LONDON, Jan 24 (Reuters) – Andy Burnham, seen as a potential leadership rival to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, announced on Saturday that he would seek a return to parliament but pledged not to “undermine” the government if successful.
Burnham, one of the most prominent figures in the ruling Labor party and currently mayor of Greater Manchester in northwest England, said he had offered to run for a vacant parliamentary seat.
“This has been a difficult decision for me,” he said in a letter to the party’s national executive committee, adding that if elected he would “support the work of the government, not undermine it”.
“I have conveyed this assurance to the prime minister,” he said.
Starmer’s party is performing poorly in opinion polls and faces a test in May’s local elections, fueling speculation about a possible leadership challenge.
Opinion polls also show Starmer himself deeply unpopular, with a net favorability rating of -54, according to YouGov data from December. The same survey showed Boreham was one of the few politicians without a negative net favorability rating.
Burnham, who briefly served as deputy finance minister in Gordon Brown’s Labor government in the 2000s, hopes Labor will now choose him to run for the seat of Gorton and Denton after the current prime minister, former minister Andrew Gwynne, said this week he would resign.
He will not be automatically selected as Labour’s candidate, with the party comfortably winning the 2024 national election, and media reports suggest Starmer’s allies may try to block him.
Even if Burnham is selected to contest the seat of Gorton and Denton, he may find it difficult to win, with a recent poll showing Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party ahead of Labor in the constituency.
(Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Jan Harvey)
