All the instruments we have now agree that Labour is on course to lose the next general election and so this has naturally been a somewhat gloomy conference. But Wes Streeting did manage to rouse delegates with a well-received speech today about what he called “a battle of progressives versus reactionaries”.
Labour’s ancestral enemy, the Conservative Party, didn’t even warrant a mention (though there was an attack on the so-called small-c “forces of conservatism” in the strike-prone British Medical Association).
Instead Nigel Farage was identified as the target of his speech in its first minute. He attacked the Reform leader as a “Mr Money Bags” who can afford private healthcare. To rapturous applause he said: “That man is a con artist posing as a voice of the people whilst working for the interests of the powerful”.
While he is far from the only minister to have attacked Farage from the podium at this conference, Streeting benefitted from being on the comfortable home turf of the NHS.
He believes it is a key wedge issue that can be used to defeat Reform. I hear that privately the Health Secretary thinks the one great success of the Runcorn and Helsby by-election earlier this year, which Labour lost by a whisker to Reform, was when the party got on the front foot about Farage’s previous comments on the health service. It forced Reform into a defensive crouch and at least temporarily moved doorstep conversations away from immigration.
Reform’s various stumbles on health policy in recent weeks also helped him when preparing this speech. After Farage’s equivocation on the safety of paracetamol and comments about vaccines being linked to instances of cancer at the party’s conference, Streeting attacked the Reform as “anti science, anti reason, anti health”.
“Nigel Farage is a snake oil salesman of British politics and it’s time to stop buying what he’s selling,” he said to applause from the conference floor, repeating a line that he trialled in broadcast interviews in recent days.
Likewise he suggested that Reform’s deportation and Indefinite Leave to Remain announcements, if implemented, could lead to an exodus of NHS workers: “Farage says go home, we say you are home. I’ve got your back, we’ve got your back, and at the next election we’ll send Farage packing”.
Roving from his brief, he called out a more general atmosphere of “prejudice and hatred” and concluded his speech by telling the floor “this is our fight, it has always been our fight”.
While the outlook may be dim for Labour at the current moment, it is still Streeting’s personal belief that Reform is more beatable than their consistent polling lead suggests.
[Further reading: Why is Labour so cheery?]
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