Britain’s health minister spent less than 20 minutes in Downing Street early on Wednesday for a meeting with Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
The meeting with Wes Streeting, who is seen as a leadership rival who could move against the prime minister now, had been dubbed by British media as a showdown.
Starmer has so far defied calls to quit from around 90 Labour lawmakers who blame him for heavy losses in local elections last week and say he has failed to deliver reforms since coming to power in a landslide 2024 election victory.
While almost a quarter of the prime minister’s elected lawmakers have called for him to go and a handful of junior ministers have resigned in protest, potential rivals for his job have yet to trigger a formal leadership challenge.
