AIBU to predict Streeting will resign tomorrow & trigger leadership contest.

[Twiglets1]

Wes Streeting will reportedly resign as Health Secretary and trigger a leadership contest against Keir Starmer and it could be as soon as tomorrow.

Allies of Mr Streeting said he was “going to go for it” after he met the Prime Minister in Downing Street for just 16 minutes this morning.

A spokesman for the Health Secretary said he would not discuss his brief meeting with Sir Keir over fears it would overshadow the King’s Speech, which will take place later today at 11.40.

AIBU to assume that Streeting is in the final stages of preparing a coup for the Labour leadership and will very likely make his move tomorrow?

ah so now HMRC have let her off? err no they don't, ask Zahawi...

Rayner cannot win and thats the problem with Labour and the 'right ... whatever they do, its always "wrong"

I've twice made errors on my SA, twice just asked to pay the correct amount.

DWP is by far the most aggressive dept's out there.

I don’t buy the genuine mistake argument, Rayner has been given cover. It categorically stated on the governments own website in relation to stamp duty what she should have done, it wasn’t a convoluted, hard to understand, little used rule. It was there in black and white.

it should have been ‘carelessness’ by HMRC standards* and she should have been fined. She was buying a property in Hove. Most people use a solicitor they’ve used before and have a relationship with, or a solicitor local to the area they’re buying in. Rayner did neither, and used a solicitor nowhere near Hove, which I think is suspicious.

*I know someone who was fined for carelessness when he didn’t pay the correct tax on some foreign income that had been taxed at source, but at the lower rate of 20% and not 40%. A new job had pushed him into the higher tax bracket. That was a genuine mistake too but cost him a 15% fine.

Seeing as you don't seem to want to talk in specifics but others might want to know what you are alluding to, this is what he said on the subject in May 2024:

Wes Streeting has admitted that he should have spoken up sooner at Stonewall and the National Union of Students to defend women who voiced concerns about trans issues.

Women should not have been “written off as bigots” because they wanted to protect women-only spaces, he conceded.

The shadow health secretary was head of education for the controversial charity before entering politics. He was also president of the National Union of Students when the feminist Julie Bindel was no-platformed for being “transphobic”.

Speaking at the Hay Festival, Mr Streeting said his views had developed in the intervening years and he regretted that he had not spoken up in support of women with gender-critical views.

“I think it is absolutely a fair challenge and fair criticism to say that gender-critical feminists and women who have been raising concerns about women-only spaces, or erasure from NHS documents and those sorts of issues, were written off as bigots or prejudiced and people shut them down.

“Absolutely I would agree with that challenge and say that was wrong, counter-productive and not the way to handle such a sensitive issue,” Mr Streeting said.

Asked by interviewer Samira Ahmed about the treatment of Ms Bindel, Mr Streeting said he had not been party to the “no-platforming” decision. “But I absolutely take the challenge that a number of us could and should have spoken up sooner,” he added.

“I hope there will be some goodwill coming in from both directions because I genuinely think there is a way through this really toxic conversation where trans people can live with dignity, respect and inclusion, and women can have their sex-based rights protected. I feel optimistic and confident.”

www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/05/26/wes-streeting-should-have-spoken-stonewall-women/

So now, HMRC have given Rayner favourable treatment...😆

.....its unbelievable the lengths and the slurs the 'right will go to, even when found to have done nothing wrong... they still moan.

And Streeting is still sitting on unlawful Stonewall, Unison and other union policies in NHS England - to the detriment of women - to this day. He lied about bringing them into line after the Supreme Court ruling over a year ago. There was another court ruling to this effect yesterday. (See broadsheets today.)

Rayner loves the same unions. So does Lisa Nandy. And Bridget Phillipson. I despair.

She had a bill to settle.

So she … had a bill to settle. That means she owed money, surely?

I’m a socialist, btw, with a fondness for class analysis including that of the two sex classes.

