Andy Burnham will attempt to return to the Commons as an MP, after Wes Streeting resigned as health secretary, saying he had lost confidence in Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer\u2019s leadership.<\/p>\n
Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, said he would ask to run for Labour in Makerfield after Labour MP Josh Simons said he would resign to make way for him.<\/p>\n
Any candidate in a Labour leadership contest to replace Sir Keir must be an MP.<\/p>\n
Streeting called for a broad debate about what comes next but did not say he would run for leader.<\/p>\n
Speculation has been rife over Sir Keir\u2019s future as leader following a disastrous set of election results for Labour last week. No leadership challenge has been triggered.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Thursday, former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, also seen as a potential challenger to Sir Keir, said she had resolved her tax affairs with HMRC.<\/p>\n
Announcing he would stand down, Simons said he believed Burnham could \u201cdrive the change our country is crying out for\u201d.<\/p>\n
Burnham said he would seek people\u2019s support to return to Parliament in order to \u201cbring the change we have brought to Greater Manchester to the whole of the UK and make politics work properly for people\u201d.<\/p>\n
He would, he added, \u201cnot take a single vote for granted\u201d and would \u201cwork hard to regain the trust of people\u201d in the north-west constituency, which Labour held in 2024 with a majority of 5,399 votes over Reform UK.<\/p>\n
Reform leader Nigel Farage said the party looked forward to the contest and would \u201cthrow absolutely everything at it\u201d after giving Labour a drubbing at the recent council elections in the area.<\/p>\n
Burnham was blocked by Labour\u2019s ruling National Executive Committee from contesting the Gorton and Denton by-election in February, which Labour lost to the Green Party.<\/p>\n
The BBC understands Sir Keir will not seek to block Burnham from becoming the Labour candidate in Makerfield.<\/p>\n
An ally of Sir Keir said he was \u201cfocused on bringing the party together so it can tackle the issues facing working families\u201d.<\/p>\n
The by-election date is yet to be announced and depends on when the government triggers the formal process.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Andy Burnham will attempt to return to the Commons as an MP, after Wes Streeting resigned as health secretary, saying he had lost confidence in Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer\u2019s leadership. Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, said he would ask to run for Labour in Makerfield after Labour MP Josh Simons said he would resign […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}