Wes Streeting MP

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1:36Welcome to another episode of Rosebud. It's good to have you here. I'm Giles Brandreth, and this is the end of a week where, on Rosebud, we've been meeting politicians. Two politicians this week. Earlier on, on Tuesday, I encountered Michael Heseltine, Lord Heseltine, Deputy Prime Minister to John Major. Prior to that, a senior member of Margaret Thatcher's government, one of the big beasts of the Conservative Party at the end of the 20th century. Well, he aspired to be Prime Minister, never quite made it, though I think he certainly contributed to the downfall of Margaret Thatcher. Interesting phenomenon, Michael Hedeltine, 93 this coming weekend.

2:23Well, today we've got somebody who is much younger, Wes Streeting. Born 21st January 1983, makes him just 43. British politician, he's famous because he's the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, has been since the Labour government under Keir Starmer came into office in 2024. he's been the member of parliament a labour mp for ilford north since 2015 brought up in a council flat with a very interesting childhood former president of the national union of students um well interesting figure and i want to get to know him a little bit better because i'm sure he would deny having any aspirations to become prime minister but everyone tells us he has those aspirations.

3:12And who knows, depending on the way the local elections go in May, the opportunity may come his way sooner rather than later. So we need to know what sort of a person this man Wes Streeting is. I want to know more about his unusual name as well. He's an unusual individual. Anyway, he very kindly invited me and my producer Harriet Jane to visit him at the Department for Health. And we've done so. And he's going to tell us his story. So welcome to this episode of Rosebud, with the Right Honourable Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Labour MP for North Ilford. Oh, and before we start, I should mention that this conversation was recorded before the meningitis outbreak, which was developed in the UK this week.

3:59Cue the music.

4:11Wes, before we begin, let me get two things straight. What is Wes short for? Wesley. Wesley, as in John Wesley, is it? No, as in Wesley Jawdash, who was a character on Rich Man, Poor Man, which is the reason why my mum decided to call me Wesley. So I am a Christian, I'm an Anglican, but I think throughout my life, lots of people have assumed that I'm a Methodist because of the name Wesley. So yeah, when I was growing up, Wesley Snipes was the only other Wesley I was aware of. Well, we've learned something already. Well done. I knew you were an Anglican. I'd assumed you were a high Anglican because you, like me, were a thurifer.

4:56So you know what a thurible is. I do. And most people have no awareness. But I couldn't believe that you were actually the furifer. I was actually the boat boy carrying the incense and the furifer took a spoon of it and put it into the furifer and then waves it about. yes so for people listening who aren't aware of what the thoroughfare is where we do the smells of the smells and bells so flinging the incense around the church and i did this when i was in primary school and was trusted with it although there was one occasion where i put far too much in and everyone left kind of with red eyes coughing and spluttering at the end of church um i'm yeah i was i went to a church of england primary schoolst peter's in wapping in east London and the church we were attached to St Peter's Church in Wapping was and I think remains high church so high Anglican basically all the smells and bells you know popery without the Pope effectively and now I go to a church in my constituency which is a bit more charismatic and happy clappy there's so much we have in common though I'm old enough to be your father I went Well, I remember you on TV AM when I was growing up and what was then Good Morning Britain before this, you know, modern stuff with Ed Balls and Susanna Reid.

6:12I remember you with your jumpers on. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Well, thank you for agreeing to do this. The first question is always the same. You'll discover as we go on that much of your past I'm familiar with in the sense that I know, for example, characters are going to come up in the story, including the gangsters, the craze who come up in your story. I did have an acquaintance with them through Barbara Windsor. Oh, wow. Yeah, who kept reassuring me, don't worry, Charles, they only ever kill their own. So that was, I suppose, to make me feel more comfortable. We begin always with the same question.

6:44So it's Wes Streeting, born 21st January 1983. Got those bits right. What, Wes, is your very first memory?

6:56i think it's the very earliest memory i can think of is being sat in and i've talked to my mum about this before and you know this was the the pram has been sort of handed down from one person to another so it was my pram but had been given to my cousin and my mum thinks that it must have been when my cousin had the pram and i was sat in it but that's one of my earliest memories there are Others, I mean, I remember some of my aunts putting me in, you know, those kind of all-in-one zip-up things with little hoods on in cold weather. I remember being zipped up in one of those before going out. So my memory goes back quite a way.

7:37That's a long way. We begin to unpack that now. Who is this mum of yours? My mum, Karina, she was a very young mum. so she was 18 when I was conceived my dad was only 17 and I think I'm what's technically known as an accident I was definitely not planned their relationship was not long-lived how did they know one another at all what was your mum doing age 18 what was she have a job or she stood out she was working as a factory hand in the east end and she met my dad through my aunt and her partner at the time later became my husband and they were they sort of mixed in similar circles and yeah they they were too young to have a child but accidents happen and when my mum fell pregnant the overwhelming consensus in the family was that she should have an abortion and the only person at the time who thought it was a sensible idea to go through with the pregnancy was my mum and she hadn't told anyone this in fact she'd gone as far as having the abortion booked in and on the day of the abortion she did the one thing that she was explicitly told she must not do ahead of the procedure which is to eat breakfast and she cooked herself a full English breakfast she was living at home with my grandmother at time before my nan realized what what what was going on she ate this breakfast my nan came in hit the roof but I think my mum did it as a slight insurance policy because she felt if she'd had breakfast there's no way she could be frog marched I think she would have been frog marched up to the hospital to have the procedure so that was the fry up that saved my life and it's one of the reasons why when i wrote my own kind of childhood memoir i called it one boy two bills after both of my very different grandfathers and a fry up so it's yeah that's the fry up that saved my life by the fry up well actually made by the fry up i'm intrigued that your grandmother should want an abortion because people of her generation which is my generation my parents generation had real reservations about abortions and abortion only become legal in my lifetime in the sort of 60s the possibility so that they should want one they just felt your mum was far too young and they didn't feel there was any prospect of did she and your dad get married no no in fact they they tried to make a go of their relationship but they split up when I was a baby I don't remember my parents ever being together so I've been used to being brought up by single parents and I actually went to live with my dad in my sort of teenage years which you might come on to but my when I got elected to parliament my poor dad always got written out of the biographical shorthands you know brought up by a single mum and this is true I lived with my mum for sort of first 10 11 12 years of my life but my dad was always in my life and was always there for me so it's important not to write him out of it tell me about your grandmother your mother's mother so she had been I think a relatively young mother I mean she she died when I was 10 and she was in her 50s she died of lung cancer so you can get that get this sense of just how young really the women in my family she smoked all her life yeah that's right yeah she did and she she was a ferocious character on in some ways she had this fire in her belly um passionate campaigner for social justice a real rabble rouser in the east end she was there in the whopping dispute protesting oh this is Murdoch trying to yeah and sometimes when I'm sat there meeting with newspaper editors and journalists from the Murdoch stable and indeed meeting members of the Murdoch family directly I do think I wonder I wonder what my nan would think of this I know exactly what she would think of this.

