Hello, welcome to Coffee House Shots. I'm James Heald, and I'm joined today by Tim Shipman.

And we'll talk about three different stories today. And first up, this afternoon,

we've got the revelation that Andy Gwynn is about to stand down as an MP in his seat of Gorton and Denton,

potentially triggering the way for Andy Burnham to make a comeback to

Parliament. Yes, breaking news. It's very exciting, James. We've been waiting for this shoe to drop

for a little while, haven't we? Several MPs been suggested as possible sort of Burnham make weights.

Tell us about the seat, though, because a lot of people think, you know, Andy Burnham is going to

mount a leadership bid. Is it safe for him, do you think? Or is there some possibility reform will want to go in all guns blazing and see if they can stop this move in its tracks? Yeah, I mean, I think the first of all, obviously, we want to make sure that Andy Burnham actually get selected, of course, because the NEC need to sign off on that. And given that it's stacked with,

as one of the prolet to me, Morgan's allies, I'm not sure that Mr. McSweeney will be rushing to accommodate anything for him, but say he does get on that list and he does get selected. The seat in question was a long-time Labor's safe seat. Andrew Gwyn won it with 50% of the vote last time, compared to reform, we finished second on about 14%.

It's a majority of 12,000.

And so you think, how would Labor face on this? to the vote last time compared to reform. We finished second on about 14%. It's a majority of 12,000.

And so you think, how would Labour face on this? Because on the one hand, you think, yes, it's quite a safe seat, but on the other hand, they lost Runcorn last year, albeit in maybe slightly more controversial circumstances with Mike McIntyre. I think you'd have to run a presidential campaign based around Annie Burnham and his, I think it was the EFT described it his sad eyes.

Potentially making it all about make a vote for Andy is a vote for a different prime minister.

Well, poor old Andy, he's always sad. He was very sad that he had to go to Cambridge and become a special advisor and then a three times over cabinet minister.

And all those wicked people in London didn't like him at all and they've always ostracized him and made him feel that he's not one of them. But yet he wants to come back to London and run the show. But he's popular in the north, isn't he? So if he ran on his record in Manchester, that might insulate him from what seems to be sort of naked hatred that the electorate has for this government at the moment. And we should remember that Stama's personal ratings are well below those of Labor at the moment. So the sort of baseline labour support probably enough for Burnham to get over the line and with a bit of look what I've done for the area, he might be okay. Yeah, I mean, I've had some booster. We've obviously read some boisterous briefings from reform. Yeah, we'll win this seat, bring it on And actually, more susceptible ones have said, hang on a sec. I mean, if you turn through electorate and say explicitly or implicitly, this is going to be a different prime minister if you get this guy in, I think even a fair few sort of tall wreaths would be able to go, yeah, I'd probably fancy that. And then, of course, it could potentially be very different. I mean, And I think Andy Burnham on policy, I think he's actually pretty soft, but I think on terms of his personal charm, he clearly has something in a connection to the electorate, particularly in Manchester, where he's elected with sort of Pyongyang levels. Yes, he's not the king in the north. He's the dear leader in the north, as it were. So the big challenge, really, is going to be getting through the sort of selection process. It's a big decision for Stama this, because if he goes and tries to block it, there will be uproar in certain corners of the party. The parliamentary Labour Party will become solid probably even more ungovernable, but that's raw power politics. If you can stop it to hold onto the leadership, then surely they'll try. And it's a big test of whether Stama and McSweeney still control the NEC.

They've lost seats on it recently with the change in leadership in the Unison Union, which has gone more left wing.

They've not quite got the iron grip they had.

They ought to still have the votes, but it wouldn't take many to put Burnham in trouble.

No, it wouldn't. I think the whole row of the Manchester caucus in this is fascinating, of course, because you have some really big Labour hitters. What are they going to try and do? So Lucy Powell, of course, the newly elected deputy Labor leader. You know, she was someone who really agreed to be sacked in the reshuffle. Would she want Andy Bonnan to come back? or would she, for instance, want him out of Parliament in order to say build up someone like Angela Rainer, another Manchester MP in all of this? I think speaking to MPs in in Parliament yesterday, they were sort of saying, well, at the moment, the shoe-in is going to be West Streeting. So it depends if people think, hang on, is it better to kind of cause this by-election now,

get Andy Burnham in and trigger maybe that contest as a way of stopping a kind of West Streeting coronation post-May. So all these different factors are going to be at play. I suspect we're going to see a couple of really sort of frenetic couple of days or so. Andy Burnan, the pressure will be what will he come out and say? Will he say, I'll stand for Parliament and do it for my country? Or will he maybe bottle it? Which in the past, he has often tended to do. And the other issue, of course, is who then would become the mayor of Manchester, which again is a seat that Labour really ought to be able to hold on to. But nothing's a given in this kind of climate with reform rampaging in the polls.

And there's been some talk that Lucy Powell

might sort of almost job swap and go off and do that.

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