Andy Burnham should abandon his ambitions to return to Westminster amid fears Labour could lose both the mayoralty of Greater Manchester and a by-election, Cabinet ministers told The i Paper.
Senior Labour strategists have been looking with dismay at last week’s local election results in Greater Manchester. Reform won every single ward up for election in Wigan, alongside 18 out of 19 seats in Tameside, with 50-point swings from Labour to Reform.
Labour was also humbled in places like Oldham and Rochdale, while in the centre at the City Council, it was the Greens who triumphed, winning more than twice as many seats up for election than Labour. In Bolton Labour lost five of the seven seats it had up for election. In other parts of the Greater Manchester conurbation, the results were more positive for Labour. The party retained its overall majority in Trafford and Wigan and Salford but also shed multiple seats.
“Look, [Nigel] Farage will throw everything he has at both fights and then we find ourselves in an even worse mess,” a Cabinet minister told The i Paper. “And how much will they [Reform UK] outspend us by? And then [Green Party Leader Zack] Polanski can sweep in too.”
Burnham is understood to have told allies he has lined up a Parliamentary seat. His supporters have been offering peerages to MPs willing to stand aside so he can return to Westminster, The i Paper reported last week. He was photographed arriving at Euston station hours after Sir Keir Starmer told his Cabinet he was remaining in post as he battles to save his premiership during a growing Labour revolt.
In January Burnham was blocked from standing in the Gorton and Denton by-election by a Starmer-led coalition on Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee. But on Monday Starmer said only it was a matter for the NEC, as senior Labour voices former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said he should be allowed to stand.
A second Cabinet Minister told The i Paper: “Andy has got many, many good qualities, and I get on with him. But if he wanted to be back, he could have come back in 2024. I get the frustration that he was blocked in Gorton and Denton, but it was genuinely for a good reason, and he’s made it hard on himself. He could be back now. He could have come back as an MP in 2024. Had he done so, I’m pretty confident he’d now be in the Cabinet. But he didn’t do that, that was his choice. He made that decision, and that decision has consequences.
“I don’t see an easier, straightforward route back for Andy Burnham, or that Andy Burnham alone is going to solve all of our problems. No one person is going to solve the big political malaise and the huge challenges the country is facing and the threat of Reform.”
Nonetheless, Burnham’s personal branding is strong in the area and he remains popular in Manchester. During the Gorton and Denton by-election campaign multiple voters told The i Paper they would have voted for Labour had Burnham been the candidate. Focus group and polling data suggests he could have won the seat and others in the area.
“Andy Burnham does have a powerful appeal with Greater Manchester voters which I suspect sets him apart from the Labour government or a generic Labour candidate. But such is the unpopularity of Labour right now, and the pull of more radical options on both left and right, that nothing is guaranteed,” Robert Ford, Professor of Political Science at the University of Manchester, said.
A spokesman for Burnham did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
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