{"id":653391,"date":"2026-06-23T04:34:50","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T04:34:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/653391\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T04:34:50","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T04:34:50","slug":"labour-mps-mull-leadership-challenge-to-prevent-burnham-coronation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/653391\/","title":{"rendered":"Labour MPs mull leadership challenge to prevent Burnham ‘coronation’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sir Keir said he had asked Labour’s governing body to set out a timetable to replace him<\/a>, with nominations opening on 9 July and ending by the summer recess on 16 July.<\/p>\n

Potential candidates have until then to amass the support of at least 81 Labour MPs.<\/p>\n

Burnham is seen by many as the frontrunner<\/a> to replace Sir Keir after an emphatic victory over his Reform UK rival in last week’s Makerfield by-election<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The former Greater Manchester mayor, who was formally sworn in as an MP in the House of Commons on Monday<\/a>, said he would put himself forward as a candidate in the leadership contest.<\/p>\n

Wes Streeting had been viewed as his main rival but the former health secretary was quick to offer his support to Burnham, increasing the likelihood of a “coronation”. <\/p>\n

John Slinger, the Labour MP for Rugby, voiced the feelings of many within the party who believe it is “necessary” to have a full leadership contest. <\/p>\n

“I think the public out there would think we’d slightly lost our minds if we didn’t go through a process where we subject people who aspire to the highest office in the land to completely normal scrutiny,” he told the BBC’s The World Tonight on Monday.<\/p>\n

Describing Sir Keir as a “terrible prime minister”, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch attacked the Labour Party’s policies, saying: “Labour MPs only want higher taxes to hand out more benefits… These are Labour’s choices and their values, regardless of who is running the party.”<\/p>\n

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said the British people were “sick of being let down by an endless merry-go-round of prime ministers while nothing really changes”.<\/p>\n

Reform leader Nigel Farage demanded a general election, saying: “If Labour thinks it can shove another professional politician into No 10, it has another thing coming.”<\/p>\n

Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, said people would hope that Burnham could bring about “meaningful change” but the “jury is out”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sir Keir said he had asked Labour’s governing body to set out a timetable to replace him, with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":653392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-653391","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\/653391","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=653391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/653392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}