Pippa Crerar

He's, of course, right in that just because people are writing letters saying that they wanted him to go.

There isn't a candidate.

There isn't a contest.

Those letters have to back one particular candidate, don't they?

That's right.

Yeah, and he made the point that the last 48 hours and all the speculation around his future has been incredibly destabilising for the government.

And of course, that has an economic cost because it has an impact on the markets and therefore has an impact on people right across the country.

So he made his opening statement.

He said that if ministers wanted to come to talk to him one-to-one, they could do that later.

And then the whole meeting moved on to talking about the Middle East and other issues that the government is dealing with.

And I'm told by sources in the room that West Streeting

came in, acted entirely normally, despite all the speculation about whether he may or may not go over the top.

One colleague described him as having a brass neck.

Somebody else suggested that some of his colleagues are very angry because they feel that he is among those in the Labour movement, Labour Party, this destabilised the Prime Minister, and suggested that some ministers were giving evils, evil eyes in his direction.

So it should probably say that Wes Treating

has always said that you'd run in a contest should somebody else initiate one, but that he didn't want to be the person to start it off, to kick it off himself.

Whether that's changed over the last 24 hours, we just don't know.

We knew that no other cabinet ministers had meetings with him before or after the cabinet, apart from Richard Hermer, the attorney general, who is, of course, not just a close colleague, but a close friend of the prime minister.

They started a legal career 30 years ago together.

and he would have been seeking his counsel.