Those who say Burnham should be allowed to stand worry about the how it would look if the PM tried to block his candidacy.<\/p>\n
One Labour MP said: “The arrogance of Westminster to think that they can block the will of local party members and ultimately voters is symbolic of everything that’s wrong with our political system and what people hate about politics.”<\/p>\n
Another said it “would be extraordinary if they blocked him”, partly because “there’s a sense in which he might be the only candidate able to win the by-election”.<\/p>\n
The prime minister shouldn’t be scared of anyone, a different MP said. That MP said: “He’s got vultures left, right, up, down, in front and behind. He needs to man up and show he’s happy to see off anyone.”<\/p>\n
Some of the Labour MPs we contacted praised Burnham’s record as mayor in Greater Manchester and suggested the government could benefit from his experience.<\/p>\n
One MP said: “He’d be great as an MP and in Parliament. Future leader possibly. I don’t think the NEC should block – always a local decision.”<\/p>\n
And a former minister said: “The way this could work for everyone is if Andy makes it clear his priority would be to represent the people of Denton and Gorton and not as a leadership vehicle bid then Keir doesn’t have months of instability and Andy shows he’s a team player.”<\/p>\n
One MP agreed, saying if Burnham “acts like a team player he’d be valuable”. But they cautioned: “If he’s a grandstanding dickhead the melodrama will be a pain in the arse.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Those who say Burnham should be allowed to stand worry about the how it would look if the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-386589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}