Elizabeth Oldfield speaks to Labour MP Wes Streeting. 28/06/2023

Introduction 

Elizabeth 

Hello, and welcome to The Sacred. My name is Elizabeth Oldfield, and this is a podcast about our deep values, the principles that drive the people that shaped our common life, and how we might be able to engage better across some other very deep differences in those principles and values. Every episode I speak to someone who has some kind of public voice or profile, and I ask them what is sacred to them, what ideas have shaped them, and what are they trying to do in the world. My hope is that by listening to a very wide range of perspectives, and tribes and professions, trying to get to the person behind the position, I can grow in empathy and curiosity and resist my temptations towards tribalism. And in so doing, be more part of the solution than the problem for the fractures that are so dividing our common life. If you’re enjoying The Sacred, please do rate review and share it. We hear this request so much that it’s easy for it to just become white noise, but I can’t tell you how much it helps other people find it. I get contacted regularly from people saying that the podcast has expanded their horizons, that has helped them understand that people not like them are not, in fact, monsters. That it’s helped them show up in the world with more curiosity and empathy, and that they found it because a friend of theirs sent them an episode and said, “I thought you might like this”. So why don’t you be one of those people today and join ‘Team Sacred’ by sharing the podcast. If you’re enjoying The Sacred, you might also be interested in a separate project that I am involved in, and it is a Substack newsletter that I’ve started. It’s called Fully Alive. You can find it at morefullyalive.substack.com and read all about it. I really hope you’ll consider subscribing. 

Meanwhile, in this episode of the sacred, you’ll hear a conversation I had with Wes Streeting MP. Wes is a Labour MP for Ilford North, which is on the border of Essex and London. And he is Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. We spoke about his childhood growing up in a council flat in East London. His recently released memoir which is called One Boy, Two Bills and a Fry Up, and what drives his political life. There are some reflections from me at the end as usual. I really hope you enjoy listening 

What is sacred to you? Wes Streeting MP’s answer 

Elizabeth 

Wes, it is early in the morning, and I have just sprinted back from the school run, so you’ve been very gracious with me. Despite all that, we’re going to go straight into a question that you don’t get asked every day, on the bus, when you meet someone for the first time. You’ve had a little bit of time to sit with it. For returning listeners, they know the contours of the question. For new listeners, it’s really trying to get to deep principles and deep values that drive us. You kind of bracket out family to get a sense of your vision of the good that you’re trying to move towards. I don’t think anyone really knows, but it’s an interesting question. What bubbled up for you? 

Wes Streeting MP 

It’s really difficult question actually, not least because you carved out the obvious go–to: family and friendship, which I think is sacred, actually, and it’s certainly very important to me. But you have banned it, and I am a politician who likes to answer the question put to them rather than one that I wish I could be answering. I thought about this on a number of levels. I think there was something fundamental to me about truth and honesty. This can be kind of dangerous territory for a politician to veer into, because, sadly, politics and politicians do not have a great reputation for honesty and truth at this particular time, although I think this has possibly been true for some time. But actually, when I was thinking about honesty and truth, I was thinking more about what Polonius says in Hamlet, which is, “To thine own self be true”. And I think there’s something that sort of guides me about being honest to and with myself, in terms of sticking to my own values, holding myself to my own values, and also being honest where I’ve fallen short. And being self–critical. But I think, in the world that I now live in, of the House of Commons, and being a Member of Parliament, I think it is really important to kind of constantly refer back to your own values and convictions because you can get pulled in all sorts of different directions, fall under all sorts of pressure. And naturally – ‘compromise’ has become a dirty word – I actually think compromise is a really important feature of our  lives, like either our everyday interactions with each other, and how we might compromise with each other right through to forging the broadest possible compromise in a society or even as a planet. So in that kind of space, it’s even more important, I think, to constantly check yourself against your own mission and values. And for me, the sorts of things that really motivate me, are a deep commitment to tackling inequality and injustice in our society. I think, as you know, having been ploughing through my book, which is coming out this month, in June, I am very much not a typical politician in terms of my background. I grew up in lots of poverty, and I’ve tried to carry all of those experiences from my life into my work now, as a Member of Parliament. I have a deep commitment to equality, which sounds like a simple enough principle, but even on equality: equality for one might compromise an equality for another. So even something as simple as equality can be a challenging concept. And, fundamentally, I sort of want to leave the world a better place than I found it. And I think we all need a sense of purpose in our lives, and that can be different things to different people. I think different people find meaning from purpose, and what might be one person’s drive might be a different person’s, but I think having purpose is also really important. 

Elizabeth 

Yeah, thank you so much. Maybe staying on honesty – because it’s the first thing that came up, and I feel like that’s often a clue. That integrity of being true to yourself. It may not be, but can you think of a time in your life… I’m always interested by how these values guide us as sort of forks in the road. And we often know what they are in situations when we feel compromised, or we feel the threat of feeling compromised, and I mean that in the bad way, not in the good way, which I agree with you about. Is there any kind of moment or story you can think of where you had to choose honesty or integrity, and you were under pressure not to? 

