Wes Streeting: PM-in-waiting or ‘this generation’s David Miliband’?

A s the unofficial political truce of the king’s speech approached, with still no sign of a leadership challenge from Wes Streeting, some of his Labour colleagues assumed the health secretary’s chance to go for the top job might have passed for ever. “There is a risk he becomes the David Miliband of this generation if he doesn’t do something,” one MP said, a reference to another longtime heir apparent who never made the final step. But then, more or less exactly as the monarch’s state coach arrived at parliament, the briefings began : Streeting would resign, perhaps as early as Thursday, and push for a leadership election. What had changed? In one sense, nothing more than events. Streeting’s ambition has long been a subject for open discussion and frequent jokes within Labour, including self-deprecating ones from the man himself. So while his allies played down the prospect of a bid as recently as the weekend , this was largely in the hope that Starmer would step down, or another candidate would enter the fray. Starmer leaves No 10 to head to Westminster for the king’s speech. It was around this time that briefings from Streeting’s camp began to emerge. Photograph: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing/ Billed as “planning, not plotting”, the idea was to be ready if a contest began, rather than instigating one. …