Exclusive: Former Labour Members Are Returning To The Party To Back Andy Burnham

Former Labour members are returning to the party to help Andy Burnham win win the crunch Makerfield by-election, HuffPost UK has been told.

Supporters who quit in protest at the direction of the party under Keir Starmer’s leadership are signing up to help the Greater Manchester mayor defeat Reform UK, it is claimed.

“They are all offering to help Andy win the by-election,” a senior Labour source said. “He is attracting support from long-standing members who left over the last two years.”

A pro-Burnham MP confirmed that ex-Labour members have returned to back his bid to return to parliament after nine years.

Burnham has said he wants to become an MP again to “save” the Labour Party, but stopped short of confirming he wants to replace Starmer as leader.

He told the BBC: “We’ve got to see this as a moment to reclaim the Labour Party, to save it from where it’s been. We can’t just carry on as we are.”

Burnham has yet to be confirmed as Labour’s by-election candidate, although the party’s ruling national executive committee (NEC) has said it will not block him, as they did when he tried to stand in Gorton and Denton earlier this year.

Josh Simons won the seat for Labour at the last election with a majority of 5,399 from Reform.

Simons announced on Thursday that he was standing down to make way for Burnham, who is expected to challenge Starmer if he wins the by-election, which takes place on June 18.

On BBC 1′s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg, Simons said he had done it in the “best interests” of his party, community and country.

He said: “I think doing things for your community and your country that are very much not in your own personal reasons is the kind of thing we should do in politics sometimes.

“This has been a really tough decision for me and my family. I have very young kids, I’ve got a three-week-old baby.

“This was not an easy thing to do, and I wouldn’t have done it unless I really, really believed, at the end of the day, that this was in the best interests of the Labour Party, my community, and most importantly, the country.”

It was revealed last week that 1,600 new members had joined Labour in the wake of the party’s drubbing in the elections on May 7.

Party sources claimed the vast majority had done so to support the prime minister.

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