Wes Streeting began yesterday denying he had any plans to challenge Keir Starmer for the Labour leadership. Now, the likelihood of such a contest has only increased.
If anonymous briefings pointing the finger at Streeting, accusing him of plotting a leadership challenge after the Budget, were intended to pre-empt a coup and kill it stone dead, it seems to have achieved the opposite effect. Leadership speculation has now been legitimised by the top of government. If the whole episode reflects badly on anyone, most of the Labour Party has concluded, it is No 10.
From the second those briefings appeared on Tuesday night, my phone blew up with Labour MPs, ministers, aides and other insiders describing it as a huge strategic blunder from Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff. There is nothing to suggest that McSweeney is personally behind any of the briefings about Streeting – one insider tells me he was not involved – but that hasn’t stopped most of the Labour Party jumping to the conclusion that he was. Their verdict is brutal.
“Morgan has lost the plot,” one Labour moderate said. “It’s really sad because Morgan is so talented but he’s bloody built the bunker, locked the doors and poor Keir doesn’t even realise he’s in the bunker.” Others echoed that sentiment. People of his own faction, who used to speak admiringly of the man who engineered Labour’s election win now blame him for this mess, and say he has badly misfired.
Downing Street maintains that none of the allegations against Streeting came from them. Those around Streeting remain sceptical, however, pointing to references to “No 10 sources” and “Starmer’s team” in the offending news reports. The blame game continues.
Either way, it was certainly not a stroke of strategic brilliance to attempt to corner Streeting on the morning round, if that was the intention. One Labour insider jokes: “You can imagine Morgan going into his mind palace, thinking: ‘Let’s go into battle with Wes where he is weakest, on breakfast television.’”
The Health Secretary came out swinging, displaying his biggest strength as a politician – his ability to communicate effectively. And the morning round gave him the chance to happily shrug off a key weakness if he hopes to be Labour leader – his perceived closeness to McSweeney and “boys getting carried away”, as he described them. He was certainly pleased to place himself in a club with other victims of what he called a “toxic” culture of briefing by No 10. “I would just like to commend the briefer on at least picking on one of the men instead of the women in the cabinet,” he said, with a sting.
Starmer has now distanced himself from the “unauthorised” briefings and given Streeting his support, although there is no leak inquiry underway to find and fire the people responsible, as Streeting requested. Meanwhile, the loyal, moderate Labour MPs I have spoken to are furious with No 10, siding with Streeting. One of them suggests it was unwise to force them to choose.
Most Labour insiders are simply baffled by what they see as an astonishing act of self-harm by Starmer’s allies. Leadership speculation about Starmer has been given an entirely new level of oxygen, and the starting gun fired by the very people seeking to stop it.
It all speaks, conclude some observers, to the dysfunction and drift of the No 10 operation itself. Whether directly responsible or not, the fact that it was allowed to happen is a sign “heads need to roll”, one usually loyal Starmerite says.
“I still don’t think there will be a leadership challenge before Christmas,” one aide concludes. “But the events of the past 24 hours have made it more likely.”
[Further reading: Did “Lady Macbeth” brief against Starmer?]
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