Welcome to this new edition of The Westminster Briefing. We’ll be discussing the last fortnight in UK Politics from Gorton and Denton to China.
For those of you that have been with me from the start of young & political to all of the newbies welcome. A little update : All old blogs from blogger will be posted here soon, so keep your eye out for them. Another podcast released this weekend as well so check out the Young & Political Podcast In Summary on Spotify.
The Gorton and Denton By-Election.
A news Story that has grabbed lots of attention over the past few weeks was the Resignation of Gorton and Denton MP Andrew Gwynne in Manchester. Gwynne resigned due to mental-health related issues and decided that it was the best decision.
When an MP resigns it triggers a by-election, which is when other MP’s will get a chance to win that constituency’s seat (no matter which political party they are) When this was announced the attention turned to Andrew Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester (LAB) which won the mayoral campaign there in 2024.
He was an MP before becoming the Mayor and has been vocal about wanting to challenge Keir Starmer (Prime Minister) in a leadership challenge. But here’s where the inner workings of the Labour Party come in… As Andy Burnham is a sitting mayor he would need the approval of the Labour Party’s NEC (National Executive Committee) to even put his name forward to stand as a Labour Candidate (he would still have needed to go through the selection process even if he was permitted) but his request was blocked.
It was blocked on a Sunday morning at around 11:00 by a small group of representatives of the NEC 10 of them including Keir Starmer, which bizarely doesn’t chair the committee. Shabana Mahmood (Home Secretary) chairs the NEC. She decided against voting to remain impartial but out of the nine voting including the PM.
They all decided to block Andy Burnham except Lucy Powell (Ex-Leader of the House of Commons now Deputy Leader of the Labour Party) Powell has called for the party to unite after the disagreement surrounding Andy Burnham being blocked from within the Labour Party. With more than fifty members signing a letter condemning the blocking.
Critics believe that this could be a sign of the fragility of Keir Starmer’s leadership and how he needs to use the labour party rulebook and technicalities to reduce the threat of a leadership challenge. Andy Burnham returned to his normal duties as Mayor last Monday (26.01.26) and was approached for comment. Since then he has spoken about how he feels that certain aspects of the government aren’t working and that he isn’t “going to be sour about it” although clearly showing discontent over the decision that was made to block him.
The Prime Minister’s Travels.
The Prime Minister set off last week on a journey to China with a huge amount of businesspeople and culture & sports organisation leaders here in the UK as well as a large amount of journalists.
They chartered an entire British Airways jet engine which raises a few questions in itself… does the Prime Minister not trust China enough? There were suggestions that the choice was due to security reasons citing that there could have been cameras or spyware put onto the Prime-ministerial plane. But these claims were dismissed as the amount of people on the trip would not have managed to fit on the prime-ministerial plane.
The trip was mainly made to reopen a dialogue between the UK and China. This was the first visit that a UK Prime Minister had made to China since 2028, which was eight years ago, although other members of the government have been going in the meantime. UK-China relations seem to differ from PM to PM, with David Cameron getting involved diplomatically with China often when he was PM.
Then under the conservative government things fell a little more silent. Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative party in the UK has stated that in her opinion the Prime Minister should not be making this trip to China now saying that it is the wrong time.
There were hopes of a large deal for something or other to be secured but nothing such happened. Instead the UK Pharmaceutical firm Astrazeneca has invested in China and the UK reducing Whiskey import tariffs into China from 10% down to 5%. The UK has secured however Visa-free travel to China for business or tourism for less than 30 days and removing some UK Figures that China has previously banned from entering the country due to them criticising China have been take off the ‘banned list’.
There is more to this visit such as the UK Citizen which is currently imprisoned in China, many expected the Prime Minister to broker a deal to free the individual but no such deal was made. It has now been seen however that the purpose of the visit was not to make huge deals that would benefit both countries massively, but to restart that dialogue between the countries that had been silent for quite some time with both countries saying that a UK-China relationship was in both Country’s National interests.
The Prime Minister spent a few days in China, but popped over to Japan briefly to check-in with them. Japan is in the midst of a snap-election, so many see it as odd to be going over there at such a turbulent political time but many believe that it was to reassure our allies in the region that we (the UK) are still in the same camp as them and that we are still here to support them.
The Chinese London Mega Embassy.
There has been controversy in Central London over a new Chinese mega embassy and the approval for it had been long awaited. It would be the biggest embassy in the UK and would be right next to The Tower of London. Many have cited security concerns over espionage and critical infrastructure such as fibre-optic cables running extremely near to where the embassy was planned. But nevertheless before Keir Starmer got on that plane to Beijing, the application was approved.
So that’s it for this week’s Westminster Briefing. Remember that The Westminster Briefing will now be released bi-weekly by Gruffydd Morris, CPE (Chief Political Editor) at Young & Political. Check back in a fortnight for another roundup of UK Political news.
Gruffydd Morris,
Chief Political Editor,
Young & Political.
Leave a Reply