𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Andy Burnham has been warned by a fellow Labour MP that his attempt to get into Parliament could go either way. Sam Rushworth, MP for Bishop Auckland added that the Mayor of Manchester should see out his term, and hold off on trying to return to the House of Commons. Sir Keir Starmer is under immense pressure after Wes Streeting resigned as Health Secretary, and MP Josh Simons announced that he is resigning from his Makerfield seat so that Mr Burnham could run in a by-election yesterday.

Mr Rushworth, whose local authority is controlled by Reform after the party swept to power at the 2025 local elections, said: “I can’t see how you can do both jobs. I work about 80 hours a week, and I’m a backbench MP. I already admire my colleagues who are ministers. I wonder how on Earth they do it.” He added that the Mayor should “fulfil his mandate to the people of Manchester”.

“And that’s not because I’m anti-Burnham,” the County Durham MP added.

“I think the guy’s great, and, if it was ‘28 and he’d completed his term of office, I’d be welcoming him into the Parliamentary Labour Party.”

Reform won all eight Makerfield Wards at last week’s local elections.

At the 2024 General Election, Reform came second by 5,399 votes.

Nigel Farage said yesterday: “We look forward to the contest and we will throw absolutely everything at it.”

When asked is he has a chance against Reform in Makerfield, Mr Rushworth said: “Of course he does.”

Although, he warned: “The electorate’s very volatile at the moment. I think it could go either way.

“But he is extremely popular in Manchester. There’s no doubt about that.”

He added that he doesn’t know whether he would retain his own seat at the next general election, where Reform finished behind Labour by 7,570 last time out.

The Tories finished second, behind by 6,672 ballots.

Mr Rushworth said: “If I was to put a bet on it today, I would give myself the edge, because we’ve got three years to go until the next election, and I think that I totally understand the public mood: people feel impatient for change, and I think as this whole saga shows, change can take a while to deliver.

“But I do see what we’ve got in the pipeline, and I’m quite confident that, three years from now, I will be able to campaign on a record of delivery – a delivery that people can’t argue with, that’s not abstract, where I’ll be able to say: ‘Look, I’ve achieved this, I’ve achieved that’, and, on that basis, I’m optimistic that it will be a straight fight between me and Reform, and I’m optimistic that I will get votes from a number of places, including Conservatives, who’ve said to me that they will vote for me in that scenario.”

He added: “I’m quite pragmatic; I’m not overly party political. I’m just very focused on the community, and I think that that makes it easier for people to feel that they can trust me.”

Mr Burnham said yesterday: “I grew up in this area and have lived here for 25 years. I care deeply about it and its people. I know they have been let down by national politics. Ten years ago, I decided to leave Westminster. Why? Because, after 16 years, I came to the conclusion that our national political system does not work for areas like ours.

“I learnt this fighting its failure to invest in the Wigan borough, for justice for the Hillsborough families and against its treatment of Greater Manchester during the pandemic. Over the last decade, I have been challenging this failure from the outside and building a new and better way of doing politics.

“We have built Greater Manchester into the fastest-growing city-region in the UK and put buses back under public control, introducing a £2 fare cap to help people with cost-of-living pressures. However, there is only so much that can be done from Greater Manchester.

“Much bigger change is needed at a national level if everyday life is to be made more affordable again. This is why I now seek people’s support to return to Parliament: to bring the change we have brought to Greater Manchester to the whole of the UK and make politics work properly for people.