Labour winds are blowing towards Burnham – and Streeting knows it

Who said the Labour party needs “a battle of ideas, not of personalities or petty factionalism … It needs to be broad, and it needs the best possible field of candidates”? Until Thursday morning, almost everyone would have attributed those words to Andy Burnham, the mayor or Greater Manchester. But those were the closing paragraphs of the former health secretary Wes Streeting’s resignation letter, a cadence so similar to Burnham’s own that it cannot be accidental. So is this the first glimmer of a deal between Labour’s two powerhouses – the soft left and the centrists? Streeting might have once hoped he had the chance of a coronation, but he does not have enough names to mount a challenge and Keir Starmer would fight him if he did. He was on the brink of utter humiliation. He knows which way the wind is blowing and it is blowing towards Manchester. In order to challenge Starmer, Burnham still needs a seat in Westminster – a challenge that is proving quite hard to surmount. It might take him time to find one. But he is also the candidate who has the most support in the parliamentary party, the membership and in the country. No one thinks Starmer has the political authority now to block him via the party’s national executive committee. So could there be a deal? It is a cliche to say that Burnham, who served under Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Jeremy Corbyn, has been on a political journey. …