Wes Streeting's resignation illustrates clever tactics - but featured one glaring omission, writes Andrew Marr

Now, let’s try to think ahead. There were two really significant passages around Streeting’s resignation statement, and one of them wasn’t even in it.

The bit that was, talked about how Keir Starmer would not lead Labour into the next election but should only be replaced after a battle of ideas, not of personalities or petty factionalism. Streeting went on: “it needs to be broad and it needs the best possible field of candidates.”

He is reaching out to other parts of the Labour family, including the Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham; he’s not trying to arrogantly bounce Labour into a limited, premature contest.

The sentence that didn’t appear follows from that. It was the one going “and therefore, I am today launching my leadership campaign.“ Because, today, he isn’t.

Now Mr. Streeting’s enemies - and after today’s events, which I think we can call 'Wexit', there’s plenty of them - will say, ha ha ha, that just shows he hasn’t got enough supporters, the 81 he needs to trigger a contest.

He insists that isn’t right. Instead, he seems prepared to wait for a timetable to allow others to come in and for there to be a proper contest of all the best people. This is right, in principle, but it’s also clever tactics.

If Streeting launches an early contest – and he still could – the left might well hold fire, allowing a fight between him and Starmer alone. The numbers suggest Starmer would win: the left would have demolished its most prominent enemy, and could then pick off the prime minister with a candidate of their choosing at a time of their choosing. 

That is what Streeting must try to avoid – although, by the way, I hope this left-right thing is overdone and Labour can have a grown-up debate about how to get more growth, how best to defend ourselves, how to deal with the border and the rest of it.

Now we wait to hear from many others, including Angela Rayner, Ed Miliband, Andy Burnham and Al Carns. But the person we most need to hear from, of course, is the Prime Minister himself. Does he now shrug off the “Wesignation” reshuffle the cabinet - as he’s had to reshuffle the junior levels of the government - and simply, in Churchill’s phrase, keep buggering on?

There’s been a lot of discussion inside Downing Street about this, and it must be very tempting. The roof wouldn’t fall in. The world would keep turning.

But try to look ahead and imagine how it would be, with more than 100 MPs publicly declaring they have no faith in you, disastrously low opinion polls and voter verdicts, and the knowledge that at any time, after just one more slip, an eloquent cabinet-level critic will come after you. That’s no way to live, never mind to govern.

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Andrew Marr is an author, journalist and presenter for LBC.

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