Andy Burnham has announced that he is seeking permission to stand in the upcoming Gorton and Denton parliamentary by-election.
If he won and became an MP, Burnham could mount a leadership challenge against Sir Keir Starmer but the BBC has been told that allies of the prime minister may try and block him from standing in the constituency.
Burnham is currently mayor of Greater Manchester and in a statement insisted that he wants to back the Labour government “not undermine it”, adding that the decision to announce his intentions had been “difficult”.
The seat in Greater Manchester is vacant after Andrew Gwynne stood down on Friday as an MP on health grounds.
As a directly-elected mayor, Burnham has to get approval from Labour’s ruling national executive committee before he can enter the race to be the party’s candidate.
Several Labour MPs have reacted angrily to the suggestion that he could be blocked from standing.
Some senior figures in the party have also said they believe Burnham should be allowed to stand.
London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan said: “If Andy Burnham wants to be a member of Parliament, Andy Burnham should be allowed to be a member of Parliament”.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said Burnham would be a massive asset” in Parliament and that he hoped Gorton and Denton party members would have “the option” of selecting him as a candidate.
In his letter to the NEC, which he shared on social media, Burnham said there was a “direct threat to everything Greater Manchester has always been about from a brand of politics which seeks to pit people against each other”.
“I see this by-election as the frontline of that fight for the Manchester Way and I feel I owe it to a city which has given me so much to lead it from the front, despite the risks involved.”
He said he had left Westminster nearly a decade ago because he believed “it wasn’t working for people in our part of the world” and that as mayor he had “tried to pioneer a different way of doing things”.
However, he added that he believed Manchester “won’t be able to be everything it should be without similar changes at a national level.
“This is why I feel the need to go back.”
