Labour should have acted sooner on Ali, says Burnham

Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham had endorsed Azhar Ali's candidacy

Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham has said he was "absolutely stunned" by Azhar Ali's Israel comments and Labour should have moved faster to condemn him.

The Rochdale by-election candidate lost party support after his claim that Israel had "allowed" the Hamas attacks.

Former government minister Mr Burnham said voters had been "let down".

And he criticised Labour Party for the "gap" in time between the comments and when it acted.

The Labour mayor appeared alongside Mr Ali last week at an event to launch his candidacy for the poll on 29 February.

He told BBC Radio Manchester he would not have done so had he been aware of the comments.

"They still seem totally out of character to me, but that isn't to make an excuse, they were unacceptable, and it was right that action was taken to withdraw support," he said.

Azhar Ali apologised after recordings of his comments were published

Mr Ali was an advisor to the Home Office in the early 2000s when Mr Burnham was a minister, and often "spoke out against anti-semitism, and spoke up for the Jewish community", the mayor said.

"All I can say to Greater Manchester's Jewish community is if i had known I wouldn't have endorsed Azhar Ali," he added.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has insisted the party had moved decisively to withdraw support for Mr Ali on Monday evening after the comments emerged on Sunday.

But Mr Burham said: "I would rather there wouldn't have been a gap."

However, he said the party had to "investigate things properly", which is why there was not "an instant judgement like you get on social media", he added.

Labour has withdrawn its support for Mr Ali

His party needed to have "some serious collective reflection" after Rochdale voters were left without a Labour candidate at an "important" by-election," Mr Burnham said.

"Normally there's a process of obviously doing these checks, what people would called due diligence, in my view I don't believe they could have been done properly," he said.

Mr Ali's name will still appear on the ballot paper as a Labour candidate in the Rochdale by-election because it was too late to make the change.