Starmer holds 16-minute meeting with Streeting amid leadership crisis | Labour party leadership

Wes Streeting held talks with Keir Starmer in Downing Street as an ally of the health secretary and renewed calls for the prime minister to resign, saying the prime minister’s authority had been “irreversibly diminished”.

Streeting arrived at No 10 on Wednesday morning amid Labour’s leadership crisis and intense speculation about his future within the party. He left approximately 16 minutes later without commenting to the media.

The health secretary’s allies had tried to portray Wednesday’s meeting as a moment when Streeting could speak candidly about his concerns. But a No 10 insider claimed Streeting was downplaying speculation he was on the verge of announcing his candidacy for the leadership.

The meeting was held by Dr. who resigned from his post as deputy minister of health on Tuesday. It came shortly after Zubir Ahmed blamed Starmer for Labour’s disastrous local election results and called on the prime minister to set a timetable for his departure with an “orderly and appropriate transition”.

Ahmed accused Starmer of being the “inadvertent midwife of a fifth-term SNP government” in the Scottish parliamentary election and said Labor had failed to challenge the Scottish National party because of the “noise created at the centre”.

The NHS transplant surgeon told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “In Scotland, as in the rest of the UK, we had a devastating set of election results and we were unable to voice our offer or indeed our criticism of the SNP government because of the noise created at the centre.

“So we became the unintentional midwife of a fifth-term SNP government, and so did the prime minister. And then in this scenario that you saw, people were waiting for a speech to try and articulate his new direction, a strategy, and that simply didn’t happen. And then you saw a spontaneous disillusionment emerge from your colleagues in the PLP.” [parliamentary Labour party].”

Asked whether the backlash among Labor MPs was spontaneous, Ahmed said: “This is not a faction of the Labor Party. This is, I think, about the Labor Party now expressing the widely held view that this is unsustainable and unstable.”

Ahmed’s intervention risks widening scrutiny of Streeting’s position after days of speculation about whether he could emerge as a potential leadership candidate for MPs looking for a post-Starmer future.

While Streeting has remained publicly loyal to Starmer since the local elections, some of his allies, including four ministers, have resigned from the government in recent days and publicly called for Starmer to leave. Earlier this week, two senior cabinet ministers, foreign secretary Yvette Cooper and home secretary Shabana Mahmood, told Starmer he must oversee an orderly transition.

Sources close to Ed Miliband have denied reports that soft-left hopeful Andy Burnham has told cabinet ministers he is ready to run for the leadership if Streeting triggers a race before he can return to Westminster and run.

Starmer’s allies have sought to portray the prime minister as a survivor of the most immediate threat to his leadership after a challenge led by Streeting failed to materialize ahead of the king’s speech on Wednesday.

Cabinet minister and long-time Starmer ally Nick Thomas-Symonds mocked speculation surrounding the meeting, describing it as a simple “coffee”.

“Everyone thought we were talking about the final scene in Casino Royal,” he told the BBC. Thomas-Symonds said there was no viable leadership challenge against Starmer, claiming Labor rebels had failed to unite around an alternative candidate who could win the support of 81 MPs as required by party rules.

“The evidence of the last two days is that with 81 MPs there is no alternative candidate,” he said.

While those in Downing Street desperately tried to maintain calm before King Charles arrived in the House of Lords for his speech, pressure on Starmer continued to mount elsewhere.

The Guardian revealed on Tuesday night that 11 Labor unions predicted Starmer would not lead the party at the next general election. Unions including Unite, Unison and the generally loyalist GMB were expected to issue a joint statement on Wednesday, saying the party would need to put in place a plan to elect a new leader “at some stage”.

In a leaked copy of the statement, unions said it was clear Labor “cannot continue on its current path” and, despite some progress, it was not doing enough to deliver the change people voted for in the general election.

Union general secretaries wrote: “Labour-affiliated unions have been clear that Labor cannot continue on its current path… The results of last week’s election were devastating… Labor is not doing enough to deliver the change that workers voted for at the general election.”

When Starmer arrived in parliament for his second king’s speech, Sittingbourne and Sheppey MP Kevin McKenna became the last Labor MP to call on him to resign. More than 90 Labor MPs have called on him to resign since the weekend.

The SNP will try to use this momentum and force a vote on Starmer’s future with an amendment to the king’s speech. SNP Westminster’s new leader, Dave Doogan, said the “leadership circus can no longer go on”.