Streeting to fire starting gun in Starmer leadership battle – The Latest

0:00Archie Bland:This is The Guardian.

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0:45There are still a lot of unanswered questions. Does he have sufficient support to raise a challenge to Keir Starmer? You even hear people say he might not be naturally sympathetic to West Streeting. At least he appears to have a clarity of agenda and a willingness to fight for it.

1:02Archie Bland:House Secretary Wes Streeting is expected to launch a leadership challenge against Keir Starmer as soon as tomorrow, with news of the plan dropping during the King's speech, derailing what was supposed to be another chance for the Prime Minister to reset the political agenda. From the Guardian's Today in Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hoff. Well, joining me is the head of national news, Archie Bland. And Archie, another quiet day in a very quiet news week. In the last few minutes, we're recording at lunchtime. We're hearing that West Streeting is reportedly planning to resign tomorrow and launch a leadership campaign following a 16-minute meeting with Keir Starmer this morning.

1:43Archie Bland:Interested in the 16-minute length? Because it's not nothing. These episodes are 10 minutes and we get through quite a lot. So what does 16 minutes mean to you? I won't have resigned from the latest by the end of this episode. But yeah, it's interesting partly because it suggests that there wasn't a lot of constructive discussion there. That's not long enough to have a kind of a very deep and serious conversation about next steps for the government. It feels like it's about the two of them presenting a public posture of disagreement. Yes. And we have since heard from allies of Streeting that he intends to resign as soon as tomorrow, which is a phrase which leaves some wiggle room for it not being tomorrow.

2:19But there are still a lot of unanswered questions about that. One of them is, does he have sufficient support to raise a challenge to Keir Starmer? He would need 81 MPs and it's not clear that he has that. Another is, is it being outsourced to his allies because he doesn't really intend to do it or doesn't quite know whether he's definitely going to do it yet? This story has taken a lot of twists and turns so far and there are probably more to come. So watch the space and even by the time you hear this, there may be more that's happened.

2:46Archie Bland:Yeah, but interestingly, I mean, listening to the news last night, There was a sense amongst some MPs that Starmer had sort of weathered the storm, this letter of 100 MPs saying, now's not the time, let's steady the ship, and let's look at a leadership contest in future. Streeting has obviously disrupted that. But also two of his major allies resigned from their positions yesterday. Do you think for him it's a question of it's really now or never, given that we know that Andy Burnham was also in town and is looking for a seat? Yeah, you know, I don't think it's ideal for Streeting to go now because he's worried that it looks opportunistic.

3:22He doesn't want to be the first one out of the blocks on this, but he may feel that he doesn't have an opportunity if he's not the first one out of the blocks because of the way things are going. He may feel, as you say, that it's now or never. As far as his allies go, another of them, Peter Kyle, who said that he couldn't possibly be planning a leadership bid because they went to the Devil Wears Prada 2 together a few days ago. Very important facts. Absolutely. He came out in support of Keir Starmer. So it's quite hard to have comprehensive readings of these things from the tea leaves that are swilling around at the moment.

3:51But, you know, it does look more and more like this is really going to happen now. And I think Streeting will probably feel that he is far from in an ideal position to do it, but he has to get on with it.

4:01Archie Bland:Meanwhile, amidst all of this context, there's the sort of near farcical King's speech involving all the pomp and paddetry, the black rod knocking on the door. Someone made a very good joke, which is not now, Andy, which I think will go down the annals of black rod jokes.

4:23Not now, Andy.

4:26Archie Bland:But obviously this is meant to be a very important, symbolic moments of the government presenting its legislative agenda and some fairly major stuff, getting rid of NHS England, Shabana Mahmood's immigration bill, the overhaul of the provision of special educational needs and some big policy stuff that I think Labour really wanted to refocus on. They knew that the council election results were going to be terrible, but that the King's speech this week would be a moment to reset. That clearly not the case. Yeah, and I think there is a kind of a policy related aspect to this and it's not just a question of the personalities involved when you look at this slate of bills and the king's speech the the kind of way that they've sought to present it is now we're really delivering we're two years into our program for government by the end of this and we're going to show you that we're changing the country when you actually look at this speech it's not obvious what in here is going to have that kind of substantive impact on the way that people feel about a labor government and so even though speech feels like a bit of a sideshow.

5:29I think it is also slightly indicative in the same way that Starmer's speech was on Monday, that they keep trying these resets, but they don't necessarily have the substance underneath them that will make it actually land with people. And it doesn't feel as if Keir Starmer can kind of turn that corner and come up with a radically new proposition for his premiership.

