As Westminster rushed to read and watch Rayner’s interviews, Streeting had still not decided whether he was staying or going.<\/p>\n
“He didn’t begin the week planning to resign”, said a colleague. But his departure had become more inevitable with each passing day.<\/p>\n
In a brief face-to-face meeting on Wednesday, Streeting told Sir Keir he had lost confidence in the prime minister’s leadership.<\/p>\n
Yet the lack of clarity over the now-former health secretary’s future had led critics to dub him a “bottler” who had not amassed anywhere near the numbers of MPs to formally launch a challenge against Sir Keir.<\/p>\n
Streeting’s allies insists that is not true. “I’ve seen the spreadsheet,” one claimed.<\/p>\n
Another colleague added: “He’d been calling round MPs and had got the numbers he needed, but through those conversations he’d concluded that any contest would have to enable the broadest set of candidates. <\/p>\n
“That meant giving Andy Burnham a chance to state his intention and come back if he wanted.”<\/p>\n
Team Streeting were also fully aware that without a credible victory he would struggle to command the support of Labour MPs if difficult legislation came to the fore.<\/p>\n
Streeting made his final decision on Thursday morning. <\/p>\n
“He had a few cabinet ministers and people in Number 10 asking him not to go,”, said a supporter. <\/p>\n
“But he spoke to friends and colleagues in Parliament and made up his mind.”<\/p>\n
Streeting drafted his resignation letter in his wood-panelled ministerial office in the Palace of Westminster.<\/p>\n
He did not take the decision at all lightly, one friend said. <\/p>\n
“But once he’d made it, he was certain it was right and honourable. It was done with a heavy heart but with total conviction.”<\/p>\n
Streeting was with his staff and a few supportive MPs when the letter was emailed to Number 10. <\/p>\n
Shortly after at 12:58 BST on Thursday he posted the bombshell news on X.<\/p>\n
At that moment, Sir Keir was on the way to meet apprentices in south west London.<\/p>\n
Soon after Streeting’s announcement, journalists were told the prime minister’s visit was cancelled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Westminster rushed to read and watch Rayner’s interviews, Streeting had still not decided whether he was staying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-586532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}