Wes Streeting
Wesley Paul William Streeting is a British politician serving as the Member of Parliament for Ilford North since 2015. A member of the Labour Party, he previously was President of the National Union of Students, as well as Deputy Leader of the London Borough of Redbridge and Cabinet Member for Health and Wellbeing.
Early life and education
Streeting was born in Tower Hamlets, a borough of London. He attended Westminster City School, a comprehensive state school in Victoria, London. He studied history at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge. Streeting served as Selwyn College's Junior Common Room President, in which capacity he was a member of Cambridge University Students' Union Council. He was subsequently elected CUSU President for the 2004–5 academic year, a sabbatical officer role. As CUSU President, he campaigned against the proposed closure of Cambridge's architecture department.Early life
After graduating, Streeting worked for the Labour Party-related organisation Progress for a year.He also served as a member of the Labour Students National Committee for four years.
NUS President
Streeting was elected as NUS President in April 2008 as a candidate from Labour Students, with the support of the Union of Jewish Students. He had been a member of the NUS National Executive Committee since 2005, having previously held the post of Vice-President from 2006 to 2008. In April 2009, he was elected to a second term. In March 2009, Pink News listed him as the 33rd-most powerful LGBT politician in the UK.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", and within seven months of taking office, revised reform proposals were submitted, passed and ratified by two extraordinary conferences to adopt the new constitution. Critics have argued, however, that the conferences were undemocratic, with a significant number of delegates not having been elected by cross-campus ballot. A large proportion of FE colleges were also unable to attend.
He was a leading figure in efforts to change the NUS's position on higher education funding in advance of the government's 2009/10 independent review of higher education funding in England.
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, as well as the Higher Education academy, having served on their board as Vice President when he was also a non-executive director of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education. 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 Liverpool University, which published its report in June 2009.
Professional career
Streeting was Chief Executive of the Helena Kennedy Foundation, an educational charity that promotes access to higher education to students from further education colleges through bursaries, mentoring and work placements.He was also Head of Education at Stonewall, where he led their Education for All campaign to tackle homophobia in schools.
He was a public sector consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers, 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.
Political career
In 2010, shortly after leaving PwC, Streeting was appointed as Head of Policy and Strategic Communications for Oona King's unsuccessful bid to win the Labour Party's nomination to be its candidate in the 2012 London Mayoral election.Local government
In a July 2010 by-election, Streeting was elected as a Labour councillor for the Chadwell ward on Redbridge London Borough Council. He held the seat for Labour by 220 votes, winning with 31.5% of the vote on a 25.5% turnout. The by-election had been triggered by a previous Labour candidate, having been elected two months earlier, being found to be ineligible to serve on the council.Streeting was elected as Deputy Leader of the Labour Group in October 2011. In 2014, he contested the Aldborough ward on Redbridge Council, winning 2,100 votes and defeating Conservative opponent Ruth Clark.
At a public meeting of the Redbridge Citizens' Assembly on 6 May 2014, Cllr Streeting on behalf of his group promised that, if elected, he would not reduce the level of Council Tax Support provided to low-income working-age residents. Once elected, the Labour council cut the level of Support, so as to treble from April 2016 the amount of Council Tax paid by supported residents; the council made a further reduction from April 2017, and made a third reduction from April 2018.
He was appointed Deputy Leader of the council in May 2014, shortly after the Labour group took control. He resigned the latter in May 2015, shortly after being elected Member of Parliament for Ilford North. Whilst he remained a backbench councillor following his election to Parliament he chose not to claim his councillor allowance. Streeting ceased to be a member of the council on Monday 7 May 2018.
Parliamentary career
In the general election of 7 May 2015, Streeting was elected as the Member of Parliament for Ilford North. Representing the Labour Party, he overturned a Conservative majority of 5,404, winning by 589 votes. He is a member of the Treasury Select Committee.Since his election, Streeting has been described as a "long-time critic" of the Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and stated prior to the 2017 general election that he was "not going to pretend to have had a damascene conversion" with regard to Corbyn's suitability to be prime minister. His views have provoked a response from Corbyn's supporters such as Ken Livingstone and the trade union leader Len McCluskey. Livingstone described him as "consciously undermining Jeremy and damaging the Labour party" while McCluskey said his reason for raising issues had been "about attacking Jeremy Corbyn". Streeting was among the 70 per cent of Labour MPs who nominated Owen Smith in the failed attempt by the Parliamentary Labour Party to replace Corbyn in the 2016 leadership election. Corbyn defeated Smith by 62% to 38%, securing a higher level of support than in the 2015 leadership election.
Streeting is a vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Antisemitism, a co-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Jews and a supporter of Labour Friends of Israel. He has accused Corbyn of a "flat-footed and lackadaisical attitude" to tackling antisemitism which is "simply unacceptable". Ilford North's Jewish community is the third-largest in the UK, amounting to about 4,000 people. In the approach to the 2017 general election, Marcus Dysch of The Jewish Chronicle believed that Streeting's majority of 589, in one of the few seats where the Jewish vote might be decisive, was vulnerable to his Conservative opponent Lee Scott, who is Jewish. In July 2018, Streeting called for “targeted economic sanctions” against Jewish settlements in the West Bank in response to the Israeli government “grossly infringing on the human rights of Palestinians”. In July 2019, Streeting was reported in the media as using abusive language in a message to another antisemitism campaigner.
He is also co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims and a supporter of Labour Friends of Palestine and Middle East. In September 2018 he held the last in a series of London-wide consultations to create a working definition of Islamophobia. Ilford North constituency has a Muslim population of 18,000.
Streeting campaigned against Brexit in the run up to the 2016 EU membership referendum. He is a supporter of the People's Vote, a campaign group calling for a public vote on the final Brexit deal between the UK and the European Union. He represents a leave-voting constituency.
In June 2018, Streeting, who is openly gay, said that those currently campaigning against LGBT+ education in schools "have peddled hatred and bigotry on school gates".
In July 2019, Streeting told a Labour First meeting that the party faced electoral oblivion in any snap poll due to the leadership's poor handling of Brexit and allegations of antisemitism.
Streeting endorsed Jess Phillips in the 2020 Labour Party leadership election. After the election of Keir Starmer as leader of the party, Streeting was appointed Shadow Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury.
Other roles
After being elected to Parliament, Streeting was elected Honorary President of the British Youth Council.He is a Vice President of the Local Government Association and a Patron of LGBT Labour.