Social Intelligence · X / Twitter · United Kingdom · 23–25 June 2026
A snapshot of the UK conversation on X across three days — 23 to 25 June 2026 — as the leadership prepares to change hands.
In that window we read 23,689 UK posts about the people in line to run the country — measuring how each is seen, by whom, and why.
The big picture
Share of voice
This isn't a poll of the whole field. We deliberately tracked two names — Andy Burnham, the presumptive new leader, and Al Carns, the one figure who looks like a genuine challenger. Burnham appears in 8,795 posts to Carns' 826, roughly 11× more, and pulls an even larger share of engagement. (Starmer, the outgoing leader, is discussed more than either — but he's on his way out, see §3.)
The verdict
Net sentiment = share of positive minus share of negative posts mentioning that person (−100 to +100). Burnham is deeply underwater. Carns leans positive — but on a far smaller, supporter-skewed base, so read his as a promising signal rather than a settled verdict.
New boss vs old
Burnham is just as unpopular on X as the man he's replacing. The two are a dead heat — Burnham nets -53, Starmer -56 — both deeply underwater. The change at the top has bought Labour no goodwill.
Net sentiment over every post that takes a stance on each man.
Net sentiment toward each, per theme (cells with ≥8 posts).
| Topic | Burnham | Starmer |
|---|---|---|
| Character, Integrity & Trust | -74 | -78 |
| Leadership Contest & Succession | -22 | -29 |
| Leadership Legitimacy & Mandate | -83 | -51 |
| Party Politics & Factionalism | -49 | -29 |
| Policy & Platform | -31 | -64 |
| Memes, Jokes & Banter | -45 | -59 |
| Conspiracy & Anti-Establishment | -88 | -82 |
| Appointments & Staffing | -35 | -48 |
| Media & Punditry | -7 | +12 |
| Immigration, Asylum & Grooming Gangs | -86 | -77 |
Across the spectrum
Every post is tagged by the political standpoint of its author — not who it's about. If a figure is disliked only by the opposite side, that's ordinary partisanship; disliked across the spectrum, the problem is structural.
Author standpoint across 23,040 posts.
| Left / progressive | Right / populist | Anti-establishment | Centrist | Apolitical | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Andy Burnham | -22 | -87 | -90 | -40 | -26 |
| Al Carns | -11 | +23 | -48 | +21 | +3 |
| Keir Starmer | -54 | -89 | -85 | +36 | -36 |
Green = net positive, red = net negative; intensity = strength. “·” = fewer than 8 posts.
Grassroots or amplified
Split each contender's mentions by the author's follower count and the picture is clear. Burnham's hostility is grassroots — deeply negative among small and mid accounts, and softest among the largest (100k+). Carns is positive among small accounts (his base) but cooler the bigger the audience.
8,795 scored mentions, split by the author's follower count.
826 scored mentions, split by the author's follower count.
What they can't forgive
Topics across the 8,795 posts mentioning Burnham, each bar split by sentiment toward Burnham. The deepest damage is on legitimacy, character and his appointments. Click any topic to read the posts behind the bar.
3,149 of Burnham's mentions — about 36% — attack how he reached the top: no mandate, an unelected “coronation”, calls for a general election, a contest with no real challenger. The case against him is his right to the job, not his policies.
The alternative
Topics across the 826 posts mentioning Carns, split by sentiment toward Carns. More positive — supporters urging him to stand — with a sharp negative strand on his record and donors. Read it as a glimmer, not a mandate: it's a small, supporter-skewed sample, and roughly a third of the "positive" posts are really attacks on Burnham. Click any topic to read the posts.
54 of Carns' mentions explicitly urge him into the race — throw his hat in the ring, challenge Burnham, stand for leader. This call-to-action, not his record, is what drives his positive share.
“Former Armed Forces minister Al Carns has refused to rule out a leadership bid in an exclusive interview with Channel…” — Channel 4 News“@Tony_Diver Nope. Carns is no comparison to Darren Jones and Starmer allies know that. He also was disloyal to Starme…” — AnneIn their own words
Not literal word counts. Every post was read and tagged with the characterisations it expresses about a figure, so this maps the recurring themes of praise and criticism — how often each type of comment comes up — rather than the exact words people typed. A post tagged "incompetent" may never use that word. Size reflects prominence — how many posts express it and how much engagement those posts drew, so rare low-engagement characterisations stay small; colour is the sentiment lean. Click any term to open its most-engaged post.
The loudest voices
The most-engaged posts in each lane (ranked by interactions; near-duplicates and repeat authors trimmed). Click any card to open it on X.
Methodology
We deliberately tracked the two leadership names in the frame — Andy Burnham and his most credible-looking challenger, Al Carns — alongside the outgoing Keir Starmer. So "share of voice" here is a chosen head-to-head, not a ranking of every politician; other figures would draw their own share if searched. Posts were pulled from the X (Twitter) API mentioning these figures, restricted to UK accounts and English-language content, then de-duplicated by post ID. Each post was assessed for relevance, sentiment toward each named figure, topic, the descriptive language used, and the author's own political standpoint. "Net sentiment" is the share of positive minus the share of negative posts that take a stance on a person, from −100 to +100. This captures the online conversation on X over the window — it is a measure of attention and tone, not a representative opinion poll.
Read with care. This is a sample of the X conversation — the posts the searches captured, not the complete picture — so treat it as the direction and texture of opinion, not a precise census. The corpus combines two searches (a leadership/Carns stream and a Starmer stream), so cross-figure volumes are indicative rather than a strict share of voice, and figures are scoped to the leadership conversation where it matters. Activity concentrates in a 24–25 June spike, and the anti-Burnham volume is inflated by a heavily reshared "general election" petition (~10% of those posts), though removing duplicates barely moves the net score. Smaller samples (notably Carns, 826 posts) are less precise than larger ones, so treat his figures as directional. Example posts shown under each theme are the most-engaged of many, not the full set.