With both Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham effectively entering the race for a potential Labour leadership contest, their supporters are rallying behind them to replace Keir Starmer. Here is a look at who is backing whom and why.
Andy Burnham
Josh Simons surprised Westminster this week by announcing he would step down in his Makerfield seat to allow Burnham to run for Parliament. Previously seen as an ally of Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, Simons warned Labour faces an "existential" crisis without Burnham's leadership.
Lucy Powell, Labour's deputy leader and a longtime ally of the Greater Manchester mayor, said on Friday she "fully supports" his bid to be the Labour candidate in Makerfield. "We've got to do our politics differently, we've got to end the factionalism, we've got to embrace all the different traditions of the Labour Party, all the different voices and bring one team back together," she added. "And that means having Andy Burnham as a key player in that team, in my view."
Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, remains a member of Starmer's cabinet and has said he has her "full support" for now, but she is expected to back Burnham if a contest begins.
Many 'Soft Left' Labour MPs are understood to support Burnham and his call for "Manchesterism" to be applied more widely across the country. They were buoyed by his Channel 4 News interview on Saturday, where he said: "We need a different path completely. What is that path? Put more things back under stronger public control: energy, housing, water, transport. I've done that with buses in Greater Manchester."
Wes Streeting
Jess Phillips, the former minister who resigned from Starmer's team last week, said Streeting showed the "bravery and boldness" needed in government. She told the BBC: "The prime minister does definitely care about violence against women and girls, don't get me wrong, but what I see from Wes is bravery and boldness."
Zubir Ahmed, the Glasgow South West MP, also resigned this week as a health minister and is seen as a close ally of Streeting. He used his resignation letter to publicly criticise Sir Keir's leadership.
Chris Curtis, MP for Milton Keynes North and a member of the 2024 intake, is the influential chair of the Labour Growth Group, which campaigns on economic and planning reform.
Peter Kyle, the business secretary, has so far remained loyal to Starmer but is a close friend of Streeting. He was forced to deny they had plotted after the disastrous local election results, saying instead they had gone out to dinner and to watch The Devil Wears Prada 2.
MPs on the right of the Labour party view Streeting with suspicion from the left, but his supporters argue he is the only one who can save Labour and the country from a Reform-led government after the next election.
