Andy Burnham travelled to London on Tuesday for a discreet gathering with Labour MPs supportive of his leadership ambitions, as Sir Keir Starmer’s government descended into its most serious crisis yet with four ministerial resignations in a single afternoon.
The Greater Manchester Mayor was photographed by The Telegraph arriving at London Euston, having abruptly withdrawn from a speaking engagement at a healthcare conference in the capital. Two Labour sources confirmed a private meeting was under way between Burnham and sympathetic MPs. Two further sources familiar with his thinking told the paper that he had now identified an MP willing to stand down and trigger a by-election, giving him a path back into Westminster. The soft-Left campaign group Mainstream, allied to Burnham, is reportedly “organising” the push for a longer Starmer resignation timetable — specifically to give the Manchester mayor sufficient time to secure a Commons seat before any leadership contest begins.
The manoeuvring unfolded on a day that saw Starmer’s government haemorrhage ministers at an unprecedented rate. Safeguarding minister Jess Phillips, communities minister Miatta Fahnbulleh, victims’ minister Alex Davies-Jones and Zubir Ahmed all resigned from their posts on Tuesday. Davies-Jones, MP for Pontypridd, demanded Starmer step down following Labour’s loss of control of Wales for the first time in a century. Fahnbulleh subsequently backed Burnham publicly, telling the BBC: “Keir has to do right by the country and see us through that process. We need our best players available.”
Angela Rayner, the former deputy Prime Minister who was forced to resign last year for breaking the ministerial code over her taxes, has also called for Burnham’s return to parliament and is said to be considering her own position. On Tuesday, Baroness Harman, brought back into Downing Street at the weekend as an adviser on violence against women and girls, went further — calling on Starmer to bring Burnham directly into his Cabinet. “If we’re looking at having a team of all the talents when the country’s facing terrible odds and the Labour Party has got a cloud hanging over it, clearly Andy is part of the solution to that,” she said on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast. “Keir Starmer could say, ‘actually, we need all the people in cabinet to be the very best people for the country. And that includes Andy Burnham.'”
Burnham’s path back to Westminster remains complicated. He left parliament in 2017 to pursue his mayoral career and was blocked from standing in February’s Gorton and Denton by-election by Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee at the behest of Starmer himself — a seat subsequently won by the Green Party. To trigger a Labour leadership contest, more than 20 per cent of Labour MPs — 81 of them — must nominate a challenger. Professor Tim Bale of Queen Mary University of London described that as “a pretty low bar when there is so much discontent in the Parliamentary Labour Party.”
Health Secretary Wes Streeting is also considered a leading contender, with his allies said to have already quietly secured enough MP nominations to formally enter a contest. Streeting’s supporters have been pushing for Starmer’s swift departure precisely to prevent Burnham from having enough time to win a seat — a contest between the two would represent a defining battle between the party’s centrist and soft-left wings.
Starmer told his Cabinet on Tuesday that he would not resign. Number 10, with the help of Foreign Secretary David Lammy, spent the day calling ministers in an attempt to shore up support. By Tuesday evening, according to Sky News political editor Beth Rigby, that effort had not been “very forthcoming.”
