Wes Streeting has urged Sir Keir Starmer to set the date of his departure from Downing Street on Friday morning in the wake of the Makerfield by-election result.
The former health secretary also said he had “no doubt” there would be a Labour leadership contest, even if Sir Keir refused to go, as he insisted he had the support of the 80-odd MPs necessary to be on the ballot paper.
Andy Burnham, the frontrunner to replace Sir Keir, will find out if he has won the by-election early on Friday morning, and with it the chance to return to Parliament and challenge for the Labour leadership.
Answering questions from journalists, after making a speech on his future priorities should he become prime minister, Mr Streeting said he hoped Mr Burnham wins and added: “I would hope that after Thursday's by-election, when the results are in… I hope the prime minister will at that stage reflect on his own position and set out a timetable.
“I think that would be a better way forward for everyone.”
But the PM hit back, insisting that he would prove his rivals wrong and “carry on with what I was elected to do”.
Speaking at the G7 summit in France, Sir Keir also said he would “bring back the change that people desperately need” after the by-election.
Mr Streeting has faced questions about the level of his support among MPs since he failed to trigger a contest when he resigned from Sir Keir’s cabinet last month.
He said he had waited as “one of the inevitable candidates is on the ballot paper. And had I tried to pull a fast one and get ahead of Andy Burnham before he came back, I think that would have been foul play.”
Pushed on whether he would trigger a contest after the Makerfield result, he said he had “no doubt” that a leadership election would happen.
And he said that Sir Keir’s legacy would be as the leader that “saved the Labour Party from oblivion” after the party suffered a historic defeat in 2019 under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.
On his vision to lead the country, Mr Streeting was asked if he could rule out an early general election.
“Yes,” he said, adding that Labour had a “mandate for a five year parliament”.
He also said the controversial triple lock on pensions was “here to stay” until at least the next election, due in 2029.
In criticism of the government he recently left, he hit out at the “optics” of spending billions on walking and cycling, while the defence secretary quits over spending on his sector.
As he appealed to the centre of British politics, in a move that will raise eyebrows among some Labour members, he called for the return of ex-Tory chancellor Nigel Lawson’s system of tax reliefs for founders of “fast-growing, UK domiciled businesses”.
He warned his own party a leadership contest risks becoming “a Dutch auction of the most expensive and popular pledges to appeal to the party faithful at the expense of the British people”, adding that he would not allow that to happen on his watch.
Mr Streeting, who has called for the UK to eventually rejoin the EU, also said he felt the Remain camp in the Brexit campaign were the “spreadsheet people and completely missed the emotional argument” as he argued that Leave voters were currently ahead of politicians in wanting closer economic co-operation with the bloc.
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