By trying to save the PM, No 10 plotters have anointed Wes Streeting as his successor

With their misjudged attempt to ‘kneecap’ Wes Streeting and his ambitions to be prime minister, Downing Street aides have succeeded only in making the health secretary look like a good bet, says John Rentoul

It looks as if someone in Downing Street has misjudged their pre-emptive warning to plotters who would seek to undermine Keir Starmer and his leadership. It appears that top brass within Labour feared that the Budget, in two weeks, would be so unpopular that it would trigger a challenge to the PM.

Selected journalists have been told that Starmer would refuse to go quietly, and instead stand and fight any challenge – and that the markets would react badly to the instability.

But the briefing war has got out of hand. Some of it was aimed squarely at Wes Streeting, the ambitious and inescapably interesting health secretary.

This makes no sense. There is no prospect currently of Streeting winning a leadership election among Labour Party members. Despite some recent tilts to the left – on Gaza and being nice about Lucy Powell – the health secretary is regarded as the incarnation of Blairite evil by too many of them.

One Labour MP explained it to me thus: “It is like the start of the First World War, when the great powers mobilised and created an unstoppable momentum for war without meaning to.” They quoted AJP Taylor on how the war was “imposed on the statesmen of Europe by railway timetables”.

It may be, therefore, that Streeting – along with Shabana Mahmood, Ed Miliband and Angela Rayner – have all been preparing for what one of the others might do if the backlash against the Budget prompts a leadership convulsion against Starmer.

And it may also be that some of Streeting’s preparations went so far as to annoy the prime minister, prompting an entirely counterproductive warning shot to be fired on the day before the health secretary was doing the morning media round – supposedly to talk about the progress of his plan to abolish the NHS England bureaucracy.

If the aim was to force Streeting to disown his leadership ambitions, it backfired like an out-of-control firework. It gave him the chance to be witty and forthright in condemning the briefing against Labour MPs – in one case, they were described as “feral”.

He was asked on Sky News if he would rule out one of the allegations, that he would demand the prime minister’s resignation in the days after the Budget: “Yes – and nor did I shoot JFK. I don’t know where Lord Lucan is. I had nothing to do with Shergar. And I do think that the US did manage to do the moon landings. I don’t think they were faked, certainly not by me.”

Wes Streeting, the health secretary, has said that the prime minister should fire those who were plotting against him (PA)

The briefings gave Streeting the chance to proclaim his loyalty to Starmer with humour and style, which can only improve his standing with party members. They may not warm to his politics, and they are not even that keen on the prime minister, but there is a residual instinct for loyalty in Labour that Lucy Powell, the leader of the internal opposition, well understood. She ran for the deputy leadership as the soft left but constructive and supportive candidate.

Thus, Streeting praised Powell and condemned anonymous briefers for “trying to kneecap one of your own team when they are out, not just making the case for the government, but actually delivering the change that we promised”. He described theirs as “self-defeating and self-destructive behaviour”, and said: “Whoever did this doesn’t speak for the prime minister. I speak for the prime minister.”

It was an impressive performance that strengthened his position. Remember that he explained how he would launch his leadership bid in an interview two years ago: “I’d tack left. You win the Labour leadership from the left.” I think he was half-joking – but only half.

If someone was trying to knock him down yesterday, they have succeeded only in building him up.