Labour’s Wes Streeting is sometimes talked up as our next Prime Minister, presumably on the grounds that the prospect of either Ed Miliband or Angry Ginge Rayner getting the job when Starmer finally implodes is too awful to contemplate.
He has cultivated a reputation for straight-talking and, to be fair, isn’t as evasive as most of his Cabinet colleagues.
No one thinks he’s got an easy task turning round the NHS, but some of us might take issue with his idea of progress.
Streeting turned up on Nick Ferrari’s LBC phone-in taking questions from callers. He at least had the sense to admit that some listeners would be shouting at the radio because their experience of the health service fell well short of the gloss he was trying to peddle.
He hailed his achievement in cutting waiting times, but conceded there was more to do. You can say that again.
Apparently the NHS has come within a whisker of meeting its target of 65 per cent of patients being treated within 18 weeks. And what about the other 35pc?
Sorry, just run that by me again. There are more than seven million treatments outstanding and 18 weeks is nearly four and a half months.
That kind of delay could be fatal in many cases. It’s not progress, it’s a national scandal, along with the near impossibility of getting a speedy GP appointment and the target reflects a paucity of ambition.
Wes was also keen to assure us that he’s doing his own bit to cut waiting lists. Apparently, he was driving down the street when an ambulance came tearing along in the opposite direction. He pulled over for four seconds to let the ambulance pass, since there’s no time to waste in a medical emergency.
Mind you, four seconds is neither here nor there if the ambulance has to queue up in the car park and despite Streeting’s optimism, one in 10 patients is still experiencing 12-hour waits before being admitted at A&E.
Wes is always keen to foster a ‘straight kinda guy’ image, but those of us with longer memories recall he’s also got a nasty streak, such as the time he said he wanted to push my colleague Jan Moir under a train because she’d written something about a gay pop star to which he had taken exception.
Still, at least Streeting answers questions even if some of those answers are unconvincing. The same can’t be said of Surkeir, who takes any attempt to get him to explain himself as a personal affront, as evidenced by his petulant response to the Speaker who had to remind him yet again that the whole point of Prime Minister’s Questions is to, er, get the Prime Minister to answer questions.
Starmer arrogantly ignores questions from Kemi Badenoch, and either sticks to a lame script, or starts shouting about Liz Truss, who was PM for about ten minutes the best part of four years ago.
We now discover that he misled the House three times about Peter Mandelson’s security vetting. Then, again I’ve previously described him as a complete and utter lawyer. His oft-repeated ‘achievements’ are utterly worthless and disingenuous. After being roundly condemned by the respected former Labour Defence Secretary and Nato leader George Robertson, Starmer spluttered about raising spending on the military from 2.3 per cent of GDP to 2.6 per cent – even though it’s woefully inadequate and hasn’t actually materialised yet.
If and when the 3pc target is ever hit some time in the next decade, it’ll be too little, too late and Starmer will be long gone, his one undeniable achievement being to have left Britain defenceless.
Mind you next to his hapless Chancellor, Surkeir can occasionally seem to be a pillar of honesty and rectitude. Rachel From Complaints was at it again this week, trying to pretend that she had created the fastest growing economy in the G7 – a ludicrous boast instantly demolished by the IMF, which said Britain was the worst equipped country to cope with the fall out from the Iran war.
What she has actually done is lumber us with the fasting-growing tax increases, the fastest-growing energy bills, the fastest-growing welfare burden, the fastest-growing youth unemployment numbers and record pub and restaurant bankruptcies.
All of this, predictably, she is trying to blame on Trump – despite the fact that she’d turned the British economy into a basket case long before the first bombs fell on Tehran.
From the NHS to defence spending, Net Zero ‘cutting our energy bills’, and the record numbers of illegals crossing the Channel, this dreadful, clueless, incompetent government is trying to take us for fools, palming us off with everything from misleading exaggerations to shameless spin and downright lies.
How stupid do they think we are?
