YouSaid · the spoken record

Wes Streeting

lines on the record: 67
first: 2024-06-27
most recent: 2024-06-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Just over the first week of this campaign has been one of the most fun weeks of my life enjoying this campaign, absolutely loving it. In fact, I did a mammoth 6am till 3 p.m. media around the other day and absolutely loved it.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, actually, I don't really think of myself as a manager, but as a leader. And I think that's the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. It's not to micromanage. It's to make sure that every tier of the system, you've got the right people with the right skills, delivering the right kind of change. And the thing that gives me great hope and confidence about what the future of the NHS could look like are the incredible people who are showing us what that change looks like already, albeit in pockets. And if all I did was to take the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS, we would see enormous productivity gains, vast improvements in patient outcomes and better use of taxpayers' money. Anna Milburn is one of my heroes too and one of the...”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that can judge us on our record, and that's absolutely accurate. You know, in 1997, we had this same pressure on pay restoration. Will you restore pay to where it would have been if it had kept up in line with inflation? And in 1997, very much like now, we had a shadow chancellor and a leader who said, hang on a minute. The promises we make have got to be promises we can keep and the country can afford. So we're not going to promise to deliver full pay restoration because we can't spell out exactly how we will pay for it and buy when. But that Labor government did deliver full pay restoration. And I'm very confident if we get the economy growing that we can improve people's not just pay, but their working conditions too.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Primary care is your GPs, your pharmacies, you know, those sort of first points of access in the community. And alongside that, you know, if you've got the right community support, care in people's homes, that's where you can do, you know, in the Jargon secondary prevention or what we might say stopping people from ending up back in hospital. So a member of my family had a series of mini-strokes last year. Fortunately, she recovered well. She was discharged back home. And in an outcome that will surprise very few people who work in the NHS within days of being at home, because there wasn't the right community nursing in place, the right care in the home, she fell, fractured her hip, was back in hospital and on a pretty horrible orthopedic recovery pathway as well as a stroke recovery pathway. That's where having the right support available to people in the community and people's homes can prevent people from needing.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Certainly, I want to see thousands more GPs trained up cutting through the red tape that holds them back, but also over time I want to see primary care as a proportion of the NHS budget grow. Because I think that would be”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The best hospital leaders in the country have recognised that the solutions to the crisis in our hospitals are systemic and they lie beyond the hospital. So if we've got better primary care and community services, we're less likely to see people arriving in ambulances. We're less likely to see people walking through the front door and of A&E. And social care, we're less likely to see delayed discharges. So the throughput of people through hospitals work so much better if you deliver the right solutions, the right system changes outside the hospital.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And look, part of my thinking about what kind of health secretary I would want to be and how we deal with this challenge is recognizing the role and responsibility you bring to bear. Understanding the systemic change that you can help to drive because, and it goes back to the earlier question you asked me, Alistair, about what have I learned in politics previously. I do not have a Messiah complex and I'm under no illusion that just by changing one person behind one desk in DHSC, Department of Health and Social Care, that we're going to fix everything, this has got to be a whole team effort and it would be my job if we win the next election to put in place the right system support to enable people at every level of the system to deliver the outcomes. And, you know, if we look at our hospital-centric system for a moment and we look at the queues of ambulances outside the front, the busy A&E departments, the chock awards,”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, mental health is one, obviously, but cancer is also the obvious example where. Know your outcomes at stage four, you're so much more likely to die with lung cancer than if you're caught at stage one or two. My own experience with kidney cancer, you know, caught as stage one, the one thing, there are two things I didn't have to worry about. One was dying because I knew enough to know that I wasn't going to die and that was relief, put it mildly. But secondly, not having to worry about the bill was important and that's important to me. And even before you get to like the worst fatal outcomes, if someone can't get a GP appointment, which would cost the NHS about 40 quid, they end up in A&E, which would cost 400. So you can see how inefficient resource allocation is across the system.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Before they get to hospital. Yeah, and too late in the later you get to people, it tends to be far more expensive to do the treatment and you're less likely to be successful in terms of the outcome.