Wes Streeting

Wesley Paul William Streeting (; born 21 January 1983) is a British politician who has served as Secretary of State for Defence since 2026. He previously served as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care from 2024 until his resignation in 2026. A member of the Labour Party, he has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Ilford North since 2015.

Streeting read history at the University of Cambridge and was president of the Cambridge Students' Union from 2004 to 2005. He was president of the National Union of Students (NUS) from 2008 to 2010. Streeting also worked for Progress, a Labour Party–related organisation, for a year before working in the public sector. In 2010 he was elected to Redbridge London Borough Council for Labour and became deputy leader of the council in May 2014. Streeting was elected to the House of Commons as MP for Ilford North at the 2015 general election and resigned as the council's deputy leader before standing down as a councillor in 2018. He was returned to Parliament at both the 2017 and the 2019 general elections.

Following Keir Starmer's election as Leader of the Labour Party in the 2020 leadership election, Streeting joined the front bench as Shadow Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury in April 2020. He became Shadow Minister for Schools in October 2020 after the resignation of Margaret Greenwood before joining the shadow cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for Child Poverty in the May 2021 shadow cabinet reshuffle. In the November 2021 shadow cabinet reshuffle, Streeting became, following a promotion by Starmer, Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, a position he remained in until July 2024.

Following Labour's victory at the 2024 general election, Streeting was appointed Secretary of State for Health and Social Care in the Starmer ministry. He resigned from this position in May 2026 following Labour's results in the 2026 United Kingdom local elections, Scottish Parliament election, and Senedd election, citing a lack of confidence in Starmer's leadership. He initially declared that he would run in any subsequent leadership election to succeed Starmer, but after the election of Andy Burnham to Parliament in June, Streeting declined to stand and endorsed Burnham. After Burnham became Prime Minister in July 2026, Streeting returned to government as Defence Secretary.

Early life and education Wesley Paul William Streeting was born on 21 January 1983 in Stepney, London, England, to Mark and Corrina, aged 17 and 18 respectively. He has five brothers, a sister and a stepsister.

His two grandfathers, both named Bill, were key figures in his youth. His maternal grandfather, Bill Crowley, was a frequently imprisoned criminal who had served time with the Kray twins. He recalls Conservative Party politicians, particularly Ann Widdecombe, in the 1990s "denigrating single-parent families like mine, which I took quite personally". Streeting briefly left the Labour Party because he opposed its decision to enter the Iraq War.

Streeting came out as gay in his second year of university. After graduating, Streeting worked part time for the Labour Party-related think tank Progress for a year.

Career

Early career (2008–2010) As president of the NUS, Streeting was a strong proponent of his predecessor Gemma Tumelty's proposed reforms to the NUS governance structures, which had been denounced and narrowly defeated by many left-wing groups in NUS as an attack on NUS democracy. His election was reported by The Guardian as "a move that will lend weight to the fight to modernise the union". During his term as NUS president he opposed academic strikes, "Given the effects of the current economic climate on the graduate jobs market, students need industrial action by university staff like a hole in the head".

Shortly after his election as NUS President, Streeting was appointed as a member of the government's Youth Citizenship Commission, chaired by Professor Jonathan Tonge of the University of Liverpool, which published its report in June 2009. Streeting supported university tuition fees as president, consistent with UK government policy during the New Labour years.

In 2009, while President of the NUS, Streeting posted tweets about wanting to push the Daily Mail journalist Jan Moir under a train.

After completing his term as President of the NUS, Streeting was subsequently a public sector consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which he gave up on election as a councillor, because Redbridge Council was a "current audit client" of the firm; this forced him to choose between keeping his job or forcing a second by-election. In 2010, shortly after leaving PwC, Streeting was appointed as Head of Policy and Strategic Communications for Oona King's unsuccessful bid to win the Labour Party's nomination to be its candidate in the 2012 London Mayoral election.

He then served as Chief Executive of the Helena Kennedy Foundation, an educational charity that promotes access to higher education for students from further education colleges. He went on to serve as head of education at Stonewall, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights charity (for one year and six months), where he led their Education for All campaign to tackle homophobia in schools.

Council career (2010–2018) Streeting poses with an RMT union banner at a protest against London Underground ticket office closures in March 2015. In a July 2010 by-election, Streeting was elected for the Chadwell ward on Redbridge London Borough Council, having stood unsuccessfully for that council's Roding ward two months earlier. He held the Chadwell seat for Labour by 220 votes, winning with 31.5% of the vote on a 25.5% turnout. The by-election had been triggered by a previously elected candidate subsequently being found to be ineligible to serve on the council. Streeting was elected as Deputy Leader of the Labour Group in October 2011.

