{"id":588932,"date":"2026-05-17T12:10:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T12:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/588932\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T12:10:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T12:10:09","slug":"personal-decision-for-keir-starmer-on-whether-to-fight-leadership-contest-minister-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/588932\/","title":{"rendered":"Personal decision for Keir Starmer on whether to fight leadership contest, minister says"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Friday, Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee, which had blocked Burnham’s previous attempt to stand in a by-election in January, cleared him to seek selection as Labour’s candidate in Makerfield<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It came after Labour MP Josh Simons said he would resign to make way for Burnham, while Sir Keir’s allies indicated the prime minister would not seek to block his return to Parliament.<\/p>\n

Nandy admitted it would be a “tough fight” for Burnham to win in Makerfield, with Reform UK performing strongly in last week’s council elections in the area.<\/p>\n

Labour won the constituency with a majority of 5,399 votes in the 2024 general election, but Nigel Farage’s party has been consistently leading in national opinion polls since spring last year.<\/p>\n

There are no precise figures for how the parties performed in Makerfield during the local elections because the ward boundaries do not fully align with the constituency boundaries – but Reform UK won roughly 50% of the vote share in the area.<\/p>\n

However, Burnham’s backers argue this does not account for the strong personal support he has in Greater Manchester, where he has won three successive landslides in mayoral elections.<\/p>\n

Nandy said: “Because of Andy’s record as mayor, people who didn’t vote for [Labour] last week were saying that they would vote for us again.”<\/p>\n

She added: “That’s why I make no apology for saying that I think he is a really important voice that needs to be heard loud and clear at the centre of Westminster.”<\/p>\n

Simons told the programme it would be “existential” for the Labour Party if it lost the Makerfield by-election.<\/p>\n

He said the contest was “about a fundamental question for my party, which is can they win back the trust of working-class people”.<\/p>\n

“If the answer to that question is yes, then I think we can get to a moment of unifying and coming together from the different traditions across my party,” he added.<\/p>\n

However, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said: “It doesn’t matter whether it’s Andy Burnham or Keir Starmer, the problem is the Labour Party.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Friday, Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee, which had blocked Burnham’s previous attempt to stand in a by-election…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":588933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-588932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588932","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=588932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/588933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}