11:46And I can almost hear her giving me a flea in my ear now. And I know exactly what I'd be saying back to her, which is, Nan, it's really important, whatever our political difference is, that the readers of those newspapers hear our story on our terms. But anyway, sadly, she's not with us, but I do know what she would have thought. What's your most vivid memory of her, of your Nan? Always rushing around. I mean, she was a brilliant cook, So she used to make great pies, great dime cakes. And I remember getting into real trouble nicking dime bars out of the fridge that she'd saved for making the dime cake and being in trouble.

12:24Dime cake? That's the thing, isn't it? Chocolate bar turned into a cake. Yeah. I wish I knew the recipe because it was great growing up. But yeah, I used to get into trouble a little bit with her. but I always remember just rushing in and out, going to Labour Party meetings, going off to Tenants Association meetings. She was a real doer, so she'd installed her own kitchen, she'd plumbed in her own shower. You'd see her with a scruffy T-shirt on with paint stains and she'd have her jeans on and a sort of tall belt round her waist. She's always fixing things, doing things. She's a real matriarch.

13:02Does she have several children, others apart from your mother? Yes, she did. From her previous relationship, she had my uncle Paul, who was sadly killed in a car accident when he was seven years old. So I never met Paul. My Aunt Amanda, then my mum, my Uncle Billy and my Aunt Eve. So five, she had five children. And was she used to getting her own way? So that when your mother rebelled and refused to have... Oh, she was definitely, yeah, she'd had quite a hard life and a hard childhood. And I think as a result, my mum also had a very hard childhood. I mean, she had been on her own quite a lot with my mum.

13:45My granddad was in prison. This is your nan's husband, one of the Bills? Yeah, my granddad Bill. Why was he in prison? He had a string of convictions for armed robbery. So he was in and out of prison throughout my mum's childhood, throughout my childhood. And my mum's childhood, as she describes it, was very disruptive, quite violent. So he's the one who gives us the connection to the Krays. Yeah. Although he knew them, but he wasn't in with them in that sense. We all say that. There were other gangsters who he was more associated with. What's your view of that? was he a bad man or was he a man who was the product of his obviously in some senses he was a bad man we accept that and he was found guilty etc but have you thought about what made him the person he was I think about this a lot he confided in my mum not long before he died in the later years long after his last stint in fact his last stint was in a police cell failing to pay his TV licence and then he and then because he'd spent you know i think a night or two in there by the time i got to court they said well you've spent your sentence and off you go and by that time he was you know a visibly old man and wasn't about to go out and do any any harm to anyone but he he confided that when he was growing up he had been a victim of physical abuse and sexual abuse at the hands of his father um or at least the man we thought was his father since i've written the book there's been a sort of wider exploration of that part of the family history we now think that his father wasn't his father at all he's completely different man which might might explain although certainly not justify some of the abuse he was subjected to and that in turn explains how a seven-year-old boy would be trying to break into Woolworths in Ballum.

