Andy Burnham Sparks Angry Labour Backlash After Latest Attack On Keir Starmer

Andy Burnham has sparked an angry backlash from Labour MPs after he launched another attack on Keir Starmer.

The Manchester mayor has infuriated a large number of his party colleagues accused the prime minister of having no plan to turn the country around.

He also said Starmer was running the Labour Party in a “very factional and quite divisive” way.

One MP contacted by HuffPost UK dismissed Burnham’s intervention as “a load of bollocks”.

Burnham, who was a Labour MP from 2001 until he quit Westminster in 2017, made the comments in an interview with the New Statesman.

He said Labour officials attending the party’s conference in Liverpool next week need to answer the question “where is our plan to turn the country around”?

“I’m going to put the question back to people at Labour conference: are we up for that wholesale change, because I think that’s what the country needs,” he said.

Burnham, who served in the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown governments, has denied he is plotting to replace Starmer as Labour leader and PM, but has refused to rule out returning to Westminster as an MP.

He said: “If you’re asking me, am I attracted to going back into my old world and the old way of doing things in Westminster with minimal change, well no, I wouldn’t find that attractive.

“[But] am I ready to work with anybody who wants to sort of put in place a plan to turn the country around? ’m happy to play any role. I am ready to play any role in that.”

Burnham’s latest comments come just weeks after he criticised Starmer’s “London-centric” cabinet reshuffle and condemned the decision to strip the Labour whip from MPs who rebelled against the government’s welfare reforms.

One Labour MP said: “If Andy thinks that we are all waiting for him to ride to the rescue then he is very much mistaken. There isn’t a lot of support for a person who ran away from Westminster when the going got tough.”

A senior Labour insider pointed out that Burnham previously criticised MPs who plotted to bring down Jeremy Corbyn.

“When masses of the front bench were resigning in a bid to get Corbyn to stand down and be replaced as Labour leader, Andy was the first person to call it a coup and condemned it,” they said.

The main obstacle Burnham faces to becoming Labour leader at the third attempt is that he is not an MP.

Andrew Gwynne, the MP for Gorton and Denton, last week shot down rumours that he could quit his seat to allow Burnham to run there.

He told The Times: “In order to end the tedious speculation about my seat while I’m trying to recover from a period of ill health, it is my intention to serve the full term.

“The route to No.10 is not going to be through Gorton and Denton.”

Another MP told HuffPost UK: “Andy would first of all have to get selected as the Labour candidate if there was a vacancy, and given the current polling would he be guaranteed to win the by-election?

“Also why would the party entertain an early mayoral by election in Greater Manchester, given the current polling?”

But a Labour source said: “Keir should say to him ‘any time you want Andy, there’ll be a seat for you, and I want you in government’. 

“He’d shit himself. People would see how useless he is and he’d stop getting a free pass to tour the TV studios criticising Westminster and his party colleagues.”