Wes Streeting is standing outside the council flat in Stepney, east London, where he spent the first years of his life. Many politicians would be getting dewy-eyed. But not the shadow health secretary. “This wasn’t a nice place to live,” he says firmly. “I spent most of my childhood thinking I want to escape.” He disliked living in council property and wished his mother had more money and could afford the lifestyle his friend Luke enjoyed; he was embarrassed by his relative poverty.
It looks pretty nice to me, I say: clean, flowers budding in attractive planters, blissfully quiet. “I must say, Tower Hamlets have done a really good job of making it a better place than it was when I was growing up.” We head up to the actual flat, number 22, that Streeting and his mother lived in, and ring the bell. No answer. So we try the neighbour. A friendly man called Rahman answers. He says next door is now rented out. The door of number 22 bursts open and a young woman whooshes past, explaining that she’d not been hiding from us, she’s just in a rush. Streeting tells Rahman he’s a Labour MP in a neighbouring area. Rahman doesn’t recognise him, but wishes him good luck. He’s a Labour supporter.
As we leave, Streeting tells me he didn’t have a clue how lucky he was when he was a kid. This estate, and the one just a road away, provided him with the start in life he needed – an affordable rent for his mum, security for them and no threat of being turfed out when they faced financial hardship, as they often did. He took so much for granted, he says. Nowadays he meets constituents in temporary accommodation who dream of living in a council home. He says that if Labour win the next general election they’ll be building more of them.
Streeting is wearing a dark blue suit, light blue shirt, and has startling sky-blue eyes. He radiates self-belief, from the firm handshake to the natural ebullience, easy eloquence and overpowering aftershave. Despite his boyish face, he has the look of a politician – or a gung-ho salesman determined to win employee of the month. Streeting – MP for Ilford North – divides people. Fans see him as a future prime minister with an inspirational backstory – the working-class boy who overcame his disadvantages and wants to ensure others like him have a similar opportunity. Others see him as just another slick Oxbridge opportunist with his eyes on the prize.
At 40 and in his ninth year as an MP, Streeting feels he’s barely started in politics. But he’s already written a memoir, One Boy, Two Bills and a Fry Up, with a cracking story to tell. Never mind the cancer, the loss of a kidney and being gay as a young Christian who considered homosexuality a sin. Focus on the boy, the Bills, the fry-up. The Bills are his grandfathers: paternal grandad Bill Streeting, a second world war veteran and upstanding working-class Tory, and maternal grandad Pops, an armed robber who spent his life in and out of prison. He adored both in different ways – Bill for his decency and dependability, Pops for being Pops.
Pops dragged Streeting’s principled grandmother, Nanny Libby, into his criminal world. She was jailed for protecting him, and shared a cell with Christine Keeler. As for the fry-up, that was the breakfast Streeting’s mother, 18-year-old Corrina, treated herself to when she decided she wasn’t going to terminate her pregnancy after all (his father was her 17-year-old boyfriend – his parents split up soon after he was born, but his dad, Mark, has always played a full role in his life). Her parents had told her she would make a terrible mother – too young, aggressive and the product of a dysfunctional family. The Streetings would make a great soap opera.
“You can bring Rishi Sunak around here and it would be like he landed on an alien planet,” Streeting says of the estate. “He doesn’t understand what life is like for people with backgrounds like mine. If he did, he wouldn’t have taken 20 quid away in universal credit.” He never misses the opportunity to ram home a political point. So will Labour reinstate it? “Well, look, I’m definitely not, through the prism of this book, going to start making commitments on behalf of my colleagues.” Nor does he miss an opportunity to mention the book. “I have a slight cringe factor of promoting it,” he claims.
He tells me about its genesis. After his successful cancer treatment, he did a newspaper interview and was asked by a literary agent to write a memoir. “I said it’s the sort of thing politicians do at the end of their career, and I don’t have time. But he coaxed me into it.” Streeting began to think about what he’d been through and how much he’d packed into a short life. “I never felt I was at risk of dying at that point, but it did remind me that you never know what’s around the corner.”
I ask Streeting what word stands out when he writes about his childhood? “Opportunity?” he asks. No. “Chances? Disadvantaged?” Nope. “Working class?” Exactly, I say. It’s refreshing to see a Labour MP talk about working-class people because it seems to have been replaced in the party’s lexicon with “working people”. “Well, Tony Blair wanted to achieve a classless society, but I think he declared victory too soon. Even after we lifted a million kids out of poverty, Britain was not a classless society. Today, it is riven with class inequality.”
