Politics latest: Burnham handed two major boosts in bid to return as MP and challenge Starmer

Labour needs to have a “battle of ideas”, not of personalities, a minister has said amid ongoing talk of a leadership challenge to replace Sir Keir Starmer.

Speaking at the Progress conference on Saturday morning ahead of Mr Streeting’s appearance, communities minister Alison McGovern said Labour had been left “reeling” from its election defeats last week.

But she also added: “Too often I think we’ve been caught up in the wrong kind of battle. It’s a battle of ideas that’s needed, not a battle of personalities.

“I must be in the top per cent of people in the country most interested in politics, and if all the political news, half low-grade soap opera, half predictable horse race, makes me want to switch off, God knows what anyone just trying to get on with their life thinks.

“So we have to put forward our ideas in a way that’s new, not the old battles of left and right swinging it out, but practical progressive ideas that show our values.”

Andy Burnham intends to stand to be the next MP for Makerfield, but would its voters welcome the ‘King of the North’? The Independent’s Dan Haygarth finds out

The country’s in chaos, isn’t it? It’s just dreadful and Starmer is doing nothing,” says Joan Preston.

“We’d always voted Labour, all of our family. If he were still here, my Dad would be saying to me ‘what do you mean you’re not voting Labour? They’re for the people. They’re for the working people’. Well, Burnham’s for the working people.”

If Mr Burnham is the man to beat Reform at a general election, he will have to prove it here first.

Ms Preston believes the mayor, whose 2024 re-election saw him win in every ward but one in Greater Manchester, certainly is the man to do it.

Mr Prior was a major victory for Nigel Farage’s party, winning a majority in the authority to end 25 years of Conservative control.

Now these councils will be forced to hold by-elections to fill the vacant seats just months after the nationwide local contests, each at a cost that is set to run into the tens of thousands of pounds.

Of the 12 former Reform councillors, 11 are set to cost local taxpayers £287,000 in by-election costs, figures obtained by The Independent through Freedom of Information requests indicate, as the mounting cost of Reform’s inadequate or unprepared candidates is revealed.

The two by-elections triggered by Mr Prior’s resignation are set to cost a further £35,000, estimates provided by Rochford council show, pushing the total figure up to £322,000. Unlike at a general election, which is funded by central government, local election costs are paid for by the authority in which they are held.

Mr Burnham won approval of Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) to stand, having previously blocked him from running in February’s by-election in Gorton and Denton, on Friday. The decision comes a day after Josh Simons announced he would quit parliament to make way for the Manchester mayor to run in his seat.

But one hurdle remains in Mr Burnham’s path to Westminster – winning the by-election against Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

Speculation that Sir Keir could face a challengehas been circling for months, but after days of mounting calls for him to resign following the disastrous Labour election results, candidates have finally begun to make their moves.

Mr Streeting, Mr Burnham and deputy prime minister Angela Rayner have all been widely touted as the most probable challengers to Sir Keir’s premiership, while Al Carns and Ed Miliband have also been named as potential candidates.

Six months earlier he allegedly authored social media posts in which he celebrated a Sikh woman being raped in the Midlands, described Muslim people as “rats” and wrote that white people were the “master race”.

Confronted by the Mirror over the posts ahead of the election, Mr Prior said he “did not recall” the tweets, despite the journalist pointing out that pictures of the candidate’s house and dog also featured in posts from the same account.

The US president claimed Sir Keir, who is facing immense pressure to resign following the fallout of Labour’s disastrous local election results, will struggle to remain in office unless he deals with immigration and energy policy.

Pressed over whether the prime minister can survive, Mr Trump said: “It’s a tough thing unless he can straighten out immigration, where he’s weak, and if he doesn’t start drilling, stop with the windmills all over the place that are causing havoc.”

Labour needs to have a “battle of ideas”, not of personalities, a minister has said amid ongoing talk of a leadership challenge to replace Sir Keir Starmer.

Communities minister Alison McGovern told the Progress think tank’s conference in London that Labour had been left “reeling” from its election defeats last week, adding: “Too often I think we’ve been caught up in the wrong kind of battle. It’s a battle of ideas that’s needed, not a battle of personalities.

“I must be in the top percent of people in the country most interested in politics, and if all the political news, half low-grade soap opera, half predictable horse race, makes me want to switch off, God knows what anyone just trying to get on with their life thinks.

“So we have to put forward our ideas in a way that’s new, not the old battles of left and right swinging it out, but practical progressive ideas that show our values.”

In a further hint at Labour’s ongoing internal ructions, Ms McGovern later said that leadership in progressive ideas is “never provided by just one man, but by each and every one of us in this room”.

“That will carry us towards the next election with hope in our hearts,” she added.

By Kate Devlin, Whitehall Editor

Westminster waited with baited breath to see what the health secretary would do.

But within hours of his resignation, the attention turned to Andy Burnham and the fight he faces to beat Reform and enter Westminster and, possibly, No 10.

That has left some believing Mr Streeting should stand aside if Burnham returns.

So today, as he breaks his silence for the first time since he resigned, in a speech to the Progress conference at 3pm, Mr Streeting faces his own battle – to set out his stall his vision for Britain and, potentially, why he should be PM.