\n<\/p>\n
When Lucy Powell, Labour\u2019s deputy leader and a close ally of Andy Burnham, took to the stage at the Fabian conference in London on Saturday, she had a blunt message for her party.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to make sure that we\u2019re putting out the best team on the pitch, week after week, so we can win those important matches,\u201d she told the audience.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to see [footballer Erling] <\/strong>Haaland on the bench because there\u2019s been some falling out,\u201d the lifelong Manchester City fan said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I\u2019m also going to get behind Pep Guardiola as our manager and make sure that we win matches, win those crucial matches, and go on to win the league. I think we can do that.\u201d<\/p>\n With Labour flagging in the polls, Keir Starmer under pressure and unpopular domestically, and dozens of MPs worried about hanging on to their seats at the next election, the view that the party should have its best players on the pitch is one widely shared.<\/p>\n But the question pondered by many inside Labour on Saturday, as they whiled away the long hours until the 5pm deadline for Gorton and Denton byelection applications, was whether Andy Burnham sees himself as the star striker on the team, or its captain.<\/p>\n Burnham is fully aware that many will see his return as just the first step in his plan to take over from Keir Starmer as leader. In his letter to Labour\u2019s ruling national executive committee (NEC), posted on social media at 5pm on the dot, Burnham confronted that head on.<\/p>\n \u201cI would be there to support the work of the government, not undermine it, and I have passed on this assurance to the prime minister,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n But does anybody believe him? Within moments of the byelection being confirmed last Thursday, Starmer\u2019s allies had already launched a \u201cStop Andy\u201d campaign to prevent the Labour mayor from returning to parliament.<\/p>\n With the party machinery tightly controlled by Morgan McSweeney, Starmer\u2019s chief of staff, it may look as though it would be an all but impossible task for Burnham to make it past the NEC to run.<\/p>\n Party insiders point to the cost of a mayoral byelection campaign in Greater Manchester, which would mean that about \u00a3500,000 of party funding was diverted from other races across Britain. \u201cThat alone should be enough to say no,\u201d said one NEC source.<\/p>\n Burnham\u2019s insistence that he would be a team player has, unsurprisingly, been meet with scepticism in some quarters.<\/p>\n \u201cIf anyone believes he\u2019s doing it to support rather than undermine the government, I have a bridge to sell them. The NEC should just make the argument that we all know what Andy is up to and they won\u2019t stand for it,\u201d one minister said.<\/p>\n Several Labour MPs drew parallels to Boris Johnson, who re-entered parliament in a byelection while still London mayor, while denying it was the start of a campaign to get into Downing Street. Once elected, he spent years undermining subsequent prime ministers before he achieved his aim.<\/p>\n Yet there is a powerful lineup of party figures on Burnham\u2019s side. They include Lucy Powell, her predecessor Angela Rayner, the former leader Ed Miliband, the London mayor Sadiq Khan, the two biggest unions, numerous MPs and party members. There would be significant disquiet if he was blocked.<\/p>\n The NEC is not, of course, his only hurdle. He would actually have to win the seat \u2013 potentially facing Reform UK and pro Gaza independents. Even the Green party leader, Zack Polanski, is considering running.<\/p>\n Burnham\u2019s regional approval ratings are high. He is not known as the King of the North for nothing. According to Ipsos, he\u2019s on +25 among voters in the north-west \u2013 the only politician with a positive rating \u2013 while Nigel Farage is on -29 and Starmer is on -40.<\/p>\n But even if he makes it back to Westminster, a leadership contest is by no means automatic. While many MPs are despairing of Starmer, fearing that he will be unable to turn things round, the No 10 operation has been trying to woo them since the autumn.<\/p>\n Starmerites argue that trying to remove their man during a period of such global instability would be deeply unwise. They add that the experience of running a city region is a world away from that of running a country.<\/p>\n But nobody denies the May elections present the next moment of great peril for the prime minister. And if Burnham were back in parliament, he would be in position to strike.<\/p>\n Another concern among MPs that could yet save Starmer: that a coup less than two years after winning a huge majority would cast Labour in the same light as the Tories, with their five prime ministers in less than 10 years.<\/p>\n Powell, one of Burnham\u2019s closest allies, touched on this in her speech, perhaps inadvertently. Notably, it was the line that got the loudest applause from the audience.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been saying openly and publicly over the last few weeks that people have got to get behind Keir Starmer,\u201d she told them. \u201cWe are one Labour team, and I don\u2019t want to see this byelection \u2026 emerge into more infighting and talking about ourselves.\u201d It may already be too late.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Lucy Powell, Labour\u2019s deputy leader and a close ally of Andy Burnham, took to the stage at the Fabian conference in London on Saturday, she had a blunt message for her party. \u201cI want to make sure that we\u2019re putting out the best team on the pitch, week after week, so we can win<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42650,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[2094,3265,1346,1321,1007,1347],"class_list":{"0":"post-42649","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-andy","9":"tag-burnham","10":"tag-keir","11":"tag-parliament","12":"tag-return","13":"tag-starmer"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}