"The man who is both there and not there. Not invited on to the main stage, but the star attraction at countless fringe events. The man no cabinet minister dares mention by name, yet who is seemingly buried deep in everyone's subconscious. Living rent free in the heads of Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves. The man who is making a leadership bid and not making a leadership bid."
"You also have to ask yourself why these things keep happening to Andy. It just doesn't seem fair somehow. There he was just giving a front page interview to the Daily Telegraph on the eve of the conference about how the government was lacking leadership and needed a change of direction, and somehow people just jumped to the conclusion that he was putting himself in the frame to be the next prime minister."
"There he was giving a 5,000-word interview to the editor of the New Statesman just before the party conference in which he spelled out his vision for Britain, and yet again people put two and two together and make five, assuming he is positioning himself to replace Keir. And there he was talking to various broadcast outlets about how various Labour MPs had been begging him to quit as mayor of Greater Manchester and return to Westminster as the leader-in-waiting."
Andy Burnham occupies a contradictory position in the Labour party, simultaneously present at events yet absent from the party's main stage and formal leadership discourse. Media interviews and public appearances repeatedly provoke speculation that he is preparing a leadership challenge, even when no organised campaign exists. His high-profile interviews and comments are interpreted as positioning, and conversations about returning from the mayoralty to Westminster fuel rumours. Observers characterise his approach as driven more by ambition than by strategic plotting, and his potential resurgence depends on Labour's electoral fortunes and whether backers decide to coalesce behind him.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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