Andy Burnham has accused unnamed Labour figures of ‘lying’ about him to the media.
Speaking on BBC Radio Manchester this morning said that briefings about him running in the Gorton and Denton by-election had exposed a ‘culture… where some people think they can say what they like’.
The Mayor also accused the Labour Party of never supporting him in his election campaigns to be mayor of Manchester.
“I’ve never had any support from the party in the three mayoral elections… so the Greater Manchester mayoral election has never been a great expense” he told the programme
On his candidacy for Gorton and Denton he insisted he was the only candidate who could have beaten the right-wing politics of Reform UK.
I believed I was probably in a better position than anybody to fight back against that, and that’s why I put myself forward to them. Because I think if we’d have that by-election, and we still might do and I’ll be out there campaigning for Labour in that by-election.
“If I’d have won it I think we could have pushed them back. I think Reform can be pushed back because they’ve brought in all these Tories. They look like the worst of the Tory Party to me and I think we could have beaten them and beaten them well, and that would have pushed them right back.”
Burnham said he’s “not going to be bitter” after his by-election candidacy was blocked.
