Allies of Greater Manchester mayor say No 10 has ‘chosen factionalism’ as decision leads to a furious backlash

The Labour party faced the prospect of civil war on Sunday night after Keir Starmer and his allies blocked Andy Burnham’s return to parliament to stave off a potential leadership challenge.

There was widespread anger among Labour MPs and union backers after the 10-strong “officers’ group” of the party’s ruling body, including the prime minister himself, voted overwhelmingly to reject Burnham’s request to seek selection for the upcoming Gorton and Denton byelection.

The national executive committee said picking Burnham would require a hugely expensive and destabilising election to replace him as mayor of Greater Manchester less than halfway through his four-year term.

But MPs from across the party – many despairing at Starmer’s leadership and not all of them natural allies of Burnham – condemned the “petty factionalism”. Another called the decision a “huge mistake”, while a third said the leadership was “mad” not to make more of the self-styled “King of the North”.

  • HellsBelle@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
    131·
    21 hours ago

    It’s politicians doing shit like this that starts riots and civil wars.

    Starmer is a fucking idiot.

    • Insekticus@aussie.zoneEnglish
      9·
      18 hours ago

      But dont worry, he’ll blame the protesters and “rioters” for failing to see his self-serving vision for the future.

    • hector@lemmy.todayEnglish
      21·
      17 hours ago

      Starmer is a fucking traitor, betraying the country, it’s people, and the grand tradition of the enlightenment, and the magna carta itself. He’s supposed to be the better option and he has done or stood by and did nothing when the right to protest was made illegal, where lawmakers can unilaterally declare terror groups and people protesting the same issue without even saying the proscribed group have been cynically charged with supporting terror.

      They made a masterbairtorbase of every web page you have ever considered whacking off to, are trying to do age checks, all of which for is them surrendering their citizens to tech in league with government, putting an id and likeness to every account and ip and keeping track of everything you say and do and with all the other information make secret social scores to decide everything for us from what we can do to how we are treated to what we are shown online, all on half baked ai programs run by the worst people in the world, like thiel’s palantir, that are deeply hostile to humanity and the environment.

      Then they cancelled the goddamned magna carta a little more, the tories cancelled jury trials for up to 1 year in prison in 2020, and now a magistrate their old boy network chooses decides guilt or innocence for up to 3 years in prison. Like it’s a godamned parking ticket. They underfunded the courts and got a backlog and use that as an excuse. This is the greatest betrayal, I’m more angry about it than they are somehow.

      England was the first in europe to take certain rights, the right to read and publish what they want, to speak what they wanted, to protest, all to a larger degree than elsewhere. But way farther back, the right to a jury trial to decide guilt or innocence, was perhaps the greatest reclamation of power from government, now cancelled on engineered pretexts in bad faith.

      Get that new party, rally to corbyn’s new party, but find a machivellian guy that is aggressive, someone that can build and run a political machine, and cooperate on getting him to raise holy hell to the people, on popular reform. Corbynn doesn’t have the machivellian touch. Or whatever you call it.

      People want reform, give it to them. If you don’t, reform the party will give it to them. Labour is handing it to them with these brazen arrogant betrayals of their country.