Will Labour’s plans revive the ailing NHS – or kill it off?

With his ‘ruthlessly pragmatic’ vision to rescue the health service, Wes Streeting has pulled off a feat that the Conservatives never could – make the idea of bringing in the private sector to help sound like a good idea, rather than an asset-stripping exercise, says James Moore

Wes Streeting visits a hospital with the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, on Monday 8 April (Jacob King/PA Wire)

Wes Streeting, Labour’s energetic shadow health secretary, has been discussing what he plans to do to fix the NHS if the electorate gives him the chance to play mechanic.

He promises to be “ruthlessly pragmatic” when it comes to the problems bedevilling the NHS – which he described as a “20th-century service that hasn’t changed with the times and isn’t fit for the modern era” – while floating the sort of ideas calculated to have his critics running to A&E with aneurysms. He intends to “[cut] the red tape that ties up GPs’ time” and bring an “analogue service into the digital age”.

Promising to call upon “spare capacity” in the private sector to reduce waiting lists, he said: “Middle-class lefties will cry ‘betrayal’. The real betrayal is the two-tier system that sees people like them treated faster while working families like mine are left waiting for longer.”