Wes Streeting MP 

I got lots of those now. I’ll come back to a more fundamental one in a minute. There’s one area that I don’t particularly want to dwell on, because it sort of opens all sorts of trauma from my first four years as an MP, but I think I’m pretty well–known for not being the biggest fan of the previous leader of the Labour Party, and finding a number of aspects of the Labour Party circa 2015–2019 very difficult. Particularly with regards to antisemitism, which was a problem and a very real problem in the Labour Party. And that just put me in a very difficult position, because I am an instinctively loyal person, and I desperately want to see my party succeed and speaking out. I mean, it’s one thing to sort of argue with someone that you fundamentally disagree with, or people you see as opponents; it is much harder, actually, to take on your own side. And I found that very, very challenging. And then, I guess, thinking about your reflection of my childhood and upbringing. I mean, one of the central themes of the book as I become older, and I go to university, is finally being honest with myself and others about my sexuality, and trying to reconcile that with my Christian faith as I was growing up. That was very, very hard, and it actually is part of the reason why I chose, when I was thinking about what’s really important, that degree of self–honesty. Because I felt this feeling of liberation once I was able to be honest with myself and honest with others. It felt as if the weight of the world had lifted off my shoulders. And I think that if you’re comfortable in your own skin, you can take on everything else around you. If you have this inner turmoil, that’s a lot more difficult. 

Elizabeth 

Yeah, I sometimes think about the phrase a stable self, a stable soul, that is rooted in love. And then, when we’re rooted enough, we’re not so reactive and defensive, are we, to those around us. We can just be in conversation with them, accept that they’re different from us and not feel like something deep within us is under threat, which is such an easy way adults act out in the world, as well as children. 

The fry–up: a single mum, an East End childhood, two Bills, and going beyond caricature 

Elizabeth 

I’d love to hear a bit about your childhood, and you write really vividly about it in your memoir. And it was really lovely to read it in your own words, because it’s very easy for it to be summarised in these kind of sound bites of “single mom”, although your dad was nearby, “council flat”, but in this network of extended family, running out of electricity, but they’re always being food at someone else’s house. I can hear you doing this beautiful job of what I always want to do, which is like here, but beyond the caricature, to the texture and the nuance. But I would love to just hear a bit about maybe that type of presence in your school, and particularly if there are any big ideas in the air – religious, political, philosophical. They’re very rarely talked about in those kind of abstract terms, but I think most people have something in the air that they think formed them. 

Wes Streeting MP 

Yeah, I think that’s right. Well, thank you very much for that, because going back to forks in the road, this book wasn’t my idea, ironically. I’d given an interview to the Times newspaper a couple of years ago. I had kidney cancer, and I was coming back to work and so did a big interview with The Times about that experience. And then Rachel Sylvester, who is a brilliant journalist and interviewer, she just started to ask me some broader questions about my childhood. And the more I said, the more she was scribbling down, the more she wanted to know. She wrote it up. There was quite a reaction to it, because as I sort of said earlier, this is a non–standard background. And I got a note in the post from Hodder, who’ve now published the book, and Tom Perrin, who became my editor, saying, “I feel it’ll make a great book. Have you thought about writing?” and I basically went back and said, “No”. I said, “Look, this is the sort of thing you do at the end of your career. I’m really busy. I’ve got more than a full–time job. Where am I gonna find time to write?”, and he basically coaxed it out of me. I’m so glad he did. You know, one of the reasons I did it, especially having had cancer, and although my prognosis is great, and I never felt I was going to die or anything like that as we caught it early, you just never know what life is gonna throw at you. So I thought, well, everything happens for a reason. This opportunity has presented itself; seize it and use it to reflect. And I did a lot of self–reflection, a lot of really lovely conversations with my family, my parents, my surviving grandparents, because their stories, their childhoods, are also integral to mine and to the book. And by the way, just as an aside, I would encourage anyone listening: take a bit of time, maybe over a Sunday lunch or something, or a dinner one evening, just to get some family around the table and have a conversation about the family and record it, because you don’t have to write a book, you will value those recordings forever. And that’s something that I treasure. So, yeah, so I had to delve right back to the beginning and thought a lot about my childhood. And you’re right, there’s heaps of complexity in my story. It’s called One Boy, Two Bills and a Fry Up. I’m the boy, the two Bills are my grandfathers, Bill Streeting on my dad’s side and Bill Crowley on my mom’s side. Both, I think, epitomise two very different stereotypical Eastend families. My dad’s side, the Streetings: strait–laced, by the book, ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’, respect, law and order, respect the monarchy, respect tradition… Granddad was in the Royal Navy in the Second World War, became a civil engineer, and following his divorce from my grandmother, his young wife, he was a single dad. A very nuclear Eastend family. On my mom’s side, you’ve got Bill Crowley, who was in and out of prison throughout my mom’s childhood and my childhood, with a string of convictions for robbery. My mom was born in prison. Well, not technically in prison – up the road at the Whittington hospital. My nan was in Holloway prison, where she shared her cell with Christine Keeler, who was sent there for the Profumo Affair. And all of these things, I think, captured people’s attention, imagination, about “Oh, this could be a great book”. But there are deeper stories and complexity, and certainly not a glamorous story as I reflect on it. However much we might glamorise in the media the craze and the sort of gangster life, there was nothing glamorous about it for my family in terms of its impact. And the book starts with the final bit of the title, the fry up, because my parents were very young. I think I’m technically what’s known as an accident. And lots of people, my dad included, and the rest of the family, wanted my mum to have an abortion. My mum had booked the appointment, and then shortly before, a few days before, she basically decided she wasn’t going to go through with it. She didn’t tell anyone. And on the morning of the appointment, she cooked herself a full English breakfast, which she never would normally do. So she cooked herself a fry up, ate it, and by the time my nan realised what was going on and said it’s time to go to the hospital, my mum announced very determinedly that she couldn’t go through with it because you’re not allowed to eat before the procedure, and she had just had a full English breakfast. And then, the proverbial hits the fan. All hell breaks loose in that kitchen as my mum sets in train the sequence of events of falling out with my dad and with the family, because she’s determined to keep the baby. And thank goodness she did, because I’m here. And then the sort of story opens up, really, by talking about the challenges or all my parents, of being young parents, not having enough money. My mum absolutely determined to prove herself, having had a baby against the wishes of the family. Actually, having had a baby against a backdrop of some people in the family saying that she’d be a bad mother, that I’d be a battered child because my mum had had a very violent upbringing in the house with my grandparents. And my mum was determined to prove them wrong. And again, thank goodness she did because I think she did. And, yeah, we chart a course through the Eastend of the 1980s, a very complicated place again. Yes, lots of poverty and inequality, certainly that I experienced and began to come alive to. Because the Eastend was also one of gentrification of the London Docklands beginning to emerge, a new gentrified middle class moving in. And I had a window into that world that made me acutely aware of my own relative disadvantage. My early childhood, I was oblivious to the fact that we didn’t have carpets on the floor when we first moved into our flat, or we weren’t able to do the sorts of things or have the sort of things that maybe other kids did. So I didn’t know, didn’t know any better. I was just a happy kid. And then, I began to sort of look through a window into middle class life and thought, “Wow, yeah, this is what I’m growing up with. This is not normal. We are worse off.” I promise not to take this long answering every question, but to go back to your opening question about the spark, I guess that was the thing that lit the spark for me about the unfairness of it. And I felt it very much when I was reflecting on the book, bucket loads of potential in my family that was unrealised because of the conditions we were growing up in. 

