Labour is a party prone to forging instant orthodoxies. In the case of Wes Streeting, whose resignation as health secretary in May failed to launch a direct challenge to Sir Keir Starmer, the view in Labour world has been that Streeting had, as one internal competitor for power put it, “blown it on day one”.
The version of events which held that Streeting did have the “numbers” of 81-plus MPs needed to force a contest for Starmer’s job – but wanted to ensure a fair fight with Andy Burnham by waiting for him to return to the Commons – felt threadbare. Shares in Streeting PLC plummeted: Burnham has thrown himself into the limelight. Internal Labour polling hasn’t done the ex-health secretary many favours since then either: Burnham leads by around eight-to-one in a recent survey of members’ opinion.
Yet, Streeting has not given up. He sees the next weeks as a fightback and a masterplan combined. For one thing, he is keen to use his new-found freedoms outside Cabinet to set out his ideas for renewal – and believes one reason for Burnham’s popularity is that he has not had to bear communal responsibility for the dreary Starmer project.
A senior source on the Streeting team says that their boss’s mindset is “there is no time to waste” in changing Labour. That means not hanging around for more than “a few months” to resolve the leadership issue. And despite resistance from Starmerites who fear change would simply bring more uncertainty and little gain, Streeting was clear in a Sunday Times interview today that the public had decided that Starmer was not rescuable. “The level of hostility to the Prime Minister is disproportionate, but I can’t alter the fact that this is how the public feel.”
