New face, same problems: replacing Keir Starmer with Wes Streeting will do nothing to help Labour | Zoe Williams

Both share a fixation with process over project and have an absence of values, which can only result in a trail of broken promisesI never thought, in the year 2025, I’d be hearing sentences that started “a week is a long time in politics”; and yet here we are, so much has happened that only the ultimate cliche can contain it.On Tuesday night, sources inside, one assumes, Downing Street more or less called for a leadership challenge, in the manoeuvre known as “come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough”. On Wednesday morning, Wes Streeting was on the Today programme, trying to sound urbane, unflappable, but most of all, loyal to Keir Starmer – only to the most casual listener, however. When he said he hadn’t spoken to the prime minister, the implication was clear: if this briefing were done without Starmer’s sanction, then surely he would have contacted his health secretary, if only to blow off a bit of steam?Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnistComments will open here at 3pm GMT Continue reading...

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