Finding purpose in parenthood, embracing responsibility, and nanny Libby’s redemptive arc 

Elizabeth 

What really comes through is just how hard your mom had it. Like, I slightly fell in love with your mom and felt very defensive of her throughout the book. Her dad was violent, her mom ended up in prison. She had a violent boyfriend at one point. She was kidnapped. Just hideous, ongoing pain for her. What do you think steadied her? What made her able to be… You know, we’re all good enough parents. None of us are perfect parents, right? But she raised with your dad nearby, but mainly on your own. You were put in a drawer when you were first born because she couldn’t afford a cot. Uphill struggle. What do you think she was drawing on that made her able to raise you? 

Wes Streeting MP 

Without speaking for my mom, I think that actually having a baby was probably one of the best decisions she made. Going back to what was saying about purpose, I think it gave her purpose and meaning in life. And when she was reflecting her childhood to me, which I write about in the book and take the opportunity to tell her story, I was really struck by the fact that despite being disruptive at school, and despite the chaotic home life, she really enjoyed being given responsibility. She enjoyed the responsibility of managing the Wendy House at school, and that kept her in school. She enjoyed the responsibility of taking kids from the estate on days out. She loved responsibility. And I think that having a baby gave her purpose and anchored her. Because you’re right, she had lots of hardship, but one of the nice things about having a young mum, and especially having got to that age and reflecting on it at the time – probably too younger mum, because I do think she sacrificed a lot of her childhood, really, and her youth. But I just remember us being quite happy a lot, actually, despite the hardships. And doing crazy things like, when we go and see my nan walking from Stepney to Wapping, there’d be bollards on the street, and she would be doing leapfrogs over them. She was doing a ‘leisure and recreation’ course at the local college, and wanted to be a fitness instructor at one point, and she’d come in and play short tennis with kids in my school as a sort of coach. So yeah, I think definitely having a child gave her purpose. One of my sisters had become a young mum, and I think she’d probably say the same about my niece. And again, doing a really brilliant job sort of bringing up a child on her own. I think people find purpose and meaning in life in different ways. And I think children is a big part of it for lots of people. And I think being a mum was probably the best thing that happened to her. 

Elizabeth 

I need to move on because there’s so much else I want to talk to you about, but I just have to get you to tell me about Nanny Libby, because she sounds like an absolute force of nature and a Labour Party activist. 

Wes Streeting MP 

She is, and she’s a complicated character, and I’ve always struggled to reconcile the nanny Libby that I grew up with – loving grandmother, loving to me, loving to my mom – with a nanny Libby that’s described in the earlier part of the book in my mom’s childhood, of actually being a harsh mum, dishing out beatings to my mum with a buckle under the belt. You know, I think my nan had it really hard with my granddad’s: being married to a convicted criminal, and living that kind of life, finding herself in prison as a result of being drawn into his criminal activity. But the nanny Libby I knew, she was a warrior for social justice. She would be on the picket lines outside News International, picketing Rupert Murdoch when he moved to Wapping. She would constantly be rabble–rousing around the estate, and where she lived, she ran the local tenants’ association, I definitely think I have got my nan’s kind of political drive and that desire to help people and to challenge injustice. And I’ve definitely got a rabble–rousing streak that I’ve inherited from her. An absolutely formidable woman, and one of my favourite stories in the book, which you alluded to my mom’s very abusive partner, who, at one point, abducted my mom and thankfully was sent to prison thanks to the courage of my mom in reporting him to the police at a time when domestic violence… I mean, even today, frankly, domestic violence is a huge issue that goes woefully under prosecuted. But back then, in the 80s, it was even harder. And there is this great moment in the book that my mum describes, where my nan turned up at the building site where he worked, carrying a very heavy bicycle chain. And she proceeds in the middle of all of his workmates to batter him – this five–foot kind of short woman, battering him with a bicycle chain, as she tells everyone stood around exactly what this beating is for. And I think she ends up with quite a lot of sympathy from the rest of them on the building site. And apparently, he lost his job afterwards. But I can’t really condone it, in a way. It was funny when we were going through the editing process, because there was this sort of line that was edited in, which had a heavy disapproving tone. And I had to sort of walk the editors back and say, “That’s actually not how I feel about this. I feel really conflicted. I don’t think people should just go around dishing out beatings, but given what he did to my mom, I can’t say I’m not a little bit proud of my nan for taking matters into her own hands and standing up for her daughter.” And I just love the idea of this sort of tiny little woman beating this big bloke… it’s brilliant. So she is a hero in the story. Like, there’s definitely a redemption arc for nanny Libby. 

