Topic analysis

Streeting says he resigned because Labour ‘in fight of our lives against nationalism’, and is currently losing – UK politics live

In many respects that was a very good speech – inspiring, emotional, well crafted. Many politicians have delivered speeches about how the generational contract has been broken, but few of them have been able to round it off with a line as good as the (Kennedy-inspired) “so the question isn’t whether young people would fight for their country, but when their country is going to fight for them”. (See 3.13pm .) Wes Streeting’s payoff line was terrific too. (See 3.24pm .) On the final day of a party conference, this would have been ideal. And that’s what gives the game away. This felt like a speech that had been repurposed. It is unlikely that Streeting was drafting it for the Labour conference, but it sounded like a speech orginally written to be delivered at the opening of a leadership campaign – like the one that Streeting notable did not launch when he resigned from the government last week. I’m the first to agree that you should never let good copy go to waste, but what we ended up with was a speech purportedly linked to Streeting’s resignation from cabinet that in fact told us almost nothing about why Streeting decided to go. He said that he thinks Labour has been losing the battle against Reform UK (see 2.36pm ), that he thinks it has been “treading water” (see 3.19pm ) and that it is missing the chance to do “big things” and to deliver “real change” (see 3.24pm ). Apart from those assertions, there was nothing in the speech that Keir Starmer would not fully support. Much of the speech was just a celebration of patriotism, and Starmer would have been happy to deliver these passages word for word. In his resignation letter last week , Streeting gave a fuller account of his reasons for quitting cabinet. He criticised Starmer’s leadership failings, and suggested these played a big role in Labour doing so badly in the local elections. He accused Starmer of offering “drift” and declared that it would be dishonourable staying in cabinet having decided he no longer had confidence in the PM. But the letter did not clarify whether Streeting believes the main problem with Starmer is a presentational one (his communication skills), or whether it is to do with his policy agenda. And if Streeting does believe it’s Starmer’s policies that are wrong, what else is he proposing? If he does have answers to that, he certainly did not reveal them today.