Streeting is so desperate to replace Starmer – but there’s 1 reason he’ll never be liked

It’s almost impossible to believe anyone could inflict more damage on the Labour Party than Sir Keir Starmer.

The walking talking HR handbook has made such a mess of his time as Prime Minister that the party – perhaps country – he leads (for now at least) is unlikely to ​ever recover.

At the heart of his ill-fated time at the wheel have been surreptitious attempts to take Britain back into the EU. In other words, to try and subtly reverse Brexit.

Starmer’s errors, misjudgements, and poor performances are too numerous to list here.

But it was obvious – not least from a man who voted Remain and who backed a second referendum – that he would try and do all he could to bring us back into line with Brussels. Except he was too cowardly to explicitly say as such.

For his part, at least Wes Streeting has had the nerve to utter the unimaginable.

On the eve of the 10th anniversary of the EU referendum, Streeting – who quit as Health Secretary to knife Starmer in a ​forthcoming leadership contest, had the nerve to say Brexit was a catastrophic mistake and he will take us back in.

The trouble is – and as he will find out – the genie can’t be put back into the bottle.

We’re out but sore losers like Streeting and his pearl clutching pals in the Labour Party, at the BBC, and across the public sector, have been unable to accept the result of a vote cast by 17.4m people he now wants to represent.

In his leadership pitch the political pipsqueak warned Labour to stop being afraid to tackle the big political issues if it is to “smash” Reform. If it fails, he said, the party risks becoming the ​”handmaidens of Nigel Farage​” and overseeing the “break-up of the United Kingdom”.

Brave, perhaps, and it will no doubt resonate with Europeanists like Sir Tony Blair, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Jean-Claude Juncker, Guy Verhofstadt, Ursula von der Leyen, and Michel Barnier, but he has just signed the party’s death warrant.

But not just that. He will have most certainly done for leadership rival Andy Burnham’s prospects in leave-backing Makerfield where he is set to contest a by-election against Reform on June 18 having done the dirty and turned his back on the people of Manchester by flouncing off from his job as mayor.

Streeting’s argument is that Starmer’s government (in which he served) has been too “timid”.

Oblivious to the economic hardship his party has inflicted, a cost of living crisis that persists, and the contempt with which Labour is held in all four corners of the country, Streeting is so befuddled by dogma he wants to change course and abruptly steer Britain into choppy waters and navigate another decade of divisiveness.

In his mind, cosying up to the bloc is more important than repairing Britain’s broken public services. It would be the ultimate betrayal of the 2016 referendum result. It wouldn’t be a recipe for success, it would be a recipe for disaster.

Labour was trounced by Nigel Farage and Reform at the local elections earlier this month, so pursuing a policy of marrying the same partner so soon after a bitter divorce would trigger a voter backlash.

Streeting could do worse than have a chat with his colleague and old stager Graham Stringer – the Labour MP who has served continuously since 1997 – and who has a much better idea of the temperature of the nation than most.

He could see what slippery Starmer was up to when he said our lame duck prime minister was hellbent on “sabotaging Brexit by stealth from the day after the referendum”.

And not just that, he also warned: “If people knew what a reversal would mean, there would be a bigger majority to stay out.”

If that is what he said about Starmer what will he make of Streeting’s ambition to fast-track the UK back to Brussels?

Streeting and Burnham have been put on notice. And so has Farage.

Britain is paralysed by political and societal friction. That Labour is still pushing closer ties with the EU just shows how out of touch it is.

At this rate Streeting’s flirtation with the party leadership will be so brief he’ll be known as Wes Fleeting.