15:51And from that point, right throughout his teens, he would be in ball stalls and the equivalent of youth detention centres back then. And by the time he was 18, had built a pretty strong skill set and reputation as a good getaway driver. and I can now understand why the criminal justice system may have felt like a more familiar and safer place to be than being in his own home I don't think it excuses his crimes but it does explain them and for me it explains how the granddad that I knew who was funny witty extremely clever I mean we used to debate he's a really staunch atheist but he had read in prison the Bible the Torah the Quran like he took a real interest in religion politics and very cynical but we used to have big arguments and big rows and debates I used to think have you ended up with this miserable existence sat on your own in you know pretty miserable existence in a flat in South London on his own alcohol dependency if not alcoholism you know spending what little money he had betting on the horses it wasn't it was a pretty sad end to what could have been a very different life what's your your sweetest memory of being with your granddad and your worst memory of being with him the sweetest memories there's quite a few actually he one year for Christmas I got some Arsenal tickets from my stepdad but he was a police officer at the time and he was working on the Bond of the Boxing Day matches and my grandad had a really really bad back and he hobbled from our flat in Stepney to Whitechapel Station went all the way across London's Highbury to the stadium and then on the way back I basically couldn't be bothered walking his place I sort of left him and got home a lot about an hour earlier than he did um so I'm a very ungrateful grandson but he really went out of his way and it was one of the few times in my childhood I thought we had like what felt like a normal grandparent you know granddad grandson day out and I remember one time he got out of prison and I asked I said to mum could because we've been to the London dungeon the year before and I said oh can we take granddad to London Dungeon I don't think he's going to want to go there just come out of prison but we did and and he he was good fun about it and you know we bought bought something like some plastic toy handcuffs and you know he's play along and then and then the one of the things that I still cherish I say cherish is I think it's in a box somewhere in my spare room but in prison he made me this when when he knew that I was coming he made this amazing soft toy duck called which I called ducky originally and when it was made it was a really nice plush toy and although I remember under his wings was a sort of blue and white striped fabric which I now realize the sort of prison wear which I didn't join the dots at the time but I used to hug ducky so tight as a kid around the neck that he's got a very floppy neck now um but i've still got it and you know that that's one of the kind of things he made me in prison that i still kind of cherish and the worst i never had i mean my mum had some really awful experiences with him growing up in terms of you know domestic violence arguments with my with my nan because i never drinking yeah and i never saw that what i did see there was one time where you know it's just it's flat in south London and I was there with my at the time baby brother and sister who are twins and my mum had gone off to do some things and my granddad was sort of looking after us must have been about 12 at the time and he wasn't looking after us at all I was effectively looking after him and twins because he was just completely plastered um didn't know what he was doing at one point because my brother and sister were both kind of pretty unhappy in their surroundings tried to kind of give them loads of cowpole and i obviously was old enough to realize that you know pouring cowpole into babies is not a good idea so i intervened and stopped him and took over the care of the babies and so that and i just it was the combination of a lot of things it was just thinking like you're you're drunken incapable of looking after us this is a miserable existence there is nothing in the fridge to eat apart from some moldy cheese and his kitchen was filthy he had clearly hadn't done any washing up for months it was just horrible and i just remember feeling a combination of being angry with him because he wasn't looking after us properly and also just feeling desperately sad.

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22:47Did people beyond the family know about him at school? Did other children know that you had a granddad who was a gangster? No, I never talked about it, really. no and it was something there were lots of aspects of my childhood now that I am comfortable speaking about and you know certainly comfortable enough to tell my own story and to write a book about it but that took a long time I was actually ashamed of lots of aspects of my upbringing and background I was you know it was not in any way a source of pride that I had a granddad who'd been in prison and and for my nan too she had spent some time in prison um and she was so ashamed of it that when the local labor party encouraged her to stand for tower hamlet's council and she would have been a brilliant counselor i always wondered you know would she have been you know a counselor and then maybe gone on to be a member of parliament who knows but she didn't want anyone to ever find out about her criminal record and i think i felt that that's the sort of stigma that i felt about having criminal grandparents or certainly my granddad didn't see my nan in the same way but having a criminal granddad and then the circumstances we were growing up in and being acutely aware as i was growing up not least because there were kids in my primary school we have from very you know you had the working class kids from the local estates white working class kids like me the bangladeshi kids and then you had what we called the yuppies the kids of the young urban professionals who'd moved into the docklands and one of my best friends fit into that category and so I would see how different where he lived was to where I was and I would never invite him or friends around to my flat because I was ashamed of it it didn't have carpets in lots of the rooms it some of the rooms didn't have wallpaper or half scraped off what was your bedroom like it had kind of hard flooring like tiles it was quite big like council flats in those days were really quite spacious looking back um and i never went without books and i had plenty of toys because i had the other granddad the so i was calling the good granddad uh on my dad's side used to spoil me so i'd you know it would be full of like he-man action figures castle gray skull this is all very current as the new master of the universe film is out this year and I'm for one I'm very much looking forward to a big hit of 80s nostalgia um and then as my brothers and sisters started to come along I was an only child of 10 years and I often joke to my brothers and sisters it's the 10 happiest years of my life and the second family is with the new partner with your mum's new partner the police officer yeah that's right um and you know he's a good guy yes I mean his his relationship my mum was up and down um but she had a few important relationships but he of all of all of those he is the only person that I consider to be my stepdad and although their relationship didn't last very recently he got married he did get married someone else yes and I was at his wedding so that is the sort of relationship we have like I can I still I call him my stepdad he was never married to my mum but he is the only person I've ever considered to be my stepfather give me now the sweetest moment of your childhood with your mother there are there are many but my my most abiding memory is when we used to walk from our flat in Stepney to my nan's council house in Wapping there's a big long walk along Cable Street and there were all these bollards and one of the advantages of having a really young mum is she was so much fun and full of so much energy and I just remember laughing and leapfrogging over all of these posts and I wasn't as I was quite I was a lot shorter mum so I used to really struggle to leap over the bollards I remember the first time I was able to do it but my mum I'd run along laughing while my mum was leapfrogging over all of these bollards um because she's only in her 20s yeah and and you know and in our house we would like I just remember like loads of music playing she's really into music and it was everything from um you know communards like proper like 80s pop right through to acid house music um so we've since had quite an eclectic child the worst of your mum she could sometimes have a really bad temper not to the extent that i was ever a battered child or anything like that but she used to have like sometimes uncontrollable outbursts of anger and it wasn't really until I was much older that I really understood why and why what was it yeah I think because of the sort of childhood she'd had I mean she was desperate to prove herself with me and part of the reason why people wanted my mum to have an abortion is there were lots of people in the family who were saying she wasn't up to it that I would be a battered child, that she'd be a terrible mum because she hadn't done well at school and she did have a temper and she was determined to prove them wrong and she did.

