Wes Streeting

And I'm sure there will be the Prime Minister and people around him saying, oh, well, of course, you know, the reason why that week was so...

fraught was because of the actions of people like me and other people who resigned that wasn't that wasn't what happened actually what happened was we were smashed in the elections in england scotland and wales people were horrified by those results we then had a very bizarre um

you know, 2009 Tribute Act assembled on the Saturday, where Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman, two brilliant Labour politicians, were asked to do two important pieces of work.

And if that had been announced in any normal week, people would have gone, brilliant idea, great idea.

But it was as a response to the local elections.

It's not like people in Dudley were going, well, I know we just gave Labour an absolute kick in, but thank goodness they're getting a grip on global finance and Gordon Brown's there to do it.

That's not the conversation.

Firstly, you have to respect the voters.

I think you have to say sorry for the mistakes that the government have gotten wrong.

And certainly in the run-up to the speech, it was being briefed that he was going to give a very different type of speech where he would own the mistakes of the government, the things we've got wrong, and set out how we'd put it right.

And that's not been the pattern of behaviour.

And I've heard time and time again, winter fuel allowance, the original sin of this government, dropped out of nowhere.

wasn't in the manifesto, wasn't linked to an agenda.

It wasn't like it was sort of, we're going to means test winter fuel in order to make sure your grandchildren have the prospects of a better future.

Some people might have bought that argument.

Instead, it sort of came out of nowhere.

And when we eventually U-turned, we didn't say, we're really sorry, we got this wrong.

We've listened, we've learned, and this is what we're going to do differently.

We said the economic outlook has changed.

It hadn't.