24 January 2026

Andy Burnham’s people

The factions that could take him to power are already forming

We know who Andy Burnham’s supporters aren’t: the various government insiders and figures from the party bureaucracy who have been quoted in the papers saying he could be blocked from standing in the Gorton and Denton by-election.

And before Burnham sought permission to stand late on Saturday afternoon, we heard a rising chorus of Labour voices making the case for the Manchester Mayor to return to parliament. Among MPs, the first to speak publicly were: Karl Turner, Jo White, Jon Trickett, Connor Naismith and Chris Webb. Factionally, they had little in common beyond feeling left out in the cold by this Labour leadership. And they were all northern. Their statements on the matter of the Gorton and Denton selection all stressed the importance of northern autonomy and it seemed this battle might end up falling along regional as much as factional lines (later on Saturday, as the Burnham push gathered momentum, southern MPs like Tony Vaughan joined their calls). One of the underappreciated resentments in Labour politics is both the Keir Starmer and Jeremy Corbyn leaderships have been manifestations of the London Labour party (meant as a compliment to neither of them).

That’s not to say any of these people would vote to make Burnham leader of the party, just that they think he should be able to stand as an MP in the city where he enjoys level of popularity that no other politician in the country can currently dream of. So who would make him PM? There are two groups on the Soft Left of the party who could potentially rally around him in any leadership challenge, Tribune and Mainstream.

Tribune, the larger group with over 100 MPs, has no “general view” of Burnham, a leading member of the caucus tells me. They said he would be welcome on the Labour benches but any attempt to launch a leadership challenge in his first months would “backfire”. “If Andy is serious about being leader, he could do a lot worse than be seen to be a team player for a decent period of time,” the MP said.

Mainstream, the smaller group, was only founded in September. Their name is based on the aspiration of where they want the party’s “mainstream” of thought to be, and the group describe themselves as “radical realists”. They have been branded a Burnham vehicle because the Manchester Mayor was supportive when they first launched as a collaborative new outfit of Milibandites, former Corbyn supporters and first-term Blairites (those who supported the progressive origins of the New Labour project but turned away from it over Iraq and PFI).

Burnham did back the group on their founding. But leading figures say they approached him on something of a wing and a prayer. They were pleasantly surprised when he offered his support. The association has, ever since, been a double-edged sword: their pronouncements get greater pick up from the popular press, but observers see Burnhamite conspiracy in all they do (for example, the fact that they have Angela Rayner as their keynote speaking at their forthcoming reception in February will set Westminster tongues wagging).

There are clear lines of distinction between the two groups. As one Mainstream figure puts it: “Tribune are the people who voted for Keir Starmer in 2020 believing he was on the soft left, Mainstream are the people who didn’t vote for him in 2020 because they knew he was lying.” Put in another way, one Labour MP likes to describe Mainstream as “the radical wing of the soft left”.

On policy questions, there are further divisions. Burnham’s critics think his carping at Whitehall and Westminster is just a form of crude regional populism. His supporters would say it is a constant reminder of the reform part of his agenda. It is not so much Burnham’s economic programme of “business friendly socialism” that has drawn Mainstream towards him, but the other and perhaps more radical part of his agenda: changing the political organisation of the country.

It is what some in the Burnham orbit are calling “the new politics” – meaning a major push for devolution to the regions, including tax and spend powers. One of the few things Burnham effusively praised about this government in a speech on Tuesday (20 January) was its decision to grant tax raising powers to metro mayors through the overnight visitor levy. It would also mean electoral reform, something Burnham has praised since he left Westminster and won two Manchester mayoral elections under the supplementary vote system (the 2024 election was fought under first past the post).

Mainstream is currently campaigning internally for the party to publish full and regular membership numbers again. The monthly disclosures at NEC meetings stopped in 2025 and the last public figure was over 300,000. The New Statesman and the Times have both separately reported that the total is now below 250,000 and that therefore Reform has overtaken Labour in terms of membership numbers as well as national opinion polling.

They also want to reinstate the Community Organising Unit of the party with, again, the aim of making it a social movement as well as a political party, as well as hoping this would revive the membership numbers. In terms of policy commitments, the group wants this Labour government to revisit its employment rights legislation, and is seeking to build strong links with the trade union movement partly on the basis of that proposal.

The way it’s been put to me is that Tribune believe they can achieve change within the “old” political system and the current Labour party, while Mainstream believe the system itself is the problem and the Labour party doesn’t work either. This is the attraction of Burnham. If he and his people can reach an accord, the crown should be in reach.

[Further reading: Andy Burnham has less than 24 hours to run in Gorton and Denton]