The ball, right now, is at Keir Starmer’s feet. In a sense, it always is: having the ball is what being prime minister means. But after that dramatic Wexit, with a very shrewdly crafted letter, the question of where to boot it is more immediate. Does he throw himself into a leadership battle against the former health secretary, assuming Wes Streeting gets the numbers for a challenge? I’m assured by a close associate of the Prime Minister that he deeply dislikes Mr Streeting. He thinks he would beat him in a one-to-one contest, as internal Labour polling also suggests, and would greatly enjoy the humiliation of his critic.
The trouble is, if a contest starts, the left will also field a candidate – most likely, in the short term, Angela Rayner, but also possibly Ed Miliband, both of whom are likely to beat Starmer. Would that be worth it, for the Prime Minister (a man, I gather, not averse to dirty football tackles) to bring down Streeting? With Andy Burnham still out of the running, it would be a bleak contest which, for many Labour people, would lack legitimacy.
Perhaps, however, there won’t be an immediate leadership fight. The clue is in two sentences from Mr Streeting’s resignation letter. Any contest to come, he said “needs to be broad, and it needs the best possible field of candidates”. If that wasn’t a signal to Andy Burnham, I’m a chocolate rabbit.
The second sentence was the one that did not appear: “…and therefore I am running to be leader of the Labour party and Prime Minister.” Was its omission simply because not enough MPs signed up? I’m assured the answer is no. In that case it must be because Streeting has accepted the argument on the left of politics that a contest should be paused for long enough to get all the best people involved – including Burnham.
I argued in this week’s magazine that the best chance for Labour to emerge from the wreckage with a strong new centre was for both wings to work together – in particular for Streeting and Burnham to do so. There are hints, no more, that this may be happening. Cabinet ministers have told Keir Starmer to consider announcing a timetable for his departure, which would allow the broad argument to take place. If he does so, this can all be ended with a certain amount of dignity and decency.
He might, however, in effect say to Streeting and others: come on if you think you’re hard enough. He might hunker down, ignore the criticism as noise and just keep going. There have been plenty of angry and emotional discussions about this inside the machine. At different times Starmer is said to have come out of them with different answers.
But consider what it would be like to govern in these even more slippery and volatile circumstances. Nearly 100 of your MPs want you out and you now face an articulate, informed senior critic of your style of governing, ready to move. The safety catch is off. One slip, one more scandal, one bad by-election loss, one maladroit move and – wham! – a contest is triggered. That’s no way to govern. It makes cool thinking impossible.
Two final thoughts: under Rachel Reeves, the latest figures suggest the economy has been doing better than many expected. It is still weak and Britain is still in a very dangerous fiscal position; but if there was one piece of news that might have saved Starmer’s bacon at the last minute, it was that.
Second thought: whatever the brickbats, it seems to me that Wes Streeting has behaved with candour and courage. He went to the Prime Minister and told him what he thought. He has calmly followed through, after laddish jeering from loyalists about “bottling it.” He has reached out to others. Many will see this as mere Westminster psychodrama but none of this would’ve happened without the verdict of millions of voters in Scotland, Wales, London and the English cities. And that, looking down and contemplating the waterlogged ball at his feet, is what the Prime Minister should concentrate on.
[Further reading: Wes Streeting resigns with excoriating letter to Starmer]
Content from our partners
Related
Join the debate
Subscribe here to comment