‘Hold the line’: Burnham tells allies in parliament he still has options to return

Andy Burnham has told Labour MPs they should hold the line and that he has options to return to parliament after several seats identified by allies of the Greater Manchester mayor failed to materialise.

Two seats his backers had described as “nailed on” as recently as Monday night are now out of contention after the MPs concerned got cold feet.

Burnham spoke to a number of MPs by phone on Tuesday and assured them that he still intended to seek an imminent return to parliament.

The Guardian was told by two MPs on Wednesday that Jeff Smith, who represents Manchester Withington, an affluent suburb of the city, was in talks about stepping side for Burnham, but his friends denied it. Smith was approached for comment.

Afzal Khan, the MP for Manchester Rusholme, has also denied his seat is in contention. Jim McMahon, who represents Oldham West, did not respond to enquiries about his seat, but he is known to be close to Angela Rayner.

There are some in the Burnham camp who have deep reservations about the seat anyway because of the likelihood of a well-funded Reform campaign there, and especially a focus on the town’s dark legacy of grooming gangs.

Burnham’s allies had previously been confident they had potential seats in St Helens and Warrington, but the MPs Charlotte Nichols and Marie Rimmer deny that was the case.

“I don’t know how many different ways I can say this, but I’m not stepping aside for Andy Burnham,” Nichols said on Wednesday. “It’s both very tedious for me and very demoralising for my staff to keep seeing it reported that I might be about to go when there’s never even been so much as a conversation with Andy about doing so.

One Burnham ally said: “We thought the local election results would concentrate some peoples’ minds [but] until you’ve got something lined up, you haven’t.

“There’s been a couple of near misses but it’s difficult because it depends how colleagues feel [about their own political future]. We were hopeful something might come up and it hasn’t.”

Another MP, a key Burnham supporter, put it bluntly: “They’ve fucked it. Everything is falling apart, they’ve run out of time.”

A third pro-Burnham source said it looked as if any leadership race would move too fast for the mayor, with Wes Streeting expected to start an accelerated process this week. “It’s a big shit cocktail. We’re all doomed,” they said.

Burnham is understood to have had conversations with union leaders, but one member of Labour’s national executive committee (NEC) said that in order to win over some he would have to distance himself from elements of the energy policies promoted by Ed Miliband because the GMB and others were pushing for a change in position.

They said Burnham had been very far from having a majority on the NEC the last time he attempted to run, but another source on the committee said that if Starmer’s political authority was shot Burnham would possibly have a chance. “Everyone on there is a pragmatist,” they said.