Labour‘s Deputy Leader has sensationally admitted that Andy Burnham would have won the Gorton and Denton by-election for them.
Lucy Powell said on Saturday that the Greater Manchester Mayor would ‘probably have held’ the safe seat and that if he had stood ‘the Greens wouldn’t have gone after the seat in the same way that they did‘.
She also warned that Labour needed to find a way to harness his popularity because people believed in him.
Effectively the first senior minister to break ranks with the Prime Minister who barred Mr Burnham from standing, she accepted ‘collective responsibility’ for the party’s decision even though she voted against the move.
Ms Powell was the only member of Labour’s ruling national executive committee (NEC) to vote in favour of allowing Mr Burnham to stand in the Manchester seat, with eight others including Sir Keir Starmer voting against him.
They cited concerns about a potential mayoral by-election in Greater Manchester to justify their decision but many accused the PM of running scared of allowing Mr Burnham a way back to Parliament where he could be a potential leadership candidate.
Instead of likely success at the polls with him as candidate, Labour was annihilated by the Green Party and Reform UK, coming third in the by-election.
Ms Powell also said Labour now needed to draw inspiration from the reasons for his popularity in Greater Manchester.
Labour’s deputy leader Lucy Powell, pictured, has effectively become the first senior minister to break with the prime minister’s decision to block the Greater Manchester mayor from standing in the Gorton and Denton by-election
Andy Burnham was blocked from standing by Labour’s national executive committee, with Ms Powell the only member of that body to vote in favour of him contesting the seat
Keir Starmer, pictured campaigning in the Gorton and Denton by-election, has been left weakened after his party was pushed into third place in what had been a safe seat
She told the Newscast podcast that people ‘see in him someone who is on their side, someone who is delivering those Labour values and those Labour policies’.
‘We have to draw on that, make use of Andy Burnham, but also draw on that and reflect on how we could do that better nationally and better as a Government.
‘And I know from talking to Keir many, many times over recent weeks, before this by-election and since, that that is something he is very focused on doing,’ she said.
Sir Keir has vowed to fight on despite the ‘disappointing’ poll result but voices are growing louder in his party for him to be unseated as the dual threat of the Green Party and Reform UK grows.
Meanwhile, Mr Burnham is yet to comment on the result in Gorton and Denton.