Wes Streeting has announced that he intends to enter a Labor leadership contest if someone is promoted to replace Sir Keir Starmer.
The civil war of Labor continues after an eventful week that saw some ministers resign to pile pressure on the prime minister.
Streeting left as health Secretary on Thursday, but he did not launch a direct leadership challenge to Sir Keir as predicted.
He welcomed Andy Burnham’s bombshell announcement to stand in the Makerfield by-election in a bid to return to PARLIAMENT.
The former health secretary said: ‘We need a proper contest with the best candidates in the field and I will stand.’
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Streeting insisted that Burnham, who is expected to enter any future leadership contest if he wins in Makerfield, should be given a chance to run in the by-election.
He said at the conference of the Progress expert group: ‘First, I have support in the parliamentary party, but this week I also had an election.
Read here why the Makerfield by-election matters
“We could have rushed straight into a leadership contest, knowing that not all the candidates would be in the field, that Andy Burnham was about to run in a by-election, and that if we had rushed ahead without giving Andy a chance to run, the new leader, whether it was me or someone else, would have lacked legitimacy and so we would have ended up in uncertainty and uncertainty.
“It may have been the right thing to do for the candidates currently in Parliament, but it wasn’t in the party’s interest and it wasn’t in the national interest.”
Despite the possibility of facing Burnham in a leadership race, Streeting said he will campaign for her.
He said it will be in Makerfield, a borough south-west of Greater Wigan Manchester‘knocking on the door day after day to help him get sorted.’
Earlier, Streeting said Labor was risking becoming ‘the servants of Nigel Farage and the breakup of the United Kingdom’ if they did not change course.
Sir Keir has been defiant despite mounting pressure calling for him to resign this week in the wake of Labour’s disastrous local election result.
A new poll by YouGov found that 38% of people believe it is unlikely that Sir Keir will still be Prime Minister at the end of 2026.
Sir Keir hit out at organizers of the Unite the Kingdom rally, which has drawn thousands of people to London today and led to several arrests even before the march began.
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