Wes Streeting, whose ambitions for U.K.’s top job was one of No 10’s worst kept secrets, has always seemed to know where he stood: right in the centre.
On Thursday, the now former health secretary seemed all but ready to pitch his candidacy in a resignation letter highly critical of Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
“Where we need vision, we have a vacuum. Where we need direction, we have drift,” he wrote in his letter posted on X, echoing the sentiment of party-affiliates who have been warning of a fracture in recent weeks.
He is the first senior minister to quit in what is seen as a precursor to challenging Starmer’s leadership. He said he had lost confidence in the prime minister, who should not serve out the remaining three years of his term.
Starmer is under growing pressure to step down after disastrous results for his Labour Party last week in local and regional elections.
In hindsight, the man perhaps best positioned to challenge Starmer from the party’s centre-right was always sure of his direction.
In 1997, at the age of 14, Streeting gave a “full-throated” endorsement of Tony Blair, who won by a landslide that year and became Britain’s longest-serving Labour prime minister, according to the Telegraph . “He was met with a resounding cacophony of boos,” a school friend recalling the event told the paper.
“He’d read the New Labour manifesto cover to cover, and he gave a speech that really spoke to the kids,” the friend told the Telegraph. “And at the end of the speech he got this huge round of applause.”
By all accounts, Streeting had a difficult childhood. He was raised in a working-class neighbourhood in the east end of London with five brothers, a sister and a stepsister. His mother was 18 and unmarried when she was pregnant with him. She largely raised him alone, and he was stung by Tory politicians who criticized single-parent homes, according to The Independent .
A devoted Christian, Streeting had struggled with his sexuality before coming out as gay in university. While studying history in Selwyn college, he got his first taste of elected office. He led the university’s student union, before going on to become president of the national students union and later a local councillor. In 2015, he became a member of Parliament for Ilford North, a short distance from the neighbourhood where he grew up.
As a backbencher, he was an outspoken critic of Labour’s left-ward turn under Jeremy Corbyn, who led the party from 2015 to 2020.
Streeting was promoted to the front bench under Starmer and rose through the ranks, but it was as shadow health secretary in November 2021 that his star rose and marked him as a potential future leader, according to the Independent.
The appointment came a few months after being diagnosed with kidney cancer. He underwent a successful surgery and became cancer free, but he has said his experience with U.K.’s strained National Health Service influenced his views as secretary.
Known in the British press for being an effective communicator, Streeting was someone the prime minister relied on to get the party’s message out. He was also known to make bold statements, and showed a willingness to privatize areas of the NHS.
“Rather than a country with an NHS, we’re going to have an NHS with a country attached to it if we’re not careful,” he said after becoming the health secretary in 2024 according to FT . A noted admirer of Blair, Streeting’s pro-business stance could be seen as a liability, the paper noted.
In his resignation letter to Starmer, Streeting touted his record in running the $370 billion health service. “We are on track to achieve the fastest improvement in NHS waiting times in history,” he wrote. But his tenure also includes a failure to end extended strikes by junior hospital doctors, despite handing them a more than 20 per cent pay raise.
To mount a leadership challenge, Labour Party rule dictates that he will need the support of 81 members. Labour has never removed removed a sitting prime minister in its 126-year history.
At 43, Streeting is the same age as Blair when he became U.K.’s youngest prime minister of the 20th century. If he runs, Streeting will have to prove he can keep Blair’s torch lit in this one.
National Post, with a file from The Associated Press
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