The importance of church, navigating bullying, and the sacred bond of friendship 

Elizabeth 

And church present in your childhood: how did that come about? And what are your, I guess, emotional memories attached to that place? 

Wes Streeting MP 

Yeah, so church was very important to me. I went to St. Peter’s Primary School in Wapping. In fact, I am popping back there today to go and talk to some of the pupils, which I’m really looking forward to, and it’s a Church of England primary school. Now, my dad’s dad was a Christian, didn’t go to church every Sunday, but very, very devout faith. Nanny Libby, on my mom’s side, used to be in the Salvation Army, but when her eldest son was killed in a car accident, she lost her faith at that point and didn’t rediscover it until her final days. And so I wasn’t surrounded by religion at all at home. My granddad would always say the Lord’s Prayer to me when we go to sleep at the weekend, but that was it. So school: those weekly trips to St. Peter’s Church on Wapping Lane, that was my first sort of encounter, really, with Christianity, with religion of any kind, and I absolutely loved it. I mean, it’s clear that there were some kids for whom going to church was a chore. There was some kids for whom going to church was borderline heresy, because they were Muslim kids, and I used to really feel for them, actually, having to traipse along. It was nice, in a way. I got to talk to a friend actually, Rushanara Ali, who’s a fellow Labour MP, Muslim, and also attended St. Peter’s Primary School. And I was talking to her about this and she said, “Oh, I used to really love going because of all the smells and the bells, and it was just interesting seeing another… Although obviously I didn’t pray, but I quite enjoyed seeing someone else’s place of worship, in a way that frankly, I enjoyed today as an MP going around the place…” But I really, really enjoyed going to church. And more than that, I think through assemblies and through the sermons, fundamentally my moral compass is underpinned by Christian teaching and by what I learned, and I really threw myself into it. I was a kid who loved reading in church, I loved serving in church. I had one or two disasters, not least when I was given the responsibility of being the thurifer, and flinging the incense around the church. I put too much in there one afternoon, when the kids emerged, spluttering and coughing with bloodshot eyes into the street, and was given a firm rebuke by Father Bill, who was the priest in charge at the time. But I loved it. I absolutely loved it. To the extent that, when we were given the opportunity to be confirmed – I mean, I hadn’t even been baptised at that stage – I said, “I really wanted to do it”, but I needed to get my parents’ permission, and both of them thought – so I was about 10 or 11 at the time – they thought I was far too young to make such a choice. And I begged and begged, and pleaded and said, “I am old enough to make a choice”. And in the end, I enlisted my granddad, and we talked through it as a family. And I said, “Look, my faith means so much to me. I understand the solemnity of this commitment, and I want to make it, and it’s my right and my choice to make it.” And my parents relented and said “Okay” for that. “Okay, well, we’ll let you get baptised and confirmed”. So that’s how important my faith was, as I was growing up, and I got that from my schooling, fundamentally supported by my granddad. 

Elizabeth 

Yeah. You went on to senior school, right across the city, which sounds like you did well, academically, but it wasn’t a super brilliant environment, either academically or in terms of some horrible bullying. 

Wes Streeting MP 

Yeah, that’s right. The irony was, my headteacher at St. Peter’s, Mrs Dodd, she’s definitely one of the most formative people in my life and education. She was determined that I would escape Tower Hamlets schools, because London schools generally had a bad reputation, and at the time that Tower Hamlets in particular the worst. So she sent me to a school called Westminster City, where she’d sent kids in the past. They’ve done well and it had a good reputation. Of course, it sounds very nice, “Westminster City”. But then we got there and it couldn’t be as far removed from the private school, the Westminster School. And not just in terms of it being a state school, and the kids there been largely drawn from council states across Southwest and East London and North London. It was an all–boys school, it was tough. The education standards at the time weren’t great. There was turbulence of school leadership, we had Ofsted in put us in special measures. And bullying was rife. In fact, my kind of salvation at the time was school drama, and building friendships through school drama, finding my self–expression and my voice and my confidence through school drama. But that was a tough school. And part of the bullying that I got was homophobic, and largely driven by the fact that I’d arrived at Westminster City with my best friend from primary school, Luke. And we just stuck together. We were utterly inseparable, best of friends. We’ve been best friends from the age of five. But as a result, our friendship drew ridicule. And it goes to go back to your initial question actually, about what is sacred. And for me, my friendship was non–negotiable. The number of kids who said to me, “Oh, look, if you didn’t hang around with Luke, you’d be alright”. And I just thought, “There’s no way I’m throwing this friendship under a bus for some popularity of people who aren’t particularly nice”. But I guess the other cruel irony I’d reflect on – and I say this to teenagers now, when I talk in schools – about what life is like as a teenager: it’s really hard. No one tells you how hard being a teenager is going to be. You get the spots, the raging hormones, you’re not old enough to do the things that you want to do, but you feel too old to do the things you always love doing. It’s a hard time, you’re finding yourself, you’re learning about yourself, you’re trying to find how you fit in and you’re placing in the changing scheme of things. And yet, kids are so utterly, ruthless in exploiting the vulnerabilities of each other. And I think it’s a cruel irony, actually, that kids in my secondary school seemed to know that I was gay before I did. And so it was tough. But the school and the teachers, some of the brilliant teachers I had, did really well by me. So actually, ironically, came out of Westminster City in good shape, and moving on to a brighter future. But I would say that I survived rather than thrived in my first five years at Westminster City. 

