The Mayor of Greater Manchester has announced his intention to challenge Keir Starmer’s leadership of the Labour Party.
Stephen Dixon and Ellie Costello discussed the current Labour Party chaos on GB News (Image: GB News)
Just hours after it was confirmed current Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham intends to challenge Keir Starmer for the Labour leadership his efforts were derided on GB News. Political advisor Claire Pearsall declared: “They can’t even stage a coup properly” as she debated the current chaos in the Labour Party with political commentator Nigel Nelson. Speaking to presenters Stephen Dixon and Ellie Costello on the channel’s breakfast show, she reflected on his support as he gets set to run in the Makerfield by-election after a current MP agreed to step aside for him.
“When you look at the pollings for the seat, it’s only a slim majority of 5,000. It’s not looking particularly good after the local elections that we’ve just had, where Reform were actually the largest party in all of the wards in the local council elections. So, if you were putting yourself forward for a seat, I wouldn’t have chosen that one,” she said.
“I suspect that there were fewer candidates willing to give up their seat for Andy Burnham, so they have found Josh Simons, who was a new MP, who’s only been elected in 2024,” she said.
“He’s already tainted,” she continued. “[He has been] looking at journalists and digging into their backgrounds and doing some really quite underhand things.
“And I don’t think he was particularly happy in Parliament – [that] was the vibe that I got from him.
“But it’s interesting that they can’t even organise themselves to stage a coup properly,” she quipped.
Andy Burnham has confirmed he is set to challenge Keir Starmer for the Labour leadership (Image: Getty)
“We’ve seen it all this week… we’ve had is a lot of speculation of people that were maybe going to resign, they were going to challenge, they weren’t going to challenge, they weren’t ready, they didn’t want to be first… You think if you’re serious about this [just] do it,” she insisted.
Nelson agreed, commenting: “The Labour Party are not very good about getting rid of their leaders. They haven’t got the ruthlessness of the Tories.”
Presenter Stephen Dixon chimed in: “But the chances of him actually winning that seat, where, if you look at the polling at the minute, Reform are much more likely to take that seat. Nigel Farage has already said we’re going to throw everything at this
Nelson responded: “Which in fact is a great irony, considering that Nigel Farage billed the local elections as the way to get rid of Keir Starmer. Now there’s a vehicle to get rid of Keir Starmer. Nigel Farage will oppose it,” he said.