Decoding the Burnham Machine

What 1,231 posts, 145 transcripts and 10,287 comments tell us about the most talked-about social operation in British politics

Since Andy Burnham entered Downing Street, everyone has had a take on his social media. Some call it authentic, others call it cringe. We ran the numbers instead, through our Make Sense framework, across every public post on TikTok, Instagram, X and Facebook, plus all 145 video transcripts and a sample of 10,287 comments.

Three things stood out.

Facebook is his biggest platform, and nobody’s talking about it. A typical Facebook post pulls 844,000 views, five times a typical TikTok. His single biggest post anywhere, 5.4 million views, is a Facebook video.

His own voice beats his team’s four to one. Official team posts about him average 25,000 views. Posts in his own voice, same weeks, same channels, average 104,000.

He never asks for anything. Across 145 videos: zero “subscribe”, zero “sign up”. Not asking is the flex.

The full report goes further: the eight-point playbook behind the voice, the hour-by-hour anatomy of an announcement, and why “the bus” works harder as a brand than any abstract message ever could.