Angela Rayner has demanded that Andy Burnham be allowed to stand as an MP, opening the door to a potential leadership challenge against Sir Keir Starmer by the Manchester mayor.<\/p>\n
The Prime Minister\u2019s former deputy said that his decision to block Mr Burnham from standing for Parliament earlier this year was a \u201cmistake that the leadership of our party should put right\u201d.<\/p>\n
In an address to the Communications Workers Union hours after Sir Keir delivered his reset speech, Ms Rayner said: \u201cWe as a party have to do better than this. And we can only prove we mean our Labour values by putting the common interest ahead of factionalism.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we can start by accepting that Andy Burnham should never have been blocked. It was a mistake that the leadership of our party should put right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Burnham was prevented from standing as the Labour candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election in February by Sir Keir and his allies on Labour\u2019s ruling body.<\/p>\n
The Prime Minister\u2019s opponents accused him of running scared from a potential leadership challenge.<\/p>\n
Ms Rayner\u2019s renewed call for Mr Burnham to return to Westminster came as a growing number of Labour MPs demanded that Sir Keir resign despite his efforts to move on from the party\u2019s disastrous local election results last week.<\/p>\n
Shortly after Sir Keir\u2019s speech, Catherine West, a leading Labour rebel who previously suggested that she could run against the Prime Minister, demanded that he resign by September.<\/p>\n
That timeline would favour Mr Burnham as he is currently ineligible to run for the Labour leadership because he is not an MP. A slower leadership election would give him time to find a seat to stand in and contest a by-election.<\/p>\n
A shorter contest would favour Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, who represents the Right wing of the party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Angela Rayner has demanded that Andy Burnham be allowed to stand as an MP, opening the door to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33809,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5172,1586,14298,1469,94,31,1587,1585,18,14,5,1182,6,4108],"class_list":{"0":"post-33808","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-angela-rayner","9":"tag-apple-news-free","10":"tag-catherine-west","11":"tag-european-union","12":"tag-keir-starmer","13":"tag-labour-party","14":"tag-live-amp-breaking","15":"tag-live-priority","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-politics","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-uk-news","20":"tag-united-kingdom","21":"tag-wes-streeting"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116556418418460240","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}