The Blairite grandson of an armed robber who could be the next PM

Wes Streeting was 14 when he first stood for election. The year was 1997. The stage: The mock campaign being run for pupils at Westminster City School.

Wesley, as he was known back then, made a full-throated pitch for why Tony Blair was the right man to lead Britain into the 21st century and finally return Labour to power.

“He was met with a resounding cacophony of boos,” a school friend Ray, who was watching, would later recall of the initial reaction. But as Mr Streeting spoke the mood began to change.

“He’d read the New Labour manifesto cover to cover and he gave a speech that really spoke to the kids,” Ray went on. “And at the end of the speech he got this huge round of applause.”

A rhetorical flourish that can sway minds; a politics grounded in Blairism; the drive and confidence to step into the spotlight.

These are themes of Mr Streeting’s rise in politics.

They are present this week as the Health Secretary – who resigned from Sir Keir Starmer’s Government on Thursday – approached the biggest gamble of his career by launching a Labour leadership challenge to oust the Prime Minister.

So too will echoes be heard in the days and weeks ahead, as Mr Streeting attempts to convince MPs, party members and – perhaps – the wider electorate of his vision.

Origins matter in politics, and Mr Streeting has been more open about his than most MPs, writing an autobiography, One Boy, Two Bills and a Fry-Up, published around the time he turned 40.

The MP for Ilford North has described having a “working-class chip on my shoulder”, in the sense of being driven to achieve what others better off assumed they would always have.

Born to teenage parents in London’s East End, money was scarce. Mr Streeting did not want to invite friends to the council flat in Stepney he called home, “ashamed” it was so “grotty”.

The lights would sometimes cut out, his mother not able to afford to put more money in the electricity meter. Food was not scarce, but its appearance relied on the kindness of relatives.

“We had the advantage of a big East End family network around us,” Mr Streeting said in a 2022 interview. “So we didn’t go hungry in that sense. But it did mean kind of traipsing the hour-long round walk to my nan’s to get food from there or to get food from my aunt’s or my grandad.”

Shaped by two ‘Bills’

His childhood was profoundly shaped by the two “Bills” – two grandfathers who, in Mr Streeting’s retelling, represented typical but very different East End families.

One was an armed robber at the time of the notorious Kray twins who spent repeated stints behind bars. Mr Streeting recalls visiting him in prison only once, refusing to return.

His grandmother, too, was jailed, convicted for stolen goods, and even gave birth to his mother when incarcerated. She also shared a cell with Christine Keeler, the temptress of the Profumo affair. The pair clicked and later became pen pals.

The connections bring a ring of truth to the Streeting line that from where he grew up “statistically I think I was more likely to end up in prison than in Parliament”.

The other Bill, a Royal Navy veteran of the Second World War and a career civil engineer, is named by Mr Streeting as the biggest influence in his life.

It is from this grandfather that the man who would reach the heights of the Cabinet traces his patriotism, his Christian faith and his instincts on law and order.

This Bill was a working-class Tory. So too was Wes’s father, who made clear after his son entered politics that he was only voting Labour because “Streeting” was on the ballot.

The family history helps explain why winning over Conservatives as well as squeezing smaller progressive parties is seen by Mr Streeting as essential to Labour’s electoral hopes.

His academic talent took him to the University of Cambridge – self-funded via retail jobs, as his MP website declares to this day – to study history and, it turned out, deepen his interest in politics.

A year as president of the Cambridge Students’ Union in 2004-05 was followed by becoming the leader of the National Union of Students (NUS).

Mr Streeting rejected calls to scrap tuition fees at the time, though did speak out against an increase in rates. The campaign was called “Admission Impossible”.

Always on the dance floor first

A fellow NUS colleague has recalled how a nationwide tour pushing the argument also allowed plenty of time to let off steam, saying Mr Streeting was “always on the dance floor first”.

He is a karaoke lover too. At the 2021 Labour conference footage captured him hollering out Robbie Williams’s Angels, editing the key line: “Keir won’t forsake me, I’m loving Starmer instead.” No longer, it seems.

There have been jobs in the third sector, with time at an educational charity and Stonewall, the LGBTQ rights charity whose position on trans rights issues has sparked controversy in recent years.

There have been moments of disillusionment with Labour, too. He briefly left the Labour Party in opposition to the Iraq war after university.

Frontline politics began at a local level, winning a seat back under the Labour banner in Redbridge London Borough Council before becoming deputy leader in May 2014.

His arrival in the House of Commons in 2015 as the MP for Ilford North, taking the seat from the Conservatives, coincided with the national party taking a step away from his centrist stance.

Jeremy Corbyn’s fervent democratic socialism, voiced as Labour leader from 2015 until 2020, clashed with Mr Streeting’s more moderate instincts, leaving him stuck on the back bench.

Mr Streeting declared his leader “unelectable”. Some of the enmity directed by Labour’s Left towards him dates back to this period of internal feuding.

The irony of Mr Streeting’s political rise – as it was when Rishi Sunak turned on Boris Johnson – is that it was done by the hand which he now bites; that of Sir Keir.

The Labour leader gave him front bench positions in his shadow Treasury and education teams before promoting him to shadow health secretary in a moderate reset in 2021.

In the half decade since, Mr Streeting has become an established figure on the national scene, known for a flash of charisma in modern politics that is all too often monochrome.

Humour is often a go-to. When told of a cancer diagnosis aged 38 – the kidney affected has been removed – he told the informing doctor that the “s--- sandwich” news had been delivered with aplomb.

Asked to contribute thoughts on Rachel Reeves, then the shadow chancellor, for a Telegraph profile piece in 2024, he texted her demanding more health funding in turn for praise.

When accused by Downing Street of plotting to topple Sir Keir last November, Mr Streeting issued a denial, adding he also did not shoot JFK or know where Lord Lucan was hiding.

His policy instincts have emerged as he moved into Government from Opposition. Mr Streeting has leant on private health care provision to ease NHS waiting lists, which are falling on his watch.

He was given another rebuke by Sir Keir’s No 10 when indicating he wanted the UK to rejoin the European Union’s customs union – a red line in the party’s 2024 manifesto.

Mr Streeting has also opened up about his private life, something which the Prime Minister, in the eyes of critics, has too often kept a closed book.

He has spoken movingly about the challenge, when he was young, of trying to square being gay with his Christian faith, which remains strong to this day.

“I spent years and years choosing not to be gay and trying desperately hard not to be because of my faith,” Mr Streeting told the BBC’s Nick Robinson on his Political Currency podcast in 2022.

“In the end, I came to the conclusion that I have been made in this way and I have not made a choice to be gay, this is just who I am. I think I have been made in God’s image, in that sense, and I’ve reconciled my faith and sexuality. But that took a long time.”

Mr Streeting eventually found love in the Labour Party. His partner, Joe Dancey, is a former adviser to Lord Mandelson who stood to be an MP in 2024 but fell short. Mr Dancey was then briefly in charge of communications for Labour until last autumn.

Plenty will be thrown at Mr Streeting as he seeks the leadership. His own friendship with Lord Mandelson, for one. Mr Streeting rushed out texts with the former US ambassador earlier this year to neutralise the danger.

Whether he could win over the Left-leaning Labour membership will be one question. Another: does he have the policy vision to provide substance to his smooth media appearances and bonhomie?

He has been here before. Aged 14, facing a hostile crowd, the plucky Wesley was able to dazzle his audience of fellow pupils into rapturous applause.

But there was a catch. The apparent enthusiasm only translated into a second-place finish. The winner? The candidate representing the Monster Raving Loony Party.

Perhaps not that much has changed since 1997.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]