Andy Burnham has plan to return to Westminster ‘within weeks’. Allies sayGreater Manchester mayor said to have identified seats where MPs would step aside to allow leadership bid.

Wyllow3

so, DH supports "the other" team...😬

No!😮 we live in the south Brighton and Hove is his team.

He just thinks Neville is an idiot.

winterwhite

I think that Streeting should be allowed to set out his stall without being accused of deliberately undermining, Burnham, who shouldn't be as much of a shoe-in as all that.

I thought that what we wanted was people who could state their ambitions without fearing what Farage might say! We've seen too much of that. And in any case Farage will talk about immigration, and that's what drove the Brexit vote in many areas.

The Makerfield by election is for a local MP and Nurhma hopes to stand for election. It is not a GE.

Streeting is not eligible to be an MP in Makerfield as he already is an MP and has his own constituency. Either offer Burnham genuine campaigning support to help Burnham win the Makerfield MP seat or back off. If Streeting plans to campaign to put his own views forward on rejoining the EU in an area that voted to leave he will definitely be undermining Burnham and Starmer. Shame on him if that's his selfish intention.

My view of Streeting has gone down.

Hmmm. He will be very aware that at grassroots level in the L Party many of us won't look kindly on sabotage.
Any contest belongs after the by-election.

It is a by election that has been deliberately engineered so that Burnham can be PM, it isn't really an election for a local MP, it is a pawn in the game.

Game of thrones. And might just end up with another disappointing ending.

Galaxy

It is a by election that has been deliberately engineered so that Burnham can be PM, it isn't really an election for a local MP, it is a pawn in the game.

Does that actually matter? If Burnham gets in but doesn't get to be leader they will have an extremely capable and very local MP.

And unlike Farage, he might actually spend time in the constituency.

We will see whether the voters think it matters.
I think it is quite hard to criticise Streeting for playing games when of course that is also what Burnham is doing.

I agree with Lemonjam, although of course it's true that they are all playing to win.

I think that Burnham has a good chance of rescuing the LP, but Streeting doesn't, so I would have had more respect for him had he stood by his pledge to support Burnham. Streeting's day will come.

But it’s not Streeting who is making the EU a by-election issue! Or an immediate issue, ‘One day’ is what he said. And Burnham has agreed that Brexit was a disaster, wh is prob what many people in Makerfield now think.

Streeting is entitled to state his own position having resigned from his job and heavily criticised the prime minister. It’s the indignation of Burnham’s supporters that has ramped this up. Farage doesn’t need any help from anyone to flood Makerfield with anti immigration slogans.

Galaxy

We will see whether the voters think it matters.
I think it is quite hard to criticise Streeting for playing games when of course that is also what Burnham is doing.

Of course Streeting will do what he can to win, at least it shows how ambitious he is, tho Burnham is equally ambitious.
If Burnham doesn’t win the seat he can stay as Mayor of Greater Manchester.He probably will win the seat as he’s a local.

Burnham was and will be a good mp if he wins the by election. It seems a leadership contest is inevitable at some point
Andy likely to win

I’d not heard the Gary Neville rumour, if true fantastic. He’s Labour. He and others opened a hotel they were refurbing in the city to homeless people during the pandemic. Yes, his song is Gary Neville is a red but I expect some blues would vote him as mayor. Proper manc ,

I think, having resigned and indicated he would challenge for the leadership, that was enough for Streeting to have said at this stage. The time for him to state what he is hanging his leadership bid on, is when there is a contest. Now, it’s attention seeking in my opinion.