28:04And there were lots of choices she made when I was growing up. I remember I always had a little bookcase originally with lots of Lady Bird books on and other books added because she said to me, you know I was determined to make sure that you weren't made to feel stupid like I was made to feel growing up she was very loving she did not get lots of cuddles and lots of love at home when she was growing up I did and I knew that she you know she made so many sacrifices for me from that very from that moment she decided that she was going to make a different choice than the one everyone else wanted she has made lots of sacrifices for me um give me an example of a practical sacrifice made by her literally going without you know i would i never went hungry growing up i'm almost certain there were times that she went without and there were times i remember we were in sainsbury's once and she was shopping and she started to take things out of the basket and put them back on the shelf because she couldn't afford it and I she didn't know but I had five pounds in my pocket because which my granddad had given me and as I was watching her doing this I just thought the mum needs this more than I do so I got my five pounds note out and I said mum you can have this this is you know granddad gave me this you can have it for shopping and she just burst into tears and she was you know she was both I think touched by it and moved and grateful but also it must have been actually really awful for her you know that her primary school you know sonny's in primary school that she's meant to be providing for is providing for her and there were loads of times the reason why we were walking down cable street jumping over bollards on loads of those occasions is because you know we were going shopping at nanny's rather than Sainsbury's and we'd you know she had a key to my nan's house and when we ran out it wasn't unusual for us to go around to my nan's and raid her fridge and cupboard and leave a note saying you know sorry mum but I've taken some bread and eggs and whatever else she took.

30:17Was your dad giving any financial support at all? Yes so my dad has always been there for me he has always provided for me and my granddad his father was very very different character to Bill crowley bill streeting you know he he was always there for me as well and how often did you see him every week oh he came on saturday every week so i used to go the routine was on fridays my granddad would come and pick me up from school this is the good granddad yeah um and while my dad was still living at home i spend all weekend with my granddad and i put the emphasis on granddad my poor dad may have been present but it was very obvious who i was there to see Because he's even younger than your mum.

30:59Yeah, my dad was 17 when I was conceived. And it was only when I got to his age that I said to him, I cannot imagine how he must have felt. Because when I was 17, 18, I thought the idea that I'd have a baby is... So I think it was... And my dad didn't have any choice in it. In fact, throughout my mum's pregnancy, he was adamant he wasn't going to be involved. and it was only on the day I was born when my granddad went to see me at the hospital and my granddad said, you better get up there. He's got your eyes and, you know, you've got to be there for your son. And he turned up and my dad has been there for me ever since.

31:40Any bad recollections of him, really? Because you paint rather a rosy picture. Because it's quite easy, possibly, to be a good dad if it's just once a week you turn up and you give the treats and you've got a benevolent father yourself. No, that wasn't my dad's role, actually. I mean, my... I think my dad's role has always been... Like, my mum would put me on the pedestal, tell me how wonderful I was, and tell everyone else how wonderful I was. And my dad, and I resensed it at points, and I didn't always understand it growing up, I think my dad saw it as his job to grab me by the ankles and put my feet back on the ground.

32:14But no, I actually... I cannot, off the top of my head, think of any bad memories of my dad. That's nice. Yeah. And when did the church become part of your life? When you were very small? Yeah, primary school. So we used to go off every week's church. The family or the school? The school. I used to enjoy it. As a school you went to church? Yeah, every week, every week. On a Sunday, the school took off. Oh no, this was on a weekday. A weekday. And we used to go every week. And we had quite a lot of Bangladeshi Muslims in our school we would have undoubtedly I can't remember any but we would have undoubtedly had some Jewish peoples as well being the East End and everyone was expected to go the the Bangladeshi kids weren't expected to pray but they would listen and you know be respectful and probably feel a bit bored or maybe joining with some of the singing but we used to go every week and I really enjoyed it and when it came to towards the tail end of my time at primary school I think around year five so probably talking about nine or ten we were given the opportunity to be confirmed I had never been baptized so I was able to be baptized and confirmed and I had to get my parents permission and they said no and they said you know I wasn't old enough to make that decision and I was furious and I got my my granddad Bill Streeting he was he was Christian he didn't regularly go to church on a Sunday but actually he started turning up at church on Friday afternoons when they moved the time from Thursday's mornings to Friday afternoons my granddad would turn up for the service as well as to pick me up and he did instill in me that Christianity in Anglican faith and he was a big advocate for me being baptised and confirmed and very much not trying to force it on me at all but actually saying to my mum and dad he's made a choice he he's really committed to this he's committed to going to all the bible study you've you've got to respect his choice he is old enough to make this decision and if in time he moves away from the church well he's not lost anything but you shouldn't you shouldn't deny him that chance and in some ways i'm it was a good test of faith and a good test of character to actually stand up to my parents and insist that i want to be baptized and confirmed I can see why you got into it.

34:37I want to ask you an extra question. You got into it, you know, obviously one of the things it provided you with was order, security, rules that people accepted, community. When you came from a home that involved a lot of chaos, highs, lows, darkness, confusion, the church gave you that single straight purpose and people who are loving and shared values with you. what I want to know is how you because I went through the same experience in a way, you ended up as the theorifer because you're the star attraction and this is, you've already told us how many children there are going to this church how come you, Wes are up there with the best pal, waving the incense everywhere and then you go on to be the person who's giving out the Eucharist who's actually there at the moment of the ultimate sacrament, what was there in your personality at that age?

35:28I had to work my way up. I started off as a torchbearer and I skipped Acolyte. So I'd clearly done a good enough job. The torchbearers, there were four of us. We used to stand at the side, you know, follow the procession and then bugger off when the MC directed us to go backstage or whatever. And then the next rung on the ladder was Acolyte. But I actually jumped that rung to be thorough first. So I'd obviously really impressed as a torchbearer. and then eventually became MC of T. There were three teams, and I was in charge of all the servers. So I had, you know, definite sort of main character energy, clearly.

