Two heavy hitters in the UK Labour Party sought to position themselves to challenge Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday, albeit with neither announcing a direct challenge, instead seeming to encourage the embattled party leader to make way voluntarily.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting made the most direct move, becoming the first senior member of Starmer’s Cabinet to resign in protest after Labour’s drubbing in local and regional elections last week.
But former party deputy leader Angela Rayner also issued a crack-of-dawn alert to the press saying that the tax scandal that prompted her resignation was now resolved, in what was interpreted as an oblique statement of intent.
A combative Starmer speech on Monday and a tense Cabinet meeting on Tuesday both failed to calm the waters after the election losses. This comes just two years after Starmer and Labour won a large majority on promises to end more than a decade of Conservative-led chaos marked by frequent changes of prime ministers.
What did Streeting say?
Streeting published a lengthy resignation letter without further comment online. He began by recapping what he portrayed as successes during his time in the role.
“These are all good reasons for me to remain in post,” Streeting wrote, “but as you know from our conversation earlier this week, having lost confidence in your leadership, I have concluded that it would be dishonorable and unprincipled to do so.”
Streeting called last week’s election results “unprecedented — both in terms of the scale of the defeat and the consequences of that failure.”
“For the first time in our country’s history, nationalists are in charge in every corner of the United Kingdom — including a dangerous English nationalism represented by Nigel Farage and Reform UK,” he said.
This referred to Labour’s losses to the Scottish National Party north of the border, to nationalists Plaid Cymru in its Welsh stronghold, and to Nigel Farage’s right-wing populists across the UK but particularly in England.
Streeting, a 43-year-old with a working class London background who became an MP in 2015, said there was much about Starmer he admired, but also listed a series of failures and shortcomings in his letter. (DW)