Inner circle<\/p>\n
Kevin Lee is Burnham\u2019s chief of staff and right-hand man. The pair have worked together for more than 15 years, including during Burnham\u2019s time in the shadow cabinet, his campaign for the Greater Manchester mayoralty and then his nine years as mayor.<\/p>\n
Josh Simons, the former Makerfield MP.<\/p>\n
Lee is considered indispensable to Burnham\u2019s political operation and they come as a team \u2013 but the operation is expanding to bring in extra hands to help with an explosion of demand for communications around the byelection.<\/p>\n
Another politico now by Burnham\u2019s side is Josh Simons<\/a>, the former Makerfield MP who stood down to make way for him.<\/p>\n He does not have a formal role yet but has been campaigning alongside Burnham in the constituency. He comes from a policy and academic background, and is not short of ideas on revitalising Labour.<\/p>\n However, some MPs who support Burnham have begun fretting that the close team he will need to mount a genuine challenge to Starmer is not yet strong enough. \u201cThere is not a big well-organised machine behind him yet,\u201d says one MP.<\/p>\n Close MPs<\/p>\n Anneliese Midgley is an MP and organiser working as the campaign\u2019s \u201cpolitical lead\u201d, with a solid history as a trade unionist who worked as political director of Unite.<\/p>\n She is now central to Burnham\u2019s operation to win in Makerfield and represents the nearly neighbouring constituency of Knowsley. A former adviser to Ken Livingstone and Jeremy Corbyn, she was also key to Starmer\u2019s project before her election as an MP.<\/p>\n Louise Haigh, the former transport secretary.<\/p>\n One of the most prominent members of the Tribune group in parliament is the former transport secretary Louise Haigh<\/a>, with the group setting out a programme for economic renewal and a more active state earlier this month. She has been a key ally of Burnham among MPs and is helping with his campaign.<\/p>\n Other senior supporters of Burnham include Lucy Powell. As deputy leader of the party, Powell has been loyal to the government but she is also an ally of the mayor<\/a> and a fellow Manchester MP.<\/p>\n She has been taking on a role helping with the Makerfield campaign and has previously run byelections as well as having directed Ed Miliband\u2019s 2015 national Labour campaign.<\/p>\n Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, is another political friend of Burnham. He was in contention for a run at the leadership himself if an immediate contest had been triggered against Starmer last week.<\/p>\n However, now Burnham is back in the mix, he has swung behind the mayor\u2019s effort to re-enter parliament and would be tipped for a big job in the event of a new administration.<\/p>\n Big thinkers<\/p>\n While Burnham\u2019s campaign has got off to a slick start, those who know him say less work has been done on preparation for an actual leadership challenge to Starmer and what he would do once in government.<\/p>\n The Greater Manchester mayor has been clear in recent days on what he thinks about various issues from supporting proportional representation<\/a> (PR) to backing the main thrust of Shabana Mahmood\u2019s immigration reforms<\/a>. But there is more thinking and organising to be done if he wants to be ready to govern, his supporters acknowledge.<\/p>\n Neal Lawson, the director of Compass.<\/p>\n One of the people who is influential on his worldview is Neal Lawson \u2013 the director of the centre-left Compass thinktank. He is a proponent of closer working between progressives, with Burnham having said he would like Labour to go into the next election promising to change the voting system.<\/p>\n Lawson told the Guardian<\/a> last week he believed Burnham had unique electoral appeal and was promising \u201creal change, not cosmetic. This is deep political, democratic, economic, social change. I think he can win on that ticket and through his commitment to PR, to pluralism, to new politics, he can win over the Greens as well.\u201d<\/p>\n Another key brain is Mathew Lawrence, the political economist and director of the Common Wealth project. He has been one of those to set out the philosophy of Manchesterism in a piece for the New Statesman.<\/p>\n He has also been critical of the government\u2019s failure to make a muscular difference on the cost of living, writing in the Guardian<\/a>: \u201cWater, energy and transport should be brought back into public ownership and run for public benefit rather than private extraction. This isn\u2019t just about fairness \u2013 it\u2019s sound macroeconomic policy.\u201d<\/p>\n