The health secretary has compared the collapse of Labour’s vote in the Caerphilly by-election to the party’s defeat in Hartlepool in 2021 – when Sir Keir Starmer considered resigning as leader.
Wes Streeting described the party’s performance in the Senedd seat – where it took just 3,713 votes – as “terrible” and said it had to match Labour’s response to the Hartlepool by-election defeat.
Politics latest: UK in ‘despair’, warns Streeting
Speaking to Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, Mr Streeting said the loss of Hartlepool to the Tories while the party was in opposition was a “shock to Labour’s core” and prompted Sir Keir to “change the Labour Party with a pace and scale of ambition” that paved the way for its landslide election victory last year.
The prime minister has admitted in several interviews that he considered resigning in the wake of the defeat.
Asked whether he was providing “withering criticism” of Sir Keir and the direction of his government, Mr Streeting said he was not but acknowledged that the public was “not yet feeling the change” Labour had promised.
“If I have one criticism of us collectively as a team, we are not telling a compelling enough story about who we are, who we’re for and what it is we are driving to do,” he said.
“Take that result in Caerphilly on the chin, take it to heart and show the same level of ambition and drive and the scale of change within government that the public are crying out for.”
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Support for Labour in the Welsh town of Caerphilly slumped in the by-election on Thursday, where it came in third place behind winners Plaid Cymru, who won with 15,960 votes.
While a defeat was denied to Reform UK, which came second with 12,113 votes, the result has prompted fear within Labour ranks that it is losing support to rival left-wing parties as well as those on the right.
The result, which Sir Keir admitted was “bad” and “disappointing”, came during another challenging week for the prime minister.
On Saturday Lucy Powell, the former Commons leader who was sacked by Sir Keir in his most recent reshuffle, was elected Labour deputy leader in what has been interpreted as a repudiation of the prime minister’s leadership.
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And the day before, a nationwide manhunt was triggered after Hadush Kebatu, an Ethiopian migrant who was jailed for 12 months in September for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman in Essex, was accidentally released from HMP Chelmsford.
The Metropolitan Police has confirmed it has now found Kebatu – whose crimes sparked protests outside the asylum hotel in Epping where he was staying – and that he was arrested in the Finsbury Park area of London at around 8.30am on Sunday morning.
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Mr Streeting said there needed to be accountability for the “egregious failure” which resulted in Kebatu’s release.
He said he agreed the incident was an example of “state failure” that played into the “sense of despair” felt across the country about the state of the country’s public services.
“There is a deep disillusionment in this country at the moment and, I’d say, growing sense of despair about whether anyone is capable of turning this country around,” he said.
“Now, I am an optimist in politics. I think there are green shoots of recovery in the NHS, in the economy, in our public services, but there is also so much more to do and we’ve got to attack those challenges with the level of energy and focus that the scale of the challenge demands.”