Elizabeth 

It’s a beautiful thing to hear you say that friendship is sacred. And I should say, you’re the first person who’s pushed back on it. And I think I should explain. It’s because, from what I understand, from all our kind of polling and research, family is the one value that almost everyone has in common. 

Wes Streeting MP 

Exactly. It’d be really boring to your podcast if every time someone said “My family and friends are really important.” 

Elizabeth 

I mean, it is an important thing because it can be such a unifier and such a bridge–builder when you have someone with radically different values in other ways: hearing each other talk about your families is one of my favourite peacebuilding reconciliation moves, because everyone settles down and recognises something in common. But yes, it doesn’t make good radio, but I’m glad you snuck in ‘friendship’ as sacred. 

Faith and sexuality: reconciling identities, schism and liberation 

Elizabeth 

Tell me a bit about that. I kind of want to listen to the twin threads of your faith and sexuality. And normally, at this point with someone who’s had faith in their childhood, I’d ask them if they had a crisis of faith, because lots of people either lose their faith or have a period of wrestling with it in their teens. And I wonder if for you, maybe it wasn’t at all related to your sexuality, but could you just tell me how those two things were unfolding in your teens? Or maybe your early 20s? 

Wes Streeting MP 

Yeah, there was definitely a schism. And I guess I almost felt like I was being forced to choose. And I chose God all the way through secondary school. I really agonised about this. In fact, when my best friend, Luke, did actually eventually tell me he was gay while we were at secondary school, and we hung around with a few other people who also ended up being gay. And I’m sure it’s no coincidence that we all found each other at school. I kept myself apart from them, almost, like I could feel this wedge building, and it was partly a religious one. I don’t think I go into this so much in the book, but I would talk to my best friend about how he reconciled his faith in his sexuality, and I think he made a very binary choice at that time, which was, “Well, yeah, I don’t really agree with this religious teaching. And therefore, that’s me done with it”. And I sort of stuck with it, right through until University, where I just knew from the moment I first told someone that I was gay, and woke up the next day having been in floods of tears in the kitchen at the house I was living with. And I’ve spoken to one of my very best friends about it, and it was sort of a late night, I’d been out so I’d had a few to drink, which is probably where the honesty came from. And I had gone to bed in floods of tears and full of fear and anxiety about what would happen next. And I woke up the next morning feeling the complete opposite. And it was, as I described earlier, that feeling of total liberation. I felt like the weight of the world had lifted from my shoulders. And I remember looking in the mirror, and laughing with relief. And I felt like I was looking in the mirror and finally recognising the person that was looking back at me. And at that point, I thought, “This is absolutely who I am”, and I need to work out what this means with everything else and all of my other fears and anxieties, including my faith later. And in fact, my first boyfriend, Ed, who I write about in the book, and he shared a letter with me that his priest had sent him, which was basically an affirmation of “You don’t need to choose between who you are and your faith”. And it meant a lot to me that Ed shared that letter with me, but I wasn’t entirely convinced still, at that point. I think it’s taken me a lot longer. And I’ve worked through for years and years, when people would ask me about this, I’d say, “I’m still working through this. This is not easy. And all I can tell you is that I don’t think I’ve chosen to be gay”. In fact, I spent years and years and years and years choosing not to be, and it’s harmful and painful. And I think it’s one of the reasons why lots of young LGBT people – and actually adults as well – really struggle with their mental health because it is very, very time consuming and painful and damaging, trying to be someone or not. So I’d sort of come to the conclusion, “I think this is who I am. I think this is how I’ve been made. And I think that, therefore, whether or not Leviticus means what orthodox teaching means, I think that’s secondary. I think I know, in my heart where I sit.” And then more recently, one book that I think has been really, really inspirational in terms of my faith and theology, was Michael Coren’s The Rebel Christ. I think it’s a brilliant book, rooted in Scripture and an understanding of Scripture that will be highly contested within my church, the Church of England, and across Christian churches in the UK and around the world. But it is a brilliant and I think compelling case for what the real lessons of Jesus were, and how we ought to live our lives, which I’ve found both inspirational and challenging, actually, in terms of my work. So that’s been helpful, I think. But as I think all of us would say, who are Christians, that your relationship with God is meant to be difficult, it’s not meant to be easy. We haven’t been given this easy path. But I’m still working through it. I describe myself as a practising Christian, practising and still not very good at it. 

Personal faith, the common underpinnings of religions and the necessity of moral leadership 

Elizabeth 

That’s beautiful. I’m gonna ask you one last question on it, and then I will let you off the hook, because I never like to torture politicians. It is so hard to say anything about these deep things in public, and very vulnerable, and I appreciate it. People listen to this podcast who come from all faiths and none. And so, I always like to hear, when I do have people of faith – interesting phrase, right? I feel like we all have faith in something. But anyway, in a colloquial use, people of faith, what does it just mean day–to–day? What does it look like in your life? How does it show up for someone who might have no experience? 

