Burnham will try again for Westminster return but declines offer of seat in 2027
Andy Burnham has not given up hopes of returning to Westminster and will try again, allies say, but would need to be convinced that Keir Starmer would not try to block him again before running.The Greater Manchester mayor’s hopes of an imminent return to parliament appeared remote, however, as No 10 sources suggested that relations between the two men were at a low ebb and played down chances of a rapprochement.As the leadership tried to defuse the anger, Starmer himself defended the decision to prevent Burnham running in the Gorton and Denton byelection next month, a move that triggered a backlash against the prime minister from sections of his own party.Starmer is understood to have offered to support Burnham running for another seat in the north-west of England in 2027, nearer the end of his mayoralty, by which time the voting system would have changed in Labour’s favour and the party would be able to line up a strong replacement.However, the proposal was not accepted and the prime minister’s allies have since suggested that Burnham’s publicly angry response to being blocked may mean that even a tentative deal will not come to pass.
“Andy had thought deeply about all of this and once you’ve reached the conclusion you want to come back, you don’t change your mind,” one ally of the mayor said.“But he will be feeling bruised and disappointed, and you’re not going to put yourself through it again unless you’re confident of a different reaction.”A second Burnham supporter argued that Labour MPs should have fought harder to get him on the ticket for Gorton and Denton, as sticking on the same trajectory would probably end in electoral disaster.“The [parliamentary Labour party] does not yet feel a burning sense of the existential threat to the party.It’s now more likely that any change will be in the wrong direction or insufficiently radical,” they said.
A letter being circulated by soft left Labour backbenchers said the decision to block him from running was a gift to Nigel Farage and that losing the byelection would be “unimaginable”,It came after Burnham himself appeared to predict that Labour would lose the byelection,The executive of the soft-left Tribune group of MPs – which includes the former ministers Louise Haigh and Justin Madders and the select committee chair Sarah Owen – have conveyed concern to Shabana Mahmood, the chair of Labour’s national executive committee (NEC),But with the interviews for candidates for the seat due to begin on Tuesday, many Burnham allies have conceded that their hopes of him fighting Gorton have been dashed,Starmer said on Monday that he and his fellow NEC officers had decided not to let Burnham quit to avoid triggering a costly mayoral election.
He said: “Andy Burnham’s doing a great job as the mayor of Manchester, but having an election for the mayor of Manchester when it’s not necessary would divert our resources away from the elections that we must have, that we must fight and win,Resources, whether that’s money or people, need to be focused on the elections that we must have, not elections that we don’t have to have,And that was the basis of the NEC decision,”Addressing the turmoil in his party, he said: “Yes, there is a fight, but that fight is with Reform and we all need to line up together to be in that fight, all playing our part,I think that everybody in the Labour party, everybody who’s a Labour MP, wants to be in that fight, wants to fight alongside all their colleagues in a fight that matters hugely to the future of our country.
”The prime minister’s allies were trying to shore up support after a turbulent few days, as Starmer left the country for the rest of the week on a visit to China and Japan.Richard Hermer, the attorney general and a close friend, told a regular private meeting of MPs: “What we are achieving as a government is radical, deeply principled and nothing short of an attempt to rework the state so it is fairer and more equal for all.“I do not for one minute underestimate the political challenge we face.Or how many people do not trust politicians and will not do so until they can at least feel we are making a difference.But nor do I underestimate this party, and my passionate belief that as our policies take hold, we will change this country for the better and for the long term.
”He added: “I can say with all honesty that Keir was the most able and principled lawyer of his generation and his belief in public service is every bit as strong today as it was then.”Reactions were mixed.One usually loyal MP said: “Everybody was in a massive grump before Christmas and now they’ve come back and nothing has got any better.Keir has used an opportunity to demonstrate strength and instead demonstrated weakness.”Burnham said on Sunday he was disappointed by the decision but promised to support whoever was selected to fight the seat vacated last week by Andrew Gwynne.
In a social media post on Monday night, he sought to make light of the situation.Ahead of a match between his football team, Everton, and Leeds, he posted: “Given the weekend I’ve had it feels very much like a [former Everton and now Leeds striker] Dominic Calvert-Lewin hat-trick is now incoming.”If Burnham had been selected for the seat, he would have been obliged to give up his Greater Manchester mayoralty less than halfway through a four-year term, triggering a byelection there.A Labour statement on Sunday said this “would have a substantial and disproportionate impact on party campaign resources ahead of the local elections and elections to the Scottish parliament and Welsh Senedd in May”.The decision caused fury among many Labour MPs, not all of them natural allies of Burnham, with one condemning what they called “petty factionalism”.