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's actually not to do with the model of funding and the fact the NHS is a single payer system free at the point of use. It is to do with the fact that when it comes to spending on hospitals, we're pretty much top of the table. But then you look at primary care, community services, mental health, social care, diagnostics. We're either near the bottom at the bottom or seriously lagging behind.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm so glad you entered the discussion through that kind of prism because I'm always asked to come from and people always rush to talk about the spending and as if the question is is it an extra two four, six, eight, ten, twenty billion rather than where's nearly £170 billion of our money going and why are we getting such terrible outcomes compared to other OECD countries? And when you look across other leading economies and why their health outcomes are better.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't understand why it's wildly out of date. So those would be the sort of the first steps we take on mental health, but ultimately I want to make sure, and I've avoided actually on the campaign trail saying we're going to deliver parity of esteem because I think, do you know what people have heard this all before? Let's just do it.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If we're able to put mental health support in every primary and secondary school in the country, I think that gets to young people a lot earlier, both in terms of preventing mental ill health and promoting positive well-being and helping young people to cope with this extraordinary range of pressures that didn't exist when I was growing up. Community mental health hubs in every community, 8,500 extra mental health support workers, we've deliberately gone at the kind of the earlier end of making sure that people avoid hitting crisis point and even on the crisis point I'm really sad, genuinely sad that we reached the end of this parliament without reform of the Mental Health Act because there was a bill that went through scrutiny among both the commons and the Lords. We were waiting for the government to introduce it formally and they didn't.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Firstly, I'd hope that we're, and this applies to physical health as well, but I'd hope that we're intervening a lot earlier and we are doing a lot more on the prevention side, getting people access to support services, treatment far earlier. There's a reason why we use the cliche prevention is better than cure. And it particularly applies in medicine and mental health is no different to physical health in that respect. We've got to make sure that at the acute end of the spectrum that services are high quality. That's a far cry from where we are today. We see far too many people detained and far too many people hitting crisis points because we don't get there early enough. And it's one of the reasons why, and I'm really proud of the fact actually that some of our mental health policies have been around for years. There were some of the earlier policies that Keir announced as leader of the Labour Party, which thinks a lot about where he is on this.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there are legitimate questions it is entirely right to ask Kate Forbes would you vote to protect my rights? Would you vote to roll them back? If there's a vote to extend my rights, how would you? It's totally legitimate. But I feel that at times, particularly in the case of Kate Forbes, and I think it's applied to other politicians, there's been a degree of ridicule that I wouldn't tolerate if that person were ridiculed for being gay or for being trans or for having an identity that is not considered to be the norm, the mainstream.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There were protests that were so, I mean, I'm not one of these people who'd be protesting against the life of Brian. I was one of my favorite films actually comes think of it. I love the fact that when I went to see the Book of Mormon, which is outrageous in the program is an advert from the Mormon saying, you know, you've seen the show, now read the book, which I just thought was wonderfully self-deprecating humor. I just think, hang on a second, we don't One of the great things about this country is we are a Christian country, but we are a multi-faith democracy and whatever disagreements I have with Rishi Sunak and his politics, I love the fact that this country has a Hindu prime minister. I love the fact we've got Muslim mayor of London. I love the fact until recently we had a Muslim first minister of Scotland. And I've, you know, I look at the way sometimes people of faith are treated in politics and it makes me feel sad.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I think, I mean, at the moment, there is a very ugly toxicity about Islam. I mean, we saw this this weekend with the demonstration on the streets of London where kids were chanting, you know. Allah, Allah, who the beep is Allah. And you just think, hang on a second. We would be up in arms”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, if you're a legislator, does that make, and this is for me the sadness about how people view Christianity is they think, well, that means you're going to take away my rights to choose. That means you're not going to respect my right to marry. And it suddenly becomes this sort of, they associate Christianity with social conservatism and they fear that if we're religious, that we're going to impinge on other people's rights. And that's never been how I've cast my vote as a legislator”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think. I think there are definitely people out there that, and this is for me, the great sadness, there are definitely people out there who, when you talk about your faith, they instinctively worry about, and actually, interestingly, I think this applies to an extent to politicians of other faiths, but there definitely seems to be a fear of Christians in politics that because I think people”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very, very strongly and a belief that Jesus Christ not only lived and existed, but he's the Son of God and was sent as our Savior. So those are the sort of central tenets of our faith.