History. 2 of 4 British cases where no chair was named on the day. In all five commissions the chair and terms came together.
Hunch. Burnham set no deadline and named no start date, and the advice is meant for the next manifesto, so there is no early date to work to (BBC News; The Guardian, 29 Sep 2026). Editorial scoring note: The conditional sample has four promises without a chair already named: one chair was named within 30 days. The already-named-chair and no-commission rows are context; wider commission groupings are not this denominator.
The chair and terms market resolves on 18 December 2026 at 10:00 on GOV.UK, Hansard, the Labour Party website, BBC News and The Guardian: YES if by 17 December 2026 both a named chair and published terms of reference exist, in one document or two. Only one of the two resolves NO.
We looked for cases where a British leader whose party held power under a set of rules (voting system, the Lords, devolved powers) promised to change them, then handed the choice to a commission or a public vote, with no change in law before the next election. We found six, from 1997 to 2016. Only three are about the voting system; the others are about the House of Lords and Scotland's powers. The Jenkins and Wakeham commissions came from one 1997 Labour manifesto, so they count once. In the four where no chair was named on the day, as with Burnham, one had a chair within 30 days.