The phoney war for the leadership of the UK Labour Party, which includes the keys to 10 Downing Street, nears an end and the real battle looms into view.
Allies of Wes Streeting, who has spent the past 22 months in cabinet pumping money into his country’s ailing health services, are set to begin the race to sign up the 81 MPs needed for him to formally challenge party leader, UK prime minister Keir Starmer.
Streeting walked into the prime minister’s Downing Street study on Wednesday morning as Starmer’s health secretary, a top cabinet performer. Sixteen minutes later, he walked out as his apparent nemesis.
Streeting has long wanted the top job. It seems we are about to find out just how much. His allies insisted he would resign – assuming he wasn’t sacked first.
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Meanwhile, allies in Westminster of Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, who also wants to be in the race, insist that he can still get back to parliament in time to take part.
Only MPs can run for the Labour leadership and Burnham would have to find one willing to give up their seat so that he could run in, and win, a hasty byelection.
Polling shows that Burnham is far and away the most popular Labour politician in Britain. His allies insist that their man’s strategy still holds, that he can find a winnable Labour seat – in the age of Nigel Farage’s rampant Reform UK.
“I think we are where we were always going to be,” one Burnham ally told The Irish Times. “When Wes goes, the whole thing kicks off. But there is loads of time.”
If, as expected, “Wes goes” on Thursday and the fight begins, that confident theory is about to be tested.
Wednesday was meant to be the day when burgeoning hostilities in the battle to unseat Starmer were temporarily suspended for the king’s speech, when the Britain’s king Charles III came to parliament to lay out his government’s upcoming legislative agenda. The union flags fluttered on Parliament Square.
Grand state coaches delivered the monarch and, separately, his crown to the House of Lords to give his speech. Black Rod banged on the door to call the MPs down to the Lords to hear it (the king is not allowed in the House of Commons).
Britain’s innate talent for political theatre was on full display.
Meanwhile, a different type of political theatre was about to kick off.
Before the day began, Starmer believed he had stabilised his position on Tuesday by shutting down an attempt by several senior cabinet members to challenge him at a meeting in Downing Street, after days of drama as the number of MPs publicly calling for him to quit ticked past 90. There had also been four junior ministerial resignations.
The drip-drip of resignations were indeed still paused as Wednesday evening drew in. But it had not been quite the ceasefire day as predicted.
Less than three hours after Streeting had emerged from an 8.30am Downing Street showdown with Starmer, his allies were widely briefing that his time as health secretary was almost over, and his time as would-be prime minister was about to begin.
The news emerged just as Charles was about to begin his speech at about 11.45am. Streeting’s critics in Westminster, an unholy alliance of Starmerites and Burnham backers, seized on the timing as evidence of his first mistake.
“The shocking thing is how shambolic the Wes operation is,” said a Burnham backer. The accuracy of that statement can be assessed after the final result.
Streeting’s credentials as a member of Labour’s right wing seem relevant in a Britain whose fiscal constraints are a much underrated political factor – bond markets have been jumpy in recent weeks as leadership speculation has mounted. That matters in a country with a debt-GDP ratio of near 100 per cent.
Yet he also has a grittier narrative to sell to Labour members who may eventually decide his fate in the looming contest. He is a working class Cockney boy done good, who clawed his way from the East End of London to the top table of British politics via the prestigious Cambridge university.
One of the difficulties he faces is that polling shows he is not personally popular with Labour members, who will ultimately decide any contest, despite being seen as one of Labour’s best communicators.
The most popular – by far – Labour politician, Burnham, has not, as yet, revealed his hand on his possible route back to parliament to enter the race. His allies had suggested he would wait for Starmer to throw in the towel first before announcing which seat he would target. Streeting’s looming intervention may yet spur the Manchester mayor into speeding up his plans.
Few people in Westminster seem to be confident about what will happen next.
For how long can Starmer’s stubborn refusal to bend sustain him?
Will other cabinet members, such as home secretary Shabana Mahmood, side with Streeting in his desire for a contest and walk out of the UK government?
Will Labour’s ruling national executive committee slow down any future leadership contest to meet the growing clamour among many Labour MPs for Burnham, surely their party’s biggest star, to be allowed take part?
Will energy secretary Ed Miliband be drawn into any contest if Burnham is locked out?
Answers to those questions may emerge as the latest act of the Westminster circus seems set to begin.