Streeting sought re-election in 2014 to represent the Aldborough ward. At a public meeting of the Redbridge Citizens' Assembly on 6 May 2014, Streeting promised on behalf of his group that, if they won the election, they would not reduce the level of Council Tax support provided to low-income working-age residents. In May 2014, Labour took control of Redbridge Council for the first time and Streeting was appointed Deputy Leader of the council, with Jas Athwal as Leader. Once elected, the Labour council proceeded to cut the level of council tax support, so as to treble the amount of Council Tax paid by supported residents from April 2016; the council made a further reduction from April 2017, and made a third reduction from April 2018.

Streeting resigned as Deputy Leader in May 2015, shortly after being elected Member of Parliament for Ilford North. Whilst he remained a backbench councillor following his election to Parliament, he chose not to claim his councillor allowance. Streeting did not stand for re-election after being elected to Parliament, and ceased to be a councillor on 3 May 2018.

Parliamentary career

Backbenches (2015–2020)

At the 2015 general election, Streeting was elected to Parliament as MP for Ilford North with 43.9% of the vote and a majority of 589. After being elected to Parliament, Streeting was elected Honorary President of the British Youth Council. In April 2016 Streeting criticised the Labour Party for refusing a £30,000 donation from McDonald's. According to Labour, the refusal was due to the company's poor record on worker's rights and hostile stance towards trade unions. Streeting campaigned in favour of the United Kingdom remaining in the European Union in the run-up to the 2016 EU membership referendum. He later campaigned for a People's Vote, a campaign group calling for a public vote on the final Brexit deal between the UK and the European Union.

At the snap 2017 general election, Streeting was re-elected as MP for Ilford North with an increased vote share of 57.8% and an increased majority of 9,639. Streeting is a vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism, a co-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Jews and a supporter of Labour Friends of Israel. He is also a co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims and a supporter of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East. In September 2018, he held the last in a series of London-wide consultations to create the Working Definition of Islamophobia. In July 2018, Streeting called for "targeted economic sanctions" against Israeli settlements in the West Bank in response to the Israeli government "grossly infringing on the human rights of Palestinians". In July 2019, Streeting was reported in the media as using abusive language towards a non-Jewish antisemitism campaigner.

Shortly before the 2019 general election, Streeting told a Labour First meeting that the party faced electoral oblivion in any snap poll due to the leadership's poor handling of Brexit and allegations of antisemitism. At the election, Streeting was again re-elected, with a decreased vote share of 50.5% and a decreased majority of 5,198. Following Labour's defeat in the general election, Streeting nominated Jess Phillips and Rosena Allin-Khan in the 2020 Labour Party leadership and deputy leadership elections, and, after Allin-Khan did not win, subsequently endorsed Ian Murray for the deputy leadership.

Frontbench (2020–2024) Following the election of Keir Starmer as Leader of the Labour Party, Streeting was appointed Shadow Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury. On 16 October 2020, Streeting became Shadow Minister for Schools in succession to Margaret Greenwood, who had resigned the previous day following her opposition to the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill. In the May 2021 shadow cabinet reshuffle, Streeting was appointed to the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for Child Poverty. He was promoted to the post of Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care in the November 2021 shadow cabinet reshuffle.

In February 2022, Streeting was re-selected as the Labour candidate for Ilford North at the 2024 general election. Streeting was ranked sixth in the New Statesman's Left Power List of May 2023, described as "one of the most prominent and confident members" of the shadow cabinet. In July 2023, Streeting apologised in response to the treatment of Rosie Duffield by Labour for her views opposing gender self-identification and gender recognition reforms. In January 2024, he supported single-sex wards in hospitals, with the possibility of separate wards for transgender people in the future. Streeting welcomed the final report of the Cass Review, which dealt with gender services for children and young people, in April 2024. He said that the report "must provide a watershed moment for the NHS's gender identity services" and "provide an evidence-led framework to deliver that". In an interview with The Sun, Streeting stated that he no longer considers his stance on trans rights to be "some people are trans, get over it, let's move on". Instead, he said there were "complexities".

At the 2024 general election, Streeting retained his Ilford North constituency by a margin of only 528 votes following a challenge by independent British-Palestinian candidate Leanne Mohamad, who ran in protest against Labour's stance on the Gaza war and the Gaza humanitarian crisis. While she was not elected, Streeting's unexpectedly narrow margin of victory provoked media and political attention, especially in the context of the simultaneous victory of several independent candidates against Labour running on platforms critical of the party's response to the conflict.

Health Secretary (2024–2026)

In July 2024, Streeting was appointed Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. He became a member of the Privy Council on 10 July 2024. Declaring the NHS to be broken, Streeting vowed to resolve the junior doctor strikes and decrease waiting times. New negotiations were held with the Labour government, which ended the dispute with Junior doctors on 17 September.

