When Wes Streeting resigned, there was a brief – very brief – feeling of reprieve among some of Sir Keir Starmer’s allies. They were convinced that the Health Secretary didn’t and still doesn’t have the numbers to launch a bloody spill and painted the development as a humiliating climb down. There was even some discussion about putting the whole palava to bed by convincing one Angela Rayner to take over from Streeting and make a cabinet comeback. This, it was thought, would quash the hard-left’s urge for an even worse socialist takeover of Downing Street.
At The Spectator’s Levelling Up vs Pride in Place event, the brief reprieve was communicated by Housing Secretary Steve Reed, who also happens to be one of Sir Keir’s closest cabinet allies. He regurgitated the usual propaganda about the government getting on with the job, encouraging rowdy backbenchers to stop ‘looking inward and talking to ourselves’.
Fast forward literally 10 minutes and another twist in the Labour psychodrama drops. Former minister Josh Simons will be valiantly relinquishing his duties as the MP for Makerfield so Andy Burnham can begin the process of returning to the Commons. And who better to deliver the news to the Housing Secretary, the bestie of Sir Keir, than one of his evil Tory predecessors, Michael Gove!
Being the gentleman he is, after informing Reed of the news Gove gave him a few minutes to gather his thoughts before addressing the audience. Eventually the Housing Secretary said:
If anyone thinks there’s a caped superhero that’s coming our way who has got all the answers to these problems, they’ve got another thing coming. Because these are actually challenges that we all need to resolve together.
There is no there is no magician able to change it all for us overnight. You can talk about how we communicate it. You can talk about how we buy people into that vision. But I genuinely think this is something for all of us together. Otherwise we’re not going to make the most of our great country.
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