Without the class suffix, it sounds as if Labour doesn’t care about people who don’t or can’t work. “The problem is when the left talk about the working class, often it’s middle-class people talking and it feels like a Hovis ad of what it means to be working class – flat cap, kids on a bike carrying bread. It feels like ventriloquism. I don’t buy into it. I think it’s partly because there aren’t enough working-class voices in politics.”
We walk across the road to another estate – greener, slightly more spacious. This is where Streeting spent most of his childhood. For his mother, it was an upgrade, but he found it gloomy and threatening. Did he play with the other kids here? “I wasn’t allowed to play out. My mum didn’t think the kids on the estate were a good influence.” Did it make him feel alienated? “Yeah. But she was probably right. It wasn’t safe. I was conscious when I started secondary school that some of those kids who were a bit older than me got into smoking and hanging out with people who were drug dealers on the estate.” At weekends, he stayed with his father in Dagenham. Both his parents went on to have children with new partners. He has five brothers, a sister and step-sister.
It’s strange that your mother was so protective when her dad was an armed robber, I say. Actually, it’s not, he replies. She knew the risks, sensed he was vulnerable and didn’t want him to end up like either Pops or herself (she left school with no qualifications). Corrina was particularly determined to bring him up well because her parents had told her she was too young to be a mother. “You shouldn’t underestimate the impact of coming up against opposition in having me in the first place. A lot of people in the family said she wasn’t going to be a good mum and that I might end up a battered child because of my mum’s temper and the upbringing she’d had.” Pops had a history of domestic violence.
Streeting talks of the first time he visited Pops in prison, as a primary school kid. He had bought a cream cake but wasn’t allowed to give it to him. “When you visit prison you’re almost treated as if you’ve done something wrong yourself. You’re related to this terrible person inside. I didn’t like seeing my grandad there behind the table, being in a room with other inmates. It was desperately sad. After the first time, I said to my mum I don’t want to visit again, I’d rather go to school.”
He and Pops were so different – Streeting a practising Christian and goody-goody, Pops a staunch atheist and anything but a goody-goody. Yet they got on so well. “We’d debate and talk as I got older. He was very well read and had strong views on religion and politics. He’d rib me mercilessly about believing in God. We had animated debates. It’s hard to reconcile that kind, clever grandfather with somebody who would strike terror into people’s hearts. He said later he really regretted the way he’d led his life. My mum said to him, ‘Don’t you worry about the impact you have on people when you commit these crimes?’ and he was like, ‘Oh no, they live such boring lives, I give them something to talk about.’”
It was Nanny Libby who introduced Streeting to politics, teaching him about socialism, solidarity, direct action. Libby died of cancer in her 50s – one of many family members who died prematurely. What would she have thought of his politics? “I think my nan would firstly be very proud, but I think she’d think my politics were not leftwing enough. She was very much of the left and I don’t think she would have been a big fan of Tony Blair. I really believe my nan could have been a brilliant Labour MP, but her criminal role stopped her.”
If Libby was around today, she probably wouldn’t be allowed to stand because her politics would be seen as too left. “Well, I’ve always believed in Labour as a broad church. There has always been that tradition in the parliamentary party from the left, the Bennite tradition to the Campaign Group, and it still has a place in the party today.” You’d struggle to find a place for Bennites, I say. Someone I know was not allowed to stand because he liked a tweet by former Green party leader Caroline Lucas. “Oh right!” he says noncommittally. “They are definitely a lot stricter on quality control of candidates now, partly because we went through such a terrible experience in 2019.” He names Jared O’Mara and Fiona Onasanya, who were jailed, for fraud and perverting the course of justice respectively. “What Keir has brought is a ruthless focus on changing the Labour party so it can appeal to the public again and win a majority.”
Streeting’s description of Starmer as ruthless is meant as a compliment. In a profile of Streeting in the Financial Times last year, an unnamed Tory cabinet member suggested the current Labour leader was insufficiently ruthless and that “the next Labour prime minister won’t be Starmer, it will be Wes Streeting”.
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We make our way down Whitechapel Road, looking for an open pub. Years ago, they would have been open from 7am for the night-shift workers, but not any more. As we walk, Streeting talks about his childhood: how his wonderful primary headteacher Mrs Dodd spotted his talent and nurtured him; being sent to Westminster City school, a successful comp near parliament, and coming face to face with a world he had never seen before. He acted in plays, learned to play the cello, excelled in exams. Again and again, he talks about providing disadvantaged youngsters with the opportunities he had.
