Burnham to run for Mayor of Greater Manchester

SHADOW Home Secretary Andy Burnham has signalled his intent to stand for Mayor of Greater Manchester, claiming that Labour runs the risk of being marginalized if it does not take devolution seriously.

Liverpool-born Burnham, who has been MP for Leigh in Greater Manchester for 15 years, sad, if elected, he would quit the Commons.

And he voiced fears a“Londoncentric” Labour Party could be pushed into third place, as happened in Scotland in this month’s Holyrood elections.

Burnham, aged 46, said: “The mistake Labour made in Scotland was that when devolution came, we didn’t field our biggest names and consequently it looked like we didn’t take it seriously enough. We can’t make that mistake again.

In an interview with the Guardian in Manchester, Burnham added: “For me this is a cabinet-level job, which needs cabinet-level experience. And it needs somebody who is going to devote themselves to it and grab it with both hands.”

Burnham has been hoping to announce his candidacy in a speech at the Lowry in Salford on today, but his team accidently broke their own embargo by changing the Twitter handle he used during last year’s bid to be leader of the party, from @andy4leader to @andy4manchester.

The profile’s biographical sentence read: “The official account of Andy Burnham’s campaign to be Labour’s candidate for mayor of Greater Manchester.”

The account retained all its followers, although all the old tweets had been deleted.

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