36:07Yes, well done. Natural leadership qualities, and you thought, I've got what it takes. Well, the thing that St. Peter's really gave me, and the thing that looking back, I'm so, so grateful to all of the teachers there, particularly Mrs. Dodd, now Mrs. Howarth, the head teacher, was a real, her mission, which I didn't know at the time but I've met her since her mission was to make sure effectively that the kids from the estates had the same chances as kids who were from the posher bits of London and so you'd go into assembly in the morning there'd be classical music playing I got the chance to learn cello and in every year from the age of five there was a school play and I kind of did everything from being Ebenezer Scrooge to playing in the percussion to being a narrator.

36:57I did all sorts of different parts and it definitely helped me. St Peter's helped me find my voice and gave me real confidence, I would say. And then you went on to Westminster City School? Yeah, not the Westminster School. It was the one that the Westminster kids affectionately called Shitty City, the state school up the road. and actually for a couple of years I was there, it was in Ofsted Special Measures. But my mum wanted me to go because Mrs Dodd said all the schools in Tower Hamlets aren't very good, which they weren't at the time. I mean, London schools were terrible and Tower Hamlets were seen among the worst.

37:29So this school, Westminster City, sounded fancy. It was ex-grammar school decades before and it had some kind of sense of history about it. But it went through its fair share of troubles. But I came through all of that pretty well. I had great teachers. Was it boys school, girls school? Boys school. To be honest, it was pretty rough at times. And there's a lot of bullying and I was on the receiving end of a lot of it. So I'd say it was character building. Did you already see yourself as a bit of an outsider? When I got to Westminster City, yes, definitely. I think I stuck out for being one of the clever kids, for being, to be honest, like one of the gay kids before I'd ever really realised and then admitted to myself that's exactly who I was.

38:12when did that happen I mean because you're now adolescent you're 12 13 and you're beginning to have crushes and then you think oh I'm having crushes on not the people I'm expected to have crushes on I mean how did that in your head how did that materialize very much that I mean you know you're watching a film and you you you realize that you're not attracted to the female lead actors and you actually you know i remember watching arm it's probably oversharing now i remember watching armageddon and thinking actually ben affleck's really quite attractive and you know i remember having like posters on my bedroom wall around like euro 96 and the england football team and you know not just thinking michael owen was a good footballer i thought well he's also quite good looking what did your mum and dad when if he visited your room What did they make of that?

39:07Well, I mean, you know, it's a pretty normal thing for a teenage boy to have football posters on the bedroom. But you didn't discuss it. It wasn't something that... No, never. And in fact, you know, I spent years trying not to be gay. And that was partly because of faith and thinking, is it okay to be gay? Partly because of fear about what would this mean for my life, my opportunities? would I be discriminated against you know I mean I went to school when section 28 was still in existence and it was legal in this country to discriminate against gay people in goods and services there was a ban on gay people serving in the military and I think I was definitely conscious that like but being gay was not seen to be not even a good thing like just it wasn't even seem to be a neutral or you know irrelevant thing it was seen to be a bad thing in inverted commas and you know there were very few out people in the media um and those that were were often ridiculed or at least faced up to that ridicule by being confidently camp and effeminate and so there weren't really many role models that i could identify with where i'd think it's going to be okay did you give going out with girls a go i certainly did oh dear yeah that yeah that was one of the things that threw my dad off and you yeah uh and to make a smile can you give us the worst of those moments or is it painful i don't know if it is painful it's not really no not really looking back it's just it's just daft actually i think a lot of my girlfriends it wasn't a surprise when they found out i was gay later on it's like then everything else made sense like the lack of you know interest actually nothing happened no no so can you remember the moment that you were brave enough to actually hold hands with a boy or kiss a boy yeah very much so you know I when I was at university I was in my second year at university and you got into Cambridge yeah I went to Cambridge I mean this is extraordinary the evolution of your life yeah you think of where we began there are a few important reasons why I ended up at Cambridge first and foremost I was surrounded growing up with people who really believed in me and encouraged me and my mum was very much one of those people my dad albeit with the feet on the ground yeah he was the one who when I was mucking about a bit during my GCSEs and A-levels and enjoying life a bit too much was the one saying knuckle down my granddad Bill Streeting I mean he you know in what was I still think the worst day of my life actually when when he died I mean even now all these years later I mean he died in what 1995 and it's it's still the the worst and you worst day of my life yeah and um but he he just encouraged me all the way encouraged me academically encouraged me with my reading anything I wanted to do just total indulgence and like unconditional love and he was you know it wasn't just my granddad growing up he was my best friend and he he really encouraged me and that gave me such a solid foundation then I had great teachers despite all the challenges Westminster City was going through and when it came to thinking about what to do next my best friend Luke who'd been with me all the way through primary school all the way through secondary school we had quite a competitive relationship and I remember in year seven Luke saying are you going to go to university because I'm going to go to university and I hadn't thought about it and I said well yeah I'm going to go to university and he said I'm going to go to Oxford or Cambridge universities because they're the best which universities are you going to go to and I was like well I'm I think I'm gonna go to Oxford or Cambridge too and in the end I actually wanted to and did get there he made a very different and equally impressive decision to go to the Brit school for performing arts and he's had a very successful career in media and communications and I went off to Cambridge with a anything you can do I can do mentality and I went on a Sutton Trust summer school which is aimed at kids from my sort of background you know high academically achieving but disadvantaged in terms of social background and yeah I just had the time of my life at Cambridge and I spent a lot of time evangelising to kids in my own constituency and from my own sort of background who might think Cambridge isn't or Oxford or other you know Russell Group universities are elitist and not for them say if you can get in go for it.

