Robert Peston on the chaos in Downing Street

Robert Peston on X last night, after someone at 10 Downing Street gave selected journalists a briefing accusing Health Secretary Wes Streeting and unspecified other Labour cabinet ministers of plotting against the Prime Minister.


"We are witnessing full-on Downing Street chaos tonight - which has led the official spokesman for the health secretary Wes Streeting to give me a formal statement denying that Streeting is plotting behind the scenes to oust the PM. 

So many aspects of this are comic. But my favourite is that Kitty Ussher, who used to be a Labour Treasury minister and is now a senior director at Barclays,  gave a presentation to all Labour special advisers, at the invitation of Downing Street officials, in which she said government bond prices were depressed because investors fear that Starmer and Reeves would be ousted.  

The message from Ussher was “be loyal or government borrowing costs will go through the roof”.  


So what has happened in the last few hours?  Out of an almost clear blue sky Downing Street officials are warning that the plotters are out to get Starmer and Reeves, and that Starmer will fight them to the death.  

Maybe they know something about an imminent Streeting coup that is hidden from the rest of us? That is possible. 

What is very probable is that the price of government bonds, gilts, will fall tomorrow morning - which is a dreadful precursor to Reeves’s looming tax-raising budget.  


This would be farcical if the potential economic damage wasn’t real.  


And in case you are interested, here is Streeting’s “not me guv” statement: “These claims are categorically untrue. Wes’s focus has entirely been on cutting waiting lists for the first time in 15 years, recruiting 2,500 more GPs, and rebuilding the NHS that saved his life.”

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