Wes Streeting: Labour Must Be Bolder or Face Defeat to Nationalists

Wes Streeting, the former health secretary, warned Monday that the Labour Party must adopt a bolder approach and deliver tangible change or risk losing ground to populist nationalism, in his first Commons speech since resigning from the government.

Streeting said he quit because the government was “currently losing” the fight against populist nationalism, reiterating his view that leaving the European Union was a damaging mistake and that young people have been let down by a system stacked against them.

Streeting resigned last week and called on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to step down. He was widely expected to launch a formal leadership challenge but apparently failed to secure the backing of the required 80-plus Labour MPs.

In his contribution to the king’s speech debate, Streeting offered no direct criticism of Starmer and praised him for keeping the UK out of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.

However, he strongly criticized the government’s overall approach, saying it had been too cautious and allowed parties such as Reform UK to co-opt patriotism.

“Never waste a minute – that’s been my mantra in government, and it’s why I don’t believe our party has time to waste in government treading water,” he told MPs. “The Labour party was elected to deliver real change. We still can.”

In a lengthy segment targeting not only Reform but also the Scottish National Party in Scotland and Plaid Cymru in Wales, Streeting said Starmer’s government had failed to effectively confront nationalists.

“I left the government because we are in the fight of our lives against nationalism, and it is a fight that we are currently losing,” he said. “Unless we change course, we risk handing the keys of No 10 to Reform, and I do not want that on our consciences.”

“For the first time in our history, nationalists are in power in every corner of the United Kingdom. Scottish and Welsh nationalism represents an existential threat to the future integrity of the United Kingdom, and Reform UK represent a threat to the values and ideals that have made this country great,” he added.

He continued: “For too long and for too often, patriotism in Britain has been left to the loudest voices and the narrowest arguments, as though love of country belongs to one tribe, one party, or one point of view. But the Britain I believe in is bigger than that, because patriotism is not about who you exclude, it is about who you stand beside.”

Streeting added: “The nurse from Nigeria is not the enemy of the factory worker in Newcastle. The family fleeing war is not responsible for the cost of living crisis. Division is the oldest trick in politics, and Britain deserves better than that.”

In a speech on Saturday, Streeting said he would like to rejoin the EU. In the Commons, he noted that in his maiden speech in 2015, he had “argued that none of the problems facing our country would be solved by leaving the European Union.”

He went on: “Today, in the dangerous and volatile world we find ourselves in, dominated by an unpredictable superpower in the USA, a rising superpower in China, and a failed superpower in Russia, it is even more clear that we would have been better off leading Europe than leaving the European Union, not despite our sovereignty and the need to control our borders, but to enable those things.”

Streeting also described a breakdown in the intergenerational contract, which he said had left young people bearing the heaviest burden from COVID-19, then unable to afford a home and at risk of being pushed out of the job market by artificial intelligence.

“Patriotism isn’t a lecture the old deliver to the young. It’s a relationship, and for generations, Britain understood that relationship as a social contract. You work hard, you play by the rules, you contribute to society, and in return you can build a decent life, a secure job, home of your own, a family if you want one, and the hope and conviction that your children will do better than you did.”

“So, the question isn’t whether young people would fight for their country but when their country is going to fight for them. This is our generational challenge,” he said.