44:04What was your mum like when she came because it is a different world what did she know she did feel like a fisher i hadn't realized until later on how self-conscious my mum felt when she came up to cambridge but but she's bursting with pride i mean my you know there aren't many times in my life where my mum and dad have been together and you know taking me up to university was one of them graduation day was another um and they yeah they're enormously proud so encouraging and you know for all of the can someone like you fit in in a university like Cambridge it evidently so because it was the first place I actually felt confident enough and comfortable enough to actually be myself and to come out and I sort of built this crush on someone who's on the student union exec with me at the time and on a night out I had plucked up the confidence to tell him and what does one say do you say I love you or do you say I like you or do you like me I mean fortunately uh I don't think I've got I mean actually I think Ed still does have this message because he'd left the club we were in and I'd sent him a text message and then we met shortly after and outside Clare College in the shadows of the King's College Chapel and outside the old school buildings where the university administration is we shared our first kiss and it was the first time i'd ever kissed someone of the same sex and the rest is history and it felt okay felt liberating i mean you know he was did absolutely the right thing in insisting that we went our separate ways that evening and we talked the next day and i walked back from where we were outside claire college to my college which is Selwyn so probably about 10 minute walk and I cried all the way home I messaged one of my best friends to say I need to speak to you got back to my uh the student house I was living next in next to the college and my one of my best friends was there and one of my housemates who was a bit older than me and but also gay and I told them what happened and the reason I was crying is because I just had that moment walking back of sheer terror because it was really the first time under the influence of alcohol that I had properly admitted to myself let alone and someone else that I was gay although I think I spent a brief period on the bisexual bus describing myself as bisexual because I think that was my conclusion at the time which must really irritate bisexual people when gay people as I describe it get on the bi bus on the way through from you know being straight to gay and but anyway I'd confided in my friends and they'd reassured me and I was very worried about how my friends would react would people hate me would people still want to be friends with me they were very reassuring and I went to bed feeling like my world had turned upside down and the next morning it was the complete opposite it I woke up with a slightly sore head and I just remember laughing and just looking in the mirror and feeling like for the first time ever I recognised the person looking back at me and it felt genuinely liberating I felt like the weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders and I just thought and actually I spent quite a lot of time in the days that followed rapidly and intensively telling everyone at university in my college and my friends what had happened and that I was gay but it took it took a few more years before I would tell anyone outside of university and I was worried about my parents reaction I was worried about my dad's reaction to be honest and what age were you when they took you till them it was a good few years later I remember exactly and the only reason is because I was in a relationship at the time and I got an invitation to Stephen Twigg who was a Labour MP at the time got an invitation to his civil partnership and it was addressed to me and my then boyfriend and when my dad was putting something in my room he knocked some stuff off the side was picking it up saw this invitation saw who it was addressed to spoke to my step-mum put two and two together and made four and I just remember coming home I'd been away I was involved in the NUS at the time National Union Students and came home and um my step-mom kind of called me in and said your dad's found this he's put two and two together is this guy your boyfriend i was like yes and she just said look your dad's okay he's gonna take some time and he's got lots of questions and he's really hurt you haven't told him and when i sat down with my dad i recounted some things that he'd said that made made me fear that he wouldn't react positively and he was mortified and his actually his reaction was brilliant it took and it did take him a couple of days to adjust but as I've said to other people especially if you know people who've asked me about coming out and it took me 20 odd years to accept that I was gay it took my dad two days to accept that I was gay I think he's I think he deserves that www.mintmobile .com

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51:02And we can assume that God already knew. Yeah. And that was comfortable, reconciling. Not at the time, but it's become comfortable since. I am comfortable with who I am and my theology and my relationship with God. And I think we're created in God's image. and if God had wanted me made differently, I would have been made differently. And you're now in a permanent relationship? Yeah, Joe is my long-term partner and we live together and have a house together. And you're going to have children together? I don't think so. I think the demands of our careers have probably put children out of the mix and I hope we don't regret that down the line, but we've got a nephew and two wonderful nieces.

51:42It's not more than the demands of your career because it's intriguing to me that you've been a star turn from the beginning. We know that. From there you are with Incense right the way through. You're at the start. You know, you're not just, you're playing Ebenezer Scrooge. You're not just in A Christmas Carol. You are the lead part. Well, I was fuming. I got to secondary school and in year seven they cast me as Tiny Tim. And I thought, fair enough. I'm in a new school. Got the script. Two lines. Tiny Tim's got two lines and they're both the same. and I thought, have they not realised or appreciated my theatrical talent?

52:19I couldn't believe it. I was absolutely fuming. When you get to Cambridge, as well as no doubt being brilliant as a scholar, you do lots of things, you become president? President of the Student Union, although I've bottled drama, is one of the only times in my life I've really suffered from imposter syndrome. And went up to Cambridge, signed up for all of the theatre audition lists, got all the emails through, never went once. I was so intimidated by Cambridge's reputation and the likes of Stephen Fry walking the boards. And I just thought, oh, what if I don't measure up? I don't believe in having regrets in life.

52:51I do believe in learning from things and learning from mistakes and learning from missed opportunities and trying to be a better person. But I do regret my cowardice. But did you become president of the NUS as well? Yeah, nationally. yet. So I got really involved in campaigning, actually campaigning against the Labour government on many things, tuition fees, Iraq. But I'm glad that I didn't. I mean, I left the Labour Party a couple of times, but I'm really glad I stuck with it. What do you think it takes to, you are clearly a natural leader, have been, and you've had a very good press for your time here at the Department of Health.

