Andy Burnham’s allies have been offering peerages to MPs willing to stand aside so he can return to Westminster, The i Paper has been told.
Multiple sources claim the Mayor of Manchester’s allies have been making moves to position him for any leadership challenge which may come after the local elections.
The results are likely to pile further pressure on Sir Keir Starmer, who has long known that these elections could be make or break for his premiership.
In January, Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) blocked Burnham from standing in the Gorton and Denton by-election in an attempt to protect a weakened Starmer from a leadership challenge from the so-called “King of the North”.
But that’s not stopped fevered speculation about him making a fresh bid, with multiple sources telling The i Paper that his allies are offering peerages to MPs willing to stand aside and allow him a route back to Westminster.
There is no suggestion that any MP has accepted an offer to vacate their seat, but it does demonstrate the lengths the competing factions in Westminster are going to in support of their favoured candidates.
Sources close to Burnham have insisted that he had neither offered, nor suggested such a reward to any MP offering to stand aside for him, nor is he in a position to do so.
While true that Burnham himself cannot currently hand out peerages, if he eventually became Prime Minister, he would have this power as part of the established Westminster Honours system.
Speculation has been building that Burnham will soon mount a new bid to enter Westminster and has identified a new seat. One ally confidently predicted that he would not be blocked again by the NEC and will be Prime Minister by September. This would require the writ being moved for a by-election as soon as Parliament returns on Wednesday for the King’s Speech. However, such claims have been dismissed by other MPs as “complete bollocks” and “wishful thinking.”
MPs thought to be under pressure to give up their seats include Peter Dowd, the MP for Bootle in Merseyside, Charlotte Nichols, the Warrington North MP, and Marie Rimmer, the MP for St Helens South – although all deny being approached.
Sources close to Burnham deny any of these seats were ever in contention. Another seat being closely watched is Rusholme, currently held by Afzal Khan, one of Burnham’s closest political allies and former Lord Mayor of Manchester.
‘Dire’ election results in North West ‘don’t help Burnham’
A Starmer supporting MP said Labour losses to Reform in the North West show why Burnham in his current left-leaning guise can’t be leader. “The detail of results doesn’t really help him,” they said. “He’s supposed to be so popular in Manchester, but the results from there are pretty dire, so where is this seat that he is going to fight? And the likelihood that we lose the mayoral by-election he might cause seems very, very high. The whole thing doesn’t really vindicate his stance.”
The MP said Burnham might have a poll bounce “in the immediate aftermath” if he were to become leader but that “a week into being prime minister he’d be confronted with the same set of decisions that Keir has got to make, and those are not decisions that are going to make you wildly popular in the short-term.”
But Compass, a think-tank supportive of Andy Burnham, rejected the analysis that Reform gains mean Labour should not tack left.
The think-tank, which backs the Mainstream Labour group closely associated with Burnham, said the party’s losses on Friday morning were mirrored by Green gains and that this was eating into the party’s vote, handing seats to Zack Polanski’s party.
It claimed there is a “progressive majority” in the UK for the party that can unite voters on the centre-left, highlighting comments from elections expert Professor Sir John Curtice on Friday saying: “It should be remembered that Labour may often lose seats to Reform because it is losing votes to the Greens, while the Conservatives are losing votes to Reform. The net effect can be that Labour end up losing a seat to Reform [as the party comes through the middle].”
Labour is forecast to lose up to 2,000 council seats across England, alongside difficult results in the Scottish and Welsh elections.
Nigel Farage’s Reform Party is on track to be the biggest winner, while Polanski’s Greens are also on course to make significant gains.
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