If Andy Burnham wins today’s Makerfield by-election, Wes Streeting won’t be letting him have a clear run at No.10. “For the avoidance of doubt, for the umpteenth time, I will be standing” for the Labour leadership, he told Politico.
Rumours are swirling that Andy Burnham “is preparing to launch an immediate leadership challenge against Keir Starmer” if he secures his return to Westminster, said The Times. His team are “confident that the challenge could be uncontested”, and are already “drawing up plans for what his first 100 days in government would look like”.
But the former health secretary is determined to spoil any Burnham coronation. He claims to have the backing he needs to enter any leadership contest, and made a major speech earlier this week setting out his own economic plan for government.
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Streeting’s speech was impressive, said City A.M. editor-in-chief Christian May. “In under an hour,” he displayed “more intellectual flair and more interest in economic growth than Rachel Reeves has offered in two years” and “certainly offered more than Burnham appears capable of”. He represents “a chance to revive this country’s economic fortunes and repair our frayed social bonds. Labour MPs and party members should seize it.”
Streeting has “had a good week” but he faces a “formidable set of obstacles” even to becoming a candidate in any leadership race, said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times. He may “in theory” have the support of the 81 Labour MPs he needs to make it onto a leadership ballot but “it is not clear they will be willing to back” his “long-shot” bid if it would “blot their copybook with Andy Burnham, the likely winner in a contest”.
Streeting’s poll ratings “have worsened since he resigned a month ago” and many in Westminster “have already written off” his leadership hopes, said The i Paper’s policy editor Jane Merrick. His allies argue that he will “make up ground” once a contest is underway: with “TV debates and hustings giving equal airtime to all candidates”, his “pitch to succeed Starmer” will be more widely heard. He talks about wanting the contest to be a “battle of ideas” about policy; “he is still regarded by many in the Labour Party as generational talent” but this will be “an uphill struggle” for him.
What next?
Right now, Streeting is “performing poorly with the Labour membership”, pollster and political strategist Scarlett Maguire told The i Paper. It is difficult to see him overcoming “the deficit he’s built up relative to” his potential leadership rivals. He would be trounced in a head-to-head battle with either Burnham or Starmer, according to a Survation/LabourList poll of Labour Party members.
But it may be that Streeting already has his Plan B up and running. It was telling that his speech this week was all about economics. “It was very much a pitch for the job of chancellor in a Burnham government,” said John Rentoul in The Independent. If Streeting can’t have “the top job”, then that’s the ministerial responsibility he would like most.
