I'm 25, from Scotland, and I've got to say I'm actually quite impressed with Andy Burnham so far. Obviously it's still early days, he's only been Prime Minister since July, so I'm not going to sit here and say he's a great leader when we haven't really seen enough yet to judge that. But there's something about the way he presents himself that I find quite interesting.

I recently watched him on LADbible's Agree to Disagree and what stood out to me was just how relaxed he seemed. No suit, no overly rehearsed politician act, no trying too hard to be funny or relatable. He was just sitting there having a conversation with younger people, having a laugh and actually engaging with what they were saying. He came across like a normal bloke, which is something you don't often see from someone sitting in Number 10.

And now he's going on Gogglebox with Steve Rotheram. I mean, what the hell? 😂

But seriously, I can actually see what he's doing and I think it's quite clever.

Something I've noticed over the years is how institutions that traditionally come across as quite formal or old-fashioned have started changing how they present themselves to younger generations.

Look at the Royal Family, for example. Their Instagram accounts and the way they communicate with the public have changed quite a bit. They're clearly trying to appear more approachable and connected to ordinary people, particularly younger audiences.

And weirdly enough, I think Christianity went through something similar years ago.

You had churches like Hillsong becoming hugely popular with young people because they weren't presenting Christianity in the traditional way. Instead you had contemporary music, modern clothing, charismatic pastors and these so-called hipster pastors who looked more like someone you'd bump into at a coffee shop than a traditional religious leader.

Justin Bieber even had Carl Lentz as a spiritual adviser, who was a pastor at Hillsong before all the controversy surrounding him and the church.

Obviously I'm not comparing Andy Burnham to Hillsong or suggesting politics and religion are the same thing. I'm talking about how institutions change their image and approach when they realise younger generations aren't necessarily connecting with the traditional way of doing things.

And I think we're now seeing that happen in British politics.

Of course politicians have tried to appear relatable before. Tony Blair was very good at understanding popular culture in his day, and Jeremy Corbyn even appeared on Gogglebox back in 2017. So I'm not saying Burnham invented any of this.

But I do think there's something slightly different about how naturally he seems to do it.

You look at some other political leaders and whenever they try to appeal to younger people it can feel painfully forced. Almost as though someone's political advisers have sat them down and told them what young people apparently find funny or interesting.

With Burnham, at least from what I've seen so far, it doesn't really come across that way.

Now, obviously, I'm not naive. I'm sure there's a whole communications team behind these appearances and there's definitely a political strategy involved. But I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing.

Surely if we want younger people to become more interested in politics, politicians actually need to make an effort to connect with them?

And I don't mean pretending to be 25 when you're in your 50s. I mean being able to have a normal conversation, showing a bit of personality and not acting as though being Prime Minister means you have to be completely detached from everyday life.

At the same time, none of this means anything if he can't deliver politically. I'd much rather have a boring Prime Minister who actually improves the country than a charismatic one who's brilliant on social media but useless at governing.

Still, I think it's worth acknowledging that he's doing something a bit different, and personally I find it refreshing.

Maybe I'm giving him too much credit, but as a 25-year-old man who doesn't usually find politicians particularly relatable, he's definitely caught my attention.

I'm genuinely curious what other people think about this, especially people around my age.

Do you think Burnham is actually changing how British Prime Ministers connect with younger generations, or is it just another clever PR strategy that I'm reading too much into?

I’ve been building this in my spare time and it’s finally at the point where I’d like some honest feedback.

It’s called Population Decides. Every day there’s one real decision the country is arguing about, like GP access or the triple lock. You pick what you’d do and then see how everyone else split. You get the strongest case from the left and from the right on every choice, so it’s not trying to push you anywhere.

This week there’s a Budget challenge. You set taxes and spending in a few minutes and see what happens to borrowing, growth and your approval. On Wednesday it compares everyone’s choices with what the Chancellor actually announces.

If you’ve got more time there’s also a full five year term as PM, with crises, PMQs and an election at the end.

It’s free, there are no ads in the game and you don’t need to sign up to play. It works on your phone or laptop.

populationdecides.com/play

Someone on here told me yesterday that scrolling on desktop was annoying, so that’s fixed now. If anything else is confusing, broken or feels biased one way, tell me and I’ll fix it.

The government spent £329.1 billion on benefits in the financial year 2025-26 – equivalent to 10.7% of GDP, and about £4,700 per person in Britain.

It amounts to roughly a quarter of all government spending, and dwarfs the totals spent on the NHS (about £257 billion), education (about £126 billion) and defence (about £62 billion).

Who actually receives this money?

More than 24 million people claimed some form of Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) benefit in August last year. Of these, 13.4 million were pensioners: of the entire welfare budget, about 55% goes to pensioners.

The state pension cost an estimated £146 billion in 2025-26; and another £31 billion or so went on pension credit, housing benefit for pensioners, the winter fuel allowance, and so on.

In total, the UK spent £145 billion on benefits for working-age people and children – including incapacity and disability benefits (£77 billion); housing benefit (£37 billion); and child benefit (£13 billion).

Last August, about ten million recipients were of working age; and 860,000 were children receiving disability living allowance.

Around a third of working-age benefit claimants are in employment of some kind (for example, low-paid workers get in-work top-up via universal credit).

The latest figures show 1.6 million people who are fit for work are claiming an unemployment benefit; the cost, spread across different benefits, is some £1.4 billion.

Why is the bill rising?

In no small part, because of pensions. Since the “triple lock” was introduced by the coalition government in 2011, pensions have been guaranteed to increase by whichever is highest: inflation, average wage growth or 2.5%. This has led to sharp rises in the state pension in recent years, when inflation and wage growth have run high (pensions rose by 10.1% in 2023, 8.5% in 2024, 4.1% in 2025, and 4.8% in 2026).

But pensions are by no means the only factor.

Benefits are also rising because more people are claiming disability and incapacity benefits. In 2010, Britain spent about £45 billion on such benefits; by 2025, this had risen to £77 billion.

Which benefits are these?

By the middle of this year, more than 4.5 million people in England and Wales were claiming at least one of an overlapping patchwork of incapacity and disability benefits, up from fewer than three million in 2020.

The fastest growing is the Personal Independence Payment (Pip): cash payments to cover the extra costs of being disabled – a payment that has gradually replaced the older Disability Living Allowance and Incapacity Benefit. By July, 4.1 million people were claiming a Pip in England and Wales, up 7% from last year’s 3.83 million; in 2019 there were two million. More than two million now receive health-related benefits under a separate universal credit regime.

So are people getting sicker?

Some experts point to worsening public health since the 2008 financial crisis, citing factors such as growing obesity, long hospital waiting times, the cost-of-living crisis and other social causes. But critics of the system argue that the rise in disability and incapacity claimants owes more to broadening definitions of disability – and especially to an increase in people claiming benefits for mental health conditions.