Labour’s star chamber met to adjudicate on Andy Burnham’s hopes of a return to Westminster – and the result was a short, sharp end to the Greater Manchester Mayor’s hopes of a Commons seat, and a pulpit for a potential leadership challenge. By a crushing margin, Burnham’s aim of selection for the Gorton and Denton by-election in south-west Manchester was nixed.

The King of the North has just suffered the polite version of the more full-on murderous approach taken by Henry VIII to quelling 16th century “northern rebellions”. His ambitions were voted down by a massive eight to one margin in the NEC not just to keep him at a safe distance from unquiet MPs in Westminster, but to signal to other ambitious nobles pitching for power that they will be slapped down.  

Any other outcome would have been a shock: the rulebook has been altered recently precisely for such an eventuality. But the implications of the Burnham revolt will linger. It has revealed how nervy the Labour leadership is about those with ambition, and its instinct is to use process to keep challenges at bay.

As for the line that a Greater Manchester mayoral race would cost too much money, the discourteous riposte might be that the Government has torn up its own welfare savings plans and made sundry costly concessions to backbenchers in order to protect the present hierarchy at the top. A city mayoral election is not the element that most........

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