Steve Reed, a former ally of Sir Keir Starmer, said the ‘vast majority’ of Labour MPs want ‘Andy Burnham’ to take over as the new Prime Minister.
Andy Burnham is expected to become Prime Minister (Image: Getty)
A senior Labour minister defended the party’s Downing Street manoeuvres by insisting the public doesn’t want a General Election.
Steve Reed, a former ally of Sir Keir Starmer, said the “vast majority” of Labour MPs want “Andy Burnham to take over as the new Prime Minister”.
The Housing Secretary told Sky News’ Sunday With Trevor Phillips: “The vast majority of my colleagues, myself included, want Andy Burnham to take over as the new prime minister, and I expect that will happen in fairly short order.”
He said the transition should be “orderly,” adding: “The public do not want a general election, and that’s not just my instinct. You can look at the polls that tell us the vast majority do not. They want us to get on with the job.”
And Mr Reed insisted the former Greater Mayor of Manchester will stick to the 2024 manifesto.
He said: “Well, there are conversations going on in Parliament all the time, but we’re elected on a manifesto and Andy is committed to that manifesto.
“Now he’ll want to change some things, and one of the areas he’s talked about, and I think very excitingly, is devolution, handing more power directly to communities.
“Now, that is something that Andy and I have both been talking about for well over 10 years now. He did an exceptional job as the mayor of Manchester. He’s one of Labour’s big success stories.
“It’s one of the reasons he did so well in the Makerfield by-election because people have seen the changes that he’s made.”
He said there would be “changes of emphasis” but suggested the “fundamentals” would remain, including the fiscal rules.
And Mr Reed tried to claim Labour swapping prime ministers was “very, very different” from when it happened under the Tories.
The Housing Secretary told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg: “This is happening in a very, very different way, like when Boris Johnson went, he’d been having parties during the lockdown in 10 Downing Street, one of them the night before the Queen buried her husband of 70 years, and he left in disgrace, and the Tories did it again and again.”
He added: “What’s happening here is the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, has accepted with good grace and is going with good grace that he’s leaving, and we, I think, now are going to move very swiftly to uniting behind Andy Burnham as the new leader, and therefore our new Prime Minister, with none of that turning inwards and talking to ourselves, and that is absolutely essential, because above all else the country expects their government to focus on the interests of the British people, and that is what we will do by getting behind Andy Burnham.”
Keir Starmer has been forced out by Labour MPs (Image: Getty)
Mr Burnham is expected to set out plans for a “devolution-first” agenda across Whitehall on Monday, under which departments will be expected to assess which areas of their responsibility and funding should be transferred to regional governments.