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Streeting seems to blame Caerphilly loss on slow pace of privatisation

On 24 October, Labour suffered a historic by-election defeat in Caerphilly, Wales. This was the first time Labour had lost the seat since devolution in 1999, which has led many to ask how this could have happened. Wes Streeting seems to have an idea of what went wrong.

While most agree the loss reflects the public’s disapproval of Starmerism, Wes Streeting seems to think it’s because they’ve failed to privatise the NHS fast enough:


The most hated Labour has ever been

Labour’s disapproval ratings aren’t just high; they’re historic:

So, what’s driving this?

Could it be the failed policies,Ā endless scandals, accusations of cronyism, and constant lies and u-turns?

It certainly seems to be, and yet Streeting has other ideas.

Wes Streeting: The modernisation man

The BBC’sĀ Laura Kuenssberg put the following to Streeting:

You described that as a Hartlepool moment for Keir Starmer, referring to when he lost a by-election in 2021 and he thought about resigning. Why are things so bad? That’s a shocking performance.

While Labour did underperform on polling, it was only by two percentage points in the end, so it wasn’t that “shocking” (although it was clearly very, very bad):

Streeting responded to Kuenssberg as follows:

So I do think we need to react to this result in the way that we did Hartlepool, which is firstly to acknowledge the scale of the result and the message that voters have sent. The worst thing you can do after a result like this is pretend the voters were sending a different message

Would you believe that Streeting goes on to take away an entirely different message to the one voters have delivered?

He continued:

The second thing we’ve got to do is take it to heart. And in the aftermath of the Hartlepool by-election, which, similar to Caerphilly, was a place that supported Labour through thick and thin – and Caerphilly supported Labour for over a century – the way to respond to that is the way that Keir responded to Hartlepool.

Clearly enjoying herself ā€” Kuenssberg interjected:

What, think about resigning?

Streeting reacted in a panic to this, blurting:

No, no, no, quite the opposite. No, thank goodness he didn’t, by the way. Because actually what he did was to say the Labour Party has not changed efficiently and it’s not changing fast enough.

Starmer certainly changed Labour, and now that his vision of the party is in power…

…everyone despises it.

Will doing the same thing, only faster, change people’s opinions?

Wes Streeting seems to think so, as he went on to state that Labour will drive a “bold and values-driven agenda” which :

is modernising and reforming, but defends our Labour values and defends this country’s values of an NHS that’s free at the point of use

‘Modernising and reforming’.

‘Free at the point of use’.

Everyone knows what these coded messages mean, Wes; you’re saying you’re going to further privatise the NHS, but don’t worry; the public won’t have to pay to visit the hospital; they’ll simply have to pay more in taxation to ensure the healthcare fat cats get their cut.

This is what the public think about how we should run the NHS:

graph showing most people support the nationalisation of utilities and other key industries

Clearly –Ā clearly – you are not listening to “the message that voters have sent”, Wes, because this is how they view privatisation.

For the few, not the many

As we’ve reported in the past, it’s entirely predictable that Wes Streeting would favour the privatisers, because they’re the people he works with.

Labour have learned nothing from Caerphilly, and they will only continue to get worse until Starmer is forced out.

Just keep your eye on Streeting when that happens, because this oily, little rat is every bit as bad as his boss.

Featured image via BBC

By Willem Moore

This post was originally published on Canary.