‘Give the guy a chance’: Wes Streeting says he does not want Starmer ousted
Wes Streeting has said he does not want Keir Starmer to be challenged as Labour leader after the May elections as it would undermine the party’s election promise to voters to avoid more chaos.
The health secretary, who is widely regarded as a prospective candidate in any contest, urged voters to “give the guy a chance” as he said that none of his colleagues would attempt to oust the prime minister.
But while he played down the prospect of a leadership race being triggered, he did not rule out throwing his hat in the ring should one take place in the wake of catastrophic results.
Streeting has kept a relatively low profile since the tumultuous day last month when the party’s Scottish leader called for Starmer to go. The health secretary had insisted he backed the prime minister and was not intending to move against him, but allies then suggested his ambitions had not been thwarted.
However, with the outbreak of the Iran conflict, supporters of Streeting and of Angela Rayner, also likely to be a contender, said they recognised that Labour MPs would be less willing to change leader during such a precarious international situation – and that the public would take a dim view of such a move.
Speaking to the Guardian’s Politics Weekly podcast, Streeting said: “I don’t want to see Keir challenged in May. I don’t think that that will happen.”
Pressed on whether he would run if somebody else triggered the contest, he added: “I don’t even think that’s going to be a scenario. And honestly, I’d had the other month just about my fill of tedious, who’s up, who’s down, that kind of ‘politics is a parlour game’ crap. I’ve got a job to do. I’ve got a big job to do. This is the only job I want to do.”
Streeting – who has faced the anger of some Labour MPs who believe leadership speculation around Starmer has been destabilising – said that the public could react negatively to any challenge.
“I think there is a risk for the Labour party if people look at us and think, hang on a minute, we voted for change. We thought you were going to draw a line under chaos and now it looks like you’re going to chop and change,” he said.
Asked whether the Middle East conflict, and the perception that Starmer has handled it well, put him in a safer position among his own MPs, he said: “There is no doubt whatsoever that people have seen in Keir’s leadership through the Iran crisis his finest qualities.
“Judgment, level-headedness, and an ability to see the bigger picture and make big calls, and the calls in our national interest as well as the interests of our allies and our collective security and world stability. And I think that has set him apart from many other prime ministers we’ve seen over the years.
“We all know that there are lots of people in this country who voted for change, who are still demanding change and are finding us wanting because of some of the mistakes we’ve made and because they’re not yet feeling change in their own lives …
“We all know this. Keir knows this. But look at the scale of the challenges we inherited when we came in. There was never going to be an overnight transformation. We are beginning to see this country moving in the right direction. He’s only been prime minister for 20 months. Give the guy and the government a chance.”
Streeting defended his decision to publish his private WhatsApp exchanges with Peter Mandelson, saying he had wanted to counter “smear and innuendo” that had implied he had been close to the former US ambassador.
“I’m not saying I didn’t know the guy. I’m not saying I didn’t seek his advice … But I just thought, I’m not having this, some people on our own side notionally saying that I had something to hide. Sunlight’s the best disinfectant. You want to see my messages? Here they are.”
He denied the messages had been damaging for him as he was as “disgusted as everyone else” by Mandelson’s continuing relationship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
But he acknowledged some of his colleagues had been unhappy with his decision to release them. “I don’t take that lightly, actually. My intention never was to put my friends and colleagues in a difficult position.”
Streeting told the podcast he was concerned that despite the recent improvement in patient satisfaction, young people appeared to be losing faith in the idea of an NHS paid for by taxes.
“If there’s one figure that sent a shiver down my spine looking at the social attitude survey, it was the attitude of younger people to the NHS,” he said.
“Younger people in this country, they haven’t really ever experienced the NHS at its best … and there is a real risk that those siren voices in Reform saying: ‘Oh, the NHS, that was nice while it lasted, but can’t afford it now, is not the right model’ – the danger is that the next generation start to hear that and believe it.”
Streeting also defended the £330m NHS data contract signed by his Conservative predecessor Victoria Atkins with the US tech firm Palantir, whose co-founder Peter Thiel is a major donor to and supporter of the US president, Donald Trump.
“If you were to put [Thiel] and some of those Palantir bosses on the political spectrum in the UK, they would be well off to the right of even Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative party, which is saying something at the moment,” he said.
But he added: “I was assured by our predecessors that firstly, the data stays here in the UK.
“Secondly, it is owned by us and we control access to it at all times. The platform they’ve given us to improve our systems, performance, intelligence about how we provide services and tackle health inequalities – all of that is run by us, by the NHS. Palantir don’t see our patient data.
“Those were important assurances [and] now I’m in government, I’m in an even better position to continue to assure myself and the public that that remains the case.”