When Labour MPs gossip about who could be their next leader, Wes Streeting’s name invariably comes up. Like Angela Rayner, the party’s deputy leader, Labour’s shadow health secretary spends half his time insisting he’s not running for the top job. Also like Rayner, he’s never actually stood for it – yet. But there have been plenty of moments in the past year when some of his comrades have wished he was the leader of the opposition rather than Keir Starmer.
Streeting became suspiciously more visible as the ‘Beergate’ investigation into whether Starmer and Rayner breached Covid restrictions reached its climax earlier this year. When I mentioned his frequent media appearances to another Labour front bencher, he shrugged: ‘When has Wes not been running?’
It’s true that Streeting, who was elected as the MP for Ilford North in 2015, often seems to be running for something. He was president of the National Union of Students for two terms between 2008 and 2010.
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