Wes Streeting MP 

Oh, that’s a really interesting question. Well, I think there are a number of ways, some of which sounds totally bonkers to people who do not believe in religion and don’t believe in God, and will just say, “Oh, okay”, and roll their eyes and almost humour you or even mock. But you know, it’s partly about prayer, and sharing your anxieties and wishes in the privacy of that relationship. I think it’s also about trying to be the best you can be. And the best kind of person you can be because, I mean, one of the great things about my job as the MP for Ilford North on the London–Essex border is, I’ve got such a diverse constituency in terms of not just ethnicity, but religion. I’ve got a really big Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh community. We’ve got – not so much in my constituency – but in Redbridge as a whole, we’ve got a Zoroastrian community. So we got everyone around here, pretty much. And I get to go to other people’s places of worship, or talk to other people about their faith. There are some really common underpinnings, and I see the generosity of people’s faith all the time, from soup kitchens, food banks, support for refugees, everyday acts of kindness… And for me, that’s part of my sadness of how religion and politics sometimes interface, because often I find… I was stunned, actually. When I first started talking, I didn’t really think much about saying, “Oh, yeah, well, I grew up as a Christian and I’m a Christian and my faith does inform what I do as a politician.” I was really taken aback by the reaction on social media, and the hostility that lots of people feel about politicians of faith, because they associate it with bigotry, and taking rights away from other people. So they often think about votes on social issues, whether equal marriage for LGBT people, or a woman’s right to choose in the case of abortion. And faith does play a role in those debates and, goodness me, we have those debates within our faith communities as well. But I think actually, fundamentally, at the heart of what binds Christians, and Jews, and Muslims, and Sikhs, and Hindus, and Zoroastrians and others together is, I think they’re fundamentally about love, and care for others than yourself. I think that’s there’s a fundamental underpinning there. So this ought to be inclusive mobilising and bridge–building, not exclusive, or fear–inducing. And so, that’s one of my sadnesses. And it’s why, when I’ve seen the Archbishop of Canterbury, the leadership of my church, speaking up on issues like poverty, or housing, sometimes getting themselves in a bit of hot water, I’m so proud of them. Because I think we do need that moral leadership. And we need that challenge from our faith communities to say, “Hang on a minute, we’ve got to think big here, and think radically, and think about how we care for people other than ourselves.” 

A vocation of public service, making a significant and lasting difference, and theories of change 

Elizabeth 

I want to hear about your work as an MP. I talk to people in all kinds of roles in public life. I talk basically to anyone who I feel like is helping with this strange organism in which we all move, which I call our “common life”. Some people are telling stories, some people building institutions, some people are leading businesses, some people are making the ideas that come out of the universities, and some people are in government and listening to the values that are driving or those people might give us a clue of the kind of ‘value soup’ that we’re living. I want to hear, does it feel like a vocation for you? And if so, what are you trying to do? 

Wes Streeting MP 

Very much so. It’s a vocation, it is all–consuming in terms of my life. And when I was off with my cancer treatment, it was the first time probably since I was at school that I genuinely stopped to do nothing, apart from read and reflect. And one of the bits of reflecting you do is, “Am I living my life in the way that I really want to? And if this had all gone horribly wrong, would I regret the way that I’ve spent my time?” And the affirming thing about all of that was, I love my job. I love what I do. I’m trying to do number of things. One is to serve and represent my local community in Ilford North. I’m embedded in the community and I live here, but I love doing school visits, I love meeting people. People always say, “I apologise”, they sort of stop to talk to me in the supermarket or the pub. I love it when people do that, actually. And I really love the fact that people feel able to approach me and they don’t see me as this aloof distant figure who’s too grand to be approached. I love the fact we’re able to help thousands of people every year. I despair at the case, actually, where we know we don’t get people the answers or the solutions they deserve, because the law and public policy isn’t on their side. And that’s what drives me, I guess, in national politics. Politics is a way to make really big difference, and I feel so sad sometimes seeing politics, especially for the last eight years that I’ve been an MP. I mean, it’s been an unhappy coincidence, by the way: it’s not all my fault that politics has been so awful. It’s just a coincidence; it happened to go rapidly downhill when I got elected. But I hate seeing politics in the news for all the wrong reasons, whether it’s harassment in Parliament, or people who’ve told lies, or just the deep cynicism about our motivations. Because I genuinely think actually, that when I look across the House of Commons to the Conservative benches, I don’t see a bunch of evil pantomime villains who go into work thinking, “Oh, I want to plunge more children into poverty today”. I actually see a bunch of people who are also motivated by public service, who want to make our country a better place. We don’t always agree about the best way to do that – and that’s the ground in which the battle of ideas and democracy is contested. And that’s a good thing: democracy is healthy. But politics has a bad rep. But I think fundamentally, it is a vehicle for bringing about serious, fundamental, and lasting change. The more I’m in politics, the more I realise we can’t do it alone. And I meet people all the time who are able to make a really big and powerful difference, whether at a very local community level, or even at the very individual level. But I also meet leaders in business, and civil society, and charities, and places of worship, who are making a really big difference. And I think politics can amplify that, can enable even more of it, or it can be an impediment to it. I’m probably less of the single–minded view that it’s all about politics, and politics is primary. And unless politics works, and nothing else does, I think it’s a little bit more complicated than I maybe thought in my more idealistic youth. I think loads of change can happen in loads of places, but politics is still, I think, fundamental to achieving it. And that’s what I’m in it for. 

