Two veteran leaders of the UK Labor Party on Thursday sought to prepare themselves to challenge Prime Minister Keir Starmer, although they did not announce a direct challenge but appeared to encourage the embattled party leader to willingly make way.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting took the most direct step, becoming the first senior member of Starmer’s Cabinet to resign in protest at Labour’s defeat in local and regional elections last week.
But former party deputy leader Angela Rayner also issued a warning to the press saying that the tax scandal that had caused her to resign had now been resolved, which was interpreted as an indirect statement of intent.
A combative Starmer speech on Monday and a tense cabinet meeting on Tuesday both failed to calm the mood after the election defeat. It comes just two years after Starmer and Labor won a landslide majority on promises to end more than a decade of Conservative-led chaos caused by frequent changes of prime ministers.
What did Streeting say?
Streeting published a lengthy resignation letter online without comment. He began by reiterating what he had characterized as successes during his time in the role.
“These are all good reasons for me to remain in office, but as you know from our conversation earlier this week, having lost confidence in your leadership, I have concluded that doing so would be disrespectful and unprincipled,” Streeting wrote.
Streeting called last week’s election results “unprecedented – both in terms of the scale of the defeat and the consequences of that failure.”
He said, “For the first time in our country’s history, nationalists are in charge in every corner of the United Kingdom – including the dangerous English nationalism represented by Nigel Farage and Reform UK.”
This included Labour’s defeat at the hands of the Scottish National Party north of the border, the nationalists plaid Cymru in its Welsh stronghold and Nigel Farage’s right-wing populists across the UK but especially in England.
Streeting, 43, who has a working-class background in London and became an MP in 2015, said there was much about Starmer he admired, but he also listed a series of failures and shortcomings in his letter.
Who else has an eye on the top job?
Former Labor deputy leader Angela Rayner’s team gathered at 6am local time on Thursday, meanwhile, British media were told the National Tax Authority has now resolved the wealth tax scandal that led to her resignation last year.
He gave an interview to a leftist newspaper GuardianBut he declined to be specific on whether he planned to challenge Starmer.
Asked whether he should step down, Rainer said, “Kiir has to consider that.”
Rayner, who is seen to lean more leftward in her politics than Streeting, was one of the first senior Labor politicians to contribute to speculation over Starmer’s future this week.
Early Monday, he issued a lengthy social media statement criticizing recent events and saying the party’s position “now needs to change.” But again he stopped short of voicing support or opposition to Starmer as Prime Minister.
The British media speculated that both Streeting and Rayner may have been hoping to pressure the Prime Minister into voluntarily stepping down. This would avoid the risk of a direct challenge in a vote in the House of Commons, given that more than 100 Labor MPs have – at least for now – signed a letter of support to the Prime Minister.
What happened in last week’s election?
The Labor Party suffered heavy losses in English municipal elections as well as elections for national parliaments in Scotland and Wales – both historical Labor strongholds.
Labor lost more than 1,400 council seats across England, reducing the influence of both Reform UK on the populist right and the Greens on the populist left.
In the Welsh Senedd Parliament it dropped from 36.2% of the vote and 30 seats to 11.1% and nine seats, and dropped from third place to the largest party behind Welsh nationalists plaid Cymru and Reform UK.
And in the north, Labor saw the Scottish National Party re-establish its dominance over the Holyrood chamber, despite its great difficulties in recent years. Reform UK wins as many Scottish seats as Labour; The Greens, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were all behind.
Edited by: Wesley Dockery