Backers of the Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham fear the West gambit could trigger a contest too soon for their man to find a route into parliament. \u201cAnyone calling for the PM to quit but using the words \u2018orderly transition\u2019 is talking about waiting for Andy,\u201d one of his supporters said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The assumption is that a contest sooner would benefit expected candidates Wes Streeting, the health secretary, and Angela Rayner, the former deputy prime minister who was forced to resign from government over a tax scandal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The former is said to be<\/a> drawing up a policy program, while the latter set one out in a social media statement<\/a> on Sunday night, putting Starmer on notice ahead of his speech. \u201cThis may be our last chance,\u201d Rayner said. \u201cThe prime minister must now meet the moment and set out the change our country needs.\u201d<\/p>\n But, for either to launch their own challenge, one of three things would have to happen: They would have to go over the top and attempt to force a ballot themselves, Starmer would have to resign, or 81 nominations fellow MPs would have to back West\u2019s candidacy to trigger a formal contest.<\/p>\n Fight to the end<\/p>\n It\u2019s not clear whether West would gain enough nominations to trigger a race on her own \u2014 and a failure to do so could mean continued stasis. <\/p>\n Three people who have mulled the numbers argue excluding those backing Burnham, those wanting Starmer to remain (or at least avoid the chaos of a leadership contest) and frontbenchers unwilling to resign to support a stalking horse, she could have no path to the 81 nominations. In her BBC interview, West declined to spell out whether she thought she had the numbers.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Backers of the Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham fear the West gambit could trigger a contest too soon for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[126],"tags":[28914,10412,10413,37830,2420,2079,1065,18299,37556,37555,264,5964,932,1745,10415],"class_list":{"0":"post-65553","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-keir-starmer","8":"tag-andy-burnham","9":"tag-angela-rayner","10":"tag-british-politics","11":"tag-catherine-west","12":"tag-communications","13":"tag-crisis","14":"tag-elections","15":"tag-england","16":"tag-gordon-brown","17":"tag-harriet-harman","18":"tag-keir-starmer","19":"tag-mayors","20":"tag-security","21":"tag-trade","22":"tag-wes-streeting"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116553488991676841","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}