A healthier democracy: cross–party friendships, compromise, and respect on social media 

Elizabeth 

And I want to finish on a question about divides, because rising polarisation was the motivation for this project. And it seems from the outside, that there are a few places that are more adversarial than the House of Commons: it’s literally set up this way, you look at each other across the benches, and this sort of theatre of Prime Minister’s Questions, the sort of strangeness of the jeering and slagging each other off… But I know that there is also the need to work together, and to compromise, and to get things done. So I guess it’s a tricky two–part last question. You’ve mentioned in the book, to be a politician, you have to have a skin like a rhinoceros. How do you navigate kickback for being Christian, kickback for being gay, kickback for everything, kickback for whatever decisions you make… and the divide between you and those outside? And then how would you navigate the divides between you and other politicians to get anything done? What have you learned? 

Wes Streeting MP 

I guess the reassurance I can offer is, it’s not as bad as it looks. There’s actually much more collegial working and thinking in the House of Commons than people see on the television, partly because, as any TV producer will tell you, getting everyone on politics live daily to say, “Oh, yeah, I really agree with that; let me build on that point” just doesn’t make for as interesting TV as seen ideas contested. But there’s a huge amount of cross–party working that takes place on single issues or via parliamentary select committees. I’ve got friendships across the political divide, which I really value. I think it’s healthy that we listen to each other a bit more. And we avoid impugning each other’s motivations, which is why I was really keen to point out that my political opponents in the Conservative Party, with some exceptions – because everyone’s got their rotten apples – but most of them are there because they’re motivated by public service and wanting to serve their country. I do think though, as a society, it’s a bigger challenge beyond politics. It’s not all about social media, but social media has brought out the worst in us. I think there’s something about being able to have an argument with someone online that you don’t have to look at them face–to–face and meet them in the eyes and respond to their emotional reaction there and then. And particularly of platforms like Twitter that don’t really allow for much nuance, it becomes glib, it becomes coarse, it becomes adversarial, and it becomes about clicks and likes and retweets from your base, rather than reaching out to build compromise and consensus. And I think that’s a very unhealthy place for a democracy in a society to be in. And the worst thing that could happen is people say, “Actually, I’ve just given up”. And I see this all the time, when I’m out campaigning. I meet people who say, “I just think you’re all as bad as each other. I’ve stopped voting years ago, I don’t think you can make any difference.” That’s a really dangerous place for a democracy to be, because, I think it was Churchill who said, “Democracy is the worst system until you consider all the others”. So I think we’ve got a lot of work to do, collectively. Politicians: yes, certainly we’ve got to take a lead, but as a society, I think we’ve got to work hard to create more space for dialogue and authentic and respectful conversation, and debate, and discussion, and to remember that ‘compromise’ isn’t a dirty word, actually. Some of the some of the best things that we we’ve achieved have come about through compromise. 

Elizabeth 

Other politicians that I’ve talked to are on social media purely in broadcast mode, i.e., they don’t see their mentions, or they’ve had to put in lots of systems in order not to be constantly dealing with a deluge of abuse. How have you navigated that? 

Wes Streeting MP 

Yeah, so you asked me about how I deal with it. I mean, I’d be lying if I said that it doesn’t get under my rhinoceros skin from time to time. I’m much better at zoning out than I was eight years ago, when I was first elected, and not just by restricting notifications – because I do occasionally delve beyond the firewall of my notifications restrictions just to see what people are saying, and kind of roll my eyes and laugh and log back into the safe space again. But I think I’ve tried to think about social media and rationalise it as, “How would I behave in the real world?” So, when I was first elected, and certainly before I was elected as an MP, if there’s an argument taking place online, I might get involved. Or if someone had goaded me on something, I might engage. And you realise that all you’re doing is amplifying, and it would be a bit like walking into a pub, seeing two people having an argument that you don’t know, and then just walking into the middle of it and saying, “I’m joining this argument now and here’s my twopence worth.” Or walking down the street and someone yelling at you, and saying, “I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to turn around and have a conversation with this person yelling at me.” We don’t behave like this in real life. We’ve got to start applying some of our real–world norms to the social media space and think, “Actually, I’m very happy to have respectful conversation with you if you’re reasonable, we can to have a discussion. But if you’re kind of a very aggressive ranty–shouty person in the corner, I’m not going to go and sit with you.” I think that if we all did that, social media might be a slightly healthier place. 

Elizabeth 

Yeah. And on those wise words, Wes Streeting, thank you so much for speaking to me on The Sacred.  

Wes Streeting MP 

Thank you for having me. 

Reflection and Outro 

Elizabeth 

So, one piece of context you need to know on this conversation is, for possibly the first time ever, I was late for this recording. I had been in a different time zone when I checked the time of the recording, and Google Calendar adjusts accordingly. So I was merrily elsewhere, when I got a call from Dan, our producer, to say that Wes was online waiting for an interview. And as you can imagine, someone who’s pathologically prompt, never late for anything, and particularly knows how difficult it is to schedule time with politicians and how tight their calendars are, it was not my favourite start to the day. I sprinted back from the school run, and anyone who’s watched the YouTube video will see that I am pouring sweat throughout this conversation. And that could have created a really difficult entry into a conversation with someone that I’d never met and I didn’t know, but Wes was really gracious and patient, and not at all kind of aloof or irritated about that beginning of the conversation, which I was really grateful for. 