"There’s an old joke about Andy Burnham that has been recycled since he started making eyes at No. 10. A Blairite, a Brownite, a Milibandite, a Starmerite, an insider and an outsider walk into a bar. The barman asks: ‘What are you having, Andy?’
It might not be that funny but it’s a direct hit as a piece of political analysis, because there have been few more transparent examples of political shape-shifters than the current mayor of Greater Manchester. It’s not so much that he says one thing then does another – although there are plenty of examples of that – but rather that, over the course of his quarter-of-a-century-long political career (he was first elected to the Commons in 2001) Burnham has said whatever he considered would be political useful for him at the time, and when that usefulness changed, so would his view.
As one former close colleague of his told me years ago, the only thing worth knowing about Burnham is that he has no real views. He has zero interest in ideas and even fewer principles, but a strong interest in the business of being a politician, and how he can advance the cause of Andy Burnham. Understand that and you understand the man.
Two years ago, for example, Burnham made an unambiguous promise to the voters of Greater Manchester. Pressed specifically on the idea that he might choose at some point to run for parliament, he said he was ‘committed to my third term, absolutely’. So committed, it seems, that the moment the chance of a better job presented itself, Burnham quite happily stuck two fingers up to his mayoral constituents and ran off to Makerfield.
Credit where it’s due; Burnham’s shape-shifting has been brilliantly shameless. Take his current chosen status as the northern outsider who is coming down south to sort the country out. At the weekend he told the BBC: ‘I think Britain has been on the wrong path for 40 years.’ Burnham was not merely an MP for 16 of those 40 years, he was also at times a Home Office minister, minister of state for Health, chief secretary to the Treasury, secretary of state for Culture, Media and Sport and secretary of state for Health. Does he therefore think he was utterly ineffectual in those jobs? Or have they been simply pretended away, like so much of his career when it suits him to pretend to be something, and someone, else?
Burnham’s current shtick is portraying himself as having only really started to be involved in politics since he became mayor of Greater Manchester in 2017. A version of that was also his supposed USP in 2015, the latter of his two previous attempts at running for the Labour leadership, when he sought to position himself as the outsider candidate and attacked the ‘Westminster bubble’. He was brilliantly skewered by Evan Davis, after Burnham told him in an interview how disillusioned he was with modern politics: ‘You are modern politics. You went to Cambridge University and worked in a couple of think tanks. You became a special adviser. And now you want to become PM. What more insider beltway Westminster politician could there be?!’
As for being an outsider: Burnham claimed £17,000 a year to rent a London flat, despite owning another within walking distance of the Commons.
As a minister, Burnham was a mainstream New Labour figure, supportive of the Blair/Brown agenda and working with pro-market public service reforms. Today, he likes to be seen as the leader of the ‘soft left’, pushing for more state intervention and a broader form of populist economics – such as his bizarre assertion last year that the government is too ‘in hock’ to the bond markets.
But Burnham’s shape-shifting extends far beyond his own career. He has no compunction about performing a 180-degree volte face on his own actions when it is politically useful. Burnham has repeatedly sought to portray himself, for example, as the champion of official accountability – most notably over Hillsborough. But as health secretary, he and his predecessor reportedly rejected 81 requests for a public inquiry into the high rate of deaths at Stafford hospital. Campaigners at the time said Burnham was the main block on holding an inquiry in public. Instead, he set up the more limited Francis Inquiry.
In his 2021 mayoral manifesto, Burnham pushed for a Clean Air Zone which would charge polluting drivers £60 a day. But when an outcry meant it was no longer politically fashionable, he not only dropped the scheme but tried to present himself as the leading campaigner against charging – despite having backed the original scheme, despite having already installed hundreds of cameras and signs and despite having already spent tens of millions (one report says it wasted £106 million) before the scheme was abandoned. He then moved to arguing that the cameras were there for the police’s use to prevent and solve crimes.
Or take Israel and Palestine. In his 2015 run for the Labour leadership he praised Israel as ‘a democracy that has a long history of protecting minorities and promoting civil rights’. But as the political axis changed, so did Burnham’s views and by 2024 he was pushing the government to recognise Palestinian statehood ‘without further delay or equivocation’. That followed his demand alongside London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan for a ceasefire in Gaza.
More immediately, Burnham is now engaged through his proxies in a row with Wes Streeting after the latter said on Saturday that we should rejoin the EU. This would, of course, go down disastrously among Brexit-voting, Reform-supporting voters in Makerfield. But at last year’s Labour conference, the Mayor of Manchester was unambiguous in his support for rejoining: ‘I want to rejoin the EU.’ Now he is seeking to distance himself by arguing that this only a wish for some vague time in the future. But, yet again, this is Burnham saying one thing when it’s the politically easy thing to say and then saying something else when that becomes more politically expedient.
Burnham is certainly a polished performer. He has managed to play the role of northern outsider galloping to the rescue of the Labour party with supreme verve. But it is no more than the latest vehicle for the advancement of Andy Burnham. As for how long this one will last when the wind starts to change…"
This is an article from The Spectator but does rather sum up my opinion of Burnham.

I'd be interested to know who write it, MayBee?

Of course The Spectator is not known to be a friend to the soft left...

How can that be an old joke if Starmer is in it?

Stephen Pollard - which makes me think he would say that, wouldn’t he?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Pollard

Paywall removed link to Spectator article:

smry.ai/spectator.com/article/who-is-the-real-andy-burnham

Seems to me that the electorate voted for stability after years of the Conservatives changing leader. Labour have now lost all credibility on that front. I think Burnham and the MP who’s standing down have been planning this for a while.

MayBee- clearly you don't like Burnham, so be it. Burma's been in politics for many years will have a charge sheet as do all long standing politicians. There will be a plus column and a minus column- we all take our own biased views which wins out.

Burnham has never given a timetable to rejoin the EU and its not within his gift to do so anyway. If he's successful in Makerfield by election, an area that voted to leave the EU- it will say a lot. Even of those that voted to leave the EU have seen the dire consequences over the past 10 years.....

Makerfield residents have direct experience of Burnham as GM Mayor over the past 10 years during which Burnham has won three successive elections- so he must be doing enough right for the majority of GM residents to vote for him whatever past perceived misdemeanours are put forward. I'm interested to see how Makerfield residents vote- thats the current contest.

FWIW- Burnham was one of the best S of State for Health the NHS has had, whether he agreed with Labour's direction or not.

Thank you MayBee

Thanks for your link Graphite. As Stephen Pollard :

"is an advocate of market-based public service reforms. He believes that "the state has no business running schools or hospitals" and "I object to the fact I have to pay for [the BBC]". He has advocated the introduction of medical co-payments for the National Health Service and the introduction of a flat tax. He expressed support for Chancellor George Osborne's decision to limit child benefits, writing that "welfare is thought of as an entitlement, so that those who choose not to work to support themselves can rely on the rest of us to pay their way." He has praised Rupert Murdoch as "a man who has done more to democratise news, sport and leisure than any of his opponents."

Clearly Pollard and his supporters will have nothing but bad things to say about Labour politicians. Unlike Pollard I do very much support the state funded NHS as does the majority of the population.

Unlike Pollard I do not rate Rupert Murdoch highly because he disregards journalistic ethics, promotes misinformation, has monopolistic media practises and as he seeks to wield his political influence. Peas in a pod maybe...

And so what? Every newspaper or writer has a particular bias, I find it interesting to hear a range of opinions on Burnham.

Show me a politician who isn’t ambitious.

I always thought that Starmer had no real views too.

Galaxy

And so what? Every newspaper or writer has a particular bias, I find it interesting to hear a range of opinions on Burnham.

It's not just bias, though, it's political and economic ideology.

I'm not trying to diss MayBee's opinion; it just seemed obvious that a Spectator article wasn't going to be supportive in any way.