Andy Burnham to boost his premiership with influencer collaborations

One Downing Street source told the Bbc they planned to take a "more social first" and "authentic to Andy" approach, with "less high production, polished" content than might have been seen from a prime minister in the past.

This means we can expect more clips of Burnham in casual mode, chatting into a handheld phone or answering questions on policy in an apparently spontaneous fashion on X, Instagram or TikTok. There will also be a focus on collaborations with social media creators. Some critics saw this is a way of avoiding serious scrutiny of polices in favour of softball questions from non-specialists. But Burnham's advisers see collaborations with influencers as a way of getting the government's message to audiences it might not normally reach.

Media additions

A Downing Street source said "the vast majority" of the public will not see or interact with content that is coming from government or the prime minister's social media channels.

Klymenko was first approached by Burnham's team around two months ago to collaborate on content. His team filmed the video quizzing the former Greater Manchester mayor on his first job, before he entered politics, a week ago, then planned to post it on his first day as prime minister to capitalise on the buzz. A member of his team pointed out this is far younger than the audience for a traditional TV interview, while his cumulative subscriber and follower count across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook is more than 16.3 million accounts. While there is some paid-for content on his pages, Klymenko said no payment or contract was exchanged with Burnham's team and they did not request changes to the content before it was posted.

Meanwhile, Sir Mo Farah's uploads, running while discussing sport, education and mental health with Burnham, went to his three million followers across YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, a far bigger reach than the prime minister's personal channels.

The strategy is the brainchild of Abby Tomlinson, who ran Burnham's digital communications during the by-election, and who the BBC can confirm has been kept on for a new role in Burnham's administration. Tomlinson has been credited with how Burnham connected with voters across platforms in recent months.

The new PM has rationed interviews with traditional media since returning to Parliament, in favour of vlogs, a question and answer session on Reddit and X posts clapping back at political opponents. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch took to Reddit to urge him to "come out from hiding, face a proper press conference and submit yourself to scrutiny and some tough questions". Burnham responded to it by saying it had only been two weeks since he faced questions from "74,000 members of the public of Makerfield".

Young TikTokers were also invited to Downing Street to thank them for their work on his Makerfield by-election campaign. Megan Cassidy, 19, from Havering, started making Labour content a year ago and said it was "surreal" to have found herself at Downing Street: "I really felt like I was witnessing history around me". The young Labour activists said they were given access to Burnham and footage of him by his team, but are not paid and can choose to edit the material how they like. It helped that Burnham was "natural" and happy to spontaneously appear in content, they told the BBC. "I do think he gets it, absolutely compared to other politicians, compared to Starmer for example, I think he's a lot more charismatic," said Megan.