As Sir Keir Starmer wearily boarded his flight to Beijing on Tuesday evening, he may have taken some solace in the fact that the leadership ambitions of one of his key challengers had been thwarted – at least for the time being.
While the full consequences of the decision to block Andy Burnham from standing in the Denton and Gorton by-election are yet to properly play out, Sir Keir has, for now, personally ensured that the Greater Manchester mayor doesn’t represent such an immediate threat to his leadership.
