What Worries the World – August 2026

A change of Prime Minister has provided some respite for the ruling Labour party, who have pulled narrowly ahead of the right-wing Reform UK party in opinion polling since Andy Burnham took over. The public are also showing signs of a lift in mood, with the proportion who feel the country is headed in the right direction up by eight percentage points since last month. However, this improvement does little to dent the overall mood of despondency felt by many Britons. People have felt a loss of the future for some years now and failure to remedy this has had a corrosive effect on trust in institutions and politics. To rebuild public positivity and avoid the fate of a chain of recent Prime Ministers who have been ejected from office after only a relatively short term, Andy Burnham will need to make demonstrable progress on the key worries that have been top of the British public mind for some time - immigration control, healthcare, poverty, and inflation.