Wes Streeting

It really gets you.

And that is so true.

And people know the personal connection in terms of...

being a cancer survivor and the NHS saving my life and that really that really did mean and does mean a huge amount to me and so I Hope people appreciate that Leaving that job was not a decision that I took lightly.

In the end

There was the meeting I had with Keir on the Wednesday morning.

And I knew as that conversation concluded that I couldn't stay and that I was leaving the government.

And I think he knew that too.

So you didn't know walking in because it had been briefed that you were going to resign?

No, I went in with effectively what I said in the letter, some other things beside.

But the case I was putting to him was...

We've just been smashed in every corner of the country.

Nationalists are in power in every corner of the United Kingdom for the first time in history.

And whether it is the English nationalism of reform, which I think is dangerous, whether it's the nationalism of the SNP implied, which offers a different type of threat and jeopardy to the future of the UK itself, the common factor in all of those defeats

was the unpopularity of this government and the Prime Minister.

And I genuinely feel that unless we change leadership and course, we're going to hand this country to Farage.

And that, for me, was the moral dilemma.

And I urged Keir to listen to...

the majority of his cabinet, ultimately the majority of his parliamentary party, when you add up the people who've made public statements and the ministers who've relayed through their whips that they have lost confidence in the PM, I thought, and I did say to him, and I don't mind repeating, I honestly can't think of a Labour prime minister this country's had who, having been rejected so profoundly by the public and urged people

to set out a timetable for departure by his parliamentary party would still be continuing.