Andy Burnham says Labour would ‘do well to listen’ to Angela Rayner
Andy Burnham has backed stark criticism of the direction of Keir Starmer’s government by Angela Rayner after she said the very survival of the Labour party was at stake.Rayner, the former deputy prime minister and an influential backbencher, used a speech on Tuesday night to warn that the prime minister “cannot go through the motions” in the face of declining support.Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, who is regarded as a rival to Rayner in any potential leadership contest to succeed Starmer, said on Wednesday: “I certainly know where she is coming from and the party would always do well to listen to what Angela has got to say.”In comments that will be seen alongside Rayner’s intervention as an effort to shift the party to the left as it faces the prospect of heavy losses in local elections in May, Burnham said the frustrations she was reflecting had also been heard at the recent Gorton and Denton byelection.Burnham had wanted to stand in that election for a previously safe Labour seat which ended up being won by the Greens but was blocked by the Labour leadership.
Burnham was speaking on the morning after Rayner used a speech at an event in London organised by Mainstream, a Labour campaign group linked to Burnham, to make her most significant intervention since resigning last year from Starmer’s government,Rayner, who has continued to command influence from the backbenches, also said it was “un-British” to move the goalposts on indefinite leave to remain, putting her at odds with the government’s key immigration proposal of increasing the standard qualifying period for permanent residence from five to 10 years,“It is down to us to rebuild this nation and this party – the question is are we up for this fight? I know we in this room are,” Rayner told the gathering in London on Tuesday evening,“As a party, and as a movement, we cannot hide, we cannot just go through the motions in the face of decline,There’s no safe ground and we’re running out of time.
The change that people wanted so desperately needs to be seen, it needs to be felt,And we have to show that it is a Labour government that will deliver it,”Speaking on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, Burnham voiced his own criticism of the government’s approach to immigration, saying that Rayner had been echoing “moral questions”,But he added that net migration had started to come down, saying: “I do think the government has a story to tell here and needs to tell it more effectively,”In the first response to Rayner’s remarks from a government figure, the Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds said Starmer’s administration shared her “impatience with the pace of change”.
Asked if he agreed with Rayner that Labour was going “through the motions in the face of decline”, he told Sky News: “I think where I would agree, and I think everybody across government would agree, is sharing an impatience with the pace of change, and that applies to every single one of us.“And I get the sense, I haven’t read the full context of Angela’s remarks, but I get the sense that that frustration is actually what is running through her remarks.It absolutely runs through every government minister as well.”He defended Shabana Mahmood’s immigration plans as “balancing up fairness, but also security at our borders” when asked about Rayner’s criticism of them.He declined repeatedly to say whether he thought Rayner would make a good party leader, stressing that there was “no vacancy” for the role.
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On the morning of the World Baseball Classic final between the United States and Venezuela, the headline of the New York Times daily briefing read, “America, alone,” in reference to the unwillingness of the country’s traditional allies to join the war with Iran. The revived rhetoric of America First, once a restoration of the isolationist, often Nazi-sympathetic sentiments of the 1930s, has coalesced into current policy, status, attitude: America by itself, making its own rules, intent on largely playing alone by them.Venezuela won the final, thrillingly, 3-2 over Team USA, but not before the hosts extended that isolationism with a sourness that produced a comically vapid extension of American bravado, and nearly undermined a tournament that in its 20th year is at last becoming one of baseball’s great successes.The WBC was a two-week block party. Canada, fresh off the Toronto Blue Jays’ American League pennant, reached the quarter-finals for the first time
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Fans love watching an underdog cause an upset. The problem is that unbeaten teams are unbeaten for a reasonA classic narrative, dating back to the classic matchup of David v Goliath, is the underdog v the favorite.The only problem is that the underdog is an underdog for the reason. Sure, everyone loves it when a David wins, but Goliath usually swats him away with predictable ease and then pounds him into the dirt. Which leads to a problem: who, other than devoted fans of the team in question, roots for the perennial champions? Isn’t that a bit like watching Hoosiers and rooting for the big kids to beat Gene Hackman’s scrappy underdogs? Or watching Rocky IV and rooting for Drago?In women’s college basketball, 12 Division I teams have finished the regular season and conference tournaments undefeated since 2009
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Who are the players to watch? Which Cinderella team could break your bracket? Our contributors pick the winners, sleepers and upsets for this year’s men’s NCAA TournamentThe annual bevy of trivia that accompanies an NCAA Tournament. Have you heard there are two Miamis? Did you know Nebraska have never won a men’s tournament game? Are you aware that the Queens Royals have a “spirit animal” called Buddy the Street Dog? Even more importantly, I’m looking forward to watching enough basketball over the next three weeks to crack 68/68 on the Sporcle quiz of this year’s mascots. EBThat first Thursday and Friday remain two of the great days on the American sports calendar: noon-to-midnight hoops, four games on screen at a time, buzzer-beaters detonating out of nowhere and a campus or small college town you’ve never heard of suddenly becoming the center of the basketball universe. (And, to no one’s surprise, billions in lost productivity.) The NCAA Tournament still trades in the romance that anything, and anyone, can take over March
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‘I was struggling to feel my hands’: Aston Martin’s problems laid bare by Alonso’s woe in China | Giles Richards
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