On August 16, AFP reported that the UK’s new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, is dramatically transforming Downing Street’s communications approach: flooding TikTok and Instagram with short-form videos, collaborating with influencers, and inviting young content creators to prime ministerial events. This has earned him the moniker “the first TikTok Prime Minister” from British media.
The “first” label isn’t entirely accurate. Burnham’s predecessor, Starmer, also had a TikTok account, and the UK government had already established a presence on the platform. What truly sets Burnham apart is that he no longer treats short videos as an afterthought to traditional press conferences. Instead, he packages policies, shapes his persona, and competes for voters directly according to platform logic.
The results came quickly. In his first week in office, Burnham’s TikTok following surged from under 99,000 to over 170,000—a jump of roughly 73%. A video announcing the cap on bus fares at £2 racked up over 2 million views, while another highlighting his first week’s five achievements drew around 5 million views. A clip of him and Chancellor John Healey tasting snacks at a pub while discussing tax cuts for the hospitality industry also pulled in 4.7 million views on X.
Why the rush to dive in? Partly because the “algorithmic high ground” of UK politics has long been held by Nigel Farage.
As of early August, Farage boasted about 2.3 million followers on X, 1.5 million on TikTok, and 1 million on Instagram. For years, he’s been compressing immigration, law-and-order, and cultural flashpoints into emotionally charged, starkly opinionated short clips, wrapped in a pub-and-pint, everyman persona. Reform UK hasn’t just outmuscled Labour on these platforms; they’ve translated this digital dominance into over a year of polling leads.
The Labour Party under Starmer was the polar opposite: policy messaging felt bureaucratic, and their short-video accounts were cluttered with stiff speeches and scattered memes. Voters might not have known what the government was actually doing, but they’d see Farage telling them “what’s wrong with Britain” every single day. For Labour, short video stopped being a PR exercise—it became a matter of political survival.
Burnham’s counter-move isn’t to out-anger Farage, but to craft a kind of “positive populist communication.” He wears dark T-shirts, talks football and pubs, jokes about his own looks, and then slips energy taxes, bus fares, and hospitality tax breaks into these relaxed settings. He’s going after the same voters who’ve lost patience with traditional politics, but he’s serving up relatability instead of a list of enemies.
The strategy appears to be paying off politically. A week into Burnham’s tenure, a Survation poll put Labour at 26%, edging past Reform UK’s 24%. Before Starmer resigned, those numbers were 19% and 27%, respectively. Two other polls also show Labour either tied with or ahead of Reform UK. That said, this bounce also factors in the “new leader” effect and cost-of-living policies, so it can’t all be chalked up to TikTok alone.
What’s genuinely striking is how the communication chain has inverted. Previously, politicians would give TV and newspaper interviews, and social media would amplify them. Now, the PM produces vertical videos first, and traditional media then report on their view counts and online buzz. The first point of contact between politicians and voters is shifting from the news studio to the phone’s content feed.
But algorithms can create a sense of familiarity; they can’t shorten hospital waiting lists. A viral video can explain bus fare caps, yet it can’t mask economic stagnation or the cost-of-living squeeze. With roughly three years until the next general election, Burnham has proven Labour can enter Farage’s traffic arena. The next test is whether he can prove that the promises made in those short videos can actually be delivered in the real world.
The UK election hasn’t started, but the campaign has already begun on every vertical screen held up in front of us.
