Wes Streeting is to criticise Nigel Farage for pushing a “miserabilist, declinist” vision of Britain, arguing it is time to start fighting a battle of ideas against the rightwing populists.
In a speech on Saturday the health secretary will say failing public services have been a “fertiliser of populism” because they have bred cynicism about the ability of politics to effect change.
He will argue that repairing the NHS will be crucial to seeing off the threat of the two “alternative candidates for prime minister at the next election”: Farage and the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch.
But he will also say that “delivery isn’t enough” and progressive politicians must confidently “take on their arguments and win the battle of ideas” in the most direct challenge to Reform UK by a cabinet minister since Labour took power.
Streeting’s intervention comes at a momentous time for the populist right after Donald Trump took over in the White House this week and Reform appeared to be neck and neck in the polls with Labour and the Conservatives.
Some Labour strategists believe there is little point taking on Farage because he poses more of a damaging threat to the Conservatives, eating into the vote share on the right.
However, many Labour backbenchers, especially those where Reform came second last year, have been uneasy about Labour’s approach of largely standing back and reserving its political punches for the Tories.
Streeting, widely tipped as a potential future Labour leader, will stake his position firmly among those on the progressive left who believe Farage needs to be confronted rather than ignored.
“The crux of Farage’s argument is this: what was possible in the 20th century is not possible in the 21st. It’s a miserabilist, declinist vision for Britain’s future. People shouldn’t have to choose between a health service that treats them on time and an NHS free at the point of use. It’s a poverty of ambition for our country. Labour utterly rejects it,” he will say.
In a speech at the Fabian Society likely to appeal to Labour members, Streeting will highlight previous comments by Badenoch and Farage suggesting the idea of an NHS free at the point of use could be up for debate.
Last year Badenoch told the Times: “I don’t think we are ready for changing the principle of free at the point of use, certainly not immediately. If we are going to reform things like that, I think we need to have a serious cross-party, national conversation.”
Farage said in 2014 that the UK was “going to have to think about healthcare very, very differently … I think we are going to have to move to an insurance-based system of healthcare.” Earlier this month he told the Times: “We’ve got to identify a system of funding for healthcare that is more effective than the one we have currently got, and at the same time carries those who can’t afford to pay.”
Streeting will say: “I can’t think of a more potent antidote to Farage’s miserabilism, than proving the cynics wrong and getting the NHS delivering world-class care for patients again,” highlighting 150,000 patients coming off waiting lists in the past four months.
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He will say the government will prove Farage and others on the populist right wrong on the NHS.
“Cutting the longest waiting times from 18 months to 18 weeks by the next election will mean achieving something the NHS hasn’t done in a decade. It will require going further and faster than even the last Labour government.
“And if we do it, it will represent an act of resistance against the status quo of managed decline. We will have helped remake the case for progressive politics, changing the lives of working people in the face of populist cynicism. We can defeat Farage by turning around the NHS.”
Streeting will also challenge Farage’s arguments in favour of tax cuts for private healthcare, saying ordinary people have been “left behind by those who can afford to jump the queue and go private”.
“The irony is that Farage, who preys on that sentiment, would cement this two-tier healthcare system. Labour is ending it,” he will say.
His criticism of Farage’s approach to the NHS and private healthcare suggests Labour is gearing up to tackle Reform over its policies, which have been little scrutinised apart from its position on “freezing” immigration and taking asylum seekers who cross the Channel back to France.
