The British Minister of Health, Wes Streeting, presented his resignation this Thursday, and forced a primary process. It has not gone so far, so far, as to automatically activate that process. It is not clear, at the moment, that Streeting still has the necessary support of eighty deputies to launch the competition. And in any case, he does not want to be seen by his teammates as the first to throw the stone, or as an opportunist willing to speed up everything to cut off other rivals.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has already made it clear that if the replacement process is activated, .
“Where we need vision, we only have a void. Where we need direction, we hesitate. All this was clear in your speech on Monday. Leaders take responsibility, but in your case it has often meant that others pay. You need to listen to your colleagues, including second-ranking MPs. Heavy-handed politics with dissenting voices makes politics small,” Streeting reproaches Starmer in his text.
“It is clear that you will not be the Labor Party candidate in the next election, and that the Labor MPs and the unions want the debate on the next leader to be a debate of ideas, not about personalities or factions. It needs to be broad, with the largest possible number of candidates. I support that approach and I trust that you will facilitate it,” demands the minister, who has been one of the main candidates to replace Starmer from the first moment.
In fact, he was the only one the Prime Minister received early this Wednesday in Downing Street. They had been unable to find together a way out of the pre-civil war situation that British Labor is experiencing.
“There are many reasons for me to continue in my position as minister, but as you know from our conversation this week, having lost confidence in your leadership, I have come to the conclusion that it would be dishonorable and contrary to my principles to continue,” says the former Minister of Health, who has waited for the latest data on the waiting lists of the National Health Service, his main battle since he took office, to announce his decision. The waiting list, he explains in his text, has fallen by more than 110,000 people last March.
The next steps
Although Streeting already had the necessary number of deputies to automatically activate the primary process, the text of his resignation letter suggests that he does not want to be responsible for this happening.
Firstly, because there are many deputies who suspect that his maneuver could consist of accelerating the mechanism to block the way for Andy Burnham, the mayor of Manchester and favorite among the Labor Party, according to all the polls. In order to run, he would need to have a seat in the House of Commons, which he does not have today. A colleague should resign and thus facilitate a by-election in which Burnham would have to compete, to win that seat in Parliament. There are many conditions, and a lot of risk.
accompanied by the overwhelming triumph of the extreme right, makes many of Burnham’s allies and rivals skeptical of the supposed ease of the mayor’s return to the House.
In any case, there are other contenders sharpening their knives. The former deputy prime minister and also a favorite of the left wing of the party, Angela Rayner, strategically announced in the early hours of this Thursday that she had already paid 40,000 pounds (about 48,000 euros) to the public treasury, and that she had been exonerated from any tax crime due to non-payment of the transfer tax on her second home.
That was the reason why he left the Government. With that shadow cleared, Rayner has entered the scene with a couple of interviews. Without saying whether she will be a candidate or whether she will support someone in particular, her suggestion to Starmer that “she should think about whether to leave or not” makes it clear that she wants to promote a replacement and participate in the entire process.
[Noticia de última hora. Habrá ampliación en breve.]
