by Atul Hatwal
The headlines about the NEC blocking Andy Burnham’s candidacy for Gorton and Denton are about a ruthless, factional hit. That it was. But it didn’t have to be this way. Losing by 8 votes to 1 tells a tale of an quixotic leadership effort that had not done the essential prework required to secure the support of the only voters that mattered: the NEC officer group.
Three votes went against Andy Burnham that he could reasonably have expected to win, regardless of how Labour leadership representatives voted.
NEC Vice Chair, Peter Wheeler is a councillor in the Northwest (Cheshire West) and is well known to Andy Burnham, personally and professionally. In several putative vote tallies on Friday, he was viewed as a likely Burnham backer.
The GMB and Usdaw representatives were subject to strenuous lobbying from both sides, within and without their unions. Once again, having ready answers for inevitable questions on the Manchester Mayoral election and finance, as well as some explicit commitments for what a Burnham leadership would have offered these unions, could have won them over.
These three votes, along with Lucy Powell, would have changed the result to 5-4, not a win but very close. Maybe close enough to force rethink.
Andrew Gwynne had been negotiating with the parliamentary authorities on the terms of his post-MP support for several months. It was well known that he would be resigning as soon as these terms were settled. This was the time Andy Burnham’s team should have been love-bombing NEC members. They needed to have identified likely arguments against his candidacy, such as the cost of a Mayoral election and potential loss to Reform, and provided answers.
Instead, at the end of last week the Burnham camp was briefing that maybe Gary Neville or a Labour celebrity could run for Manchester Mayor and save it for Labour. A briefing that did not get any support from Gary Neville.
Team Burnham should have had a clear set of policy deliverables for NEC representatives and dangled personal inducements, whether peerages or party roles. It’s low politics but the essential currency of currying favour with officers, whether in student politics or Labour’s NEC. Little in terms of substantive offers, calibrated to individual NEC members, seems to have been communicated.
And Cabinet supporters should have been cultivated for several months, with clear asks defined. For example, at the point Andrew Gwynne resigned, public expressions of support should have been coupled with muscular private lobbying of swing voters on the NEC such as union representatives. Andy Burnham certainly had several Cabinet members publicly asserting that he should be allowed to run, but the scale of defeat indicates the private lobbying did not occur with the intensity required.
It’s a hoary old LBJ maxim, that the first rule of politics is to learn how to count. Andy Burnham’s 8-1 defeat would suggest he didn’t.
Correction: The original piece stated Ann Black was on the Officers group. It has been updated to reflect that she left in December 2025
Atul Hatwal is editor of Labour Uncut
Tags: Andy Burnham, Atul Hatwal, Gorton and Denton, Labour leadership, NEC
