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Labour must not take the wrong lesson from its recovery. Burnham's bounce is coming from progressive voters who currently see their values and priorities reflected in the new administration. But the previous government showed how quickly that support can disappear if they no longer do.

Instead, Reform's decline is driven partly by a modest Conservative recovery. The chart below shows where the 2024 Conservative vote has gone - they are losing slightly fewer voters to Reform than a year ago. I also suspect fewer 2024 non-voters now intend to vote Reform.

By contrast the percentage of Labour 2024 voters intending to switch to Reform has not altered significantly for over a year.

This chart shows the destination of Labour's 2024 vote. The red line is the percentage that would still vote Labour. You can see that this starts trending upwards around the time that the percentage of former Labour voters intending to vote Green starts falling.

Labour's headline voting intention is recovering. This pre-dates Burnham becoming PM, but as his victory became inevitable we've seen polls putting Labour within touching distance of Reform. Crucially, this appears to be a consolidation of the progressive vote, rather than gains from Reform.

Our first focus groups on Andy Burnham with Labour considerers with a spectrum of views. Interesting North/South divide - Southerners simply know less about him. There's hope he'll be more representative of "Labour values" than the previous government – will be important that he lives up to that.

My debut on the No Sacred Cows podcast, talking about my favourite subject - the fragmentation of the electorate and how Labour might put it back together again (in which I am told I sound almost optimistic!)

It also trackers pollsters house effects - a matter of controversy in some quarters...

My favourite section (which I've never seen anywhere) is the chart of where the GE2024 vote for each party has gone. This is Labour - you can really see the rise in Labour to Green switchers after Polanski becomes leader and how it is starting to fall back (and how significant those switchers are).

For anyone with even a passing interest in polling, this is a fantastic resource, created by @cwp-weir.bsky.social, Research Manager at @thinklabour.bsky.social, which collates all the latest public headline polling, but also pulls out demographic detail from the tables. www.pollingpolis.co.uk

@thinklabour.bsky.social's report on Muslim voters found a general sense that they were taken for granted by Labour. But all is far from lost, Muslims are still more likely than average to vote Labour and most don't have a negative view of the party. Report here: thinklabour.co.uk/thinking/gon...

This is a good and necessary first step in repairing Labour's relationship with the Muslim community. But the mistakes over Gaza reflect broader problems, including a sense that Labour hasn't done enough to stand up for ethnic minorities against the hard right. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

The entire house buying process needs to be digitised and handled by AI agents because the fact that a solicitor failing to read an email for a week or a dispute about what colour something is shaded on a lease plan or an estate agent not chasing up, can cause a sale to fall through is ridiculous.

Sure. Though for example that hasn't stopped the SNP - and the numbers for "Yes" are less consistently positive than for rejoin.

Decisions over defence and trade are also subject to the whims of other countries, which shouldn't stop us making them. And I don't think it's primarily worry about the reaction of the EU 27 that's driving the hesitation (if they don't want us, we walk away) - it's fear of the public getting upset

Yes I think that's right. Which is why you're going to need someone who believes in Europe at an identity level rather than an analytical one

27 veto players who would be materially better off if the UK rejoined. I'm absolutely not saying this is easy or a foregone conclusion, but nothing that would make a significant difference to the UK is.

There's a trend among the liberal commentariat to say the UK would be better off in the EU but it's going to be terribly, terribly difficult to rejoin and it will be controversial with the public, so we can't . While criticising Starmer for taking the same attitude to every other difficult decision.

Extraordinary credit to Sadiq Khan for pushing through this deeply controversial policy. This is what can happen when politicians are prepared to stick to their principles.

Was on Times Radio yesterday making the point that Burnham won big in Makerfield mainly because he was so successful at consolidating the progressive vote and turning out people who hadn't viewed in the locals and less because he has a magic appeal to Reform voters.