Wes Streeting

And if I thought that the situation was salvageable and that Keir could turn it around and the team could just pull together and get the job done, then I'd still be in the Department of Health and Social Care and loving life and loving the job.

But I don't believe those things to be true.

And I felt, the reason why I knew I was going to go as I left Downing Street that morning

was having had that kind of conversation with the Prime Minister and told him directly I'd lost confidence.

There was no way I could be back at the Cabinet the following Tuesday pretending nothing had happened.

And there were plenty of efforts.

I mean, there were so many people from Cabinet colleagues, people in Downing Street and people who...

closest to me closest supporters people I love who were saying you know don't do it stay as health secretary it's okay like you know if Downing Street are saying there's still a way for you to stay stay but I honestly think that would have been unprincipled and dishonourable and more than that and this is the thing I kind of would urge my parliamentary colleagues in particular to reflect on there is such a chasm between

between the conversation that MPs are having and the conversation that the country is having.

I spent in the last couple of weeks time with Labour councillors and candidates who lost in Newcastle, where Labour is now down to just two councillors, Sunderland, where we're down to five.

Yesterday, I was in Hales Owen and Birmingham and talking to people from actually across the West Midlands, including places like Dudley, where we took an absolute battering.

We have lost to our left and to our right.

And, you know, it was the same things that are coming up in conversation.

You know, the original sin of the Winter Fuel Cup, the unpopularity of the prime minister, a sense among our own supporters of we don't know who you are, we don't know what you stand for.

And I really think this is existential for Labour.

And if it's existential for Labour, it's existential for the country, because I genuinely think we are the only party capable of beating reform at the next election.

Yeah, look at what's... We just were.

We just were.

And I don't think the conversation that's being had in the parliamentary party reflects the existential crisis facing the party and the moral responsibility we have.

as a party to defeat very dangerous English national politics.