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which has My belief in God has not wavered. My connection with my faith has. And I've now managed to reconcile those two things and have reconciled that.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, these are rites of passage in the faith. And I was already aware that I hadn't been baptized as a baby. And so I already felt I'd missed out on something. And also for the confirmation was about me making a commitment to my faith. And there was a bit of me that thought, you know, what the hell's it got to do with you, my parents? I've made this choice. This is my faith. This is my commitment. It's got Bugra all to do with you.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I want to be. And they didn't. I mean, my mum actually is now Christian, but my parents at the time were kind of. Atheist, and they thought I was too young to make the decision. I begged and pleaded and begged I used to go to church every Sunday.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think going back to when I was baptised and confirmed, which is when I was 10 years old, I had to fight my parents to be baptized and confirmed.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Definitely come onto that. And on the faith point, I mean, I had this conflict consumed me. And actually, in the end, I came out and accepted myself for being gay. And then it really, I mean, it created a distance between me and the church that's never fully recovered in that, you know, even though there was literally a chapel in the middle of my college at Selwyn that I could have just walked to 30 seconds every Sunday morning. I didn't attend chapel once during my time at Cambridge until the end of my last.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I came out of university, and the best answer to the nature versus nurture debate is, well, I tried really hard not to be gay. And I think that did me an awful lot of damage. And I think it damages a lot of people who try to be someone they're not and then live with the consequences because you realize when you have this weight lifted off your shoulders and I felt this genuinely liberating experience when I came out, you realize how much time and emotional energy is consumed living a and trying to be someone else. And the highest compliment I can pay Cambridge, by the way, because I often get asked, you know, what was it like being a working class kid at Cambridge? Could you fit in the highest compliment I can pay the university and sell him college, my college, is not only was I happy at Cambridge, it was the first place I felt so comfortable that I was able to tell people I was gay and I received a very good reaction and that was 20 years ago. It's even better now I think.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, the faith was the biggest hindrance. I really wrestled with my faith and sexuality for years and years. And often I'm asked, Do you choose to be gay, or were you born gay? Is it nature? Is it nurture? And I don't have a scientific answer to the question.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Government that Kir's talking about. Although I think it will speak to some highly engaged voters. But this idea that government can't solve everything and that we have to work in partnership with business, with civil society and all of us as citizens, I think is really powerful. And similarly, and I think this is the antidote to the sort of the laissez-faire, hands-off small statism of the conservative party traditionally, there are lots of things we can't do without a good enabling government. So we've got to see this as a more mature dynamic partnership. And so beyond the sort of the specific pledges and how they're funded and the ground on which the election is fall, I think there's something fundamental about how Keir Starman wants to reshape government, which if we pull it off, would be really quite radical and transformational and make government look a lot different in the future than it has been in the past.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I thought you'd mock me if I said renewal. So I'm glad you're following the script, Alistonia to identify the lines. But I think there's a real opportunity. And similarly, I mean, this is not really a retail offer for the voters, the sort of the mission driven.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Chopping and changing of ministers. I mean, in the last two and a half years, I've been shadow health and social care sector. I've been up against five secretaries of state for health and social care. Now, that's just not serious. And it means even where you've got good people occupying those jobs, they can't actually make a difference for them moved on. And the thing that I am optimistic about is one of the things about Kier's character as a political leader which is underestimated because often he's his late arrival into politics is often debated as if it's some sort of weakness whereas I think it's his superpower because I think he sees the pitfalls and shortcomings of the way our political system currently works that gives me some hope and confidence that he's going to change it. I mean, it's not just special pleading when I say to Kir. You really shouldn't shop and change your ministers every five minutes. And by the way, you know, it's going to take me at least a term to get an NHS weighting standard to where we'd want them to be.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exchanging ideas. No, there are some exceptions. I mean, you know, on issues like assisted dying or if there are particular abortion reforms where I think the free vote debates, you do have more of a debate. But there's an awful lot of influencing going on behind the scenes. And there are often groups of MPs who are able to affect change, to shift their parties.