{"id":392454,"date":"2026-01-27T04:14:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T04:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/392454\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T04:14:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T04:14:07","slug":"fifty-labour-mps-sign-letter-objecting-to-andy-burnham-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/392454\/","title":{"rendered":"Fifty Labour MPs sign letter objecting to Andy Burnham decision"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The letter was addressed to Sir Keir, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood in her role as chair of the NEC, and Labour Party General Secretary Hollie Ridley.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It said the decision to block Burnham had caused a &#8220;huge amount of anxiety and anger&#8221; amongst colleagues in the Parliamentary Labour Party and party members across the country.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Around half a dozen Labour peers also signed the letter, the BBC has been told. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Members of the NEC voted on Sunday morning to deny Burnham permission to stand in the contest.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Labour won the seat in 2024 with a 13,000 majority but Reform UK and the Greens are both expected to pose a greater challenge this time round.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Speaking to BBC Newsnight, former Labour cabinet minister Harriet Harman said her parliamentary colleagues should move on and focus on winning the by-election, instead of discussing the decision to block Burnham.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The letter was addressed to Sir Keir, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood in her role as chair of the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-392454","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392454","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=392454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}