rather than political, and knows that any legal mechanism is good to achieve an objective, even if it involves some foul play. The prime minister has used the Labor Party’s National Executive Committee (NEC). Eight of the ten members of the NEC, the only body that could give the mayor permission to make the leap as a member of the House of Commons, have voted against this possibility, including Starmer.
The president of the organization, the Minister of the Interior, Shabana Mahmood, has abstained, although she had publicly expressed her rejection of the mayor’s claims. Only Lucy Powell, vice president of the party and ideological counterweight to Starmer, has given her support to Burnham.
The prime minister knew that his decision was going to be harshly criticized by Labor deputies, unions and even members of his own Government, but he has chosen to nip in the bud the construction of a threatening alternative to his leadership. If the municipal elections in May, which in Scotland and Wales will be autonomous, the ground on which Starmer stands runs a serious risk of cracking. Dozens of deputies would support the idea of forcing primaries to change the leader (and prime minister) before the next general elections, scheduled for 2029.
The threat from the extreme right of Reform UK, Nigel Farage’s party, which has been in first position for more than a year in all the polls that measure voter preferences, has put the British left on guard, or its moderation at best, does not convince many of its coreligionists.
has numerous supports among Labor members, unionists and voters. On Saturday he cleared everyone’s doubts by announcing his intention to contest the vacant seat in the Gordon and Denton constituency, within the Greater Manchester region.
The Labor MP who represented her, Andrew Gwynne, has announced his intention to resign for health reasons. It is actually a negotiated excuse so that the 51-year-old Labor politician can receive compensatory compensation and secure a disability pension. He was expelled from the Government’s parliamentary group and remains under investigation for some unfortunate outbursts against voters in a WhatsApp group.
In the United Kingdom, the resignation of an MP generates a by-election, in which the parties compete again – and the voters vote – to elect a new representative for that constituency. This type of limited competition is usually a useful thermometer of the mood of citizens. But in this case, it could be the starting signal for an internal battle on the British left.
The mayor wanted to make it clear that his desire to join the House of Commons (if he had won the seat) would have no other purpose than to “contribute to the momentum of the Government.” This is how he would have explained it to Starmer in a telephone conversation prior to his announcement. But the prime minister has not taken the apparent bait. The noise of internal rebellion within Labor is increasingly intense and, along with other names such as the Minister of Health, Wes Streeting, or the former Prime Minister, Angela Rayner (the favorite of the unions), the hypothetical candidacy of the “king of the north” was gaining more and more strength.
In fact, Burnham already set off all the alarms in Downing Street last September,
“Have some deputies already asked you to run against Starmer?” the journalist from The Daily Telegraph. “Yes, people have contacted me throughout this summer; I cannot deny that it has happened. But that decision depends more on them than on me. Although I have already run twice to lead the party. I think that says it all, right?”, responded the mayor.
The NEC decision
As mayor of a very important municipality, Burnham, who was already an MP between 2001 and 2017, had to ask the NEC for permission to stand in the Gordon and Denton by-election. If he had obtained approval, he would have had to leave the mayor’s office, and new municipal elections would have been launched.
But in the hypothetical case that a process to replace Stamer’s leadership was opened after the May elections, only those who had a position as deputies could aspire to replace him. That’s why Burnham’s move was so clearly threatening to the prime minister’s allies.
Labor party sources say that the two main reasons given by the NEC for rejecting Burnham’s aspirations were, firstly, how costly a new campaign to retain the Manchester mayoralty would be for the party. And secondly, how delicate and damaging a process of internal war similar to those suffered by the conservatives in recent years would be, in a very complex geopolitical and economic moment.
But Starmer’s team also knows that it has opened the canopy of thunder. Many Labor members, including ministers Streeting and Miliband, had already expressed their rejection of the idea of blocking a hypothetical move by the mayor of Manchester. Starmer’s move is risky, because many of his critics see it as undemocratic, with a lot of foul play and little intelligence. If Labor ended up losing the seat of Gordon and Denton when defeated by the extreme right, as has already happened in constituencies such as Runcorn, for not having placed the candidate with the most possibilities, the internal noise against the prime minister would increase considerably in decibels.
