UK: Health Secretary Wes Streeting resigns, likely in bid to topple PM Keir Starmer

Two heavy hitters in the UK Labour Party sought to position themselves to challenge Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday, albeit with neither announcing a direct challenge, instead seeming to encourage the embattled party leader to make way voluntarily. 

Health Secretary Wes Streeting made the most direct move, becoming the first senior member of Starmer's Cabinet to resign in protest after Labour's drubbing in local and regional elections last week. 

But former party deputy leader Angela Rayner also issued a crack-of-dawn alert to the press saying that the tax scandal that prompted her resignation was now resolved, in what was interpreted as an oblique statement of intent.

A combative Starmer speech on Monday and a tense Cabinet meeting on Tuesday both failed to calm the waters after the election losses. This comes just two years after Starmer and Labour won a large majority on promises to end more than a decade of Conservative-led chaos marked by frequent changes of prime ministers. 

What did Streeting say? 

Streeting published a lengthy resignation letter without further comment online. He began by recapping what he portrayed as successes during his time in the role. 

"These are all good reasons for me to remain in post," Streeting wrote, "but as you know from our conversation earlier this week, having lost confidence in your leadership, I have concluded that it would be dishonorable and unprincipled to do so." 

Streeting called last week's election results "unprecedented — both in terms of the scale of the defeat and the consequences of that failure." 

"For the first time in our country's history, nationalists are in charge in every corner of the United Kingdom — including a dangerous English nationalism represented by Nigel Farage and Reform UK," he said.

This referred to Labour's losses to the Scottish National Party north of the border, to nationalists Plaid Cymru in its Welsh stronghold, and to Nigel Farage's right-wing populists across the UK but particularly in England.

Streeting, a 43-year-old with a working class London background who became an MP in 2015, said there was much about Starmer he admired, but also listed a series of failures and shortcomings in his letter. 

Who else seems to be eying the top job? 

Former Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner's team mobilized at 6 a.m. sharp local time on Thursday, meanwhile, letting British media know that the national tax authority now deemed the property tax scandal that led to her resignation last year to be resolved. 

She gave an interview to the left-leaning newspaper The Guardian, but refused to be drawn on whether she planned to challenge Starmer. 

When asked whether he should step down, Rayner said "Keir will have to reflect on that." 

Rayner, who is seen to lean further left than Streeting in her politics, was among the first senior Labour politicians to contribute to the speculation on Starmer's future this week.

Early on Monday, she issued a lengthy social media statement criticizing recent events and saying that the party's situation "needs to change — now." But again she stopped short of voicing either support for or opposition to Starmer as prime minister. 

British media speculated that both Streeting and Rayner might be hoping to pressure the prime minister into stepping down of his own volition. This would avoid risking a direct challenge in a vote in the House of Commons, given that well over 100 Labour MPs have signed a letter of support — at least for now — for the prime minister.

What happened in last week's elections?

The Labour Party suffered heavy losses in English municipal elections as well as in elections for the national parliaments in Scotland and Wales — both historical Labour heartlands. 

Labour lost more than 1,400 council seats around England, leaking influence both to Reform UK on the populist right and the Greens on the populist left. 

It slipped from 36.2% of the vote and 30 seats to 11.1% and nine seats in the Welsh Senedd parliament, going from the largest party to a distant third, behind the Welsh nationalists Plaid Cymru and Reform UK. 

And to the north, Labour saw the Scottish National Party reassert its dominance of the Holyrood chamber, despite its own major difficulties in recent years. Reform UK won as many Scottish seats as Labour; the Greens, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats were all close behind. 

UK's Starmer under pressure as King Charles opens parliament

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Edited by: Wesley Dockery