Several of Labour’s union backers have also criticised the move.
Record number of people in UK live in ‘very deep poverty’, analysis shows
The UK’s poorest families are getting poorer, with record numbers of people classed as in “very deep poverty” – meaning their annual household incomes fail to cover the cost of food, energy bills and clothing, according to analysis.Although overall relative poverty levels have flatlined in recent years at about 21% of the population, life for those below the breadline has got materially worse as they try to subsist on incomes many thousands of pounds beneath the poverty threshold.About 6.8 million people – half of all those in poverty – were in very deep poverty, the highest number and proportion since records began three decades ago, said the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), which carried out the analysis.Households on the lowest incomes were still experiencing a cost of living crisis four years on, with millions of people forced to go without food, falling behind on household bills and having to borrow to survive, said JRF
UK loses WHO status as measles-free after rise in deaths and fall in jab uptake
The UK has lost its status as a measles-free country after a rise in deaths from the disease and fall in the proportion of children having the MMR jab in recent years.The World Health Organization said it no longer classified Britain as having eliminated measles because the disease had become re-established.The UK is one of six countries in Europe and central Asia that the WHO says is no longer measles-free, the others being Spain, Austria, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan.The WHO had adjudged the UK to have eliminated the disease between 2021 and 2023, but recent increases in the number of recorded cases – there were 3,681 in 2024 – and rises in the number of outbreaks and deaths has led to a rethink.There were 20 deaths from measles in the six years between 2019 and 2025, the same number as in the 19 years between 1999 and 2018
Children need to get their hands on a project, not a screen | Letters
Emine Saner’s article on screen time and toddlers identifies a key symptom, but doesn’t pay enough attention to the deeper diagnosis (How screen time affects toddlers: ‘We’re losing a big part of being human’, 22 January). The problem isn’t simply that children are watching screens. It’s that they’re not creating anything meaningful.For 11 years, Red Paper Plane has worked with more than 30,000 children in Bulgaria using a project-based learning programme we call Design Champions. As part of it, five- to 10-year-old children don’t consume content – they become park designers, car engineers and city architects
Life after Molly: Ian Russell on big tech, his daughter’s death – and why a social media ban won’t work
Molly Russell was just 14 when she took her own life in 2017, and an inquest later found negative online content was a significant factor. With many people now pushing for teenagers to be kept off tech platforms, her father explains why he backs a different approachIan Russell describes his life as being split into two parts: before and after 20 November 2017, the day his youngest daughter, Molly, took her own life as a result of depression and negative social media content. “Our life before Molly’s death was very ordinary. Unremarkable,” he says. He was a television producer and director, married with three daughters
NHS to increase accuracy of bowel cancer test in England
The main test for the UK’s second deadliest cancer is being made more accurate in England, in a move NHS bosses believe will save hundreds of lives.The sensitivity of the faecal immunochemical test (Fit), which detects bowel cancer by spotting blood in the patient’s stool, will be increased as part of an overhaul of cancer diagnosis and treatment.NHS England is lowering the threshold for the amount of blood detected through a Fit test needed to trigger the patient being sent for further investigation.It is now 120 micrograms of blood a gram of stool. But that will be reduced to 80 micrograms by 2028 and will bring England into line with the threshold already used in Scotland and Wales
Almost a quarter of UK GPs are seeing obese children aged four and under
Almost a quarter of GPs are seeing children aged four or under who are obese, according to a survey of UK family doctors.The “alarming” research also found that almost half (49%) of GPs have seen boys and girls up to the age of seven who have obesity, including a handful younger than a year old.However, four out of five family doctors find it difficult to talk to children or their parents about the condition, in case such conversations make them feel upset, angry or ashamed.Dr John Holden, the chief medical officer at the medical organisation MDDUS, which ran the survey, said: “These findings are an alarming confirmation of the growing crisis of childhood obesity across the country and the very real difficulties this creates in everyday GP consultations.”The survey asked 540 family doctors about their experience of managing obesity, the explosion in the use of weight loss drugs and what widespread levels of dangerous overweight means for the NHS
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