He was an unapologetic swot till sixth form when he enjoyed a minor rebellion. “I liked going out too much at weekends and started not handing in work. I did extra work in McDonald’s when I should have been in school so I could afford to go out.” Was he out sexually by then?” “No-no-no-no-no, I was so far back in the closet I was almost in Narnia. I grew up thinking being gay was sinful and that my life would be harder. I grew up with all that baggage. Religion was a big part of it.”
He dated girls for a while because “it made my life easier” though they never had sex. Finally, at Cambridge, where he studied history, he came out. “I reached a tipping point. I thought, I cannot go on pretending to be something I’m not. When I first came out, I felt total liberation. This huge weight had been lifted. It was only then I had a true appreciation of how exhausting and time-consuming it is trying to be someone you’re not.”
In his final year at Cambridge he kissed a boy, and went straight into a long-term relationship with him. “I’ve always been much keener on relationships rather than casual flings.” Streeting lives with Joe Dancey, a communications and public affairs adviser to whom he is engaged. He points to a Victorian pub as we cross the road. “This is the famous Blind Beggar.” It’s where the Krays drank – Grandad Pops knew them. But it’s closed. “There’ll be somewhere else along here.”
After university, he became president of the National Union of Students. He learned so much – lobbying government ministers, running an organisation with hundreds of staff, spearheading campaigns. For the first time, he says, he became a pantomime villain for the left when the NUS opposed free education at university because it disproportionately benefited people from middle and higher income backgrounds. After the NUS, he spent 18 months as head of education at the LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall, and in 2015 stood for Labour in the general election, winning Ilford North off the Tories.
We pass another pub and push at the door. Closed. “We look desperate now, like winos walking down the street!” Does he drink? “Yes, that is my vice. I’ve never taken drugs.” Never? “Never. I can’t even do the Clinton ‘I didn’t inhale’ line.” Does he think he’s boring? “No, I don’t think I am boring. Hahahahaha! God, I hope that isn’t the headline. Hahahahaha.” He seems to laugh more when he is challenged than when he finds things funny.
What does he regard as a great night out? “I’m about to stand up the boring charge. Now I’m in my 40s, my idea of a great night is in front of the telly. But a great night out is going out with friends and getting absolutely plastered.” What does he get plastered on? “Normally lager. If I’m on a slimming kick it will be gin and slim. If I’m going out, I’m a bad binge drinker.” He smiles. “That’s terrible messaging for the shadow health secretary, but I am a binge drinker.”
We give up on pubs and settle for a trendy coffee shop. I ask him whether people are right not to trust politicians. “You can totally understand why. People voted for change when they voted for Brexit and they haven’t got it. You can understand why a big chunk of the country is basically saying I don’t believe this can get better, and that’s a challenging place for the party to be.” When it comes to trusting Labour, isn’t part of the problem that they are refusing to discuss the possibility of rejoining the single market when we all know the main players were ardent remainers? “We are a party that wants to be in government in a country that is outside the EU with no credible route back. So it’s our job to make Brexit work as best we can.” Last week Michel Barnier, former EU Brexit negotiator, said “the door is open” for Britain to rejoin.
Streeting is well briefed and fantastically on message. But occasionally he pulls back the curtain to allow me to see the workings behind politics. I’m not sure he’s conscious he’s doing it. For all the talk of him being on the right of the party, in 2020 he argued that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour was right to say capital gains tax should be equalised up to the level of income tax – a policy today’s party would run a mile from because it would alienate the rich. When I mention it, he gives one of his heartiest laughs yet. “This is a matter for the shadow chancellor! I said it in my Fabian Society pamphlet in the immediate aftermath of the 2019 general election when I could say exactly what I thought, free of the shackles of the frontbench and collective responsibility.”
What does he think now? He giggles. “It’s easy to make these pronouncements but you do have to work through the consequences to a tax and spending policy. Thankfully that responsibility is Rachel’s [Reeves].”
Meanwhile his responsibility will be the NHS if Labour wins the next general election. While universal healthcare remains the proudest provision of any Labour government, Streeting accepts the NHS is in crisis, with a population that is ageing, increasingly long-term sick post-Covid and the third most obese in Europe.
