Wes Streeting

What went wrong on that welfare bill was that everyone knew it wasn't about reforming the system.

It was simply about cutting the bill.

So it's an arbitrary cut.

And when Liz Kendall was the welfare secretary at the time, the work and pension secretary, showed me the case studies of the types of people who would be impacted, I was horrified.

And so were Labour MPs.

Labour MPs will support welfare reform, but they want it to be genuinely reforming.

And the other thing I'd say about the Parliamentary Party, because they're sometimes presented as if they're sort of, you know...

constantly trying to drag the government off to the left and are incapable of making difficult decisions.

That's not true.

Actually, what Labour MPs are fed up with is going out there, defending difficult decisions, being marched up to the top of the hill, only to have the rug pulled out from under the feet because the government U-turns.

Or being punished for saying the right thing and then finding actually the government changes its tune, like Marcus Campbell savours.

the MP for Penrith and Solway, classic case in point, speaking up for his farmers.

And like this guy is Labour to his core, was the group whip when he was a councillor.

So he understands the importance of discipline, but he was tearing his hair out, not getting a hearing, rebelled on farming, lost the whip in a way that would never have happened under Tony Blair or Gordon Brown or Ed Miliband for that matter.

And then we change our position back to Marcus's.

And like, it just it's just daft.

Yeah, I do think that is fundamentally that is that is exactly it.

And it's how you end up kind of.

triangulating in the worst way and then not being able to sort of recover the position so look the thing that that nearly took me out at the last general election and took out good labor people like john ashworth was that lbc interview you know where he said it was okay for israel to cut off water aid electricity to gaza and said israel does have that right now i i am in no doubt that he misspoke about that i am not in any doubt

But then there was no correction for days.