Wes Streeting has resigned as well being secretary, saying it’s now clear that Keir Starmer won’t “lead the Labour Get together into the following common election.”
Streeting, who has headed the Division of Well being and Social Care for the reason that 2024 common election, described the 2026 native and devolved parliament elections as “unprecedented”.
In his resignation letter, the main Labour MP mentioned that the rise of nationalism in all corners of Britain represented “an existential menace to the longer term integrity of the UK”.
He wrote: “Progressives throughout our nation perceive this menace and our duty to confront it, however they’re more and more dropping religion that the Labour Get together is able to rising to our historic duty of defeating racism and providing hope that Britain’s greatest days lie forward by social democracy.”
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Streeting additional accused Starmer of presiding over a interval of “drift”.
He referred to as on the prime minister to supervise a management contest and for a future election to be a “battle of concepts, not of personalities or petty factionalism.”
Learn Streeting’s resignation letter in full.
Expensive prime minister,
The outcomes are in and I’m happy to report that I’ve delivered in opposition to the formidable targets you set for me once I turned your Secretary of State for Well being and Social Care. Right now’s figures verify that we surpassed our ready occasions goal regardless of strikes, and that ready lists fell by 110,000 in March- the most important month-to-month drop exterior of Covid since 2008 – that means that we’re on monitor to attain the quickest enchancment in NHS ready occasions in historical past.
The one query that issues in authorities is whether or not we depart our successors a greater scenario than we inherited. Ambulance response occasions for coronary heart assaults and strokes are actually the quickest in 5 years. A&E ready occasions are enhancing, with four-hour ready figures additionally the very best in 5 years. We’ve recruited 2,000 extra GPs and satisfaction has risen from 60 per cent to 74.5 % since we got here to workplace. We hit our goal of recruiting 8,500 psychological well being workers three years early. We’ve achieved this on the identical as balancing the books for the primary time in 9 years and smashing the two per cent NHS productiveness goal by reaching 2.8 per cent, which suggests the funding we’re placing in goes additional and that the general public can have larger confidence that their cash is being well-spent.
None of this may have been achieved with out the good management group of ministers, officers, and particular advisers we now have established within the Division of Well being and Social Care and the NHS – fantastically led by Samantha Jones and Sir Jim Mackey, who has been a knight in shining armour and an excellent chief of 1.5 million workers upon whom all this success relies upon.
The Nationwide Well being Service is the embodiment of all that’s greatest about Britain and our values. Due to our Labour authorities, it’s on the street to restoration: heaps finished, however a lot extra to do.
These are all good causes for me to stay in put up, however as from our dialog earlier this week, having misplaced confidence in your management, I’ve concluded that it could be dishonourable and unprincipled to take action.
Final week’s election outcomes had been unprecedented – each by way of the size of the defeat and the results of that failure. For the primary time in our nation’s historical past, nationalists are in energy in each nook of the UK – together with a harmful English nationalism represented by Nigel Farage and Reform UK. This represents each an existential menace to the longer term integrity of the UK, however Reform UK additionally characterize a menace to the values and beliefs which have made this nation nice. Progressives throughout our nation perceive this menace and our duty to confront it, however they’re more and more dropping religion that the Labour Get together is able to rising to our historic duty of defeating racism and providing hope that Britain’s greatest days lie forward by social democracy.
There is no such thing as a doubt that the unpopularity of this Authorities was a serious and customary think about our defeats throughout England, Scotland and Wales. Good Labour folks misplaced by no fault of their very own. There are lots of causes we may level to: from particular person errors on coverage like the choice to chop the winter gas allowance to the “island of strangers” speech, all of which have left the nation not understanding who we’re or what we actually stand for.
You’ve got many nice strengths that I like. You led our celebration to a victory few thought doable in 2024 and I used to be proud to combat alongside you within the trenches of that marketing campaign. You’ve got proven braveness and statesmanship on the world stage – not least in holding Britain out of the battle in Iran.
However the place we want imaginative and prescient, we now have a vacuum. The place we want route, we now have drift. This was underscored by your speech on Monday. Leaders take duty, however too typically that has meant different folks falling on their swords. You additionally have to hearken to your colleagues, together with backbenchers, and the heavy-handed method to dissenting voices diminishes our politics.
As a member of your authorities, I do know higher than most that governing is difficult. It ought to be, as a result of it issues. There are huge challenges going through this nation. For the primary time in our historical past the following era faces a worse inheritance than the final. We have now wars raging in Europe and the Center East which might be making our challenges tougher, not simpler. We’re within the foothills of a technological industrial revolution that has big implications for each facet of our lives – not least the way forward for work. It isn’t clear whether or not democracy or tyranny will outline the twenty first century. After the monetary disaster, austerity, the catastrophe of Brexit, Liz Truss, the covid pandemic, the battle in Ukraine and now the battle in Iran, the nation must imagine once more that issues might be higher than this and that politics is a part of the reply, not the supply of the issue. These are massive challenges that require a daring imaginative and prescient and greater options than we’re providing.
It’s now clear that you’ll not lead the Labour Get together into the following common election and that Labour MPs and Labour Unions need the controversy about what comes subsequent to be a battle of concepts, not of personalities or petty factionalism. It must be broad, and it wants the absolute best subject of candidates. I assist that method and I hope that you’ll facilitate this.
Serving as your Secretary of State for Well being and Social Care has been the best pleasure of my life and, no matter our variations this week, I stay actually grateful to you for the chance to serve and I’m deeply saddened to be leaving authorities on this means.
Yours sincerely,
Wes Streeting
