Wes Streeting’s NHS online hospitals are a good idea – but they can’t save Keir Starmer

NHS Online, the health secretary’s ‘virtual hospitals’ that will offer 8.5 million consultations over Zoom, helping to free up face-to-face appointments for those who prefer them, can’t be rolled out quickly enough for a prime minister on life support, says John Rentoul

Even when he is being as loyal as possible, Wes Streeting cannot help the contrast between him and Keir Starmer undermining the prime minister.

This morning, the health secretary was on the morning broadcast round, selling his plan for NHS Online, the latest instalment in his vision of a hi-tech, futuristic health service, faster, more efficient and driven by patient choice.

Never mind that all this means is Zoom consultations in “virtual” hospitals. The plan to offer an extra 8.5 million NHS appointments over the internet, first announced in September, is a good idea, and Streeting explained it well. Unfortunately, it will not actually start until next year – that is, 2027.

After a morning of media appearances, he had to sit through a cabinet meeting at which Starmer delivered a new year pep talk of soul-crushing banality. This was considered important enough to allow the cameras in – and yet the prime minister still read out his words from a piece of paper.

There was nothing wrong with what he said, exactly. “Turning the corner” is about the only metaphor that is available. He is right to say that “getting our country back on track is hard, difficult work”. It is a mere statement of the obvious that, “at the next general election, we will be judged on whether we’ve delivered on things that really matter – do people feel better off, are public services improving, and do people feel safe and secure in their own community?”

And there is nothing wrong with exhorting his colleagues to work harder and as a team, although that is usually better done out of sight of the cameras.

But the prime minister’s words were dull, abstract and unconvincing. The answers to his questions are all currently, “no”. At least Streeting was able to offer a specific and practical improvement, even if it is some time away.

Streeting is such a good communicator that, even as he praised Starmer’s leadership and credited the prime minister with ownership of the online hospital policy, he could not help but weaken him further.

Streeting was careful not to overclaim. He said that, after a year and a half, “we’ve made decent progress” and that waiting lists are coming down. In fact, the decline in lists is painfully slow, but there was never any prospect of a dramatic improvement this early in a parliament. The last Labour government didn’t really start to see improvements in the NHS until its second term.

In some ways, the NHS is still going backwards, five years after the start of the pandemic. As Kate Devlin has reported for The Independent, the use of mixed-sex wards – which had been reduced to almost zero – is now back at record levels. That is a telling indicator of the pressures on large parts of the health service.

But Streeting sold his policy in a confident way, using normal language and a touch of humour. He said that if people said, “What’s he talking about? I don’t want to see someone online,” that would be fine. No one would be forced to use the service, but those who did might free up places on the waiting list for those who did not, so “everyone’s a winner”.

This also allowed him to make a point about patient choice as the driver of reform, and the need to match increased spending with modernisation, without sounding ideological.

The problem for the prime minister – apart from being shown up as a poor communicator – is that the timetable of public service reform is out of sync with the political cycle. The online hospital will not actually start until next year, but Starmer needs something to persuade the voters that things are getting better by the Scottish, Welsh and English local elections in 17 weeks’ time.

Even if the voters were persuaded that the NHS, which the polls confirm they think is one of the most important problems facing the country, was starting to improve, there is no reason for Starmer to get the credit for it.

In the unlikely event that the NHS is considered to be “turning the corner” before the May elections, it might only increase support for Streeting to take over as prime minister.