Research by the Good Law Project in October 2024 showed that more than 60% of the donations he has declared in the UK Parliament Register of Members' Financial Interests) since he entered parliament has come from companies and individuals with links to private healthcare. As of October 2024, a total of £311,400 has been given by companies and individuals to Streeting. Streeting declared a January 2025 donation of £53,000 from OPD Group Ltd as being "Towards staffing costs in my constituency office". Streeting pleged to implement the review's findings in full.

In November 2024, Streeting cautioned NHS leaders that consistently failing hospitals will be publicly identified, with managers held accountable, potentially facing removal and restrictions on future employment in the sector. thumb leftIn December 2024, Streeting indefinitely extended a temporary ban on puberty blockers for children with gender dysphoria set in place by the prior Conservative government, following the publication of the Cass Review. He received mixed responses to his decision, with wide criticism from LGBTQ+ right groups, including Keyne Walker from TransActual characterising the ban as "discrimination, plain and simple". Puberty blockers remained legal for other children and adults.

In January 2025 a press release announced a new agreement between the NHS and the "independent sector to help tackle waiting lists and give patients greater choice". Also that month, Streeting criticised the campaigners of former neonatal nurse Lucy Letby, asking people to "consider those grieving parents who've lost their babies" and stating that "waging a campaign" on behalf of Letby is "not the right thing to do", concluding that "Until I'm told otherwise by the courts of this land, then I continue to stand by the view that there's been a fair conviction here until the courts determine otherwise; that's how justice in this country works."

On 9 September 2025, Streeting defended then-UK ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson, stating that he should not be judged as "guilty by association" for his links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The defence came after US committee documents were released within which he called the offender his "best pal". In an interview on Sky News, Streeting said that Mandelson "deeply regrets ever having been introduced" to Epstein. He argued against dismissing someone based purely on their past connections, stating, "I don't think we should regard everyone as guilty by association". Streeting also highlighted the importance of justice for Epstein's victims, stating they should receive a platform to tell their stories. In February 2026, following the subsequent revelations, Streeting took a more critical position, stating Mandelson betrayed his country. It was reported that Streeting's prior friendship with Mandelson could prevent him from launching a potential leadership challenge to Starmer.

In November 2025, Streeting condemned strikes by resident doctors in England as "morally reprehensible" and stated that the strikes would threaten the future of the NHS. He said the British Medical Association was a "cartel-like" union and no longer a professional voice for doctors. Later that month, the Institute for Government accused Streeting of a "chaotic and incoherent approach" to reforming the NHS making it unlikely the government will hit its own targets.

On 14 May 2026, Streeting resigned as Health Secretary and said he no longer had confidence in Starmer's leadership. In his resignation letter, Streeting called for a Labour leadership contest with a "broad" range of candidates, which was interpreted as an acknowledgement that he lacked the required 81 nominations from sitting Labour MPs in order to kickstart a leadership race himself. Streeting rejected this on 16 June, stating that he did have the required number of supporters, but wanted a "genuine contest" and not an "unopposed coronation".

Return to the backbenches (2026) On 16 May 2026, Streeting confirmed that he would stand if a Labour leadership contest was triggered. On 21 May Streeting's organizers told The Times that, if Andy Burnham won the Makerfield by-election, he would withdraw from the race. However, sources close to Streeting said this claim was "rubbish".

After the resignation of Starmer on 22 June, Streeting declined to stand in the leadership election and endorsed Burnham.

Defence Secretary (2026–) On 20 July 2026, Streeting was appointed Defence Secretary under Andy Burnham. The former head of the British Army Lord Dannatt, commenting about reports that Streeting could take over leading the Ministry of Defence, said he would be "very disappointed if that's the case".

The day after taking office, Streeting and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood were heard on camera making comments over the early prisoner release scheme with Justice Secretary Alex Norris. Streeting described Norris as "the enemy now" while Mahmood responded "no he's not", and Streeting then stated that "he wants to let them all out". Both Streeting and Mahmood subsequently apologised, with Streeting stating "I hope everyone can see there was no ill intent behind this ribbing of the new justice secretary - it was a reference to an old May/Clarke joke".

Political positions Streeting has said he suggested "working with the best of British business to reform the worst of British capitalism". In 2020, Streeting said he wanted to tax capital gains on the same basis as income and suggested replacing inheritance tax with a lifetime gifts tax. He supports an increase in corporation tax. Streeting was among the 70 per cent of Labour MPs who nominated Owen Smith in the 2016 party leadership election. In 2022, Streeting said, "I always thought that Jeremy Corbyn was unelectable and there was a fundamental moral objection to where he was on anti-Semitism."

In May 2026, Streeting backed a social media ban for under-16s in the UK.

