Wes Streeting is ready to listen to farmers. The ex-Health Secretary told Britain so in a video posted to social media. Isn’t that nice!
Fresh from botching his bid to seize the Labour leadership at speed, Streeting is now preparing for the long game – a contest that could be drawn out over months. So, while the media’s eyes are on his rival Andy Burnham in Makerfield, the ex-Health Secretary is embarking on a lessons-learning road trip, visiting ‘people and places that Labour have lost since the general election to talk about what’s gone wrong’.
First stop: farmers. Streeting says they are ‘absolutely huge contributors’ and ‘custodians of our land’. Stirring stuff. Rather less stirring, perhaps, is his own voting record. On no fewer than six occasions, Streeting voted with the Cabinet for the hated family farm tax. He repeatedly defended Rachel Reeves’s 2024 Budget, which first imposed the policy, on the airwaves and in the Commons chamber. Indeed, so fond was Streeting of the tax-raiding fiscal package that he hailed it as truly ‘the change our country voted for’ and an ‘historic turning point for our country’.
That was then. Now, the wannabe prime minister is off to Hexham to visit a farm and presumably make his first apology on behalf of the party, alongside the local MP and his parliamentary pal Joe Morris, who resigned as a Health PPS to back Streeting for the Downing Street gig.
Shadow Environment Secretary Victoria Atkins was quick to jump on Streeting’s change of heart, suggesting:
As part of your listening exercise, could you ask yourself why you voted for the Family Farm Tax a whopping SIX times? #AllMouthandNoTrousers.
In Streeting’s defence, it’s hardly the first time he’s shown some love for Big Farma, eh…
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