5:45Archie Bland:Yeah. And also the speech is happening at a time where we don't even know if Keir Starmer will still be Prime Minister by the end of the week. And in terms of looking at the other people who perhaps we can consider as leadership challenges. I mean, we had a really interesting conversation on Monday with Aditya Chakraborty, who said that the end of the sort of slightly nondescript centrism of Starmer would either mean a shift to the right or a shift to the soft left. Do we have a sense of whether Streeting and others would be entering a leadership challenge with a sense of their own real clear agenda that would be different to what was presented today?

6:19Archie Bland:And it's worth noting that where Streeting said, lots has been done, lots more to do, on X just now. Yeah, I think all of the leading candidates have a more coherent platform and a more coherent vision. People, I think, who pay attention to politics understand more clearly what their ideological underpinning is, whether that's to the left of the Labour Party or to the right of the Labour Party. And you even hear people say who might not be naturally sympathetic to Wes Streeting, at least he appears to have a kind of a clarity of agenda and a willingness to fight for it. That was a complaint that one of his allies, Jess Phillips, made in her resignation yesterday about Keir Starmer.

6:55So I think the fact that they're all going to show their kind of ideological stripes a bit in this fight is partly indicative of the fact that the party is really crying out for that after several years of a leader whose managerialism was touted as a strength, but ultimately has proved to be one of his weaknesses.

7:10Archie Bland:Yeah, and that two people that if streeting runs, it's rumoured that Ed Miliband would stand against him, both ministers who came in very well prepared for their brief in 2024 and have been very successful in cabinet or have been perceived to have been very successful since then. But even the timing of this was pretty comical because this story about Wes Streeting's plan to resign and launch a leadership challenge happened literally as the King's speech was happening. Yeah, and even Wes Streeting's team said before this that he would never dream of doing anything to disrupt King Charles's appearance in Parliament.

7:44And at the same time, sources very close to him appear to have produced something that may well have been deliberately timed to come out at a time when it'd be very difficult for any ministers opposed to him to start briefing on the other side of the picture. So that will, I think, immediately cause some anger amongst allies of Keir Starmer's.

8:01Archie Bland:And meanwhile, whilst all of this sort of near comical pageantry is going on today, it's a useful distraction for Nigel Farage. There's been a crucial update on this very controversial gift that he received from the overseas crypto billionaire Christopher Harbourn. What's happened there? So this is the gift which people will remember was revealed in a Guardian an exclusive recently and what that said was that this five million pounds uh was given to farage shortly before he decided to run in the last election yeah the way that the electoral commission considers these things uh one of its rules is if there is any doubt over whether a gift is for personal use or could be considered to have a political ramification uh in the 12 months before somebody becomes an mp then it should be declared farage says that this was unambiguously for personal use and that it was because he had security concerns which Christopher Harbourn wanted to fund but it looks as if the electoral commission has concluded that there is at least a question to answer here and if it concludes that he has broken the code of conduct that could lead to a suspension which could itself ultimately lead to a recall petition and potentially even a challenge to him as an MP so there's an awful lot to play for here for Farage it's pretty serious but we obviously don't know yet which way the investigation will go.

9:15Archie Bland:Yeah wow extraordinary times Archie thank you so much all right thank you that's it for today my huge thanks again to Archie Bland the Guardian's head of national news you can keep up with all our coverage of the political drama and the king's speech over at theguardian.com and don't miss tonight's first episode of our new video podcast from Guardian US called Stateside with Kai and Carter and the first episode will be a conversation with Stacey Abrams on how the Supreme Court has taken an axe to voting rights. Don't miss it. You can catch it on YouTube or find it wherever you get your podcasts.

9:48Archie Bland:Thanks for listening to this episode of The Latest. Today on Focus will be back in your feeds as usual tomorrow morning. The Latest will be back tomorrow night. This episode was presented by me, Lucy Hoff. It was produced by Sam Gruet. The senior producer was Bryony Moore. The lead producer was Zoe Hitch.

10:06Archie Bland:I'm Kai Wright. I'm Kai Sherman. And we are here to tell you about our new show, which is rooted in this feeling that at least I have, I know you have, where it's kind of like when you wake up in the morning and you pick up your phone and you're just hit in the face with a fire hose of news, right? There's war, there's authoritarianism, our planet is burning. I could go on and on and on. On and on and on. But we're trying to figure out how to manage it, right? How do you manage it? I manage it by leaning in and trying to learn more and trying to figure out, OK, how can I be smarter about this particular topic?

10:43And who can I talk to that's going to make me feel better about it? And who can tell me who's responsible for the mess that I'm reading about? So that's our mission. That's the show. Welcome to Stateside with Kai and Carter. We're a new show from The Guardian. We're talking to big thinkers and the best journalists, just trying to understand the world through smart conversation and honest reporting. We don't have billionaires telling us what to say. Stateside with Kyan Carter is out now every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Follow on Apple Podcasts or catch us wherever you watch or listen. This is The Guardian.

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