Wes Streeting’s 22 months in office were characterised by relentless media interviews, newspaper editorials and Department of Health and Social Care press releases. They portrayed a dynamic health secretary who was clearing up the mess he had inherited in the NHS, pushing ahead with radical changes and making progress on what matters most to patients – accessing care when they need it.
Having initially declared the NHS “broken” by the Conservatives, it is six months since he first said the health service was now, on his watch, “on the road to recovery”, a claim he has made regularly since. He included the gist of it again – a sort of greatest hits collection – in his resignation letter to Keir Starmer at lunchtime on Thursday.