Anyone (above the tax threshold) filling out a SA will "owe money"

HMRC do not expect the same level of knowledge from a lay person as they might from a corporation & there is no requirement to seek tax advice either.

Come on ... Rayner failed to seek further expert tax advice as recommended.

As reported by Labour's own ethics adviser.

@Alexandra2001 thus is direct from the government’s own website :

What property the higher rates apply to
When you know who the rules apply to, you should work out how many residential properties each of you will own at the end of the day of your new purchase.
If any of you will own, or part own more than one residential property worth £40,000 or more, you will have to pay the higher rates on your new purchase (unless there is another reason why the higher rates do not apply).
Include any residential property that:

• is owned on behalf of children under the age of 18 (parents are treated as the owners even if the property is held through a trust and they are not the trustees)
• you have an interest in as the beneficiary of a trust

Include your current home, if you still own it at the end of the day you buy your new home.

Either Rayner is completely thick or she was duplicitous. It couldn’t be written any clearer and HMRC have let her off the hook, which will have implications for the challenge of any future fines for ordinary people. As I said in another post I know someone who underpaid tax on some foreign income. It was taxed at source at 20% but it should have been 40%. Genuine mistake but he was fined 15% for carelessness. Goose and gander. If I were him I’d be asking for the money back. It’s no different to Rayner’s situation.

Anyway, back to the potential leadership challenge.

Rayner says “I would not trigger the prime minister”. She therefore would not directly challenge Starmer by finding 81 MPs to back her, but she could run in an eventual contest to become Labour leader and prime minister.

The BBC notes that Rayner’s intervention suggests there may be a rather full field of candidates if a leadership campaign does begin.

Yet with Labour MPs split on both whether the prime minister should be replaced, and by whom, that contest is not yet inevitable.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cwy21gpr1kzt

He seems to be the best of a bad bunch.

The problem is, STARMER was supposed to be - and may still be - the best of a bad bunch to a large segment of the UK public. As the Labour Party itself appeared to be in 2024, and to many still does.

I can see the argument that Starmer should have gone over the Mandelson/USA debacle, but he didn't. The idea that he should go over local elections seems obviously contrived. The only things that are really coming across publicly from the MPs who've called for his resignation are (1) they think he can't win a Labour majority in the 2029 GE and another Leader might and (2) he doesn't communicate internally or listen to/accommodate the ideas and objections of Cabinet members and Labour backbenchers when he disagrees with them. Neither of those things is of primary importance to the average member of the UK public right now.

I don't see the point in replacing Starmer with another Labour Party Leader/PM when it's not at all clear to the general public what it is exactly that Starmer has supposedly done wrong and how another Leader - ANY one, since there's no front runner - would not immediately fall into the same patterns. I fear losing the relative good Starmer is doing on the international stage (although of course it's not as exciting as a lot of people would like) without getting the positive changes domestically that some people seem to be hoping for from a new Leader - which seem overly optimistic to me given that they'd still be following Labour's 2024 Manifesto.

IF Starmer goes, I'd rather have Yvette Cooper than any other current Labour MP, but I think her ship has probably sailed.

I agree with you @MeanwhileinGilead that it’s not clear exactly what Starmer has done wrong.

It’s still not clear to me even having read lots of posts about him on other threads. As far as I can tell it seems to be mainly a personality thing but any Labour leader would quickly get criticised just as much, in my opinion.

You should work for HMRC, you clearly know more about AR case than they do 😆

Streeting was a signatory on a secret group which was instrumental in witch hunting any labour female member who espoused anything other than trans women are women. Many long standing female members left,were hounded online or removed from their local labour party because of it.
I don't care if he is claiming he has had an epiphany, ( co incidentally just when public sentiment was changing). But I don't trust him to protect women's rights if it is a choice between his career and women.

This is the measure of the man, isn’t it? A nasty misogynist who has done NOTHING to implement the Supreme Court ruling of April 2025.

@Alexandra2001 the point is that what is written on HMG’s own website with regard to stamp duty is self explanatory. You have to pay the higher rate if you own a second property, even if that property is in trust for your child and even if you are not a trustee of the trust. How much more tax advice did she need?

