New face, same problems: replacing Keir Starmer with Wes Streeting will do nothing to help Labour | Zoe Williams

Both share a fixation with process over project and have an absence of values, which can only result in a trail of broken promises

I never thought, in the year 2025, I’d be hearing sentences that started “a week is a long time in politics”; and yet here we are, so much has happened that only the ultimate cliche can contain it.

On Tuesday night, sources inside, one assumes, Downing Street more or less called for a leadership challenge, in the manoeuvre known as “come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough”. On Wednesday morning, Wes Streeting was on the Today programme, trying to sound urbane, unflappable, but most of all, loyal to Keir Starmer – only to the most casual listener, however. When he said he hadn’t spoken to the prime minister, the implication was clear: if this briefing were done without Starmer’s sanction, then surely he would have contacted his health secretary, if only to blow off a bit of steam?

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...