And he started with this sacred value of ‘truth’, “to your own self be true”, this Shakespeare quote. Staying true to your conscience, which I have an interesting relationship with that. I think it’s both an incredibly good call to stay loyal to our values, to know what is sacred to us and live by it. It can present as a sort of… it’s often the thing that people say who are just self–confessed contrarians, showing up in the world with that adversarial energy, but that’s not what comes through with Wes. What come came through with Wes is just a sense of wanting to listen to his conscience, and then combining it with compromise: it is maybe a kind of healthy and helpful combo, actually, to stay true to your values, but as far as possible within that frame, to find ways to work with broad coalitions. And he said something about when he came out – and it’s a very moving thing when you hear someone recount that moment – and that sense of suddenly being comfortable in his own skin. And honestly, I have interviewed quite a few politicians now, and it’s hard for them to be comfortable in their own skin. Their own skin is in the glare of publicity and critique at all times. But there does seem to be quite a refreshing, steady sense of self, or a comfort in his own skin, coming from Wes. 

We touched on how difficult his childhood is. And because the memoir’s coming out, you’ll be able to read in more detail about that in lots of other places. But there was this really distinct sense of him not being eaten – to use the stereotype – that a disproportionate number of politicians experienced in their childhood. That there were times when their electricity went off, when the flat was infested with fleas, when they had to treat other family members’ kitchen cupboards as their larder because there was no food in their own house, and that can’t help but be formative, right? It can’t help but shape how you see the world and your understanding of politics. And it was really helpful for me just to be personal for a second as I was listening, because I’m kind of one generation down from similar origins. And I think part of the reason I fell in love with nanny Libby is that I had a nanny – and for international listeners, this is one of those ridiculous British tiny class signifiers that we do. People who had nannies who were grandmothers, that’s often a sort of working class usage, compared to people who have nannies who were child carers, is one of the sort of like jostles and signifiers that you come up against. I had a an East End nanny, and her childhood sound similar to Wes’ mom, that she grew up with a lot of struggle, and not in a place where a child could easily flourish. Not with money, not with peace, not with enough food, in fact. And thinking about the ways that different branches of our family have been impacted by that, and where almost accidental seeming injections of privilege or opportunity or money or education have showed up, for example in my life, and where they haven’t. And so I do think it’s so helpful to hear those stories. And this thing that he came through with about responsibility and agency, again, I think is something that will stay with me, that it’s people whose paths in life are difficult don’t want to be victims, don’t want to be pitied. They often want to be given some agency and some responsibility that they can grab a hold of. 

Wes’ conversation about the Church of England Primary School. I was so aware that if you are someone who is a Christian who thinks it’s a good thing when people become Christians, you will be thinking, “Well, brilliant! Church of England primaries do a good job of that!” And if you are someone who are not, it might be confirming all your worst fears, that Church of England primaries can be places where people encounter Christianity and are drawn to it. But both in person in the book, I get such a sense of how much of a haven that primary school was for Wes, and how much of a place of encouragement, and steadying. How much time he spent there, really, not as an escape from his home life – because there was lots of that was good in his home life – but as a really healthy complement to his home life. And then, this really sad chapter about getting bullied at senior school. Honestly, as someone with children heading towards the age group, that just fills me with absolute horror. How do you protect children? How do you raise children with the kind of resilience that can navigate that time? I mean, Wes seems to have come through it with aplomb, so maybe there’s a hopeful thing in there. And I just love that detail about school drama. It’s just a really charming thing. And the echoes of that in a politician’s life, of wanting to hold the room and have a kind of public persona is a really helpful clue for me about who Wes is. I really enjoyed his honesty about navigating a sexuality and his faith, and the complexity of that, and still wrestling through some of that. 

And you might have noticed that we didn’t talk a lot about Wes’ politics, and that is because it’s really hard to get particularly Ministers, or Shadow Ministers, to talk about their politics in anything other than carefully rehearsed soundbites. And when we veered into that territory was the only time, actually, that I felt like Wes was just a bit less accessible as a human being. So if you were coming on expecting a deep dissection of Wes’ politics, and the fact that he’s seen as a centrist Labour Party member, or a more conservative–leaning Labour Party member, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I have learned from many years of interviewing politicians that it’s just almost impossible for them to speak with the level of, not honesty, but human–ness, and nuance and complexity. And I just don’t find it that interesting, trying to talk to politicians about their politics, because it can only be polished and PR–tested nuggets. And you can go anywhere you like for that, there’s no need to come here. 

And then we ended on division in Parliament. And I do hear this a lot, that it’s not as bad as it looks. And that because politicians have to work together, they have to compromise, and have to physically be in the same space, it acts as guardrails on that tribalism and that polarisation. And there’s something to be learned in that, that we need institutions where we’re forced to compromise. We need organisations and physical spaces where we are forced into proximity with each other, where we have to listen to each other. And it also reminds me again of how I need to really take care about how I consume media, because our natural way of reporting is to look for the extreme, to look for the divisive, and not to bother telling the stories of compromise reached, or a friendship across the aisle, or moments of forgiveness. You know, the ordinary humdrum stuff of our common life doesn’t get told. What gets told is the fractures, and the moments of hatred boiling over. And those are part of our story, but they’re not a whole story. And I need to try and keep them in perspective, that there is a lot more human–to–human reaction across divides happening than it sometimes feels easy to believe. 

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