Wes Streeting is bursting for the top job but his time in charge of the NHS proves he’s just not up to it.
Wes Streeting is expected to launch a leadership challenge as soon as today (Image: Getty)
Health Secretary Wes Streeting wants to be Prime Minister but can’t even insert and twist a knife properly.
Too cowardly to quit the Cabinet when Sir Keir stood on the precipice, vacillation is his middle name.
Worse still, his prevarication over biological sex – the indisputable difference between a man and a woman – proves decision making ain’t his forte.
Streeting has been taken for a ride by militant striking resident doctors and has been unable – or unwilling – to rid the NHS of a cult that worships political correctness.
After the Supreme Court ruled in April last year that biological sex means the one assigned at birth, Streeting promised new NHS guidance on single‑sex spaces would be delivered “within weeks”. It should come as little surprise petrified women are still waiting as he dithers and delays.
You might ask why this matters.
Until someone has the bravery to stand up to the woke army occupying the public sector men will be allowed to undress in front of women and children in hospitals, swimming pools, and leisure centres.
If he is unable to get a grip on this very basic and indisputable biological fact then, really, what hope has the country got under his stewardship?
After the scandal of the Darlington nurses – where County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust allowed a biological male trans woman to use female changing rooms without so much as a blink of an eye – Streeting said he supported their cause and was “horrified” they had been forced to resort to legal action (which they won).
He has repeatedly said he supports the northern nurses, and others who continue to be victims of harassment and sex discrimination, thanks to plainly idiotic Stonewall-inspired policies peddled in the public sector that allow men into women’s spaces, violating their rights and dignity in the process.
But if he truly believed in that – and single‑sex spaces based on biological sex – you might have thought it would be reflected in clear, enforceable and expedited guidance across the NHS.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer (Image: Getty)
Not a chance. Not under Labour.
A failure to act has exposed every NHS trust across the country to legal challenge.
While Streeting’s warm words are welcome they are just that.
Women, in the NHS as across wider society, need certainty not more dither and delay.
But Streeting knows – as illustrated by the unresolved case of money-grabbing BMA medics who continue to hold patients to ransom – the NHS and Labour is beholden to unions and activists.
Centrist Streeting, 43, a protege of Lord Mandelson, an ardent Remainer who wanted to keep Britain in the single market and a customs union, and a liberal on immigration, consistently denied he would challenge Sir Keir.
Well, up to a point he is right. He’s not had the nerve.
But today he is poised to do just that in an example of the dither and delay that has become his calling card.
Streeting promised to overhaul the NHS to make it fit for the 21st century.
His only two notable achievements have been a modest fall in waiting lists and bringing back the NHS under direct ministerial control by axing the NHS England quango.
On the issues that matter – strikes and ensuring safe spaces so women are guaranteed protection from oddballs who pretend they are a different sex – he has so far failed.
Streeting has repeatedly spoken of the need for NHS reform yet it still lumbers on as a wasteful, bloated, bureaucratic beast.
Starmer is clearly not up to the job but, as his potential successors are showing one by one, neither are they.