When asked who was most likely to become the next prime minister, 59 percent of respondents named Burnham, with only 2 percent naming former defense minister Al Carns.
Burnham won an endorsement of sorts for replacing Starmer, with 44 percent saying he has a stronger right to govern than Starmer because he “better reflects what the public wants now.” Some 25 percent said Starmer had a stronger right to lead the country because “he won the last general election.”
Labour has been lagging behind Nigel Farage’s Reform UK for more than a year in the headline polls. Recent analysis suggests Burnham would cut Reform’s lead if, as expected, he takes over the Labour leadership, but would still struggle to hang onto Labour’s Commons majority, even in the best-case scenarios.
When it comes to political support, respondents to the latest poll who plan to vote for Reform were the most likely to say Burnham needs to call an election to gain legitimacy: 75 percent of current Reform voters backed this approach.
Among Conservative voters, the proportion saying Burnham should call an election was 63 percent, while even one in three Labour supporters (34 percent), whose party stands to lose scores of MPs on current polling, think Burnham should seek a new mandate.
“Calling an election is undeniably a risk,” Wride said. “Even if we assume that Labour might get a small bounce from changing leader, Burnham has a difficult task ahead to enact popular changes while avoiding the criticism that he has no public mandate for those changes. Election polls remain fractured, and the result is far from predictable.”
NOTE: Public First surveyed 2,013 UK adults online, between June 26 and June 29.