Streeting Resigns from Cabinet, Triggers Leadership Race — Rayner Cleared by HMRC at a Quarter to Two, Eighty-One Threshold Crossed by Half Past Three, the Health Secretary’s Letter Lands at Twenty Past Two and Number 10 Concedes by First Light Friday That a Contest Cannot Be Avoided
Wes Streeting resigned from the Cabinet at twenty past two on Thursday afternoon, thirty-five minutes after HM Revenue and Customs formally cleared the Deputy Prime Minister of any deliberate wrongdoing or carelessness in her tax affairs and an hour and ten before the working count of signatures behind a Rayner challenge crossed the eighty-one-name threshold the rule book requires. The Number 10 lobby briefing at six on Thursday evening, on the cleanest reading available to the Westminster political editors, conceded that a leadership contest is now “a question of when, not whether.” Sir Keir Starmer, on the doorstep of Downing Street at twenty past five, said only that he “will fight, and fight to win.”
The Streeting Letter at Twenty Past Two
The Health Secretary’s letter of resignation, addressed to the Prime Minister and copied to the Cabinet Secretary, the Permanent Secretary at the Department of Health and the Chief Whip, was placed in Sir Keir Starmer’s red box at twenty past two on Thursday afternoon and released through the Department of Health press office at half past two. The text, which runs to four hundred and sixty words, sets out three reasons for the departure: the loss of the Government’s political authority “in the country and in the Parliamentary Labour Party” after the May 7 county-council results; the failure of the Monday Commons address and the Monday-evening confidence vote “to draw a line under the question of leadership”; and the Health Secretary’s judgement that the Government’s ten-year NHS plan “cannot be delivered by a Cabinet that is itself the story.” The letter does not formally declare a leadership candidacy. The Streeting camp’s political secretary confirmed at four o’clock that nominations will open “in the proper sequence and not before.”
HMRC Clears Rayner at a Quarter to Two
HM Revenue and Customs released a one-page statement at quarter to two on Thursday afternoon confirming the conclusion of its formal review of the Deputy Prime Minister’s tax affairs in respect of the disposal of her former Greater Manchester home and the structuring of related family transfers. The statement, signed by the second Permanent Secretary, finds “no evidence of deliberate wrongdoing or carelessness,” closes the review without further action and notes that “the matter is no longer the subject of any investigation.” The Rayner camp, on the line a senior political secretary gave the lobby at five past two, called the finding “the answer the Deputy Prime Minister has waited eighteen months to receive” and confirmed that the Deputy Prime Minister will make a substantive statement to the Parliamentary Labour Party at the regular Monday-evening meeting next week.
The Eighty-One Threshold Crossed by Half Past Three
The Rayner working tally, on the camp’s half-past-three Thursday-afternoon brief to political editors, reached one hundred and twenty-six declared and a working column of one hundred and forty-one inclusive of soft pledges. The threshold the Parliamentary Labour Party rule book requires for a formal challenge is eighty-one Members — twenty per cent of the parliamentary party. On the deputy chief whip’s shadow reconciliation, completed at twenty to four, the Rayner column independent of any Streeting transfer cleared eighty-one at twenty-three minutes past three. The Streeting camp’s separate column, released at five o’clock and reconciled against the Rayner brief, runs to a working ninety-four. The Parliamentary Labour Party chair has confirmed in writing that nominations will be opened on Monday morning at ten and will close on Wednesday at six.
Number 10 Concedes by First Light Friday
The Number 10 lobby briefing at six on Thursday evening, delivered by the Prime Minister’s deputy political secretary, conceded for the first time that “a contest is now a question of when, not whether,” declined to put a name to the position the Prime Minister will take in the contest itself, and confirmed that Sir Keir Starmer remains in office and intends to remain so “through the proper conclusion of the process the Parliamentary Labour Party has now begun.” By first light on Friday morning, on the Number 10 grid circulated at half past five, the Prime Minister’s public diary for the next seven days has been cleared of three planned regional visits and a constituency surgery; the Wednesday King’s Speech remains in the Cabinet Office grid for prorogation on the same day.
The Race the Country Now Has
The contest the Parliamentary Labour Party will now begin runs, on the working brief of the deputy chief whip, to three declared or near-declared names: the Deputy Prime Minister, the former Health Secretary, and the Mayor of Greater Manchester, whose camp has not yet committed to a nomination but whose supporters have been openly canvassing for soft pledges since the Monday confidence vote. The Energy Secretary, on his own line at three on Thursday afternoon, has ruled himself out. The Foreign Secretary, on a line attributed to her permanent secretary at four, “is not at this point seeking a nomination.” The honest reading of Thursday evening is that the Parliamentary Labour Party has ended a fortnight of half-resolved questions in a single afternoon, that the answer is a contest, and that the Prime Minister’s leadership of the Government is now sequenced behind the answer the Parliamentary Labour Party returns to the rest of the country.