Keir Starmer has blocked Andy Burnham from running for parliament, with the party’s National Executive Committee voting 8-1 against his candidacy for Gorton and Denton. The Prime Minister himself voted against Burnham, while his deputy Lucy Powell was the only member of the committee to vote in favour.
There is an obvious argument for blocking someone who is such an explicit threat to Starmer’s leadership. Given the Prime Minister’s weakness, it is not a given that he could see Burnham off, and so he would essentially be saying he was ready for the leadership contest that many Labour MPs think will definitely happen in May. Burnham being blocked doesn’t change the likelihood of that contest, though: it just affects the list of who the contenders will probably be. The instability at the top is now such that even MPs who would have previously felt themselves to be loyal to Starmer and horrified by any kind of party psychodrama are now quite clear that it is a matter of when, not if he gets challenged.
The question is whether the decision to block really helps Starmer that much against the other – much more credible – contenders to be leader such as Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood. It still sends a message that the Prime Minister is weak and frightened of a challenge and prepared to use machine politics rather than his own abilities and performance to win the argument. Diane Abbott, who was on the sharp end of those kind of machinations back in 2024, has already been out and about on the airwaves arguing that this move against Burnham is a huge mistake, and it may well yet prove to be a major factor in Starmer’s leadership unravelling, even if the result is not going to be Andy Burnham as prime minister.
Comments