I think she has got off very lightly and that treatment is not available to others when they also make a genuine mistake. Could Rayner’s case have been construed as carelessness? 100%.

anyway, back to Streeting. No, no and no again.

So self explanatory that the first tax advice she sought was "no, you do not need to pay the higher rate..."

Like i said, you don't know her specific case nor her defence to HMRC.

...and so far, WS hasn't triggered a leadership contest.... so thats another "rumour" with no legs...

Well, his NHS improvements are subjective. Nothing has changed for this area. It’s still a shitshow. He’s probably the best of a bad bunch though. Without proper reform, the NHS won’t improve. 🤷‍♀️

Rayner, despite being ‘cleared’, suddenly, of a tax fiddle, is hopeless. 🙄. I know she has promised to give Waspi’s compensation, but taxing the middle and rich classes more to pay for it, doesn’t feel like a good option. And I’m talking as a WASPI. 🙄

Miliband would be completely silly. He’s failed once.

Theres a complete lack of talent to choose from.

Depressing really.

That is interesting to know about Wes Streeting regarding the trans letter.

He seems to be burning up all the political support he had by desperately trying to push Starmer to resign. I do not think he is all that popular with the Labour membership and hoped for MPs to coronate him. He is going to be disappointed

I think if Starmervstands he will win, because the Left want to wait for Burnham and Streeting doesn't have the support. He should go for it. He's ineffectual with his party but he may as well crack down on them now and tell them to put up or shut up until the next election. Most of them will lose their seats. Especially the ones who think going further Left is going to help them

He’s just resigned as health secretary

Some things are measurable:

An estimated 65.3 per cent of patients in England in March began hospital treatment within 18 weeks of referral, up from 62.6 per cent in February and the highest percentage since November 2021.

This means the Government and NHS England have hit the target they set for 65 per cent of people to be seen within this timeframe by March.

The overall waiting list for planned hospital treatment in England has also fallen for the fifth month in a row and is now at its lowest since summer 2022.

However, interim targets on cancer care and A&E have not quite been met, with experts calling for further action to sustain the progress made so far.

https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/nhs-targets-wes-streeting-5HjdZBK_2/

Are you sure it's a rumour with no legs?

Wes Streeting resigns as health secretary, saying he has lost confidence in PM's leadership

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cwy21gpr1kzt

Excellent resignation letter, especially the bits about his achievements as Health Secretary:

"Today's figures confirm that we surpassed our waiting times target despite strikes, and that waiting lists fell by 110,000 in March - the biggest monthly drop outside of Covid since 2008 meaning that we are on track to achieve the fastest improvement in NHS waiting times in history.

The only question that matters in government is whether we leave our successors a better situation than we inherited. Ambulance response times for heart attacks and strokes are now the fastest in five years. A&E waiting times are improving, with four-hour waiting figures also the best in five years. We've recruited 2,000 more GPs and satisfaction has risen from 60 per cent to 74.5 per cent since we came to office. We hit our target of recruiting 8,500 mental health staff three years early. We've achieved this at the same as balancing the books for the first time in nine years and smashing the 2 per cent NHS productivity target by achieving 2.8 per cent, which means the investment we're putting in goes further and that the public can have greater confidence that their money is being well-spent."

The political editor of the Telegraph points to an interesting line in Wes Streeting’s resignation letter that could significantly change how the leadership crisis in Downing Street plays out.

The former Health Secretary said he wanted a “debate” in the Labour Party and a “battle of ideas”, which is a coded reference to a leadership contest.

But he also said he wanted the process to have the “best possible field of candidates”. That would appear to suggest he wants Andy Burnham, the Manchester mayor, to be allowed to run.

Mr Burnham is not currently an MP, but his allies want any leadership contest to be delayed until after he runs in a by-election. He is the most popular contender with the public, polls show.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/05/14/keir-starmer-live-rayner-wes-streeting-leadership-contest/