Wes Streeting’s big resignation speech has a hole in the middle
The doughnut arrived just after lunch. When a cabinet minister resigns, by longstanding tradition they are permitted to give a resignation speech in the House of Commons.
A more recent tradition is that they give this speech while standing in the middle of a tightly packed circle of their closest parliamentary colleagues to make the occasion feel more historic for the TV cameras, which tend not to capture the clear and obvious reality that the rest of the chamber is completely empty.
Wes Streeting’s doughnut was an intriguing spectacle, more fascinating than appetising, like one of those novelty recipes that only exists for the purposes of going viral on Instagram. Here was politics made prosecco-flavoured crisps.
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Shortly after a general election, the parliamentary authorities produce a little book of the official photographs of all 650 MPs. Rarely has that book been more aggressively thumbed in the press gallery than in the long wait for the now-former health secretary to rise and, as it would turn out, not actually tell us why it was he’d resigned.
Who were these people? To his left, it would turn out, was Rosie Wrighting, MP for Kettering, who’s only 28, and poor Sam Carling, MP for Cambridge, who’s only 23. It wasn’t meant to be this way, was it? The looks on their faces recalled any number of tragic First World War poems. Never such innocence again.
To his right was Joe Morris and beyond him Steve Race. Those two, with Wrighting, are the parliamentary private secretaries whose gently explosive resignations last week brought us to this moment of crisis. Eventually, Jess Phillips, another resigner, arrived and the right flank of the doughnut was ushered outwards to make way for her. She, unlike the rest of them, is vaguely box office, after all.
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In the middle, trying but ultimately failing not to look extremely nervous, sat Streeting himself. He, like the prime minister he is trying to bring down, can be overly enthusiastic when reaching into the hair gel tub. He has been an MP for 11 years now, during which time I suspect not a single strand upon his head has moved so much as a millimetre. On the basis of appearance alone, a Shakespearean version of this bloody tale might make Keir Starmer and Streeting father and son. It would make it all a lot more exciting.
The speech itself achieved something truly rare. It went on too long yet it was also over before it started. It lasted 15 minutes but at no point did it explain why Streeting resigned. “I left the government because we are in the fight of our life against nationalism,” he said, “and it is a fight we are currently losing.”
We’d been told in advance he would say that. We imagined that, when it came to it, some further context might be provided. Why were they losing it? How might they win it were he in charge? But none of that came. Mainly, we were told, the government he had just quit was doing a great job on things like NHS waiting lists and hospital appointments. The things, in other words, of which Streeting been in charge.
It might have made some sense had it been a speech in a Labour Party leadership contest, possibly at a party conference in the wake of a crushing election defeat, but that hasn’t happened. Streeting is running to be leader of the Labour Party because he has taken down the current holder of that position. In such circumstances, some more explanation is necessary.
He spoke the usual platitudes about Labour’s apparently sacred role in the life of the nation. “Progressives against reactionaries, hope over hate — that’s this party’s fight. And it’s Andy Burnham’s fight in Makerfield too,” he said. They seemed to be meant as the stirring words of a some kind of field marshal, before sending his men over the top. The slight flaw is that Makerfield is land they’d already won. The privates are having to fight for it again because the generals accidentally lost it while arguing among themselves.
In his resignation letter last week, Streeting let loose some violent phrases, such as: “Where we need vision, we have a vacuum.” If you choose to say such things, it does become rather essential that you provide some vision, rather quickly. At this important moment there was none.
The first round of the battle Streeting has unleashed involves winning MPs around to his side. That none of any great significance came to his side to listen to it was worrying enough. If they were not persuaded at the start, it is doubtful they’ll have been persuaded by the end.
There seemed to be a thread to be found by the end: that Britain can do big things. “We couldn’t vaccinate against the deadly virus, until we could. We couldn’t nationalise the banking system, until we could. We couldn’t reorientate our entire manufacturing base toward building aircraft, until we could,” he said. It’s rare to hear a political speech that singles out for praise Gordon Brown, Neville Chamberlain and Boris Johnson. Is this the club Streeting wishes to join?
He didn’t quite say, but still he carried on. “Britain used to punch above its weight in the world. We still can.” And with that final flourish, Streeting sat down, the centre of his own doughnut, master of his own curious universe.
“Punching above your weight” is a favourite line of politicians. In the world of boxing, from which the term is borrowed, the authorities rarely allow it. Punching above your weight tends to get you knocked out. Streeting had come out punching, but where he was aiming was anyone’s guess.