How, exactly, did Downing Street reach the curiously specific conclusion – as briefed to newspapers on Tuesday night – that Wes Streeting was ready to launch a leadership coup after the budget, with “50 frontbenchers willing to step down if the budget was received badly and the prime minister failed to resign,” as the Times reported?
After the apparent attempt to smoke Streeting out backfired, Labour insiders are now asking: was foul play involved?
The gossip inside SW1A is that someone else with leadership ambitions told No 10 of Streeting’s alleged plot, prompting Starmer allies to react in the way that they did… Not directly, of course. This aspiring leader is rumoured to have acted through an intermediary, a certain MP who acted as “Lady Macbeth”…
[Further reading: Wes For Leader site registered yesterday]
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