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again, there's some truth in that. I think the role of Parliament, though, matters and holding the executive to account matters. I think what fights.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of truth in what you say. A few things I'd say, though. Firstly, Parliament really matters and our role as legislators really matters. And there are things that you can achieve even as a backbencher. I mean, that was certainly true in the Brexit parliaments where, I mean, we kind of seize control of the order paper in quite unprecedented ways.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Eyecompoints I've done in Parliament to make a difference, albeit on issues like Islamophobia, where I work with Saeed Avarsi. We made some impact not the fundamental change I really wanted to make. That's why...”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, and it's good, and I mean, I love my time, and you know, the one year I had as deputy leader of the London Borough of Redbridge before I was elected as the MP for Iford North, I got so much done in that one year and I can point things around my constituency and around my borough that I delivered as deputy leader of the council. In the last nine years as most a backbencher and then as a member of the shadow cabinet and a member of the front bench, I can point to things I achieve that are consequential. I saved King George accent emergency department. That was the A&E department that found my kidney cancer and saved my life.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Up on Tside, the fact that he is still there, despite the tsunami that swept away other conservatives, says something about the fact that people judged him as a mayor, not simply as the political brand. And so I'm very committed to devolution. But also, again, it's about how you affect fundamental change and sometimes really practical change. I was in a rush the other day. I was going from one thing to another as you do during the election campaign. And I stopped at these traffic lights around the corner from where I live on Horns Road in Barkingside. And I was in a rush and I said to the person driving the car, I was like, this is my fault. I've got these traffic lights installed because we've got the new development behind me and the school in front of me and we put the crossing in because we were worried about children's road safety. And we probably saved some lives and prevented some injuries. So even really practical things like getting in a pedestrian crossing people.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that wasn't just me, by the way, it was a huge team effort. The architecture society leadership at the time deserved the lion's share of the credit, but that's what politics and political changes really about, the saviour, if ever it's about the saviour. It is about a collective effort, a team effort to effect change. And we did. And I'm incredibly proud that that architecture department is still there today, still thriving. And I can say hand on heart that I was part of that achievement and legacy. And similarly, in local government, I mean, it's made me a committed devolver. I believe that power is better exercised when it's closer to the peoples and communities it's there to serve Andy Burnham has been a trailblazer for the mayoral model and we're seeing others now follow using those levers of power I might not be happy with the result for lots of reasons but Ben Howard”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That politics is fundamentally about change at any level, and I had a rry smile this week, I think varsity, one of the student newspapers at Cambridge, they run a sort of feature looking back sort of 20 years. 20 years ago was me. And this week they mentioned a certain West Streeting campaigning to successfully to save the university's architecture department from closure.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think it's so much a conscience issue, but I do think it's a resources issue. I mean, the prison estate is an absolute mess. But then would you prioritize prisons over our schools and hospitals? I wouldn't. And I don't think that's an immoral choice.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And also, like, you know, and then there's a question of the money, we've got a fierce competition for resources at the moment because they're in short supply. And would you start here? I do think there's a more fundamental question, though, about why how we got to this state and why is it that criminal justice and prisons feature so low? I mean, you know, you were a prisons minister. What is most What made your job? the most difficult to...”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think it's a surprise that when money is in short supply and when you're fighting an election on the issues that matter to voters and you're trying to kind of hit voters on the nose with the messages that speak to the issues that they care most about that prison and prison reform is not going to be a centrepiece of the election campaign.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think we do have to look at the whole issue of kind of criminal justice in the round. I would argue, for example, that my NAN should never have been in prison, that her offences weren't serious enough as a pregnant woman to find herself giving birth with all of the consequences that would involve, because my mum was separated from my nan for a while at the beginning and we now know so much about those first thousand days. That was a terrible thing to have done. And I think there are probably too many women in prison today for offences.