ANDY Burnham last night made a humiliating climbdown from his campaign to replace Sir Keir Starmer.
Pushed on whether the PM is the right person to lead Britain and Labour, the Manchester mayor said: “Yes.”
It came after days of criticism, which sparked fury from Cabinet ministers.
But despite saying “you’d have to wrench me out of Manchester”, Mr Burnham used day two of the Labour conference in Liverpool to continuing sniping at the PM.
The ex-minister said now isn’t the time to roll out digital ID.
And he implored the Chancellor to be “flexible” with her fiscal rules to increase spending capacity.
Hitting back at accusations from Labour ministers that he’d crash the economy, the mayor told The Guardian’s Politics Weekly podcast: “I reject entirely this idea that I’m sort of hopeless and I’ve no idea about how to make it add up.”
New polling by YouGov yesterday showed 62 per cent of Labour members would back Mr Burnham to be PM, compared to 29 per cent who support Sir Keir.
The mayor conceded that he “can’t launch a leadership campaign” because “I’m not in parliament”.
He added: “So that is the bottom line.”
Mr Burnham also said that if it were up to him Britain would rejoin the EU in his lifetime.
