ANDY Burnham is tipped to reward the former boss of a dodgy think tank who called for people smugglers to be sent to Scotland with a Government job after helping to pave his route to No 10.
The probable contender for Keir Starmer’s job will reportedly give Josh Simons a position in Downing Street if Burnham becomes PM.
Simons, best known for leading Labour Together while it spied on journalists covering its failure to properly declare donations, quit his Makerfield seat last week in order to give Burnham a way back to the Commons to challenge Starmer for the premiership.
He also sparked outrage before the last General Election when he asked: “Why don’t you send the smuggler gangs and put them on the barge that has been set aside for the asylum seekers, and then ship the barge up to the north of Scotland for all I – you know, who cares?”
Labour insiders told the i newspaper that Simons could be rewarded with the position of Burnham’s head of policy, if the Greater Manchester Mayor becomes prime minister.
Simons dismissed the claims as “gossip and tittle-tattle” but stopped short of an out-and-out denial.
He quit as a junior minister after it emerged he had paid a company to snoop on journalists who uncovered Labour Together’s failure to properly declare donations to the Electoral Commission.
SNP MP Kirsty Blackman said that suggestions Simons could be elevated to a top Downing Street job showed “that Westminster is incapable of real change”.
She added: “It's a revolving door of failure – and it's a repeat of the same cronyism that plagued Keir Starmer's government.
"This is a man who was forced to resign from the Labour government in disgrace for paying a company to spy on journalists, and someone who was rightly slated for suggesting smuggler gangs in the English Channel should be shipped to the north of Scotland.
"And it comes after Andy Burnham admitted that he would continue to impose the most damaging Westminster policies – including Brexit and Tory austerity spending rules. As ever with broken Britain – the more things change, the more they stay exactly the same.”
Burnham’s spokesperson told Bloomberg on Monday that, if the Manchester mayor became PM, he would stick to Tory fiscal rules which have proved powerful constraints on Chancellor Rachel Reeves.
Elsewhere, he made clear that he would not seek to reverse Brexit, having previously expressed hope of seeing Britain rejoining the European Union in his lifetime.
