Wes Streeting’s admirers saw him as the British government’s best communicator, injecting energy and clarity into an administration that has sorely lacked both.
Streeting today resigned from the UK government as health secretary and called on UK prime minister Keir Starmer to resign.
Shortly after becoming health secretary in 2024, he said bluntly: “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.”
A year later, when anonymous officials loyal to Starmer tried to brief against him, Streeting hit back: “Someone’s definitely been watching too much Celebrity Traitors in Downing Street.”
READ MORE
Such straight-talking explains why Streeting has been discussed as a future Labour leader since even before he became an MP in 2015. He has made little secret of his ambition, even while adopting centrist, Blairite politics at odds with much of his party.
Allies depict him as a reformer who is not afraid to confront Labour members with hard truths. Zubir Ahmed, who quit as a health minister under Streeting on Tuesday, said his former boss was a “generationally talented politician”.
Critics see Streeting as an incorrigible schemer, whose ambition is undermined by vacillation, as he has delayed in launching a challenge to Starmer.
Two years into one of the government’s toughest jobs, overseeing England’s creaking £200 billion health service, there are also growing questions about whether his rhetorical zeal about reform has been matched by achievement.
On Thursday, official figures will show whether NHS hospitals have hit Streeting’s March target of treating 65 per cent of routine patients within 18 weeks.
Streeting plans to argue he is on course for the fastest reduction of waiting lists in NHS history. But many question if progress is fast enough to hit his target of 92 per cent by the next election.
Streeting secured a £29 billion budget uplift from the treasury. However, there are still 6.1 million patients waiting for 7.2 million treatments and waiting lists are falling no faster than under the previous government.
One senior NHS figure said hitting the 92 per cent target was “not going to happen” and that Streeting had ignored warnings in opposition that prioritising the waiting list target was both a hostage to fortune, and risked distorting his wider drive to shift care out of hospital.
At times Streeting’s decisions appeared to prioritise announcements over delivery, critics said, adding: “You hear it said a lot that Wes is a performer, not a reformer.”
In July last year, Streeting set out a 10-year vision to transform the health service to one focusing on prevention, treating patients close to home rather than in hospital, and using the latest digital tools. Health service chiefs acknowledge progress has been slow.
Thea Stein, chief executive at the Nuffield Trust think-tank, said: “Streeting has overseen slow but positive progress on public satisfaction with the NHS.”
But it had been “incredibly difficult” to start delivering his reforms at the same time as trying to rapidly cut waiting times, she added, and there had not been “proper recognition of the trade-offs needed during a time of scarce resources”.
Despite handing striking doctors a 22 per cent pay rise, Streeting has also failed to resolve their long-running dispute.
On Thursday, Streeting was to set out a health Bill formally abolishing NHS England, more than a year after he announced it. The process has been delayed by months because of a row about how to fund redundancy payments.
His plan to lay off thousands of managers both in London and local health boards is seen by many in the health service as a distraction, with staff worrying about their jobs rather than transforming patient care. Stein said that “undertaking a massive NHS reorganisation may well scupper the chance of delivering” on Streeting’s reform plans.
The Bill will contain potentially contentious reforms to how patient medical data is managed. His backers think this is just the kind of argument Streeting is capable of taking on and winning, contrasting it with Starmer’s caution. He has been consistent in his belief in empowering individuals and spreading opportunities, drawing on his own route from a council estate in east London to Cambridge university and Westminster.
Unlike Starmer – whose rote references to his toolmaker father came to be widely mocked – Streeting has drawn more sparingly on his own background, despite publishing an autobiography in 2023.
The book’s description of how his life was saved by a fry-up – a breakfast that stopped his mother going through with a planned abortion – illustrates his storytelling ability. He is now 43, the same age as Tony Blair and David Cameron when they became prime minister.
Critics on the Labour backbenches see Streeting as “continuity Starmer”, implicated in the government’s unpopular decisions and too close to figures such as Peter Mandelson and Morgan McSweeney.
Streeting has published private messages with Mandelson. Nonetheless, there are concerns that further revelations about their relationship could prove embarrassing.
Some colleagues noted that he could struggle to hold his seat of Ilford North, where his majority is only 528. He is also widely mistrusted by MPs, and one ally of Starmer said it was “ludicrous” to claim that Streeting was not co-ordinating attacks on the prime minister.
Streeting has been resolute in his long-time admiration for Blair, even when his embrace of the market and suspicion of monolithic public services have been unpopular on the left. Admirers contrast this with the lack of clarity over Starmer’s own views, and the intellectual flexibility of Andy Burnham, his main leadership rival.
But one very senior doctor struck a warning note for Streeting should he enter No 10. “I think he underestimated the size of the problem when he came in and didn’t understand how long it would take even to do the small stuff,” they said of his experience as health secretary. “He perhaps didn’t recognise the lack of levers in the system to get things done.”
If he reaches Downing Street, the same problems may await.
– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026
