CommentWhy it still won't be Wes
For all the health secretary's achievements with the NHS, his centrist instincts and peerless communication skills, the odds are stacked against him replacing Keir Starmer in No 10, says John Rentoul
Tuesday 12 May 2026 14:15 BST
The Independent reports live from Downing Street as defiant Starmer pledges not to quit
Being a good communicator is not a superficial skill in politics. It is fundamental. Tony Blair wrote in his memoir: "When people say to me, 'Oh, So-and-So, they don't believe in anything, they're just a good communicator', as a statement about politics, it's close to being an oxymoron, certainly for the top person. At the top, the scrutiny is microscopic. It is soul-penetrating." One of the biggest problems Keir Starmer has is that he has been subjected to that soul-penetrating scrutiny… and found wanting.
He struggles to get his case across, zigzagging from promising incremental change – a 10-year project for a government inheriting a wasteland – to promising to overturn the status quo as a matter of urgency. Wes Streeting would do a better job of this essential part of being a prime minister, who is not just an administrator but a teacher, empathiser and leader. Communication is not an optional extra on top of policy: being able to explain what the government is going and why is the precondition of success. Streeting would bring fluency, clarity and humour to the serious business of government. The humour is important, if only because it is the most effective way of deflecting political attacks. In November, when he was asked if he would rule out demanding Starmer's resignation, he said: "Yes, and nor did I shoot JFK. I don't know where Lord Lucan is, had nothing to do with Shergar, and I do think that the US did manage to do the moon landings. I don't think they were fake." He is not to everyone's taste, although he is the least unpopular of leading Labour politicians who are not called Andy Burnham, who benefits from not being an MP. In focus groups, I am told he is sometimes described as smug, too smooth, too young (he is 43) and too pleased with himself. But most of the hostility towards him comes from Labour Party members who regard him as too "right-wing" – and it is true that he is a Blairite in his ideology as well as in his communication skills. In policy, his Blairism is more of an instinct than a detailed manifesto. He resists the Labour tendency to see higher public spending and higher taxes as the answer to every problem. He managed to blend a low-tax message with a pro-EU one in his boldest excursion outside his health department brief in an interview in December. "We've taken a massive economic hit leaving the European Union," he said. "I'm really uncomfortable with the level of taxation in this country. We're asking a lot of individual taxpayers, we're asking a lot of businesses. We've got a level of indebtedness that we need to take very seriously." This message against the Labour grain paved the way for a big pitch to the party's anti-Brexit core: "The best way for us to get more growth into our economy is a deeper trading relationship with the EU." He hinted at a customs union with the EU, which would be the closest possible relationship that would "not lead to a return to freedom of movement".
Wes Streeting, health secretary, leaves No 10 after a Cabinet meeting (Reuters)
As health secretary, Streeting has been an incremental reformer of the NHS. He has taken a tough line rhetorically with the part of the BMA that represents resident doctors – although his initial handling of the long-running pay dispute was to give them a big rise with no conditions for reforming working practices attached. Waiting lists have started to come down – it is hard to produce dramatic results in just 22 months – so he does at least have a story to tell, and he tells it well. In those months, he has also strayed beyond his ministerial portfolio to set out a position on Palestine that was as distinct as possible while constrained by collective ministerial responsibility. He took a leading position on recognising the Palestinian state, just ahead of Keir Starmer moving the government to adopt that position last year. This is important not just to saving his own seat of Ilford North, where a pro-Palestinian independent came within 528 votes of defeating him at the last election, but to the wider defence of Labour's Gaza flank from Greens and independents. But it is on taking the fight to Nigel Farage, on Labour's other flank, that a Streeting government might be most different from a Starmer one. Streeting is good at making the case for easier trade with the EU without telling Reform-inclined voters that they are stupid and wrong, as Starmer appeared to do in his "stand and fight" speech on Monday. Before we get to a Streeting-led government, he has to fight a Labour leadership campaign in which the dominant question will be: "Who has the best chance of beating Farage in 2029?" It is a question he is well placed to answer.
