Here we go again. A parliamentary Labour Party is pretty grumpy with the way things are going in government and if handy-Andy would potentially rejoint the Commons in the weeks and months after those potentially very bruising local elections and elections in Wales and Scotland in May and make no mistake that Andy Burnham still potentially has leadership ambitions. I believe the first question now is does he still want to stand as an MP however, we haven't got an answer that as of this evening we haven't heard a thing really from Andy Burnham other than him saying that he didn't quite know what was going on with Andrew Gwynne and whether he was going to step down.

Of course he has stepped down now and now it's decision time I think for Andy Burnham the difficulty would be if he did become an MP, he wouldn't be able to be Manchester mayor they would have to be another election to elect a new Manchester mayor costly for the Greater Manchester authority potentially costly for Labour as well to fight that it would inject a huge amount of psychodrama into labour politics.

Just imagine months of chasing around Andy Burnham and Keir Starmer asking when he's going to stage a leadership challenge if he does become an MP, that's something the government really doesn't need.

The second big question is does the party allow him to stand even if he decides he wants to the nominations for the shortlist have to go through the party's national executive committee the governing body of Labour where Keir Starmer is very influential on that and if they wanted to block him they could probably find a way to do it.

It is well known that everybody calls Andy Burnham King of the Knowles if we up the King of the North will insist and I'm not sure he is but if we have the King of the North willing to stand?

There are arguments raging across the top of the Labour Party about what happens next there, are some more sympathetic to Andy Burnham and potentially more on the left of the party and even these are NEC members saying this that he should be a sensually allowed to stand if he wants to that it shouldn't be gerrymandered that the list shouldn't be stitched up to exclude him.

There are suggestions that maybe they could propose an “all women” shortlist which would obviously have the effect of excluding Andy Burnham.

Mind you, of course the big ultimate question is that even if he does decide to stand, he has also to actually win the thing and Reform and the Green Party both of whom pulled pretty well in the last election there. Both parties are saying they will throw everything at this so, there are risks, there are hurdles for Andy Burnham.

The thing is, if the Manchester Mayor does want to make it back to the Commons and potentially does want to even make it into Downing Street, he might not find a better opportunity in the coming months than this one.

There is no doubt that PM loyalists will make it difficult for Mr Burnham to be selected as Labour's byelection candidate and the source tells the times an anti-Burnham coalition is forming to the left and right of Labour's national executive committee. Sir Keir Starmer was very clear that he thinks Andy Burnham’s really good at running Manchester and he should stay that.

My personal opinion?

Make no mistake, this is a huge opportunity for Andy Burnham which was on radar way in advance back in the autumn. The leadership would be insane to allow Andy Burnham to stand this election and he himself would be perhaps better and wisely to go to give Reform and the Greens the opportunity to give the Labour Party sweetening. On the other hand it would be dreadful for the government to stop Andy Burnham and if they do PMQ will be again served on plate from Kemi Badenoch all about how "weak PM Starmer is"

There is no doubts that PM is scared losing leadership and PM is without any shadow of the doubt afraid of Andy Burnham and he will do everything in his power to make sure that he doesn't get to run and that doesn’t matter that Andy Burnham compared to British politicians his approval rating is literally 0 (zero, nil, zilch).

That has happened to me personally with the last election, when I wrote to Pat McFaden who was at the time Labour’s campaign coordinator, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves. I even relocated myself to get the one Tori snake Chris Philip (currently Shadow Home Secretary) out of commons as he would never ever win against me.

None replied, no reply from Pat McFaden, no reply from our PM even less from Rachel Reeves. Well I am not a lawyer or solicitors, perhaps I would have a chance to be on a ballot.