European Union and immigration

Streeting campaigned in favour of the United Kingdom remaining in the European Union (EU) in the run-up to the 2016 EU membership referendum. Streeting appeared in The Sun and tweeted a link to the article saying he would be "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime".

In a speech at Progress in May 2026, Streeting called for the United Kingdom to pursue a "new special relationship" and to rejoin the European Union in the future. He said he views that leaving was a 'catastrophic mistake'.

NHS On health, in December 2021, in response to growing waiting times in the National Health Service (NHS), Streeting said the way to reduce waiting times was better pay and conditions, while keeping a check on the six-figure salaries of managers and management consultants. Following a visit to Israel in May 2022, Streeting suggested that the UK should embrace new technologies in the health sector that are commonplace in Israel to improve outcomes. In January 2022, Streeting said that he supported the use of private providers in the NHS to cut waiting lists. In June 2023, Streeting said that the NHS requires three big shifts: "from an excessive focus on hospital care to more focus on neighbourhood and community services; from an analogue service to one that embraces the technological revolution; and from sickness to prevention." In January 2024, he also defended "nanny state" reforms, saying Labour would not "stand by while children become fatter and unhealthier".

Streeting is opposed to legislation on assisted dying, announcing in October 2024 that he would be voting against Kim Leadbeater's Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. The Labour government gave its MPs a free vote on the legislation, and Streeting said he was concerned the current state of palliative care meant patients could feel 'guilt-tripped' into ending their lives. He attracted criticism from some colleagues including Harriet Harman for ordering a review of the costs of assisted dying, warning that it would “come at the expense of other choices”.

LGBTQ issues In 2019, Streeting criticised those campaigning against same-sex relationship education in schools.

Previously supportive of trans rights and stating that "trans women are women, trans men are men", in January 2024, he supported hospital wards separated by sex recorded at birth, with separate accommodation for transgender patients. When asked if transgender women are women on a Talkradio interview show in May 2024, he said: "Men have penises, women have vaginas; here ends my biology lesson." After the 2024 general election, Streeting defended and extended the previous Conservative government's ban on prescriptions of puberty blockers to transgender youth, and announced an indefinite ban of puberty blocker prescriptions for transgender under-18s in both the NHS and private sector in December of the same year.

Trans Kids Deserve Better, a group of teenage transgender activists, tried to meet with Streeting several times to argue for their rights to access healthcare, but according to QueerAF he refused to speak to the group. On 25 March 2025, two members of the group tried to confront Streeting when he was on stage at a Guardian Live event. They were escorted out of the venue.

Trans rights campaigners have criticised Streeting for his association with Bayswater Support Group, an advocacy organisation for parents who reject their transgender children's identities. Streeting has met with Bayswater representatives multiple times, and solicited their views in government consultations on trans healthcare. Streeting has refused to comment publicly on his association with Bayswater.

Middle East policy Streeting is a member of Labour Friends of Israel - and in 2022, they paid for Streeting's visit to Israel. In January 2024, Streeting described the ICJ genocide case against Israel as a “distraction”. In later-released private messages to Peter Mandelson, Streeting described Israel a "rogue state" whose government should be treated as "pariahs", advocating for "sanctions applied to the state, not just a few ministers".

In popular culture In the inaugural season of Saturday Night Live UK, Wes Streeting was portrayed by Jack Shep in a cold open sketch in the season finale where Streeting, Andy Burnham (portrayed by Paddy Young) and Angela Rayner (portrayed by Celeste Dring) were having "property viewings" of 10 Downing Street.

Personal life Streeting lives in Redbridge, London, with his partner Joe Dancey, a communications and public affairs adviser. He has been engaged to Dancey since 2013. although he was unsuccessful.

Streeting, who is a practising Anglican, has said his faith is "about compassion, not walking by on the other side", and that it caused serious problems when it came to his sexuality: "My faith was a really big obstacle to accepting myself ... I spent many years choosing not to be gay." and would be stepping back from frontline politics while he received treatment for it. He had received a phone call from his urologist informing him that tests, initially for kidney stones, revealed he had kidney cancer. He was on a campaign visit at the time. However, because the cancer was noticed early, his prognosis was good even though he needed surgery to remove the kidney.

Streeting published his memoir One Boy, Two Bills and a Fry-Up, in June 2023. Jason Cowley of The Sunday Times praised Streeting for telling "his story with emotional intelligence. He is never self-aggrandising, yet part of his appeal is his naked ambition; in a 2024 interview he was unequivocal about wanting one day to be prime minister. This is the self-made East End boy speaking." Robert Colls of Literary Review was more critical, writing that "There are few ideas here that might take us deeper or wider. Streeting is a self-confessed Christian geek who never stopped reading and who wore his school merit badges with pride, but I was left searching for the intellect on which all his achievements were built. Maybe it will be in the next book."

Electoral history

2020s

2010s