Starmer faces pressure not to block Andy Burnham’s return to parliament
Keir Starmer is facing mounting pressure not to block Andy Burnham from making a comeback to parliament, with Angela Rayner planning to urge No 10 to let him stand in a forthcoming byelection.The prime minister’s allies have been trying to prevent Burnham’s return as a candidate in the Greater Manchester seat of Gorton and Denton, amid fears he could challenge the leadership.However, a string of Labour MPs and the boss of Britain’s biggest union, Unison, warned on Friday that the party must ensure a democratic process and avoid a stitch-up.Rayner, the former Labour deputy leader, is understood to be supportive of Burnham standing if he wants to, and is expected to argue he should be allowed to when she speaks at Labour’s north-west regional conference on Saturday.The timeline for candidates to make a decision is extremely tight, with applications opening at 5pm on Friday, a deadline to seek permission from the national executive committee (NEC) 24 hours later, and applications closing on Sunday shortly before midnight.
A candidate will be chosen within a week,Burnham has not confirmed he intends to run for the seat but he made no secret of his ambitions,In the runup to the party’s conference last year he said many MPs had urged him to run for Labour leader, prompting outrage within No 10 and among cabinet ministers,He would have to stand down as mayor of Greater Manchester if he were to run,Bev Craig, the leader of Manchester city council, is another possible Labour contender, believed to be favoured by allies of Starmer.
Reports on Friday suggested Burnham could try to line up a high-profile figure to run as Labour candidate for Greater Manchester mayor, such as the footballer Gary Neville, if he were to resign to seek a Westminster seat.The byelection is shaping up to be a hotly contested race, with Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, not ruling himself out, and George Galloway, the independent former MP and Workers party leader also hinting he could stand.Reform UK could also stand a chance, with possible contenders including the policy chief, Zia Yusuf, or a former Tory MP such as Jonathan Gullis.The contest was triggered by the resignation of the independent MP Andrew Gwynne on medical grounds, immediately sparking speculation that Burnham could be in parliament in time for any potential leadership challenge to Starmer if May’s local elections are disastrous for Labour.The Guardian reported on Thursday that allies of Starmer were trying to prevent Burnham’s return.
Members of the party’s ruling national executive committee predicted it would be impossible for Burnham to make it through the selection process given the number of Starmer loyalists on the body.But Andrea Egan, the new general secretary of Unison, warned against “control-freakery” in the party.“I’m sure all trade unionists expect a democratic process for Gorton & Denton in which local party members decide who they want to represent them,” she said on X.“We’ve seen enough control-freakery in the Labour party and it has done our movement nothing but harm.”Jo White, a leading MP who runs Labour’s so-called red wall group of MPs, said: “Let the north decide who their Labour candidate should be for the Gorton and Denton byelection.
A London stitch-up will be a disaster for Labour.”One northern backbencher said it wasn’t just a leftwing caucus of MPs who were hoping Burnham would make a return to Westminster.“There’s a few of us thinking it would be a sign of weakness for the PM to block him via the NEC.”They added that if speculation that Yusuf and Polanski could stand materialised, then Burnham would be the centrist candidate.“I wouldn’t want to see him challenge for leader this year, but I think we need stronger northern representation in government.
”Stephen Kinnock, a health minister, insisted the process would be the same as any other candidate selection, despite rumours it could be limited to an all-women or all black, Asian and minority ethnic shortlist,He said Burnham was “doing a great job in the role that he currently has” and was an “incredibly talented and effective leader as the mayor of Greater Manchester”,Allies of Burnham suggested there would be significant disquiet among MPs, unions and party members should the leadership try to block him from returning to parliament, where he served as the MP for Leigh from 2001 to 2017,He has long been believed to be seeking a return to parliament to stand for the leadership if there was a challenge to Starmer, but was thought to have limited options for a byelection in the north-west of England,Labour won the seat under Gwynne, who was later suspended from the party, with a 13,413 majority in 2024.
