The working class extrovert who wants to be Labour leader - who is Wes Streeting?

Wes Streeting couldn't have been plotting a coup against Sir Keir Starmer, his friends claim, because he went to the cinema to watch the Devil Wears Prada 2.

"We went for dinner and we went a saw a movie together," the health secretary's friend and cabinet colleague Peter Kyle told Sky News this week.

"Somebody who was planning to pull the plug and launch a leadership bid in a couple of days' time doesn't go to the cinema with a friend."

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Glad that's cleared up. All very innocent, it seems.

But hold on! The plot of the film, the sequel to the 2006 original, tells the story of a coup, no less, with Anne Hathaway's character taking on her old boss, played by Meryl Streep.

According to Streeting's allies, he is indeed planning for the Labour leadership. But he's not plotting.

But suspicions have been raised by the resignations of two members of the health secretary's ministerial team, junior minister Zubir Ahmed and his ministerial aide Joe Morris.

Just a coincidence, surely? But Streeting's parliamentary neighbour, Ilford South MP Jaz Athwal, has also called on the prime minister to announce an exit timetable.

Warriors for Wes? It certainly looks that way.

Streeting's leadership ambitions have been Westminster's worst kept secret for months, if not years.

He's by far the best communicator in the cabinet and is said to have a comprehensive plan to change the country, on the economy, defence, Europe and immigration.

He's also one of the most irrepressible extroverts in politics, taking over the decks at party conference discos and belting out Robbie Williams' Angels on karaoke with the words: "I'm loving Starmer instead."

Now there's loyalty to the prime minister.

Streeting, 43, also has arguably the most colourful family background of any MP. His maternal grandfather was an armed robber who did time in prison and knew the Krays.

His grandmother also served time in Holloway prison, where she met Christine Keeler. His parents were only 17 and 18 when he was born.

He grew up in a council flat in east London and went to Westminster City School, not the elite public school near the Houses of Parliament but a comprehensive in Victoria.

He then studied history at Cambridge University, where he came out as gay in his second year, was president of the student union and then National Union of Students president.

At university he briefly left the Labour Party because he opposed Tony Blair's Iraq war.

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He worked for Stonewall, the LGBT campaign group, then became a councillor in Redbridge and MP for Ilford North in 2015, but he didn't prosper until Sir Keir Starmer became Labour leader in 2020.

He was a shadow Treasury minister, then spokesman on schools, before joining the shadow cabinet in 2021, briefly as spokesman on child poverty and then health.

But his career almost came to a shuddering halt in 2024 when he scraped in by only 528 votes in the general election that saw Sir Keir win a 172-seat landslide.

The challenger who almost unseated him was independent candidate Leanne Mohamad, a 23-year-old British Palestinian whose campaign was focused on opposition to Labour's stance on the Israel-Gaza war.

As health secretary since the election he has fought a constant battle with the doctors' unions, warning their pay demands for junior doctors - now called resident doctors - would "break the country".

He has abolished NHS England, the world's biggest quango and part of the bureaucracy brought in by David Cameron, and been successful in cutting waiting lists.

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If elected prime minister, he has promised to stick to Rachel Reeves' strict fiscal rules and backed savings from the welfare budget to boost defence spending to 3% of national income.

But he's also one of the most high-profile Remainers in the cabinet, suggesting Labour should consider taking the UK back into a customs union, claiming it would boost growth.

And on immigration he's a liberal and has suggested he's uneasy about the government's clampdown on visas, asylum and deporting families who arrive in the UK illegally.

In a highly significant move as health secretary, he opposed Kim Leadbeater's assisted dying bill, on which MPs had a free vote, and said it would "come at the expense of other choices".

He also has personal experience of NHS care, having been diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2021.

But as well as being tagged as a Blairite on the right of the party, a friendship with Peter Mandelson could be highly damaging in a leadership contest.

After the release of the Epstein files earlier this year, Streeting faced uncomfortable questions about his friendship with the former US ambassador.

Streeting, who says he's a practising Anglican, lives in east London with his partner, Joe Dancey, who stood unsuccessfully for Labour in Stockton West in the 2024 general election.

And as his recent cinema trip to watch The Devil Wears Pravda 2 confirms, he's clearly a movie fan. He has said his favourite film is Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, in which hero Luke Skywalker leads The Rebel Alliance.

He may not be plotting, but Wes Streeting now appears to be poised to lead his own rebel alliance.

(c) Sky News 2026: The working class extrovert who wants to be Labour leader - who is Wes Streeting?