Starmer defends blocking Burnham from standing in byelection – UK politics live

PM says holding a mayoral election in Manchester would divert resources from local council, Scottish and Welsh campaigns for Labour

According to Sam Coates at Sky News, Labour might decide to hold the Gorton and Denton byelection as early as late February. The party that previously held the seat gets to move the writ for a byelection and governing parties facing a difficult byelection sometimes go for a quick contest so that challenger parties, which might not be well organised in the seat and short of voter data, don’t have time to bed in and build up momentum.

Keir Starmer has defended the decision not to allow Andy Burnham to stand to be Labour’s candidate in the Gorton and Denton byelection. Starmer was on the 10-strong panel that took the near-unanimous decision to block Burnham yesterday, and, speaking to broadcasters today, he set out the same argument used by Douglas Alexander earlier. (See 8.51am.) Starmer said:

We have really important elections already across England for local councils, very important elections in Wales for the government there and very important elections in Scotland for the Scottish government that will affect millions of people. And we’re out campaigning on the cost of living and they’re very important elections.

We need all of our focus on those elections.

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Source: www.theguardian.com

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