Starmer backs Streeting and refutes ‘completely unacceptable’ No 10 leaks over ‘coup attempt’: Latest

Sir Keir Starmer “has lost control of his Government, he’s lost the confidence of his party, and lost the trust of the British people”, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said.

Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions, Mrs Badenoch said: “I wouldn’t have made the stupid mistake in the first place of putting up the jobs tax and killing jobs.

“Since they came in, it’s been disaster after disaster. The Deputy Prime Minister, the new Deputy Prime Minister, is clueless about how many illegal migrant sex offenders he’s let loose. The Culture Secretary breaking the rules to give her donor a top job. Taxes set to rise even further, unemployment at levels not seen since lockdown.

“And in the middle of it, a weak Prime Minister at war with his own Cabinet.

“It’s not just him, it is all of them. There is no replacement, it is all of them. Two weeks before the Budget, isn’t it the case that this Prime Minister has lost control of his Government, he’s lost the confidence of his party, and lost the trust of the British people?”

The Prime Minister replied: “The stupid mistakes were made over 14 long years. They broke the economy and now they think they can lecture us, and now they’ve got this unserious idea that they can find £47 billion of cuts without saying where they’re going to come from.”

Health Secretary Wes Streeting has addressed leadership speculation as he attends the NHS conference in Manchester.

He said he wanted to start by “addressing this leadership speculation upfront”.

“I know there is concern about how long the man in the top job has left,” he said. “Let me reassure everyone I am doing everything I can to persuade Jim Mackey to stay around as long as possible.”

He referred to Sir Jim Mackey the Chief Executive Officer of NHS England and not Sir Keir Starmer, who he is rumoured to be challenging the premiership of.

We’ll bring you the updates as Wes Streeting speaks on NHS reform at a conference in Manchester.

Stay tuned for the top lines.

Number 10 indicated on Wednesday afternoon that the prime minister does still have confidence in his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney.

Asked about the matter during PMQs, Sir Keir Starmer declined to explicitly say he had confidence in his senior aide, saying that his team, including Mr McSweeney, are “absolutely focussed on delivering for the country”.

The prime minister’s press secretary said afterwards that the PM does have confidence in his aide and pointed to his words in the chamber.

It looks as if someone in Downing Street has misjudged their pre-emptive warning to plotters who would seek to undermine Keir Starmer and his leadership. It appears that top brass within Labour feared that the Budget, in two weeks, would be so unpopular that it would trigger a challenge to the PM.

Selected journalists have been told that Starmer would refuse to go quietly, and instead stand and fight any challenge – and that the markets would react badly to the instability.

But the briefing war has got out of hand. Some of it was aimed squarely at Wes Streeting, the ambitious and inescapably interesting health secretary.

Downing Street will not be drawn into commenting on suggestions there is a toxic culture at the heart of Government.

Asked if the Prime Minister was concerned about sexism within No 10, the Prime Minister’s press secretary insisted there were “fantastic women at the very top of Government”.

Pressed if this meant Health Secretary Wes Streeting was wrong to talk about the need for a change of “culture” in No 10, she replied: “No. I am just setting out that we have fantastic women. I am not commenting directly on his comments.”

Asked if the PM was concerned about discontent among Labour backbenchers with his record, the press secretary told reporters: “You have got the Prime Minister’s words about always wanting to go further and faster on delivering for the British people. That is his sole focus. That is his Government’s sole focus. That is what Labour MPs are focused on as well.”

Sir Keir “engages regularly” with the Parliamentary Labour Party, she added, and he will continue to do so in the weeks ahead of the Budget and beyond.

The chairwoman of the Red Wall group of Labour MPs, Jo White, blamed the leadership coup rumours on “a group of people who think they’re much cleverer than the rest of us, who spend their time selectively briefing journalists and stirring the pot”.

Another Labour MP told the PA news agency “whoever thought it was clever wants shooting” and “there is clearly a cultural problem”.

The Independent’s political editor David Maddox reports:

The prime minister was never going to have an easy PMQs after his own team briefed out claims that he was facing a coup.It made it one of the easier outings in PMQs that Kemi Badenoch will ever have and she did not fail to deliver.

The Tory leader went straight after a quote from health secretary Wes Streeting this morning where he called for those behind the claims he was leading a coup should be sacked while complaining of a “toxic culture” in Downing Street.

Forced into a corner, the prime minister was pressed on the role of his chief of staff M

McSweeney has been blamed squarely for the debacle last night and it was noticeable that for the first time, Sir Keir was not fulsome in his praise of defence of him.

It means that the result of this briefing may be that in order to survive the man who put Starmer in Downing Street could be the one sacrificed to save him.

This would have been unthinkable 24 hours ago and may still not happen but the focus is very much on those two men and whether there is room in Downing Street for the both.

Dismissing the speculation, the health secretary said the claims were “self-defeating and self-destructive”, comparing them to conspiracy theories.

He told Sky News on Wednesday: “I think whoever’s been briefing this has been watching too much Celebrity Traitors.”