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As well as making noises about wealth taxes that sound suspiciously similar to the kind of thing Andy Burnham would normally say, Wes Streeting has also been opining this week about the lack of radical action from the government he’s just resigned from. When he quit as health secretary, he managed to overshadow the publication of his own legislation, leaving the task of getting yet another reorganisation of the NHS through parliament to his successor. Streeting told Nick Robinson that while the government had done ‘some important things’ on health and social care, it had fallen ‘well short of my ambition’, particularly on social care.
As it happens, that ambition is also something Streeting has long shared with Burnham: to legislate for a National Care Service. Instead, Keir Starmer kicked social care back into the long grass with another consultation and an ambition to make it a ‘second term issue’. The Prime Minister’s predicament now shows the hubris of talking about second term issues: even if he manages to limp on for months, there will be no second Starmer term. He should always have taken the big, initially unpopular decisions on open sores in British policymaking such as social care early in his premiership when he had the political capital. Now, even the most charismatic of his successors will struggle.