The NHS will be 75 on 5 July. I mention a recent article by health expert Richard Taunt in which he said he feared it would not be around to celebrate its 100th birthday. Does Streeting think the NHS is on its last legs? “The NHS isn’t going to die overnight. It’s not just going to collapse. But we are seeing the morbid symptoms before our eyes. It is dying on its knees.” Why? “A lack of investment and a lack of reform. But I do believe it is salvageable.” How? “It requires three big shifts: from an excessive focus on hospital care to more focus on neighbourhood and community services; from an analogue service to one that embraces the technological revolution; and from sickness to prevention. If it does all three things, it will be an NHS fit for the 21st century.”
Streeting’s critics on the left have suggested the health service is unsafe in his hands. This is nonsense, he says. Yes, he’s prepared to use private facilities to cut NHS waiting lists and waiting times “in the short term”. But rather than privatisation by the back door, he insists, it’s common sense. “That wins me no fans on the left. But it’s a principled argument. We’ve now got a huge increase in people paying to go private. If there’s spare capacity to be used, I’d rather we use it on NHS terms, free at the point of use for the patient. We get them seen faster and I don’t think it’s acceptable to say, ‘I’m sorry, my leftwing principles mean you should wait longer.’”
We talk about the moral high ground in politics. Labour was recently criticised for attack ads suggesting Sunak doesn’t think paedophiles should go to jail. Streeting defends them. “I thought it was important to show the Conservative party, who sling mud all the time, that we are not going to be a pushover and can give as good as we get. I also thought it was important to hold this government to account on its appalling record on criminal justice. I run very positive campaigns and prefer that type of campaigning, but there is a place for negative campaigning. It does work. Look how many people shared it.” He has a view of the human condition, partly shaped by his Christianity, that we’re all deeply flawed characters. “Don’t expect your politicians to be perfect because they are just as flawed as everyone.”
What’s his biggest flaw? “I can be arrogant. I’ve got more humility now than I had in my 30s and 20s. And in my teens I was a nightmare. Supremely arrogant. Thank God teachers weren’t allowed to hit us. There were times I deserved a good slap for being so cocky.”
Last May, after Starmer announced he would resign if fined for a breach of lockdown rules, it was reported that Streeting had launched a campaign to succeed him. A spokesman for Streeting dismissed the story as mischievous “nonsense”. Today, he says: “I didn’t think Keir would resign. I didn’t think we’d get to that point.” So he never considered a bid for the leadership? He doesn’t answer directly. “I knew he wouldn’t have been breaking the rules and also how rigidly organised his diary is, so the risk of that happening didn’t exist.”
How much would Streeting like to lead the Labour party? “Hehehehehe!” That laugh again. “You couldn’t pay me to do what Keir has done in the last three years.” I don’t believe you, I say. “Put it this way, if I’d been leader of the party after 2019, I don’t think I would have been anywhere near as successful as Keir has been.”
Honest answer, please? “I’ve never been ashamed of aiming high and going as far as my talents will take me. I’m in politics to get things done. I want to change things for the better, and where better to do that than being head of the cabinet? Prime ministers have huge power, so why would you not want to do that job?”
But as regards challenging for the leadership, he says, you just need to look at his politics to know that’s not true. “If I was ruthlessly focused on the pursuit of the top job, I’d tack left.” Pardon? “You win the Labour leadership from the left, as I reminded Tony Blair from time to time. His pitch of 1994 was not the Tony Blair of 2007. So even an arch moderniser like him still did a bit of tacking left.” Again, he draws back the curtain. Blimey, I’m thinking, this sounds just like what Starmer did with his radical manifesto to win the leadership before dumping it, claiming the pandemic and cost of living crisis had resulted in different circumstances. “Successful leaders meet the party where it is, then take it on a journey to where the country is,” Streeting continues. “That’s what Keir did when he won the leadership, and he’s taken the party on a journey back to where the public are. That’s what successful leaders do.”
Does he dream of being leader?” “When I was younger I would have said absolutely, 100%. Now I say, only half jokingly, by the time there is a vacancy I’ll be too old.”
If Starmer did two terms, I say, you’d only be 50-odd. “Maybe,” he says. “ I think I have a lot to prove before then. If I can take the NHS from the worst crisis in its history and make it fit for the future, and that’s all I ever achieve in politics, I’ll retire feeling very proud of that. And if my place in the history books is akin to Nye Bevan’s, I’d be more than happy.” As he says, he has always aimed high – and he’s not quite done yet. “And if I got a chance to be a Keir Starmer or Tony Blair or Gordon Brown or Wilson or Attlee, I would die happy.”