53:31What do you think it takes, what have you got to offer as a leader? What do you think is in you because clearly you've shown it so far what do you think of the qualities that you Wes have if I think about the way I've led the Department of Health and Social Care and the NHS over the last just you know 20 months or so I think there's a lot of things you have to bring you have to bring clarity of vision and purpose and what it is that you're trying to achieve like what's the direction you have to build a strong team around you I do not believe in this hero model of leadership where if you just have like this great inspirational hero leader then everything works like you have to build a strong team and we've been building that team and I feel like I lead a brilliant team not just nationally but also across the country part of the job is to mobilize the one and a half million people who work in the NHS, a very similar number who work in social care to deliver change on that scale.

54:37I think you have to bring seriousness without taking yourself too seriously and creating space for fun and joy. We spend so much of our time at work. People should work hard, but coming to work should also be rewarding and people should enjoy what they do and gain satisfaction from it. What don't you get right? You personally? Not in terms of what the system does. Yeah. Is there a weakness? Some of the things that I regret in a way or things that I would have done differently in the short time I've been in were reaching decisions at a point when I could have done it much sooner. and it's a hard balance to strike because sometimes you want to take time but there is sometimes a temptation to put off the difficult decisions, the difficult choices and you've got to try and bring some of those I think forward and yeah, I think there are times in politics where things are put in the too difficult box and I can be quite bullish is something else I'd say I think sometimes that's a strength and you have to drive things through a system that can sometimes be institutionally small c conservative and where you've always got naysayers.

56:07But, you know, sometimes being bullish can sometimes mean being glib. And I'd say that, you know, I'm quite an empathetic person and I've really valued the time I've spent with victims of the NHS, for example. and I take what they say to heart but in those moments I'm very careful about what I say and try and think through how my words might be heard and felt I think sometimes I should apply that same principle to more generally to communication I like I like being someone who answers questions directly I like being person someone who goes into battle and is able to win arguments. I think there are times where I can put people's nose out of joint.

56:57Sometimes you have to have a fight and win. There are other times where I think maybe some of the other voice in my ear telling me to be a bit more diplomatic may have been right on occasion. Four very quick questions then for direct answers. Do you think much about death? Did your kidney cancer, was it five, six years ago, make you think about death and time is short? Yeah, I never feared dying because my prognosis was good. but there are two near-death experiences I've had in recent years in a sense one was kidney cancer which made me think about my immortality even if I didn't think I was going to die the other was my near-death experience at the ballot box at the last general election and both of those things both in life and in politics don't waste time don't waste a second cherish these moments there are days in this job where you wake up and you're confronting enormous challenges sometimes it can feel overwhelming and in those moments I always just think this is exactly what I wanted to be doing this is a job I've loved more than any other and I suspect when I am on my deathbed at some point this is the job and this is the time I'll look back on with most pride and joy and thinking god those weren't those the best days so um it those both of those experiences have given me a zest for life generally and a real zeal for what I'm doing now and for all the challenges and the grief you sometimes get and the abuse and you know people hate politicians who are about less popular than tax collectors and estate agents but I actually think this is a noble profession and a great thing to be doing and I love it and I tell you when I became an MP I planned to be prime minister and in fact I now see the moment that I missed the boat and I hope in the fullness of time, you will succeed in becoming Prime Minister.

58:49Would you like to, well, you would be the first openly gay Prime Minister. Quite exciting. One day. Would that be, would that, is that part and parcel of it in your head? No, not really. I mean, I think, you know, the first thing to obviously say, because it winds me up, so goodness knows how the Prime Minister himself feels. I think there's actually a bit too much obsession with who's up, who's down and anything I've ever said about I mean I've never been shy about having ambition and being ambitious I think it's a good thing and I spend all of my time encouraging kids from my backgrounds to be ambitious so I don't want to let me or them down by saying oh but oh I don't know you know I must say though um you know I've certainly been inspired seeing you know in the Netherlands, in France, openly gay leaders, I think that is a good thing that people can rise to as far as their talents will take them.

59:45I think it is a good thing that we have in Keir's government, the most working class cabinet in history, not for tokenism, but because we bring different perspectives and experiences that inform our choices and make it more likely that we'll make decisions in the interests of the majority, not just a privileged few. and you know I would say as I said went around some of the secondary schools in my constituency saying before the general election does anyone know who our prime minister is and some of the answer Rishi Sunak do you know what makes Rishi Sunak special and being able to talk about our country having its first prime minister of Indian heritage the first Hindu prime minister I think that's a source of great pride for our country.

1:00:31So I think diversity and inclusion does matter. And those things are contested now more than ever. So I'm definitely not going to be one of those people that ducks away from that fight. Final stretch, three quickies. I say a moment of joy, what comes into your head, just from your whole life, particularly your childhood, a moment of joy. Every moment spent with my granddad. And that'll be the moment of sadness too, because his death is, is that the greatest moment of sadness, his dying? It was the worst, the single worst day of my life. I remember it as vividly now as I did when I was living through it.

1:01:05And it was my nanny Libby, my mum's mum had died the year before and that was really hard watching her die slowly and painfully of lung cancer. My granddad, Bill Streeting, died of a massive heart attack and I was the last person in the family to see him alive. And in fact, you know, everything happens for a reason. God has a plan. In my mind, I can still see him waving goodbye at the entry door to our flats before he got into a minicab to go home and then had a massive heart attack. And I remember that really vividly. And what I took from it at the time was I got to say goodbye. And my dad didn't.

1:01:46No one else in the family did. But that was the single hardest day of my life, I'd say. And what has your unusual life taught you? from where you began to this extraordinary office overlooking Westminster here. You talked about having friends who were almost yuppies when you were young. You've become, not with the accent, but with everything else, you could be a yuppie in a sense. You've moved. It's a transition. You're a Secretary of State, member of the Privy Council. People talk about you as a future Prime Minister one day in the fullest of time. Extraordinary. What has life taught you, Wes?

