Wes Streeting resigns and challenges Keir Starmer: open crisis in Labour after local elections
The health minister quits the government and calls for a leadership confrontation, marking a split in the party after the election defeat.
Everything was as expected: the British Health Minister, Wes Streeting, resigned today, the first step in his bid to succeed Keir Starmer. In his letter to the Prime Minister, the member of the moderate wing of the Labour Party wrote that he had "lost all confidence" in his ability to lead the country and that therefore as a "matter of principle and honour" he could not remain in his government.
Streeting recalled the unprecedented negative results of last week's election: ´There is no doubt that the unpopularity of this government was the determining factor in our defeats in England, Scotland and Wales. The problem is the leader, Starmer, according to the outgoing Health Minister: ´We need a vision and instead we have a vacuum. We need a direction and instead we are in disarray.¨
The defeat has real consequences, Streeting writes: ¨For the first time in our country´s history, nationalists are in power in every corner of the UK, including the dangerous nationalism of Reform UK, which poses an existential threat to the Union and also a threat to the values and ideals that have made this country great¨.
It is therefore clear, Streeting concludes, that it cannot be Starmer who will lead the party at the next election, so the right thing to do is to step aside, ¨listen to Labour MPs and voters¨ and allow an orderly transition.
This seems to be an invitation to pave the way for as wide a succession race as possible, which means waiting for Andy Burnham, the very popular mayor of Manchester, to find a constituency in which to get elected so that he can run for office. Only elected MPs can aspire to the party leadership.