Reform and the Greens were in second and third place and almost neck and neck, with 14% and 13% of the vote respectively,
Latest ChatGPT model uses Elon Musk’s Grokipedia as source, tests reveal
The latest model of ChatGPT has begun to cite Elon Musk’s Grokipedia as a source on a wide range of queries, including on Iranian conglomerates and Holocaust deniers, raising concerns about misinformation on the platform.In tests done by the Guardian, GPT-5.2 cited Grokipedia nine times in response to more than a dozen different questions. These included queries on political structures in Iran, such as salaries of the Basij paramilitary force and the ownership of the Mostazafan Foundation, and questions on the biography of Sir Richard Evans, a British historian and expert witness against Holocaust denier David Irving in his libel trial.Grokipedia, launched in October, is an AI-generated online encyclopedia that aims to compete with Wikipedia, and which has been criticised for propagating rightwing narratives on topics including gay marriage and the 6 January insurrection in the US
Young will suffer most when AI ‘tsunami’ hits jobs, says head of IMF
Artificial intelligence will be a “tsunami hitting the labour market”, with young people worst affected, the head of the International Monetary Fund warned the World Economic Forum on Friday.Kristalina Georgieva told delegates in Davos that the IMF’s own research suggested there would be a big transformation of demand for skills, as the technology becomes increasingly widespread.“We expect over the next years, in advanced economies, 60% of jobs to be affected by AI, either enhanced or eliminated or transformed – 40% globally,” she said. “This is like a tsunami hitting the labour market.”She suggested that in advanced economies, one in 10 jobs had already been “enhanced” by AI, tending to boost these workers’ pay, with knock-on benefits for the local economy
TikTok announces it has finalized deal to establish US entity, sidestepping ban
TikTok announced on Thursday it had closed a deal to establish a new US entity, allowing it to sidestep a ban and ending a long legal battle.The deal finalized by ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese owner, sets up a majority American-owned venture, with investors including Larry Ellison’s Oracle, the private-equity group Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi’s MGX owning 80.1% of the new entity, while ByteDance will own 19.9%.The announcement comes five years after Donald Trump first threatened to ban the popular platform in the US during his first term
Campaigner launches £1.5bn legal action in UK against Apple over wallet’s ‘hidden fees’
The financial campaigner James Daley has launched a £1.5bn class action lawsuit against Apple over its mobile phone wallet, claiming the US tech company blocked competition and charged hidden fees that ultimately harmed 50 million UK consumers.The lawsuit takes aim at Apple Pay, which they say has been the only contactless payment service available for iPhone users in Britain over the past decade.Daley, who is the founder of the advocacy group Fairer Finance, claims this situation amounted to anti-competitive behaviour and allowed Apple to charge hidden fees, ultimately pushing up costs for banks that passed charges on to consumers, regardless of whether they owned an iPhone.It is the first UK legal challenge to the company’s conduct in relation to Apple Pay, and takes place months after regulators like the Competition and Markets Authority and the Payments Systems Regulator began scrutinising the tech industry’s digital wallet services
Former FTX crypto executive Caroline Ellison released from federal custody
The Disgraced former cryptocurrency executive Caroline Ellison has been released from federal custody after serving about 14 months for her involvement in the multibillion-dollar FTX fraud scandal. Ellison was previously head of FTX’s associated trading arm and the on-again, off-again romantic partner of the crypto exchange’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried.Ellison, 31, was sentenced to 24 months in prison in 2024 after pleading guilty to seven charges, including wire fraud and money laundering. She featured prominently as a witness for the prosecution of Bankman-Fried, testifying that her former paramour directed her to commit crimes. Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison
Experts warn of threat to democracy from ‘AI bot swarms’ infesting social media
Political leaders could soon launch swarms of human-imitating AI agents to reshape public opinion in a way that threatens to undermine democracy, a high profile group of experts in AI and online misinformation has warned.The Nobel peace prize-winning free-speech activist Maria Ressa, and leading AI and social science researchers from Berkeley, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge and Yale are among a global consortium flagging the new “disruptive threat” posed by hard-to-detect, malicious “AI swarms” infesting social media and messaging channels.A would-be autocrat could use such swarms to persuade populations to accept cancelled elections or overturn results, they said, amid predictions the technology could be deployed at scale by the time of the US presidential election in 2028.The warnings, published today in Science, come alongside calls for coordinated global action to counter the risk, including “swarm scanners” and watermarked content to counter AI-run misinformation campaigns. Early versions of AI-powered influence operations have been used in the 2024 elections in Taiwan, India and Indonesia
My cultural awakening: A Queen song helped me break free from communist Cuba
From Saipan to Take That: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead
Tell us your UK town of culture nomination
R&B star Jill Scott: ‘I like mystery – I love Sade but I don’t know what she had for breakfast’
Letter: Colin Ford obituary
Museums must reach all parts of UK, says Nandy as £1.5bn of arts funding announced