1:02:19you can't you can't do it on your own it's it's like it's the heart of it's the heart of my values and my own experience I wish it were true that if you if we all just pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps any of us could get on and and hard work matters effort must be rewarded but I am the product of a loving family a great state education council flat that put a roof over my head you know I'm the product of all of those things all of those influences and I more over and above everything else the thing I care most about is making sure that everyone whatever their background has the same choices and chances and security and opportunities like in life as those most privileged backgrounds and we have a responsibility to each other do you have a favourite prayer that you end the day with that we could end our conversation with a line I love the blessing at the end of every service anyway but do you have a favourite line that we can end with so before I um I always like say the Lord's Prayer but before I do I always say what my granddad used to say which is and now I lay me down to sleep my soul to the O God will keep and if I wake up in the morn make me glad that I was born and then we used to list every member the family god bless mommy god bless daddy and i used to list as many people as i could think of um to detain my granddad longer but i say that to remember him and remember his example and to feel closer to him and is that final line in particular if i wake up in the morn make me glad that i was born and that is i think the essence i'm very glad we've had this conversation it's lovely talking to you thanks so much thank you

1:04:13Well, that was Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, and who knows what the future holds for him. I must say, I liked him and found him very interesting. And we do like to feel that we cover the field here on Rosebud. So we've had Keir Starmer, he became Prime Minister. We've had Kemi Badenoch, she hopes to be Prime Minister. We've had Ed Davey, he hopes to be Prime Minister. I'm trying to disguise the chuckle in my voice, but I have to say I liked him. and I found his story absolutely fascinating. And what I do find strange is when we have these political figures on Rosebud, the way some people leave messages saying, how could you interview such a person?

1:04:54How could you? Well, actually, I think everybody is interesting and people who aspire to lead the country, well, I want to hear their stories. So whatever political party you belong to, if you've got a story that we'd like to hear, we will be sharing it with our listeners. so who knows we may be having zach here that's zach polanski rather than zach goldsmith we might have both of them we have all the zacks oh you might say no zacks please we're not interested enough of this nonsense from me let me read you a um an email that we've had it's to both harriet our producer and myself dear harriet and giles oh my word oh this is to do with last friday's podcast, where we had a very distinguished British actor as our guest.

1:05:43The Proustian puppetry memory buttons pressed by Giles and Richard E. Grant's discussion of Pelham puppets, dot, dot, dot. Proustian relates to the idea of Marcel Proust in his famous La Recherche du Temps Perdue, mentioning the Madeleine, the little cake that evoked memories. So this was the Proust, as opposed to a Faustian compact, the Proustian puppetry memory. Pelham puppets, that's what Richard E. Grant and I had in common. Between the ages of 8 and 13, writes Roderick Keegan, I collected six or seven puppets, including The Splendid Witch, Glamorous Cinderella, Rather Dull Tyrellian Boy, and of course The Skeleton.

1:06:33Christmas 1959 delivered the, to me, enormous self-assembly Pelham Puppet Theatre. Do you know, Roderick, I think that's the year I got my Pelham Puppet Theatre. Anyway, I was an enthusiastic member of the Pel-Pup Club, receiving the regular gestetned magazine edited by Pel-Pup, also known as the puppet master, Mr Pelham himself. Located in Marlborough, the Pelham factory was on our route from home outside Bournemouth to our prep school near Swindon. In January 1961, my mother arranged for us to stop off at the factory, where we were shown around, to my men's excitement, by Bob Pelpop Pelham. He was charming, informative and amusing.

1:07:17My two elder brothers, not puppet obsessives, tagged along and ever after, to my irritation, referred to Pelpop as shaving brush on account of his distinctive mini beard. And yes, Giles, my puppets certainly delivered a life lesson. Theatre is, of course, a collaborative art form. In order to put on a successful puppet performance, I had to enlist help from one or both of my brothers, cueing in the music from the gramophone, affecting lighting changes and so on. Unfortunately, I found it difficult to communicate my artistic vision for my productions with my kindly but not always enthusiastic siblings.

1:07:59I blushed to recall the tantrums, meltdowns and hoo-hahs that ensued. On my part, not on theirs. Eventually, I learnt that my happy place was on the other side of the footlights, where I could relax and enjoy the glorious illusions created by the genuine creatives. And that's where I've been ever since. Hurrah! Continuing to relish the peerless Rosebud interviews. Sincerely, Roderick Keegan. well I'm going to share with Harriet the idea of us maybe having a Pelham puppet tea party inviting to Groven House and Park Lane where we often record our episodes people who, the passport to this tea party will be to bring a Pelham puppet and we'll all get together with our Pelham puppets and Harriet can take pictures of us and interview us about our puppet mania.

1:08:56She can pull the strings. That's it. That's it for this week's Rosebud. I hope you found it intriguing. Politics is not for everybody, but I think politicians are there to serve everybody. So learning about them and what makes them tick about their childhoods and their aspirations is worthwhile. Even if you mistrust them, they're there. Better to know the enemy than just ignore them. That's my view. But next week, who knows who we will have? It could be another archbishop, another actress. Oh, we must do an episode with a bishop and an actress. I know so many of both. Till next time, this is Giles saying goodbye.

1:10:12Rosebud is produced by Harriet Jane, artwork by Freya Betts, and music by Phil Leppard.

1:10:26The Bleacher Report app is your destination for sports. Right now, the NBA is heating up, March Madness is here, and MLB is almost back. Every day there's a new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you've got to see for yourself. That's why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it's about staying connected to my sports. I can follow the teams I care about, get real-time scores, breaking news, and highlights all in one place. Download the Bleacher Report app today so you never miss a moment. It's time your hard-earned money works harder for you. With the Wealthfront Cash account, your uninvested cash can earn up to 3.95 % APY.

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