling off a very high risk, high reward strategy. It’s social media done right, and it might just rewrite the rules for the entire government.