Labour peer and former cabinet minister Charlie Falconer said Prime Minister Keir Starmer has 'absolutely no authority' because 'everybody assumes' Andy Burnham will challenge for the leadership and is likely to win. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.
Falconer, who served in Tony Blair's cabinet, told the BBC that Starmer has 'at most weeks to go', leaving him unable to effectively steer his cabinet or command the Commons.
When asked whether Starmer should compete in a leadership contest, Falconer said: 'My advice, sadly, would be: don't stand. The reason it would be "don't stand" is because if you stand, it is likely there would then be a difficult leadership battle in which the two leadership candidates would try to undermine each other.'
Former safeguarding minister Jess Phillips said Andy Burnham has 'proved his hypothesis' that he could beat Reform. 'He beat off Reform absolutely soundly in an area that absolutely should have been delivered to Reform and if anyone else had stood there, we would not be having this conversation now,' she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
Phillips said Burnham has 'earned the right to come and make his case to the parliamentary Labour party.' She previously backed Wes Streeting but said she was looking forward to Burnham arriving in Westminster on Monday and seeing candidates 'setting out their stall.' She added: 'It would be much better if this wasn't protracted and didn't go on for a long time.'
Beccy Cooper, Labour MP for Worthing West backing Andy Burnham, said he is 'not the messiah' and insisted that 'this doesn't rest just on one person.' Speaking to Times Radio, she argued that a Burnham-led government would 'still be a Labour government' and would stick to the party's manifesto because 'that's what people voted for.'
She said a leadership contest involving Keir Starmer 'is not actually going to benefit our country or the party in the long term,' while adding that she does not 'necessarily want a coronation' for Burnham and would like a new leader in place before the Labour conference in September.
Illustrator Stanley Chow described how he created the ubiquitous image of Andy Burnham. After Burnham's famous speech outside Manchester Central Library in October 2020, Chow decided to draw him. 'It was the pandemic and we were all so down in the dumps at that point. But I remember looking around and he had just moved everyone,' Chow said.
Chow created the image in Adobe Illustrator and posted it on Twitter. 'Within 10 mins, Andy had nicked it,' he said. Burnham initially used the image for his Twitter handle, but it has since appeared on billboards, beer mats, mugs, aprons and record inlays. The image, with its spot-on light scowl and navy/black attire, has become shorthand for Burnham's anti-establishment sentiment.