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.”
The war gaming of this on the inside of the Streeting camp is that if Burnham wins against Reform in the Makerfield by-election on June 18th, more momentum will switch away from the “keep hold of Starmer” line – and Burnham would have a purple path to No 10. But there would, as Streeting allies point out, still need to be some form of contest. A coronation is far harder to organize under Labour rules. Streeting is arguing that after the dulling of debate by Starmer and an over-controlling No 10, this is the time to let fresh thinking into the open. In other words, he intends to keep running “100 per cent,” says one of his advisors.
Hence the politeness about competing “with” Burnham, not “against” him – but the word “compete” is still in the air.
“Wes has always really wanted it,” says a minister who worked with him for a long stint. “Andy is more like, ‘Oh well the ball came loose at the back of the scrum’ – as Boris put it.’”
For all of Streeting’s smartness and gift of engaging communication, something has also gone awry in his relationship with his own tribe. In polling of Labour members, the group who will decide the outcome of any contest, a figure who previously polled confidently is struggling by an order of magnitude. His response has been to try to ditch the “Blairite” candidate reputation and strum some unabashedly left-wing tunes: rebadging a commitment to equalise capital gains and income taxes as a “wealth tax” for bumper sticker appeal with the more rich-bashing end of the party and distancing himself from the tech giant Palantir, which he previously supported as a vital part of the NHS’s tech upgrade and operational plumbing.
He also seeks to occupy a less tepid position than the other candidates on the progressive pipe dream about rejoining the EU.
In the next weeks, Streeting wants to show more robust policy positioning which was not just Angel Delight for the soft left. He has started with a review into the rise in employers’ national insurance hikes, which he admits has dissuaded firms for hiring and especially hit young jobseekers. Pretty much everyone who talks to business folk knows this – and the response the Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden was tetchy: “If you want to pull one lever in the tax basket, as it were, there will be consequences” – i.e. it will mean tax rises.
Well yes, but McFadden is arguing as if nothing is about to change, and something big is changing: the leader and possibly the chancellor too. So much depends on how far Streeting wants to challenge other deficits in the Government’s economic thinking. Challenging Ed Miliband outright on the consequences of losing revenue at a time of desperate public finances by blocking oil and gas exploration in the North Sea is a sign that Streeting may not only fancy a return under Burnham as health secretary – and even sees his fightback as providing an audition for other more senior roles.
So, a Burnham-Streeting ticket rebooting a wan cabinet is definitely maybe – providing that relationships which are tentatively cordial now would remain so after a contest. Some of Wes’s relationships do tend to end up being highly personalised: the competitive stand-off with Angela Rayner is still the talk of the tearoom. “Honestly, I think Angela might even still run if Wes is in the field, just to spite him!” says one MP who knows them both. One Cabinet rival tells me he finds Streeting embodying “both the best and the worst things about politicians” – because he is perceived as a one-man band.
To look at it another way: though ambition is not a bad thing in politics, and neither is being a bit “out there” when Labour so clearly needs a reset, not only defined by being pro or anti-Tony Blair’s nostrums. For one of the most-driven figures in Labour, the challenge is how to avoid going down as the Arsenal versus PSG of politics – nice try, messed up a tackle and couldn’t convert in the end.
There is always another game though. One way or the other, my bet would be that Streeting ends up back on the pitch. The only question is where.
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