Alan Machin retweetledi
The Man Who Wants To Lead Labour Just Described Its Lost Voters As A Threat To The Nation.
Wes Streeting resigned as Health Secretary this morning and launched his leadership bid with a letter that deserves to be read carefully. Not for what it says about the NHS. For what it says about how he intends to fight.
Reform UK, Streeting writes, represents dangerous English nationalism and an existential threat to the future integrity of the United Kingdom. Reform won 27 percent of votes cast in local elections across England a week ago. Millions of working class people in Labour's former heartlands, people whose parents and grandparents voted Labour for generations, chose that party. Describing their choice as dangerous English nationalism is not a strategy for winning them back. It is the attitude that drove them away in the first place, restated with greater confidence the morning after the worst local election result in Labour history.
The NHS claims in the letter require equal scrutiny. Streeting describes a fastest improvement in waiting times in history. The Nuffield Trust's deputy director of research told the Telegraph that the apparent progress owes more to administrative removals than genuine increases in patient care. The number of patients waiting over 12 hours for emergency admission in March 2026 was 141 times higher than before the pandemic. The waiting list remains above seven million. The letter presents stabilisation as transformation and expects nobody to check.
Then there is Angela Rayner. HMRC has cleared her of wrongdoing over the stamp duty affair that ended her Cabinet career in September. The clearance itself is more complicated than her team is presenting. Tax Policy Associates, an independent expert body, states it cannot understand why HMRC decided not to charge a penalty. Both of Rayner's advisers explicitly told her to obtain specialist tax advice. She did not. Independent experts say a penalty of around 20 percent was the likely and legally correct outcome. HMRC reached a different conclusion without explaining why.
A £50,000 donation to the Office of Angela Rayner Limited from Refrigeration House Limited arrived on 24 March 2026, declared on the parliamentary register and described as towards staffing costs. Weeks later Rayner paid the £40,000 stamp duty bill. Whether any connection exists between the donation and the payment cannot be asserted. The questions the timing raises are entirely legitimate and entirely unanswered.
Over 100 Labour MPs have now called for Starmer to go. The threshold to trigger a leadership contest is 81. The numbers exist. What has been missing is a serious candidate willing to step forward and bear the consequences. Streeting has now stepped forward. Rayner is positioning. Burnham remains without a seat.
The succession is underway. The candidates are the products of the same political culture that produced the Mandelson appointment, the three line whip, the undeclared Palantir meeting and the systematic accommodation of interests that do not align with Britain's. Streeting's letter describes Reform voters as nationalists. Rayner's clearance raises questions her supporters are not asking. Burnham's record on grooming gang accountability in Greater Manchester has never been satisfactorily addressed.
None of them has identified the culture as the problem. None of them has proposed dismantling it. The country is being forced to accept the same arrangement with different names attached. The questions are already forming. They will not wait for the leadership contest to conclude.
"Reform UK, Streeting writes, represents dangerous English nationalism and an existential threat to the future integrity of the United Kingdom."
English
