The whipping system used to make MPs vote on party lines should be abolished because it turns them into “frauds”, a former Labour cabinet secretary has said.

Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, said the British political system didn’t let people “be what they want to be” or speak with their own voice.

He said the whips, the disciplinarians deployed by most parties, meant MPs were deprived of power and authority and “just told how to vote like a school kid”.

Mr Burnham, who twice ran unsuccessfully for the Labour leadership in 2010 and 2015, also said he might run for the job a third time if the circumstances were right.

However he stressed that was not a comment on Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership, and he would only do it in order to “rewire” the British state through far-ranging devolution.

Mr Burnham was speaking to former Labour MSP Neil Findlay in an In Conversation event at The Stand New Town Theatre on the Edinburgh Fringe.

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He said he believed the Westminster system was fundamentally broken and insular and could not deliver equality, justice or change to the UK as a whole.

Asked why he had recently said politics made frauds of people, he said: “It’s being in a system down there where you’re told what to say, you’re given the party line, you’re told how to vote according to the Whip. 

“I was there 16 years in Westminster… and I did feel when I was in the middle of that system that people were losing the sense of who I was, and maybe I was to a degree. What was I in it for?”

He went on: "I think the norms of British politics don't let people be what they want to be, speak with their voice.

"You go into an environment that has these expected things that anyone who is in a leadership position has to do, and that makes them appear different, not appear sincere or you have to vote in certain ways and you don't fully believe it.

"You know what I would do? I would remove the whips system from the Commons. 

“Also, I've come to the view that we need to change the way the Commons is elected.

"I'm now a very strong proponent - I've got the zeal of the convert about proportional representation."

He added: "We should have a system in politics where the status of elected representatives is higher, not that they're just told how to vote like a school kid. 

"It's a case of, use your best judgment for your place. And politics would be held in better esteem, I think, if it was organised in that way. 

"The whips system, the effect of it, is to take power off elected representatives, and concentrate it in the hands of the unelected advisers and civil servants, 50 or 100 or so at the heart of government. 

"And that's what I say - the Westminster system concentrates too much power in the hands of too few people.”

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Mr Burnham, 53, was the MP for Leigh in Greater Manchester from 2001 to 2016 and served in the cabinet as culture and then health secretary under Gordon Brown.

Asked if he would run for the Labour leadership again, he said he was standing for a third term as mayor, but added: “I’m hopeful that we will have a Labour Government led by Keir Starmer.

"I’m hoping it will bring hope and radical change to the way the country’s run.... and I want to play my part in that. 

"But, to answer your question, if a path opens up in time, then of course I’m not going to turn away from that.

"So I think there potentially is one last go at Westminster in me, somewhere.

"But – I want to be clear about this though – it would only be going back to enact what I’ve talked about today. Honestly, no other reason.

“If - and it’s not any time soon, and it’s certainly not in any way a statement on the current situation – if people felt that was right, and it was the sort of thing that was natural, then of course I wouldn’t turn away from it.”