Streeting is preparing to challenge Starmer

On 12 April, Wes Streeting appeared on the Sunday interview shows. With the local elections fast approaching, you’d expect him to be on an election footing. As Saul Staniforth noted, however, it seemed like Streeting was actually gearing up to challenge his boss, Keir Starmer:

As if things couldn’t get any worse in this country!

Post-Starmer

As everyone knows, Labour are going to get hammered in the upcoming local elections. And when we say ‘hammered’, we don’t simply mean they’re going to get beaten; we mean they’re going to get smushed into paste:

It’s shaping up to be Labour’s greatest defeat since… well, since possibly ever.

The worry for Labour is it won’t stop with one defeat, either, and that the local election loss will translate into a general election wipeout.

Accordingly, heavy losses in the local elections will mean Labour have no choice but to give Starmer the boot. This might not fix things, but it’s clear there can be no fix with him at the helm, so it’s a necessary step if nothing else.

Streeting manoeuvres

In the clip at the top, Streeting criticises Donald Trump for threatening to wipe out the civilisation of Iran. Staniforth identified this as Streeting gearing up for a leadership challenge, and there are two good reasons to think this:

1. Trump and his war on Iran are incredibly unpopular in the UK, so it makes sense to attack him.
2. Streeting has no personality traits besides political ambition, so he wouldn’t attack Trump unless it benefitted him.

Of course, you could say that Streeting attacking Trump is a sign that he doesn’t want to become PM. After all, as PM, he would have to engage with Trump one-to-one.

The reason why this doesn’t hold up is because Streeting knows what every other politician does – namely that Trump has a cheat code. If a person rolls over and shows Trump their belly, he doesn’t care what they’ve said in the past.

Keir Starmer and Boris Johnson are examples of British politicians who publicly spoke out against Trump only to roll over later on; JD Vance is an example of an American politician:

Staniforth also highlighted the following:

Health

As much as Streeting wants to come across as a respectable and righteous politician, he simply cannot get over the disdain he feels for the medical professionals he represents:

It’s no secret why Streeting is opposed to our once-successful public health model either, as James Wright wrote for the Canary:

Labour health secretary Wes Streeting has taken another £55,000 from the ODP Group Ltd—which provides headhunting services to the NHS and private healthcare providers.

The firm’s owner, Peter Hearn, has longstanding links to private healthcare.

Additionally:

This is not the first donation Streeting has accepted from a Hearn-linked company. In 2023, he took £48, 000 from the OPD Group, according to the National (Scotland). in donations from another company Hearn controls. And the Financial Times has reported that, through seemingly shell companies, Hearn previously donated over £1m to Labour and prominent individual MPs like Streeting from between 2014 and 2023.

Streeting — Starmer 2.0?

While some have said Streeting would be Starmer 2.0, we don’t think that’s the case. Streeting is more ideologically driven that Starmer, if only because our current PM isn’t curious enough to hold his own opinions.

The problem is that Streeting’s ideology is the toxic privatisation mindset of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. In other words, we’ll need to hold on to our public institutions if he becomes PM, because he’ll be selling off everything that isn’t nailed down.

Featured image via BBC