Could Labour’s Wes Streeting be a future prime minister?

The new shadow health secretary shines where his leader is dull, and has set tongues wagging, writes John Rentoul

Wes Streeting’s recent interview with Nick Robinson of the BBC was a remarkably fluent performance (UK Parliament)

Just what Keir Starmer needed. A profile of his newly promoted shadow health secretary in The New Statesman, headlined: “Is Wes Streeting the next Labour leader?” Starmer must have felt as pleased as John Smith did when he opened The Sunday Times the weekend after he was elected Labour leader in 1992 to find the cover of the magazine devoted to a profile of Tony Blair, headed: “The leader Labour missed?”

It is the fate of party leaders to have the press complaining either that their top team is no good, or that certain members of it are better than they are and ought to have the top job sooner rather than later.

Ailbhe Rea, the author of the New Statesman article, quotes a source saying that Starmer claimed that “he doesn’t care what Streeting’s ambitions are: everyone is entitled to want to be party leader if they have the ability, and, in the meantime, he regards him as a completely loyal figure”.