While some Labour MPs have expressed unhappiness about the decision to stop Burnham from standing in Gorton and Denton, there are some who are happy the Manchester mayor has been blocked.
Reasons include not wanting Labour splits to be exposed in months of public drama, and others because they want a different candidate to succeed Sir Keir whenever that time comes.
Messages from Labour politicians to the BBC’s Matt Chorley were split about two to one in favour of the decision, with most arguing Sir Keir’s position was strengthened rather than undermined by events of the weekend.
Several cast doubt on Burnham’s popularity among the Parliamentary Labour Party, with some querying if he would have support from the 80-odd MPs needed to trigger a leadership contest.
A waspish cabinet minister texts: “Does anyone really think the psychodrama in the last three days would have ended had he been selected?
“Is Andy Burnham’s third resurrection so needed by humanity that getting him back to parliament is worth £5m of everyone’s money?
“The fact Burnham thinks so makes me more grateful than ever for the decision.”
Others insist the prime minister’s position is deteriorating, and some express surprise that Sir Keir himself attended the crucial meeting which decided Burnham’s fate.
Others are blunter. “Suspect he will pay for this in the longer term,” says one MP, with another texting: “Dead man walking. Everybody just waiting until May.”
Earlier, Labour MP Nadia Whittome told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that she disagreed with the decision to block Burnham, because local party members should have the right to choose their own candidate to run in the seat vacated by former Labour MP Andrew Gwynne.
The MP for Nottingham East said: “Myself and many other MPs from right across the party believe that in blocking our only senior Labour politician with a net positive popularity rating, who is mayor of Greater Manchester, is putting petty factional manoeuvring and settling personal scores above winning elections and, in doing so, is risking gifting the seat to Reform.”
Asked whether Burnham should be getting on with his job as mayor, Whittome said: “Let’s be honest, that’s not the reason he was blocked.”
She was supportive of a letter understood to be circulating between backbenchers that called the decision to block Burnham a “remote stitch-up” and said: “Our loyalty is to the Labour Party, not to some of the people at the top of the party, who are wrecking the party that we love,” she added.
But Baroness Harman, a former Labour deputy leader, told the same programme she was “slightly baffled” why Burnham applied when it “could or should have been clear to him that it would end up like it is now”, with rejection.
“What was going to be obvious was the NEC would support the position taken by the prime minister, which they did by eight to one,” she said, adding “it would have been better for him not to put in an application.”
Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander told Today “Nadia is right” about the importance of the coming months for Labour, but defended the NEC’s judgement because of the electoral threat from Reform, who he said are “outspending us at the moment ten to one”.
“You’ve got to ask yourselves, as the NEC asked themselves, where is the best interests of the Labour party served and would our opponents have been cheering if the Labour party had decided to engage in a psychodrama instead of directing our fire and training our sights on Reform, on the Green party, on the SNP, on Plaid Cymru.”