The NHS needs to be open to a course of tough love as prescribed by Labour

Editorial: If the NHS embraces change as outlined by Wes Streeting, it can do more with the resources it is provided with. Labour’s ambitious plans could eventually help the NHS achieve the levels of satisfaction it enjoyed before the Tories took office

Labour leader Keir Starmer and shadow health secretary Wes Streeting visit King’s Mill Hospital in Sutton, southwest London, on Monday (PA Wire)

Labour’s perpetually combative shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, has never shied away from unarmed political combat, but to launch himself into an attack on his own party’s core support is, even for him, veering into dangerous-dog territory.

In what the police would, in a different context, term an “unprovoked attack”, Mr Streeting gave little more warning than a cursory snarl about Labour’s investment in the NHS being “linked to reform” before sinking those sharp centrist fangs of his into the soft flesh of the Labour movement.

“Pouring more money in without reform would be like pouring water into a leaky bucket. We will also use spare capacity in the private sector to cut the waiting lists. Middle-class lefties 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.” Constituency Labour parties and Unison branches across the land were left needing stitches.