Streeting heckled as he urges progressives to fight the ‘populist right’
Two women shouted over him as he gave an address to the Fabian Society.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting was interrupted by climate protesters on Saturday, as he gave a speech urging progressives to fight the “cynicism” of the “populist right”.
Two women shouted over him as he used an address to the Fabian Society to call for the centre-left to challenge the “miserablist, declinist vision” he said was offered by figures like Reform UK leader Nigel Farage.
The demonstrators, who were both swiftly removed from the conference in London’s Guildhall by security, said they voted Labour in 2024 but were protesting against the continued subsidisation of Drax power station in North Yorkshire.
Mr Streeting said the Government was implementing policies to bring about change, including by hiring more doctors, ending strikes and cutting NHS waiting lists, adding: “And that’s much better than shouting from the sidelines.”
One of the demonstrators, Zoe Courtney-Bodgener, told the PA news agency: “Labour promised change and we voted for them because we wanted change and they are continuing to subsidise.
“We still believe that there’s time for them to make a difference, but they need to end the subsidies now.”
In his keynote address at the Fabian Society’s new year conference, Mr Streeting took aim at Mr Farage for offering what he described as a “poverty of ambition” for Britain.
It comes after Mr Farage’s party topped a national opinion poll for the first time, with 26% of the vote, in a survey carried out by Find Out Now on Wednesday.
In the most direct attack on Mr Farage by a Cabinet minister since Labour entered Government, Mr Streeting said: “The crux of Farage’s argument is this, what was possible in the 20th century isn’t possible in the 21st.
“It’s a miserablist, declinist vision for Britain’s future.
“People shouldn’t have to choose between a health service that treats them on time and an NHS free at point of use.
“That’s a poverty of ambition for our country and Labour utterly rejects it.”
Mr Farage told The Times earlier this month: “We’ve got to identify a system of funding for healthcare that is more effective than the one we have currently got, and at the same time carries those who can’t afford to pay.”
The Health Secretary told the event: “I can’t think of a more potent antidote to Farage’s miserabilism than proving the cynics wrong and getting the NHS delivering world-class care for patients every time.”
He said that Labour must not shy away from acknowledging state failure, saying “western liberal democracies are littered with the corpses of progressive political parties who found themselves defending the indefensible”.
“The populist right are coming for us and we need to be serious about beating them,” he said.
“We have to do three things: suffocate their conspiracism with honesty, overcome their cynicism with hope by delivering real change, and take on their arguments to win the battle of ideas.
“Beating the populist right will require us to be honest with ourselves – sometimes the centre-left can forget our purpose.”
He accused the Conservatives and Reform of “rolling the pitch for Labour to fail on the NHS”, adding: “They want us to fail, because if we don’t turn the NHS around, they will have the chance to beat us at the ballot box and overturn 76 years of universal healthcare, publicly funded, free at the point of need.”
Mr Farage hit back in a post on social media site X, saying: “Wes Streeting is so scared of Reform that he has now resorted to lying about our plans for the NHS.
“Let me be clear, the NHS will always be free at the point of delivery under a Reform government.”
Just days after US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Mr Streeting also said the Government feels a “responsibility at this moment in history” to be “the light on the hill for progressives around the world”.
He said the Labour administration would approach its transatlantic relationship as every UK government has, in recognising the “deep and existential nature of this alliance”, but that it felt “confident in our politics.”
Asked whether Mr Trump’s victory would prompt him to rethink how important progressive values are to the wider public, Mr Streeting said: “No.
“I think we feel in the Starmer Government that it’s our responsibility at this moment in history to be the light on the hill for progressives around the world.”
He said Mr Trump’s withdrawal of the US from the World Health Organisation (WHO) would “bring its challenges” but “it’s not a surprise and, to be fair to president Trump, he was clear ahead of the election that is what he would do”.
Mr Streeting added: “I disagree with it. I respect their right to make a different decision.”
