Andy Burnham Accuses Labour Of Lack Of Support In Elections

Andy Burnham has accused the Labour Party of never supporting him in his election campaigns to be mayor of Manchester.

He also said Keir Starmer had snubbed his attempts at talks before Labour’s ruling national executive committee (NEC) blocked him from running to be the party’s candidate in next month’s Gorton and Denton by-election.

Burnham’s comments, on BBC Radio Manchester, threaten to reignite the bitter war of words which erupted between him and Downing Street at the weekend.

A sub-committee of the NEC, which included the PM, voted 8-1 against allowing the Manchester mayor to put his name forward on Sunday.

In his most in-depth comments since being rejected, Burnham spoke of his disappointment at insisted he was the only candidate who could have beaten the right-wing politics of Reform UK.

He said: “I believed I was probably in a better position than anybody to fight back against that, and that’s why I put myself forward to them. Because I think if we’d have that by-election, and we still might do and I’ll be out there campaigning for Labour in that by-election.

“If I’d have won it I think we could have pushed them back. I think Reform can be pushed back because they’ve brought in all these Tories. They look like the worst of the Tory Party to me and I think we could have beaten them and beaten them well, and that would have pushed them right back.”

Starmer has said Burnham was rejected because if he’d become an MP, it would have triggered a mayoral by-election in Greater Manchester, costing Labour and the public purse millions of pounds.

But Burnham said: “I would have pointed out to them I’ve never had any support from the party in the three mayoral elections I’ve fought, so the Greater Manchester mayoral election has never been a great expense. I’ve never had support in fighting it.”

A Labour MP hit back: “Go and tell that to the thousands of activists who went knocking on doors and leafleting to get him elected.”

The mayor also said he had spoken to home secretary Shabana Mahmood before the NEC vote on Sunday, but that his attempts to assure the PM he is not after his job had failed.

“I did ask to speak to the prime minister because I wanted to assure him… that I wasn’t coming in to undermine him or the government, I was coming in to see if I could contribute,” Burnham said.

“We had a conversation on Monday. It was a fair exchange, we both said how we felt and I was glad to have that conversation and a chance to say how I felt.

“But I would have preferred to speak in advance of the decision to assure him of what I was trying to do.

“I think it could have created a more positive path for everybody, including the prime minister and the government.”

Burnham also took a swipe at No.10 sources who told the media that he was warned in advance that his MP bid was doomed to fail.

He said: “Always in these moments it does flush something out and I think it flushes out something I left Westminster feeling frustrated about.

“And that is this culture where, in the aftermath, people behind their hand to journalists think they can just lie, basically.”

Burnham added: “I accept the decision, but the one thing I won’t just leave there and not question is the sense that some people can go out and impugn the character of elected politicians, because it happens to the cabinet and it happens to ministers.

“I’m speaking for all of those people down there as well as myself. This culture does a major disservice to politics in this country.”