Wes Streeting

Wesley Paul William Streeting (born 21 January 1983) is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care since 2021, and Member of Parliament (MP) for Ilford North since 2015.

He served as Shadow Secretary of State for Child Poverty from May to November 2021, as Shadow Minister for Schools from 2020 to 2021, and as Shadow Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury from April to October 2020.

He was also president of the National Union of Students (NUS), and Deputy Leader of Redbridge London Borough Council.

Streeting was born in Stepney, London, on 21 January 1983.

His parents, Mark and Corinna, were teenagers when he was born.

He has five brothers, a sister and a stepsister.

His maternal grandfather was an armed robber who spent time in prison, and his grandmother became embroiled in his crimes and ended up in Holloway jail, where she met Christine Keeler (a key figure in the Profumo affair).

According to Streeting, they "stayed in touch, they became friends."

His grandmother was released from prison to give birth to his mother at Whittington Hospital.

Streeting's two grandfathers, both named Bill, were key figures in his youth.

His maternal grandfather, Bill Crowley, was acquainted with the infamous East End Krays.

He was "really well read and well informed", and engaged his grandson in lively discussions about religion and politics.

Streeting’s paternal grandfather served in the Second World War in the Royal Navy and later in the merchant navy before becoming a civil engineer.

He recalled: "He was the grandad I was closest to. He was a traditional working-class Tory."

Streeting grew up in poverty living in a council flat.

He recalls Conservative Party politicians, particularly Ann Widdecombe, in the 1990s "denigrating single-parent families like mine, which I took quite personally."

He attended Westminster City School, a comprehensive state school in Victoria, London, where he studied History, Politics, and Religious Studies at A-level, receiving 3 A grades.

He went on to study history at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge.

Streeting previously had left the Labour Party because he opposed its decision to enter the Iraq War; however, he says Tony Blair did not act with malign intent.

Streeting came out as gay in his second year of university.

He served as Selwyn College's Junior Common Room (JCR) President, in which capacity he was a member of Cambridge University Students' Union (CUSU) Council.

Progress was a pressure group created to support Tony Blair's New Labour in 1996 and continued to promote the thinking of the Blairite-Brownite wing of Labour until 2014.

Progress was funded by David Sainsbury, Baron Sainsbury of Turville and coincided with Blair's announcement that he would abolish the party’s Clause IV commitment to old-style public ownership.

After completing his term as President of the NUS, Streeting served as Chief Executive of the Helena Kennedy Foundation, an educational charity that promotes access to higher education for students from further education colleges.

He went on to serve as head of education at Stonewall, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights charity (for one year and six months), where he led their Education for All campaign to tackle homophobia in schools.

He was subsequently a public sector consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which he gave up on election as a councillor, because Redbridge Council was a "current audit client" of the firm; this forced him to choose between keeping his job or forcing a second by-election.

He was subsequently elected CUSU President for the 2004–05 academic year, a sabbatical officer role.

As CUSU President, he campaigned against the proposed closure of Cambridge's architecture department.

He had been a member of the NUS National Executive Committee since 2005, having previously held the post of Vice-President (Education) from 2006 to 2008.

Streeting was elected as President of the National Union of Students (NUS) in April 2008 as a candidate from Labour Students, with the support of the Union of Jewish Students.

In April 2009, he was elected to a second term as President of the NUS.

He also served as a member of the National Committee of Labour Students for four years during this time.

As President of the NUS, Streeting was a strong proponent of his predecessor Gemma Tumelty's proposed reforms to the NUS governance structures, which had been denounced and narrowly defeated by many left-wing groups in NUS as an attack on NUS democracy.

His election was reported by The Guardian as "a move that will lend weight to the fight to modernise the union".

As NUS President, Streeting was a non-executive director of the NUS's trading arm, NUS Services Ltd, and of Endsleigh Insurance.

He was also a non-executive director of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS), as well as the Higher Education academy, having served on their board as Vice President (Education) when he was also a non-executive director of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (OIAHE).

Shortly after his election as NUS President, Streeting was appointed as a member of the government's Youth Citizenship Commission, chaired by Professor Jonathan Tonge of the University of Liverpool, which published its report in June 2009.

Streeting supported university tuition fees as President, consistent with UK government policy during the New Labour years.

As The Independent pointed out, Streeting's decision put the NUS position on student fees to the right of the Liberal Democrats who had just committed to a policy of free education for all.

Streeting worked for the Labour Party-related organisation Progress for a year.