This is an edited transcript of the remarks Streeting made to the New Statesman summer reception.
The question that the New Statesman’s interview with Keir posed is “What is this Labour government for?” I think it’s a question that Keir has answered many times and he answered again last week at the away day we had in Chequers. The story of this government is very much reflected in our leader and Prime Minister, the team he’s assembled, who we are, what we represent, and what we want to do for people from backgrounds like ours. We have a prime minister who has reached the heights of not just one but two professions that are really hard to crack into for people from backgrounds like ours. The legal profession, where he became our country’s top prosecutor. And politics, where he is our country’s Prime Minister. What is remarkable about that man and what he represents is that he carries those experiences and that sense of injustice into work with him every day. He talks a lot about his parents, his dad, his mum, and what they mean to him. And also what they represent.
His mum’s experience in the NHS, both working for and being served by the NHS is why he has made tackling the NHS crisis, and doing for this century what Atlee’s government did for the last, his top priority. He knows that when he’s cutting waiting lists, and building an NHS and social care system that is fit for the future, it means better pay, better conditions, more professional respect for people like his Mum, but also better quality care, and not just for his Mum, but for families around the country like his. When he talks about his Dad and the disrespect he faced as a tradesman, that explains why his government is delivering the biggest expansion in employment rights in generations. And when we introduce fair pay agreements for care workers, something that would transform the life of people like his sister, who is a care worker.
It’s visceral, it’s personal, and it changes the dynamics of politics among the political class. And he has assembled the most working-class cabinet in history. That really matters. Not for tokenism, but because of the experience we bring to bear and the changes that we make for people from backgrounds like ours. The whole purpose of making sure the levers of social, political and economic power in this country aren’t just wielded by people from the most privileged backgrounds, the reason we want to break open the hold they have, isn’t because they’re malevolent people who want to see poorer or working class people suffer.
It’s that if you don’t have a diversity of perspective and experience, you end up through unconscious, if not conscious, bias making decisions in the interests of the privileged few. That’s what’s led to our country being so incredibly described as one of the world’s richest economies, which is true if you measure it in GDP per capita. And if you go to any part of this city, one of the richest cities anywhere on earth, let alone the towns and rural communities across our country, you are greeted with a level of poverty, inequality, insecurity, and lack of access to opportunity that should shame this country in this age of the 21st century.
The Deputy Prime Minister, who has worked her way up from poverty, through the social care system as a care worker, through the trade union movement, to be the Deputy Prime Minister, to build 1.5 million homes understanding the difference those homes will make, that really matters. Having an education secretary who experienced the sort of child poverty I experienced growing up being responsible for smashing the class ceiling for kids in state schools across our country, that really matters. Having people like David Lammy and Shabana Mahmood, also from humble backgrounds, also facing the additional challenges that come from being black or Asian in our country even in the 21st century, even now, that they are the Lord Chancellor and the Foreign Secretary of our country, that really matters.
And you can see it reflected in the choice we made in the first year of this Labour government. I’m not going to do a shopping list, because sometimes in politics we’re a bit too guilty of doing a shopping list, so I’m just going to give you one example. The decision that Keir and Rachel and Bridget and Liz took on one day in the first year of this Labour government to expand free school meals to 500,000 children lifted 100,000 children out of poverty. The last Labour government, in 13 years, lifted 400,000 children out of poverty and we saw it as one of our great achievements. Keir, Rachel, Bridget and Liz did that in one day with one decision in the first year of a Labour government. So don’t tell me that voting doesn’t change anything, don’t tell me that there isn’t a difference between a Labour government and the alternative, and don’t for a minute think that the discipline and focus that we showed as the left in opposition to win power can now be lost now that we hold it.
There are difficult choices. We came into government confronting not just a crisis in our economy, a crisis in our NHS, a crisis in our school system, a crisis in our prison system, a crisis in our rivers, a crisis of ambition and energy and climate change. We face all of it. In normal conditions, any one of those issues would be dominating. With this Labour government, we don’t have that luxury, we have to tackle them all. So forgive us if we haven’t solved all those problems in the first year. But do not kid yourselves for one minute that things would be better with the alternative, that there are easy answers, easy slogans or easy solutions. Believe me, if there were, we would have reached them. Politics is hard, governing is hard, and I just want to end on this note. I wouldn’t complain for a minute about any of it. The best, most liberating thing about being in government is the privilege of coming into the office every day and saying, “What are we going to do?” In opposition, all you can do is ask, “What are we going to say?”
So just remember. Remember the scale of the challenge, remember the things we’ve done in our first year. Plenty more to do – no one doubts that. It’s a decade of national renewal we’re looking for. But to win that decade of national renewal, we need to show change. And we need to make sure that people feel change. And there is no better leader, or no better team, to make sure that change is felt in every community and every class of our country, than the team who have lived it, experienced it. And I don’t just mean the Prime Minister or the government, I mean the Parliamentary Labour Party, a group of people who look and sound like and represent the diversity of our country. It really matters.
[Further reading: Why Labour has embraced class politics]
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