Andy Burnham has been blocked from standing in the Gorton and Denton by-election. The vote this morning by Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) was not even close, with the ten-man panel voting eight to one against allowing him to stand. Lucy Powell, Labour’s deputy leader, was the only to vote for him; Shabana Mahmood, as chair, chose to abstain. The fact that she and other potential candidates for the Labour leadership like Ed Miliband have been so unwilling to criticise Burnham personally suggests that they think a contest is coming sooner, rather than later.
In a statement, the Labour party said that ‘an unnecessary election for the position of Greater Manchester Mayor would have a substantial and disproportionate impact on party campaign resources’ ahead of the forthcoming local election. Labour goes on to insist that while ‘the party would be confident of retaining the mayoralty, the NEC could not put Labour’s control of Greater Manchester at any risk.’ The argument made by allies of Keir Starmer and his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, was that Burnham standing was a luxury which the party and the taxpayer could not afford. Speaking ahead of the vote, one Labour MP told me pithily that the Prime Minister is ‘gonna look weak if [the] NEC block.’ For Starmer and his team, they have judged that that is a risk worth taking.
Yet while Burnham is not about to enter parliament, it is not clear that the decision to block him will lead to any strengthening in Starmer’s position. He now faces a difficult by-election, tipped to be held in March, ahead of the May elections – a ‘double whammy’, in the words of one aide, which ‘risks killing any momentum’. One theory doing the rounds is that Wes Streeting, who took care to criticise the ‘anti-Burnham briefings’ of recent days, could stand to benefit from the anger caused by this decision. As one MP in the Mainstream group of MPs told me last week: ‘the right control all the party machinery.’ With Burnham seatless and Angela Rayner under investigation by HMRC, he is certainly extremely well-placed if Starmer should face pressure to go post-May.
The more immediate winner from ‘blockgate’ is Nigel Farage. Reform has canvassed this seat hard since October, when it was first reported that Andrew Gwynne was looking to quit. They have already sent a mail shot out to every household in the seat, with 100 canvassers out door knocking yesterday too. The decision to block Burnham has delighted senior figures. Reform is keen to convince a big-name candidate to stand for the by-election in the coming weeks – a task that has been made considerably easier by the popular Burnham now being ruled out. ‘It risks demoralising the Labour activists’ notes one Reform aide of the NEC decision. ‘And the Prime Minister dare not show his face.’
At the last election, Farage’s party won 14.1 per cent of the vote here – not far off the 14.7 per cent that Reform polled nationally. The party intends to put serious resources into Gorton and Denton. Half the seat is Greater Manchester but the other is in Tameside, where Reform won a council by-election last April with an impressive 47 per cent of the vote. The 2021 census found that almost a third of this constituency was Muslim: hence the 10 per cent vote for George Galloway’s Workers’ party at the last election. Should that vote go to the Greens this time, then Reform will hope to eat into Labour’s white working class vote to secure victory.
As one Labour minister points out the ‘ground game has started’ and asks ‘how much money will they spend before the regulated period.. the current polls there don’t take into account what they will throw at this.’ The minister in question urges ‘all hands on deck right now for the campaigns.’ But with a fair few Labour MPs already in a surly mood, such calls for unity will not go down well with all in Starmer’s unhappy party.
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