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We've reached the same destination, but I've had to clear hurdles to get it hit. And actually, that's made me the stronger athlete, and it's built resilience. And so I don't look back with, and it's certainly not a misery memoir of it, and I don't look back with a sense of pity. I mean, even so we mentioned the sort of one boy, the two bills, the grandparents, the fry-up. And this is probably where the precociousness was born in the womb. My mum was pregnant as a teenager. I think what's technically known as an accident. It was not a planned pregnancy. And everyone, including my dad, my granddad, my mum's mum, all agreed the best thing to do as my mum to have an abortion. But she decided to run up that she wasn't going to go through with it. She knew that my formidable nan might well frog march her to the hospital to go through of it. So on the morning of the appointment, she did the one thing that she was explicitly told she couldn't do or the procedure couldn't go ahead, which was to have breakfast. So the friop is literally the fry.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We've got an equal vote, an equal voice, and we're sat around the Treasury Committee, like one of the most influential committees. And Jacob was that opposite me for a good few years. I used to say, look, Jacob and I do the same job. We've got the same weight, the same, not quite the same voice, but notionally we've got the right speak”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of trying to say, well, you've earned your place here, we've all earned our place here, but I've earned my place more because I've had to clear more hurdles. And the way I describe it now talking to kids from backgrounds like mine across the East End when I go and talk in schools is, you know, actually I often compare myself to Jacob Reese Mogg after I was led to Parliament, which is, look,”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've always had to find a better way to describe this because I always describe myself having a bit of a working class chip on my shoulder, but I don't mean that in a resentful or aggravated way. What I mean is that I'd sort of been brought up with this idea, well, you know, anything you can do, I can do. always had this sort of sense of, well, I'm not going to let my background hold me back. So I arrived in Cambridge with a precocious, actually precocious is probably about, I had a precociousness, yeah. And I arrived, and I remember having some arguments with some of my friends from independent schools, and I'd never met anyone from private school before I went to university.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's the sadness for me is when I was very young, I remember him being in and out of prison. I went to visit him once in prison and I didn't want to go back. Which prison was he? I didn't like seeing him there. And I said to my mother, I didn't want to go back afterwards, which upset my granddad. But I just didn't want to go back. When he eventually came out and came out for good, I found him to be loving, but also to be living quite a sad and solitary life. And I felt sorry for him. And when I spent time with him, and it goes back to suddenly it all makes sense point in terms of his childhood. But I used to sit there thinking, because we used to have fierce debates about politics, about religion. He was like a Dawkins-style atheist before Richard Dawkins became a big thing. And he had read all of the major religious texts, the Bible, the Quran, the Torah. And he was really well read. And I used to think, and he used to be incredibly funny. He used to raise a sharp wit. And he absolutely encouraged me to aim high. I mean, you know, he was so proud when I made it to Cambridge. And I used to sit there thinking, how is it that someone this smart, this...”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think from both sides of the family, I mean, my mum's never justified my granddad's criminality. I mean, in the book I explain it in that it was only not long before he died when he finally revealed to my mum and my aunt that he'd been both physically and sexually abused by his father growing up. And suddenly it all made sense. It doesn't excuse, but it does explain. And you can then see, well, despite having a really loving mum and a brilliant relationship with his sisters, you can understand why Ball Store approved school might feel like a safer place and why the institutions of prison and that routine felt like a safer place. And of course, he had status in prisons as an armed robber and as a getaway driver. He had friends. And so he, you know, life was actually... Better for him in prison, which I think is a huge tragedy.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To talk to everyone, I think she could have been a great Labour councillor or even a Labour MP. In fact, she was asked to be a Labour councillor and she said no, because she was ashamed of her criminal record and she didn't want to bring herself, the family or the Labour Party into disrepute. So it had a big consequence for my mum, for her brothers and brother and sisters for my nan and what she was able to do.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Gun and say, Go on that. And I would also count my own family among his victims because his relationship with my nan was a very abusive one. I mean, my nan herself was incredibly strong, but my mum grew up in an environment with violence where my granddad was at home and not at home. It was a very unstable childhood. It affected my mum's education and her life chances. You mentioned my nan giving birth in prison. She was only in prison because she got caught up with my granddad's work. And yet my nan was this warrior for social justice. She very active in the tenants association in the East End campaigned against Murdoch when he moved to News International, sometimes after when I'm going into work to do an interview with the Sun. I sort of look up and say I'm really sorry Nan, but you know.”
2024-06-27 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 82. Wes Streeting: Labour, privatisation, and the NHS · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source