Andy Burnham has a seat (almost)

Andy Burnham has found a seat to run in. In an extraordinary turn of events Josh Simons MP, a prime architect of the Starmer project, has turned on the Prime Minister and announced that he will surrender his seat of Makerfield with the explicit intention of being replaced as its MP by Burnham so that the Greater Manchester mayor can challenge Starmer for the leadership of the Labour Party and the country.

“Today, I am putting the people I represent and the country I love first and will be resigning as MP for Makerfield,” he said. “I am standing aside so that Andy Burnham can return to his home, fight to re-enter parliament, and if elected, drive the change our country is crying out for,” he said in a statement to his constituents.

Makerfield, on the western outskirts of Greater Manchester, has a comfortable but not huge Labour majority of 5,000. It stayed with the party even during its major national defeat in 2019. In the local elections last week, Reform performed well in the wards that make up the constituency (and the party came second there at the last election). Burnham’s team will be confident that his overwhelming personal popularity in Greater Manchester means he would hold the seat for Labour in a by-election.

Simons, 32, said it had “not been an easy decision” to give up his parliamentary career. He was a leading light of the 2024 Labour intake and was quickly promoted by Starmer to a ministerial position at the Cabinet Office. Before the election, Simons led the Labour Together think tank that had been previously led by Morgan McSweeney in his quest to crush the left of the party and make Starmer Labour’s leader.

However Simons’s fortunes changed early this year after a number of stories about Labour Together’s activities were reported in the press. He resigned his post in February after it was revealed that while head of Labour Together he had commissioned a private intelligence investigation into journalists who were looking into the think tank.

He said today: “I am in politics because politics is how you change lives for the better. My party has one last chance to do that: deliver for the people and places I represent, drive economic growth, secure our borders, reform our state and politics, and change a status quo that is not working. That is the fight. I believe Andy is the one to lead it.”

It is a further blow to Starmer, as once-supportive bits of the Labour Party are collapsing around him. Only yesterday, all 11 affiliated trade unions released a statement saying that he had to go.

Simons’s announcement coincides with the resignation of Wes Streeting today as Health Secretary. Streeting gave a statement in which he called on Starmer to set out a timetable for departure and allow a “broad field” of candidates to stand to replace him, an implicit demand that Burnham should not be blocked from attempting to return to parliament. 

On Saturday Angela Rayner, another leading contender for the leadership, also called for Burnham to be allowed to run for parliament. 

There is now an almost overwhelming consensus in the Labour Party that Burnham cannot be blocked by the NEC as even his potential rivals call for him to be brought back.

[Further reading: Keir Starmer can end this with dignity]