Streeting Denies Plot to Replace Starmer as UK Prime Minister

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00:00I'm not going in to demand the Prime Minister's resignation. I support the

00:04Prime Minister. I have done since he was elected leader of the Labour Party. I

00:07didn't vote for him in the leadership election but I did support him from the

00:10moment he was elected and I supported him all the way through at points when he

00:14did things that no one thought was possible. They didn't think he could

00:17turn around the Labour Party. He did. They didn't think he could win a general

00:21election. He did. People are now questioning whether he can change the

00:24country. He will. So that was the Health Secretary himself denying that he's

00:28plotting to oust Prime Minister Keir Starmer. But he also went on to

00:32criticise Starmer. He said that calling your own MPs feral is not very helpful

00:37and that the Downing Street briefings tried to, in his words, kneecap him. And so

00:43you might ask whether actually there is a part of restricting that is challenging

00:48the Prime Minister even if he's publicly denying it. So Lizzie, that draws a line

00:53on everything then. This is done. No more leadership challenges. The Prime

00:56Minister is safe and secure. We can look through the polling numbers.

00:59Well, I think the best way to answer that is to look backwards. So we had a

01:03crescendo of leadership challenges around the Labour Party conference,

01:07including, remember, from Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Manchester. And he had to walk

01:11that back and it became presented that Starmer had regained control of his party.

01:18Another name that swirls is the former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner. And don't

01:23forget, when Donald Trump came to town, Wes Streeting openly criticised the US

01:28President, which broke with Keir Starmer's softly, softly approach. And so the leadership

01:33challenges are nothing new. And they seem to continue, at least according to Alex Wickham,

01:38our political editor, and what he's been hearing in Downing Street, that Streeting's

01:43team is plotting a challenge behind the scenes. What's interesting is Streeting is actually

01:50at risk in his own seat. He only won it by 528 seats, a razor-thin margin. So he might

01:57not actually be re-elected if, for example, an independent pro-Palestine candidate challenges

02:03him at the next election, whenever that may be.

02:05OK. I'm going to channel our listeners who are thinking about business and economics and

02:09what it means for the UK, rather than the ins and outs of the politics. And I will say

02:14this, though. I'm looking at the manifesto that the Labour Party published before the

02:20election, which is only 16 months ago. Basically, the first paragraph. This election is about

02:25change. A chance to stop the endless conservative chaos that has directly harmed the finances of

02:32every family in Britain. That is the opening line. This is what the Labour Party wanted to

02:37deliver better economic circumstances. Surely it's going to worry investors if there's political

02:43uncertainty. And that's Starmer's team's argument. Who can forget the political instability under

02:48Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak? That's exactly what Starmer said he would end by becoming

02:55Prime Minister. It's interesting, isn't it, that all of this is happening just weeks before a budget

02:59as well. And it could be so unpopular if, you referred to the manifesto, that Chancellor Rachel

03:05Reeves breaks that and raises income tax, as there is so much speculation she will. But interestingly,

03:12our economists just this morning say if Reeves can get setting aside a bigger fiscal buffer past

03:19Parliament, then the 10-year gilt yield could fall as much as 50 basis points. That would be a £6

03:24billion reduction in debt interest payments by the end of the decade. If Labour, under Starmer and

03:30Reeves, can get this budget through and then they get the markets behind them, perhaps that could

03:35save Starmer all the way to the next election. And we have a reminder of of how the markets are

03:39watching. The political shifting sands in the UK with the gilt markets underperforming other

03:45sovereign debt across Europe and certainly the US today with yields up between one to two basis points.

03:50Not major moves, but it is there and the gilt markets are standing out. It's not quite what we

03:54saw when Rachel Reeves cried in Parliament. You'll remember that because the bond vigilante is seeming to

04:00rush to her defence. And this is the point that the Prime Minister is going to be leaning into. We did have

04:03unemployment data yesterday, 5% unemployment in the UK. Today, and that led to a big rally in

04:09gilts as markets started to say, okay, hang on, the BOE is going to cut in December. Today,

04:14question marks over that data, Lizzie? Yeah, it wasn't just traders who seized on that data,

04:18it was also opposition politicians. Of course, this 5% unemployment figure, the highest since the

04:23pandemic. And as you say, traders upping their bets on a Christmas cut from the Bank of England,

04:27JP Morgan changing its call from February to December for when they are to cut next. But Megan

04:33Green on the Monetary Policy Committee coming out and saying, you really have to be careful with

04:37the labour force survey, reminding us of all the data collection issues that we've seen with it of

04:43late. And remember, the tax rises by the Chancellor at the last autumn budget have been blamed for putting

04:48the squeeze on employers, creating unemployment. Well, Green says, actually, if you look at the high

04:54frequency data, the brunt of that is behind us. Yeah, I think it's very interesting. And that idea of trust

05:01in data trust in the Office for National Statistics, it is a theme that a lot, I see a lot of writers,

05:07a lot of thinkers in the UK are talking about, including Bloomberg's own Rosa Prince, our opinion

05:12columnist. You know, I think you can put this political issue in the broader context of the

05:17declining trust in national institutions in the UK that includes the government. But also,

05:23I thought interestingly, she names the Church of England, the Royal Family and banks. Yeah,

05:28but it's not just the ONS, is it? It's also the BLS on the other side of the pond,

05:32the Bureau of Labour Statistics. Yeah, absolutely. Interesting. Lizzie,

05:35thank you so much for being with us. That is our UK correspondent, Lizzie Burden.

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