The Duplicity of Wes Streeting

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Ever since the Labour Party came into government and Wes Streeting MP became the Secretary of State for Health, I have always had my doubts.

I am routinely told that he is the only ‘sensible’ member of the Cabinet. For example, I have been pointed towards the ban on puberty blockers that he implemented after his appointment.

As I have spoken about previously, I am not at all satisfied with this ‘ban’. It is due to be reviewed in 2027 and can be easily overturned. Children already on puberty blockers can continue to receive them. Streeting has committed to rolling out new regional ‘gender clinics’. Most concerning of all is that Streeting is still pushing forward with a clinical trial on puberty blockers, meaning potentially unlimited numbers of children will be able to access medication that the government itself has acknowledged carries an “unacceptable safety risk”. This is inconsistent and outrageous. My legal team and I have already pledged to bring judicial review proceedings, should this trial indeed go ahead.

Some have gone further than calling him ‘sensible’. I have had it told to me that he is a ‘secret TERF’. For a man who was previously Head of Education at Stonewall, this seemed unlikely.

Unfortunately, my doubts about him have now been confirmed. On Monday of this week, Streeting was the keynote speaker at the annual ‘NHS LGBT Conference’. This whole-day event is clearly nothing more than an opportunity to push ideology, as demonstrated by the agenda. It also begs the question as to why, when waiting times are as high as they are, time, money and resources are being spent on this?

Curious as to what Streeting might say at a ticketed event amongst fellow members of the ‘LGBT community’, I asked someone to record his speech and subsequent Q&A session.

Streeting began his talk by telling the crowd that he had ripped up the speech that had been written for him and had re-written it himself in the car on the way to the Conference. He joked about the fact that this wouldn’t make him very ‘popular’ with his team. He got that one right.

Ideological language was spouted by Streeting throughout his presentation. Terms like ‘transwoman’, ‘non-binary’ and ‘cisgender’ fell off his tongue with such ease, that his previous Stonewall employers would be proud.

What I observed from Streeting can only be described as duplicity.

He spoke of the “toxicity” of the debate and cautioned colleagues to avoid “weaponisation”. However, in the next breath he attempted to make a political point with an outlandish claim that “half of trans people” try to kill themselves. This, of course, flies in the face of the evidence, including the government-commissioned Appleby Report. In a random aside, Streeting, seemingly referencing the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally, which took place the previous weekend, spoke of a “racism” that is “cloaked in our country’s flag”. This is toxicity.

Things became far more concerning when Streeting began to speak of children, for whom he said the NHS should be a “safe and inclusive space”, again parroting language used by trans activist outfits.

On the puberty blockers ban, Streeting stated that he was “constrained by the clinical advice and the evidence”, even though the decision “has not sat easily with me at all”. For a Health Secretary to appear to bemoan the fact that he had to follow clinical guidance is extremely disconcerting. He went on to say that, as a politician, sometimes you have to “say no to things even when it makes you feel very uncomfortable”. So, Streeting feels “very uncomfortable” at the thought of stopping the experimental medicalisation and sterilisation of vulnerable children? Shocking beyond belief.

Following on from this, and contrary to the Cass Review, as well as lack of good data that we have available, Streeting attempted to minimise the harm caused to children by puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, telling the Conference, without evidence, that a “very small number” of people who medically transition regret it.

As regards women’s safety, Streeting appeared pre-occupied with the safety of ‘trans’ people, devoting a chunk of time to speaking about the risk of sexual assault to ‘trans’ people. He then doubled down with an erasure of the concept of biological reality, stating that: “blokes are now having to go into women’s toilets because they were born female…that is clearly not a scenario which is good for anyone”. The ‘blokes’ he is referencing are, of course, women. The fact that Streeting is willing to use this language demonstrates that he is a full-blown gender ideologue.

On same-sex spaces more broadly, Streeting claimed that “no one is worried about men’s spaces”. Utter tosh.

Finally, as if there could be any doubt, Streeting adopted a wholly partisan stance and stated: “I do want trans people to know that I’m on their side”. The fact of the matter is that, if you are on the side of gender ideology, you are opposed to child safeguarding, women’s rights and free speech.

Not long after I posted about this on X, I discovered that the website for the Conference had been taken down. Nothing to see here folks…

In the aftermath of making this public, some commentators, including those generally on my side of argument, appeared to take Streeting’s side, claiming that he was facing a ‘hostile audience’ and that he simply ‘hedged around’ a bit.

It is the role of a politician to be able to handle the heat robustly and with integrity. As for ‘hedging’, I would describe it more as ‘talking out of both sides of his mouth’ and saying things to his ‘community’ that he wouldn’t dare say to the greater British public. Surely, we can expect better from our Health Secretary, particularly when the topic is as important as this?

As Abraham Lincoln once said: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”