Pressure on Keir Starmer intensified last night as the backlash to his decision to block Andy Burnham continued to grow.
One Labour MP called for the Prime Minister to ‘consider his position’ while more than 50 put their names to a letter critical of his actions.
There were also calls for an emergency meeting of the party’s ruling body to reverse the decision.
Sir Keir has long been expected to face a leadership challenge following what is likely to be a devastating set of local election results in May. But MPs warned that his strike against Mr Burnham has ‘hastened his demise’ and increased the chances of a battle.
Nigel Farage yesterday welcomed Sir Keir’s move, saying that the Greater Manchester mayor would have been ‘very difficult to beat’ in a by-election. In comments that will further infuriate Labour MPs, the Reform UK leader said his candidate’s chances had ‘improved massively’ as a result of Mr Burnham being kept off the ballot paper.
His intervention came after Mr Burnham himself insinuated that Labour would now lose the Gorton and Denton by-election, set for the end of February, because it had stopped him standing.
While he appeared to reluctantly accept the decision, the former health secretary could not resist making a few arch comments. When Sir Keir’s biographer Tom Baldwin said Labour’s ‘inward-looking psychodrama … does no one any good,’ Mr Burnham replied: ‘I’m not sure losing a by-election does us any good either.’
At an event yesterday, he also made a jibe at the Labour leadership in Westminster, feeding into a growing North-South divide in the party. He said: ‘The Greater Manchester way is built on togetherness. We don’t ever here have a politics that’s about pitting people [against one] another.’
Pressure on Keir Starmer intensified last night as the backlash to his decision to block Andy Burnham, pictured in Manchester on Monday, continued to grow
One Labour MP called for Prime Minister Keir Starmer, pictured, to ‘consider his position’ while more than 50 put their names to a letter critical of his actions
Earlier yesterday, the PM defended his decision to block Mr Burnham, saying it would ‘divert our resources’ from fighting the local elections in May. He added that Mr Burnham was doing a ‘great job’ in his role and called for unity ahead of the local elections which he cast as the ‘battle of our times’ with Reform.
But his words did little to calm the growing backlash against the decision which MPs have warned will increase the chances of a challenge against him. Kim Johnson, the Left-wing MP for Liverpool Riverside, broke ranks to demand he ‘consider his position’.
More than 50 backbench MPs are understood to have signed a private letter to the PM to complain about a ‘remote stitch-up from a small group of people at the very top in London’.
‘As a former Cabinet member and the current Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, there is no legitimate reason why Andy Burnham should not have the democratic right to put his candidacy to the local people of Gorton and Denton,’ the letter said.
‘This is particularly important as polling clearly shows he may be our very best chance at winning this by-election.’
It is not just the hard-Left of the party that has turned on Sir Keir – former Cabinet minister Louise Haigh said the decision should be reversed ‘otherwise I think we’ll all come to regret this’.
Last night Brian Leishman, Labour MP for Alloa and Grangemouth, told LBC that there is a ‘degree of inevitability’ that the PM will face a leadership challenge this year, adding: ‘There’s no doubt about it, the Prime Minister is not Mr Popular on the doorsteps.’
And Sacha Lord, a former adviser to Mr Burnham, said of Sir Keir on GB News: ‘A fish rots from the head.
Nigel Farage, pictured, yesterday welcomed Sir Keir’s move, saying that the Greater Manchester mayor would have been ‘very difficult to beat’ in a by-election
‘He is a dead man walking and I think there’ll be a new prime minister in post come July.’
It follows a weekend in which Sir Keir took a major political risk by personally leading efforts to block his rival. In a show of force, the Starmer-controlled panel of the party’s ruling body voted against Mr Burnham being allowed to contest the seat by eight votes to one.
Labour sources argued that the risk of losing the Manchester mayoralty to Reform was too great and that it would divert costs from fighting local elections in England, Scotland and Wales.
Left-wing Labour MP Ian Byrne, a good friend of Mr Burnham, tweeted: ‘Keir Starmer and his inner circle are prepared to gift Gorton and Denton to Reform if it means protecting their own factional interests. That’s not leadership, it’s weakness.’
Trade unions also criticised the decision, with the TSSA saying Labour had ‘lost its way’ and the general secretary of Unison, Britain’s largest trade union, saying it was not the way ‘any democratic organisation should be run’.
Some within Labour have privately admitted that they expect to lose the by-election.
A senior Government figure told The Times: ‘Realistically we know that we’re going to lose. But it was a question of what was worse: Losing a by-election or losing control of Greater Manchester, which would have been a total disaster.’
Another party source said ‘no one expects’ victory.
Mr Farage said he thought the move to block Mr Burnham had boosted his party’s chances of winning the seat.
‘Burnham would have galvanised the anti-Starmer vote. He’d have pushed the turnout up, and I think it would have been very difficult for us to beat him,’ he said.
‘Now he’s not there. I think that the anti-Starmer vote will coalesce around us, so I think our chances have improved massively overnight.’
The Gorton by-election to replace ex-Labour MP Andrew Gwynne is expected to take place on February 26. Mr Gwynne was suspended by Labour last year after The Mail on Sunday uncovered a series of offensive WhatsApp messages he had sent.
