In British politics, moments of genuine surprise are rare. The rhythms of Westminster – its factionalism, its gossip circuits, and its cyclical crises – follow a pattern so predictable that one could almost map the life cycle of a scandal before it begins. Yet even by these standards, the recent episode involving Keir Starmer, Wes Streeting, and No 10’s now-notorious briefings managed to generate a special blend of farce, dysfunction, and political déjà vu.
According to reports, allies of Prime Minister Keir Starmer briefed journalists that Wes Streeting, the health secretary, was plotting a leadership challenge. Streeting denied this outright, prompting Starmer to apologise – only to later insist that No 10 had never issued such briefings at all. This denial was so implausible that one government source, dripping with sarcasm, remarked that journalists must have been “tricked by several impostors posing as No 10 staff.”
The episode is absurd on its face. It is also almost entirely irrelevant to the daily concerns of voters. Yet in the space between the accusation and the attempted retraction, the event served as a revealing microcosm of the state of British governance, the dynamics inside Labour, and the broader decline of political seriousness in the UK. In many ways, it appears less an isolated crisis and more a preview of what the coming years might look like.
What we witnessed in this brief but telling drama was a classic four-stage cycle: crisis, personnel drama, the emergence of a supposedly salvationary leadership contender, and finally a return to crisis. It is the “death spiral” pattern typical of governments that have exhausted their mandate long before their term ends. First comes the panic, then the infighting, then the desperate search for a new hero – someone, anyone – who can stabilise the party’s fortunes. And finally, once the figure has been anointed, the cycle repeats.
Those observing events from afar often assume that political actors operate with elaborate strategic intent. Commentators asked: was Morgan McSweeney, Downing Street’s chief of staff, moving preemptively to flush out potential challengers? Was Starmer complicit in the scheme – or perhaps a captive, surrounded by overly ambitious aides and unable to control the machinery around him? Was Streeting expertly positioning himself by denying the rumours with just the right balance of confidence and humour?
But there is a simpler explanation, and one that British political observers too often overlook: perhaps there was no plan at all. Perhaps these are not moves on a chessboard but instinctive, dysfunctional lurches by people operating under immense pressure. Politics, like any high-stress workplace, is susceptible to paranoia, rivalry, and old grudges resurfacing when crisis hits. The constant assumption that the chaos emanating from Downing Street must be part of some grand game belies recent political history – from Dominic Cummings’s spectacular fall from “master strategist” to fringe social media ranter – to show that we are often dealing not with masterminds, but with exhausted, reactive, and frequently overwhelmed individuals.
Wes Streeting has now entered the stage of British political mythology traditionally reserved for the “great hope.” His response to the briefings has already been described breathlessly as a “masterclass,” delivered with “deadly” seriousness, “great humour,” and “streetwise” command. This is political narrative machinery operating at full throttle: take a figure whose public profile is moderately appealing and inflate him into a potential saviour on the basis of minimal evidence.
This narrative inflation is familiar. It is precisely what elevated Rishi Sunak into a supposed stabilising force in 2022, a politician whose entire aura was constructed around a single well-received speech and a BBC video that depicted him as Superman. The search for a messianic figure becomes most intense when a government is floundering, and Labour’s current predicament – economic pressures, political drift, internal fractures, and the rise of Reform – provides fertile ground for such fantasies.
But the hero narrative quickly falls apart upon inspection. Streeting’s majority was slashed to barely 500 votes. His flagship NHS reforms have been criticised by the Institute for Government as “chaotic and incoherent.” And despite his calm media appearances, his policy offerings are far from transformative. The Labour government’s victory in 2024 was “wide but thin”: broad geographic reach masking extremely shallow support. Streeting embodies this dynamic. He is a competent communicator in a party lacking them – not a visionary leader poised to redirect a country.
The deeper problem transcends personalities. Labour’s crisis is structural: a lack of direction, a politics defined by negative space rather than constructive ambition. Pragmatism, once a method, has become the governing philosophy itself. Starmer’s version of Labourism is not built around a coherent vision of the state, society, or economy. It is a project of cautious incrementalism, of “not scaring the horses,” of reassuring the powerful while maintaining public order.
Streeting’s infamous comment – “Every day, we should drag a sacred cow of our party to the town market place and slaughter it” – captures Labour’s governing ethos: internal iconoclasm without external purpose. But voters living through a cost-of-living crisis, rising food prices, and stagnant wages do not benefit from symbolic gestures. And yet the government continues to elevate “illegal immigration” as the crisis “tearing our country apart,” as though stripping asylum seekers of their valuables will bring down grocery bills or stabilise the economy.
The current moment represents the transition into what might be called Labour’s “musical chairs era”: constant reshuffling of personnel, constant talk of leadership, and constant internal jockeying for position. When the music stops, someone is briefly in the spotlight – but not because policy has changed, nor because governance has improved. Instead, the cycle persists because the government’s void of purpose makes personality drama the only fuel remaining.
When politicians focus inward, the electorate becomes a spectator to a failing political class governed by self-preservation. The moment internal rivalries replace governance as the party’s central preoccupation, decline becomes a terminal condition. And like all terminal conditions in politics, it may drag on for years, repeating itself endlessly, each repetition a dim echo of previous collapses.
Labour’s present crisis is not just about Starmer, Streeting, or No 10’s culture. It is about a political system unable to regenerate itself, where governance has become secondary to managing narratives, soothing markets, and cycling through figureheads. As history shows, once a government begins reenacting the rituals of its own demise, the end is no longer a question of “if,” but “when.”
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