“We are going to be obliterated if we carry on like this,” one left-leaning Labour MP told The i Paper.

Labour MPs who had hoped Andy Burnham could stage a triumphal return to Parliament in a by-election next month did not take long to complain when he was blocked by Sir Keir Starmer.

Many now see a post-May challenge to Starmer as inevitable. More worrying for the left of the party is that there is currently no viable socialist or soft-left alternative to succeed him.

Hours after Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) thwarted Burnham’s ambitions, a private letter was circulating calling for a rethink. But, with only 50 signatories by the time it was presented to Starmer and the NEC on Monday, the Prime Minister’s allies see it as eminently manageable.

Worse for Burnham, plenty of his Labour colleagues are pleased that he won’t be back any time soon. “Who the hell does Andy think he is?” one MP ally of Starmer remarked.

Some haven’t given up on getting Burnham in. On Tuesday, chatter resurfaced that a Labour MP could be induced to stand aside for Burnham in Liverpool rather than Manchester, as Labour MPs war-gamed how to get the Greater Manchester Mayor back into Parliament.

An earlier offer by the MP for Norwich South, Clive Lewis, to give up his seat to let Burnham stand has been dismissed, given the Manchester mayor’s King of the North branding. Nonetheless, Lewis is one of the key instigators of........

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