Wes Streeting

like my kind of people in the Labour Party who said, well, I can't support what you've done.

I knew that would be the case.

But, you know, you can't just sit, like when you know there's such a fundamental problem, you can't stick your head in the sand and you can't look around waiting for someone else to lead.

You know, and when I saw Miata Fambula, now she's from a different Labour tribe to me, and I don't, I suspect she'd be supporting Andy Burnham in a Labour leadership contest.

I saw Miata resign.

She's a new MP.

New MP, put straight into government, extremely impressive.

And when I saw her resign, I thought, that's courage and integrity.

Then I see my friends, Jess Phillips, Alex Davis-Jones, Zubir Ahmed, one of my ministers in the Department of Health.

And I thought, I can't watch other good people resign.

say what I believe and do the right thing and not follow and not show the same... They weren't going over the top for you.

Well, no, Miata Van Buller was... Not Miata, the other ones you mentioned, like Jess Phillips and your junior health minister.

I'm absolutely not going to deny that in the case of friends who resigned, we did have those conversations.

And whereas previously I had sort of said, look, you know, give it some time, let's try and make this work.

I accepted that by that point, there was no way I could persuade them to do anything else.

And also, I just thought, I can't sit here and watch other good people in the party...

say what I believe, do the right thing, and leave them hanging on their own.

And I'll be honest, there was one... Yeah, there was one image... I was in the office and I saw the images up on the screen and I just thought, I...

They're saying what I think.

They're doing what I believe is the right thing to do.