One of the given reasons is because Burnham is currently mayor of Greater Manchester, and running a new election there would cost approx £4m(!!) which is a huge waste of taxpayer money.
I was surprised that they even gave this as a faux reason since it seems like the sort of money they would spend on replenishing the water coolers, or buying bic pens, or... building a static website!
eg.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jun/28/labour-debt-peter...
https://doctorsforthenhs.org.uk/the-truth-about-the-lies-tha...
etc
The fact that a huge amount of money is extracted from the UK government for no (or very little value) is a crying shame.
I know multiple people who work as consultants (hired via private agencies, paid for by Government) who have literally done nothing for six months plus.
They have no incentive to whistleblow, the agency employing them has no incentive to get rid of them as they take a cut, and then government department hiring them is non-the-wiser because they have no technical knowledge or understanding of what's being carried out.
It should be the scandal of the decade.
Why can't he just do both jobs? Boris did it iirc.
It is fairly innately political. No Prime Minister has ever polled as low as Starmer and come back from it, or so is being said in the press. Burnham might be a smart electoral move, but he's not a plaything of the Labour right, so they kept him out.
For our American brethren, it's like the difference between being the Mayor of NYC vs the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade King.
There's not much actual difference in the mayoral aspect of the roles - Jarvis was the Mayor of the South Yorkshire Combined Authority, not simply the mayor of Sheffield City Council.