Starmer on brink as Streeting quits criticising ‘drift’ at top of Government

Sophie Wingate, Press Association Deputy Political Editor

Wes Streeting has quit as Health Secretary, paving the way for a leadership challenge and plunging Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership into crisis.

In his resignation letter, Mr Streeting criticised the “drift” at the top of Government and told the Prime Minister it is “clear” he will not lead Labour into the next election.

His letter read: “It is now clear that you will not lead the Labour Party into the next general election and that Labour MPs and Labour unions want the debate about what comes next to be a battle of ideas, not of personalities or petty factionalism.

“It needs to be broad, and it needs to be the best possible field of candidates. I support that approach and I hope you will facilitate it.”

Mr Streeting’s resignation follows days of turmoil in which calls have mounted for the Prime Minister to step down in the wake of Labour’s election mauling last week.

It could fire the gun on a leadership contest in which Angela Rayner has also indicated she could run, with other possible contenders including Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, armed forces minister Al Carns and Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham.

Streeting

A man in a hurry, Wes Streeting has never made any secret of his desire to scale the very summit of British politics.

By the age of 40 he had already survived a cancer scare, published a memoir of his poverty-stricken childhood growing up in London’s East End, and was being tipped as a future prime minister.

A fluent and effective communicator, he is seen as a champion of the Labour centre-right – openly patriotic and strong on law and order – who has been compared to Tony Blair, although he rejects the label “Blairite” as too divisive.

While his rapid ascent – from a lone-parent family in a council flat in Stepney to Cabinet minister via presidency of the Cambridge Students’ Union – has attracted admiration from some, his unashamed ambition has also brought criticism.

Having been promoted by Sir Keir Starmer as one of the party’s rising stars, he angered allies of the Prime Minister with what they saw as his barely disguised plotting as Labour’s fortunes plummeted in government.

As Health Secretary, he has sought to expand the role of the private sector in treating NHS patients and clashed with resident doctors over their “morally reprehensible” strikes in support of an inflation-busting pay claim.

A committed Christian, as a young man he struggled with his sexuality before coming out as gay while in his second year at university. If he succeeds in becoming leader he will be Britain’s first openly gay prime minister.

One of eight siblings (including one step-sister), his mother was just 18 and unmarried when she became pregnant with him. Both her boyfriend (Mr Streeting’s father) and her mother wanted her to have an abortion but she refused.

Although his father subsequently embraced him, his relationship with Mr Streeting’s mother did not survive and she was largely left to bring him up alone during his early years.

It was not an easy childhood, and even growing up among working class children, he was conscious that they were “poor working class” and was stung by criticism from Tory politicians of single-parent families.

With money always tight, they frequently had to resort to candlelight because his mother could not afford to top up the electricity meter while there were problems such as cockroaches from neighbouring flats.

His maternal grandfather was an armed robber who knew the Krays and was in and out of prison for much of his childhood while his grandmother once shared a prison cell Christine Keeler who was at the centre of the Profumo affair in the 1960s.

Despite their straitened circumstances, his mother was determined he should be surrounded by books and while he went to live with his father in his teens, he also pushed him do well at school and go on to university.

His opportunity came when one of his teachers spotted his potential and suggested he should apply to Westminster City School – a high-performing state academy from where he won a place to read history at Cambridge.

Arriving at university, by his own account, with “a bit of a working class chip on my shoulder”, his ambitions soon became apparent as he secured election as president of the Cambridge Students’ Union before going on to become president of the National Union of Students.

After a stint working for the Blairite pressure group, Progress, in 2010 he won a seat on Redbridge Council in east London and two years later was part of Oona King’s unsuccessful bid to replace Ken Livingstone as Labour candidate for London mayor.

In the 2015 general election, against the odds he took Ilford North from the Tories – with a majority of just 589 – on what was otherwise a night of triumph for the Conservatives.

At Westminster he quickly caught the eye, even among political opponents with chancellor George Osborne – a noted admirer of Mr Blair – picking him out as a future star.

When left-winger Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader, Mr Streeting was one of his most outspoken critics on the party’s backbenches, lambasting his failure to tackle antisemitism within its ranks.

Mr Corbyn’s replacement by Sir Keir following Labour failure in the 2019 general election saw the start of his rapid rise through the ranks of frontbenchers, starting as a shadow Treasury minister and entering the shadow cabinet in 2021 as shadow secretary for child poverty.

His progress was briefly interrupted when he announced he was stepping back from frontline politics after being diagnosed with kidney cancer but within four months he was back after a successful operation to remove one of his kidneys.

When Sir Keir faced demands to resign over claims he broke Covid lockdown rules, he rode to his leader’s defence, warning any potential rivals who thought about trying to “flash some ankle and to burnish their leadership credentials” that they were being “deeply disrespectful” and “hindering the Labour Party”.

His loyalty was rewarded with promotion to the key position of shadow health secretary – potentially marking him out as a future leader.

However, as Labour’s poll ratings sank following their victory in the 2024 general election, relations between the two men soured, amid fears among Sir Keir’s allies that Mr Streeting was plotting a coup, prompting the Health Secretary to demand an end to “self-defeating” briefings against him.

His ambitions received a setback with the disclosure in the US of details of the relationship between Lord Mandelson – a close ally – and paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Initially Mr Streeting sought to defend his old friend, but as more evidence emerged of the closeness of his relationship with Epstein, he sought to distance himself from him saying he had betrayed his country.

Whether such associations will damage him now among members of a party keen to move on from its Blairite past remains to be seen.