Labour faces ‘serious questions’ if Wakefield by-election lost, says Wes Streeting

Red-wall contest is must-win to show Labour on ‘path back to government’, says frontbencher

This week’s by-election in Wakefield is a must-win for Labour, senior frontbencher Wes Streeting has said.

The shadow health secretary said Sir Keir Starmer’s party would face “serious questions” if it failed to take the crucial red-wall seat back from the Tories.

Thursday’s contest in West Yorkshire is a “big test” of whether voters in key seats in the north and Midlands are ready to put their trust in Labour again, the shadow minister said.

“We win it – it shows Labour is on the path back to government. We lose – we will face serious questions,” he told The Mirror.

Mr Streeting also said Labour was “urgently” considering its manifesto offer to the electorate, following speculation that Boris Johnson could call an early general election in 2022.

“We’re thinking more urgently about what the manifesto will look like, what our priorities are, what we can do in the first term of a Labour government versus what we will have to park for the second term of a Labour government,” he said.

The senior figure added: “That’s the level of ambition we’re thinking of. We don’t want to be a flash in the pan for four or five years. We really want to deliver real change in our country.”

Mr Streeting, who has been touted as a major contender for the leadership if Sir Keir was forced to stand down, also dismissed Labour’s 2019 manifesto under Jeremy Corbyn by saying Labour would not promise “the moon on a stick” next time around.

Labour frontbencher Lisa Nandy has dismissed as “absolute nonsense” claims that Sir Keir is already making plans for who will succeed him as party leader in the event that he is forced to resign over the “Beergate” saga.

Sir Keir, who has repeatedly insisted that no lockdown rules were broken when he had beer and a curry with staff in April 2021, has pledged to quit if fined and is currently awaiting the outcome of a Durham Police probe.

Meanwhile, Conservative MPs have told The Independent that a Wakefield by-election loss to Labour is now “priced in” and will not in itself cause Mr Johnson’s premiership major damage.

But losing the Tiverton & Honiton by-election – also being held on 23 June following the resignation of Neil Parish over the watching of porn in parliament – to the Liberal Democrats would be more significant.

A senior Tory MP, pointing to the “enormous” Tory majority of 24,000 in the Devon seat, told The Independent: “To lose it by one would be a disaster.”

Another Conservative MP agreed, saying: “The scale of the results is important. If we lose Wakefield by a lot and Tiverton by a few thousand people will think, ‘Bloody hell’.”

Tory campaign leaflets and advertisements relating to the forthcoming by-elections in Devon and West Yorkshire are reported to omit any mention of Mr Johnson.