Starmer must make plans to resign as soon as Makerfield by-election result revealed, Streeting says

Wes Starmer has urged Keir Starmer to set the date of his departure from Downing Street on Friday morning in the wake of the Makerfield by-election result.

The would-be prime minister also said he had “no doubt” there would be a Labour leadership contest, even if Sir Keir refused to go, as he insisted he had the support of the 80-odd MPs necessary to be on the ballot paper.

Andy Burnham, the frontrunner to replace Sir Keir, is due to find out if he has won the by-election, and with it the chance to return to Parliament and challenge the Labour leader, in the early hours of Friday morning.

Answering questions from journalists, Mr Streeting said he hoped Mr Burnham wins and added: “I would hope that after Thursday’s by-election, when the results are in… I hope the prime minister will at that stage reflect on his own position and set out a timetable.

“I think that would be a better way forward for everyone.”

His call came after he made a speech in central London setting out his pitch to be PM, in which he ruled out an early general election, backed the triple lock on pensions and praised a former Tory chancellor.

But the PM hit back, insisting that he would prove his rivals wrong and “carry on with what I was elected to do”.

Speaking at the G7 summit in France, Sir Keir also said he would “bring back the change that people desperately need” after the by-election.

Mr Streeting has faced questions about the level of his support among MPs since he failed to trigger a contest when he resigned from Sir Keir’s cabinet last month.

He said he had wanted to wait for the by-election result as “one of the inevitable candidates is on the ballot paper. And had I tried to pull a fast one and get ahead of Andy Burnham before he came back, I think that would have been foul play.”

Pushed on whether he would trigger a contest after the Makerfield result, he said he had “no doubt” that a leadership election would happen.

And he said that Sir Keir’s legacy would be as the leader that “saved the Labour Party from oblivion” after the Jeremy Corbyn years.

On his vision to lead the country, he was asked if he could rule out an early general election.

“Yes,” he said, adding that Labour had a “mandate for a five year parliament”.

He also said the controversial triple lock on pensions was “here to stay” until at least the next election, due in 2029.

In criticism of the government he recently left, he hit out at the “optics” of spending billions on walking and cycling, while the defence secretary quits over spending on his sector.

As he appealed to the centre of British politics, in a move that will raise eyebrows among some Labour members, he called for the return of ex-Tory chancellor Nigel Lawson’s system of tax reliefs for founders of “fast-growing, UK domiciled businesses”.

He warned his own party a leadership contest risks becoming “a Dutch auction of the most expensive and popular pledges to appeal to the party faithful at the expense of the British people”, adding that he would not let it on his watch.

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