By Andrew MacAskill and Elizabeth Piper
LONDON, May 14 (Reuters) - When British Prime Minister Keir Starmer faced growing calls to resign at the weekend, his health secretary, Wes Streeting, went to see "The Devil Wears Prada 2", a film which depicts a rival challenging a weakened leader.
The parallels were difficult to escape on Thursday when Streeting was the first senior minister to resign in order to call for a leadership contest to replace his boss.
While Streeting stopped short of triggering a formal leadership contest, his withering criticism of Starmer summed up the feelings of some in the governing Labour Party and piled pressure on the leader to set out a timetable for his departure.
"Where we need vision, we have a vacuum. Where we need direction, we have drift," Streeting said in a letter to the prime minister to announce his resignation.
STREETING WOULD BE A PRO-BUSINESS CANDIDATE
Long seen as a potential challenger to Starmer, Streeting was forced to deny last year that he was plotting to oust the prime minister. Now, their rivalry is out in the open.
Streeting is a divisive figure in the centre-left Labour Party, who, last month, became the first cabinet minister to suggest the government should cut welfare spending to increase investment in defence, arguing the money had "to come from somewhere".
The 43-year-old, who has made his long-time admiration for former prime minister Tony Blair well known, would be the most pro-business of all the potential candidates. He said last year he felt "really uncomfortable" with current levels of taxation and believes the state should operate more efficiently.
His supporters argue he is one of Labour's most effective communicators, capable of injecting energy and humour into a government that has often lacked both during its first two years in power.
FAMILY HISTORY MARKED BY CRIME AND CHALLENGES
If successful in any leadership election, Streeting would become Britain's first openly gay prime minister.
For now, he has put the brakes on triggering a formal contest, arguing that he supported a contest with a broad field of candidates.
"It is now clear ... that Labour MPs (members of parliament) and Labour (trade) Unions want the debate about what comes next to be a battle of ideas, not of personalities or petty factionalism," he wrote in his resignation letter.
That might help one of his main rivals, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, who does not hold a seat in parliament and therefore cannot currently stand in any contest.
Polling suggests Streeting would struggle in a head-to-head contest with Burnham, and his candidacy would be fiercely opposed by some of the party's left-wing lawmakers.
Streeting is no stranger to overcoming difficult circumstances.
His grandmother gave birth to his mother while handcuffed and serving a prison sentence. His grandfather was an armed robber who held up shops with a shotgun in a rubber mask he nicknamed Claude.
Reflecting on his life at the Labour Party conference last year, Streeting joked that if his grandfather could see him now, he would say: "You work with more crooks than I did."
In Streeting's autobiography published in 2023, he recounts how his 18-year-old mother defied pressure to have an abortion by eating an English breakfast, known as a fry-up. She had been told not to eat beforehand, and the abortion had to be cancelled.
Streeting also recovered from kidney cancer five years ago.
Having grown up in poverty, he was encouraged by his teachers to study history at the University of Cambridge, where he became the first person in his family to graduate.
There, he was elected the university's student union president, an experience that set him on a path into politics.
LEFT-WING LABOUR LAWMAKERS WARY OF STREETING
Streeting was elected to parliament in 2015.
Named by Starmer as the party's health spokesman six years later while in opposition, he was made health minister when the party won the national election in 2024, one of the toughest jobs in government.
Streeting had some success in bringing down waiting lists, though renewed strike action by doctors this year has undermined that progress.
Over recent months, Streeting has spoken candidly about the government's failings.
In November, he criticised what he called some of the "toxic" briefings coming from Downing Street and said allies of the prime minister were trying to "kneecap" him.
In February, Streeting released messages with Peter Mandelson, the former British ambassador to the United States, in which he warned the government had "no growth strategy".
But he denied having a close friendship with Mandelson, who was fired last year over his links to the late U.S. convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein.
Streeting's candidacy would be opposed by many on the left of the party.
John McDonnell, the party's finance chief under socialist leader Jeremy Corbyn, said this week Streeting was a protege of two disliked figures in Labour's history: Mandelson and Starmer's ousted former chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney.
McDonnell warned against a rushed leadership contest that excluded Burnham, saying it would be "Mandelson's & Morgan's revenge" on the party.
(Editing by Alison Williams)
