CHILDREN’S Minister Josh MacAlister has suggested that Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham is not interested in running to become an MP again.
Asked about Clive Lewis saying he might give up his seat to pave the way for Burnham’s return, MacAlister told GB News: “Clive has been known to speak his mind about many leaders of the Labour Party. It won’t be a surprise to anybody that Clive is a critic of the leadership of the Labour Party.
“I think it is a bit of a surprise that he thinks that Andy Burnham, who’s the Mayor of Greater Manchester at the other end of England, might be interested in standing in his seat, but this is a bit of a distraction to be honest.
“I don’t know how serious Clive’s offer is, but Clive has been a long-standing critic of leaders of the Labour Party. He’s respected by many for speaking his mind on these things, and the Labour Party is a broad church, but the government, as you can tell from the other things that we’ve spoken about, is just completely focused on tackling the affordability challenges that families are facing.”
On whether Andrew Mountbatten Windsor should give evidence in the US Congress, he said: “I would hope that anybody who’s been asked to provide evidence to this investigation would want to come forward and share what they know.
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“If you’ve got the victims front of mind in this situation, then I think that’s what you do. Obviously, Andrew is a private individual now, and it’s a matter for him, but if some people have got information to share, they should absolutely come forward and provide that evidence.”
He also defended a jocular statement issued by the Department of Education yesterday about school breakfast clubs: “Sometimes government gets accused, I would say, very unfairly, of being a bit boring. So this was an attempt to be a bit playful.
“The consequence of that actually, is we got huge increases in public interaction with DFE Department for Education websites with information about universal free childcare, free breakfast clubs, the expansion of free school meals that’s happening next year, a whole package of measures which is going to help families, really practically, with the cost of living, which we know is a huge issue for people.
“I’m not going to go through the looking glass and offer you an apology on top of a fake apology, so I’ll leave it there. But this is an attempt by government to just be a bit more playful.
“It got a lot of interest and a bit of interaction from the public on the important issues of what we’re doing to actually improve the cost of living for families.”
