Wes sweetens pill as he quits job to take on PM

Labour turmoil in leadership race

Sketch

After a prolonged period in which journalists standing around doing next to nothing outside Downing Street, the news finally dropped.

Whoever else might be moving out, it most certainly wasn’t going to be Larry the Cat, who has stalked many Prime Ministers in his time lurking round Number 10. Yes, he had seen it all and heard it all before but no-one was to displace the moggy and deprive him of a roof over his head. After all that would contravene government policy. Even cats have no-fault rentals.

The apparent back-door Downing Street dithering was having an acute impact on delirious hacks, who, having nothing to report at all for 72 hours, could not contain their excitement that some major news had broken and Larry had been liberated.

It wasn’t quite what the gathering mob, desperate for any crumbs of news in the traditional sense, wanted but it was something.

The actual news was that the health secretary Wes Streeting had finally decided he would resign.

It was only a few weeks since he had intimated his plan, which was a modest wait when compared to the length of time some patients have had to wait on trolleys in corridors.

Wes tried his best to appear entirely reasonable in a two-page letter explaining his decision. Basically, it amounted to a claim that while great strides had been made in rebuilding the NHS there was now a situation in which the government didn’t know what to do next. There was a vacuum where there should be a vision, Wes asserted. He did his best to appear humble but largely failed; the ritual exchange of letters was a classic war of attrition - the two protagonists slugging it out on Commons headed paper as if it bestowed some kind of legitimacy.

Now the pair moved on to battle it out over an unspecified time period; it could be weeks or months. Who knows? Labour just makes these things up. Wes appealed to Starmer to facilitate a selection process that was as wide as possible, which no doubt delighted Ed Miliband, who sounds desperate to get on the ballot paper.

Yes that Ed Miliband. Labour really does have a problem if Ed is the solution. We’ll find out in due course.