BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.

Hello, it's Adam recording this bonus episode of newscast on Sunday evening.

Now, the reason I am here in the studio is because I was moonlighting on Five Live, filling in for Stephen Nolan on the 9 o'clock to midnight show.

And also, Chris Mason was here being on the 10 o'clock news.

So we thought we would just get together on 5 Live and then share it with you here in the newscast feed.

And the reason we're doing this is not just to show off what exceptionally long hours we both do,

Chris does, is because now we know Andy Burnham will not be in the race to become the Labour candidate in that by-election in Greater Manchester, which means he will not be coming back to Westminster as an MP, which for now means he will not be challenging Keir Starmour for the leadership of the Labour Party and the role of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

And that is because on Sunday morning, just before lunchtime,

Labor's National Executive Committee met and voted 8 to 1

that as the mayor of Greater Manchester,

he would not be given permission to contest the selection for the Gorton by-election,

or to be the Labour candidate in the Gorton by-election. So that ends or blocks

off one path back to power or to power in the first place at Westminster for Andy Burnham.

So what you'll hear now is the conversation Chris and I had on 5 Live just after 9 o'clock on Sunday night,

but is now here as newscast. Newscast from the BBC. Fat boy sliver me in the classroom doing our violin lessons. I was the tattle tail in the class. Can I have an apology, please? I trust almost nobody. That daddy has to sometimes do strong language. Next time in Moscow. I feel delulu with no salulu. Take me down to Downey Street. Let's go have a tour. Blimey. Hello, Chris. Hello. I can always tell it's a big political story because you work on a Sunday night. Not that you're work shy, obviously, but it's just you do more than enough work during the week. Yeah, yeah. It's been one of those days, hasn't it? And it's been the kind of arc to this, hasn't there, Adam? So we had Andrew Gwynne, the outgoing MP for Gorton and Denton, saying last week that he was going to stand down, pointing to the fact that he has had all sorts of mental health troubles. He'd also got himself in a bit of a tangle about WhatsApp that he'd sent that a newspaper got hold of. And then this process, where the Prime Minister was going to be confronted by a decision.

And I think, you know, when I step back from it now, here we are on Sunday evening,

you've got the Prime Minister exerting a kind of brute force, a brute power.

But underneath it, it's kind of a recognition of a weakness, because if he was totally flying as Prime Minister, he could think, well, you know, this guy's clearly able, he's been a mayor, he's been a Cabinet Minister, we'll welcome him back, there'd be no threat to me. And the reality is the Prime Minister is well aware that Andy Burnham is a threat. I mean, not least because he's gone out of his way,. Burnham to say quite a few times about his ambitions to be Prime Minister. And so, yeah, the Prime Minister squashed it. But is that leadership threat how they actually squished Andy Burnham's ambitions? Didn't they use lots more kind of procedural things to do that? They did. So there were some bureaucratic kind of strictures that they were able to lean on. And to be fair, these are things written down in the rules that are very clear. So the rules set out that if you are... Oh yeah, Andy Brunham wouldn't have known this yesterday. Well, indeed. If you look at the rules, it's set down there. If you are an elected mayor or indeed a police and crime commissioner, and you want to run for Westminster, you can ask to, but the National Executive Committee, the kind of governing body, if you like, of the Labour Party, gets to have a say. And that's what was happening this morning. So you had this collection, this sort of subgroup of the National Executive Committee. By the way, the Prime Minister is on it and he was on this Teams or Zoom call or whatever, is this virtual call. Although he doesn't share it, though. He doesn't. He doesn't. It's just an average Joe on it and he was on this teams or Zoom call or whatever is this virtual call. Although he doesn't

share it though. He doesn't. He doesn't. He's just an average

Joe on it. Yeah, so the Home Secretary Shabana

Mahmood, who no, you know,

only just finished talking to Laura Kaye on the

...