I have not seen Labour turn on itself like this since the 1970s

As 50 Labour MPs demand Andy Burnham be allowed to try to return to the Commons – and potentially to challenge Keir Starmer’s authority – John Rentoul asks if the party is ungovernable

Here is one U-turn that Keir Starmer will not be making. Fifty Labour MPs have signed a round-robin letter asking the prime minister to reverse his decision to block Andy Burnham as the Labour candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election.

It is not happening. They can save their breath. It is not a huge saving, obviously, not to say to Clive Lewis, the MP who drafted the letter, “Yes, you can put my name down.” But there was a time when it would have been automatic for the vast majority of Labour MPs to refrain from adding their names to pointless protests against the leadership.

And this is a pointless protest. The prime minister’s decision to keep his most dangerous leadership rival out of parliament was not merely an act of ruthless self-defence. It was also squarely in the Labour Party’s interest.

To be blunt, once Andrew Gwynne stood down as an MP, the party faced a stark choice: lose the parliamentary by-election, or lose the mayoralty of Greater Manchester. Neither outcome was guaranteed, but each was likely enough to make the rational decision clear. Labour could keep Burnham in office as mayor and sacrifice the seat in the Commons.

Burnham’s popularity in the region, and his reputation as an anti-Starmer candidate, would probably have saved the by-election seat – but at the price of losing Greater Manchester to Reform.

Blocking Burnham may look like cynical machine politics, but it is not going to be reversed by a list of MPs – mostly the usual suspects – complaining about it. Nor will it be reversed by Burnham himself throwing a tantrum about the prime minister “breaking commitments” made to him.

I do not know what Starmer said to Burnham, or what Starmer’s people said to Burnham’s people. But it should have been obvious to Burnham that Starmer would block him. He should not have put his name forward; and, having done so, he should have kept a dignified silence and retained his place on what most Labour members regard as the high moral ground.

But Burnham, like so many of the Labour MPs whom he wants to join in Westminster, cannot help himself. There is a government to run and Nigel Farage to worry about, but they would rather fight each other.

This kind of suicidal self-indulgence may not be the root cause of the Labour government’s problems, but it makes them far harder to solve.

Starmer may judge that he has bought himself some time – enough, perhaps, to leave the country without fearing a coup in his absence. MPs on the right of the party insist that 50 MPs is not that many. They are correct, insofar as the Socialist Campaign Group, which is opposed to the leader at all times except when it was Jeremy Corbyn, accounts for roughly half of them.

But 50 is not that far from 81 – the number needed to nominate a rival candidate publicly and force a leadership election. Angela Rayner, the most likely recipient of those nominations, told a fundraiser for a Labour MP last night: “We need to be unapologetically Labour.” The subtext was unmistakable. She was reminding Burnham’s supporters that there is someone who shares their politics and is actually eligible to run.

This parliamentary party is already the most unruly in Labour’s history. For most of the 20th century, the party whips ruled, and rebellions were rare. They became more common under Tony Blair, but his authority remained secure for at least his first six years.

Fifty MPs have written to Keir Starmer asking him to allow Andy Burnham to stand in the Gorton and Denton by-election (PA Archive)

This government has been different. Despite winning a majority almost as dominant as Blair’s, Starmer has repeatedly bowed to the threat of Labour MPs voting against him. He has mostly avoided the humiliation of losing votes in the Commons, but only by U-turning on policy after policy before the vote is held.

Today’s reversal is on business rates for pubs. The most damaging came last year, when he abandoned cuts to disability benefits. Taken together, these retreats mean higher public spending and higher taxes.

Starmer has bought himself time by keeping Burnham at bay. But the unruliness of Labour MPs will continue to destabilise him. A party unable to restrain its own self-destructive tendencies – and aping the later years of the last Tory government with its incessant leadership plotting – is not well placed to see off Farage.