‘Complacency terrifies me’: on the doorstep with Labour’s Wes Streeting

In the beating sunshine deep in the heart of one of the Conservatives’ safest Midlands seats, Wes Streeting is slapping on factor 50 for another afternoon in pursuit of a historic Labour majority. It is in these safe seats where it will be seen whether the extinction-level predictions for the Tories are accurate.

But Streeting, who has been dispatched by Labour HQ to crisscross the country hundreds of miles, says his party is feeling the heat of undecided voters – and during a half hour of canvassing, there are plenty of them politely reluctant to commit to Labour.

“I don’t recall a general election where so many people have been this undecided so late in a campaign,” he says. And it is not just in the more ambitious target seats like this, he says, but in places Labour needs to win in order to just be the largest party – not even to secure a majority.

“I was out last weekend, talking to people who have already voted by post in [those kind of seats] and I was finding people who voted Conservative on the basis that we were going to win anyway, and saying it was important that the country has strong opposition. And that just genuinely terrifies me.”

Streeting has barely stayed a night at home since the campaign began. He is one of the party’s most reliable and fluent communicators, which means early mornings on breakfast radio and late nights in the debate spin rooms.

Over the course of the day in North West Leicestershire and later in Nottingham, he does about 20 media interviews, hopping between cars, taxis, in the backrooms of campaign offices and in the BBC debate studio. He records dozens of party social media clips and endorsement videos for candidates who are keen for an injection of energy.

Streeting, often named as a potential future Labour leader, has spent his entire career as a campaigner deeply involved in local organising. He is in demand from candidates partly because he is such a comfortable doorstep activist, who bangs on doors with the vigour normally reserved for use by police officers or bailiffs.

The party’s message this week is an all-out war on complacency. But Streeting says he is genuinely encountering far more undecided voters than he had anticipated and that he has not seen the Labour landslide the polls have predicted. “I don’t think they take into account the millions of undecided voters who will ultimately decide whether there is a Labour government,” he said.

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The choice of target seat is a bit of a tell however – it is North West Leicestershire which has a Conservative majority of 20,000. It is not the sort of place that Labour would be spending resources campaigning in if it was truly worried about a Conservative victory. But this seat is now in play, driven partially by the fact that its former Tory MP Andrew Bridgen was expelled by the Conservatives over anti-vax conspiracy theories.

On the drive to Whitwick, one of the few places left in the country where there are a smattering of Vote Conservative boards outside some homes, Bridgen’s advertising trailer for his independent candidacy is parked in a layby.

It is this kind of long-shot seat, visited by Starmer earlier in the day, which is conversely fuelling apathy – part of the Conservatives’ supermajority narrative.

Streeting knows this tactic from experience – he was among the Labour MPs who deployed something similar in 2017, arguing it was safe to vote Labour locally because Jeremy Corbyn would never be prime minister, though it is disputed if the move by centrist MPs had any material affect in costing the Tories their majority.

He says he is concerned that view is taking hold among leftwingers who feel it is safe not to back Labour in favour of the Greens or independents, because a landslide is coming anyway.

It is “the one Conservative attack that is sticking” and is being echoed back to him on the doorsteps, he says. “I think there is a real risk of complacency about change with Labour, and people thinking ‘well, we’ll take a punt on the Greens or, you know, we’ll vote for the smaller parties’, in what are two-horse races between Labour and the Conservatives.”

The party plans to hammer home this complacency narrative over the coming days. In his address to a clutch of activists sweating on a grass verge, Streeting says there are 150 seats like this one that are on a knife-edge according to polling. As he makes his pitch, a man yells “vote Reform!” from a passing van.

But the target of the shadow health secretary’s main irritation is the left – those voters angry at a perceived lack of boldness on issues such as the climate and poverty. In his seat of Ilford North, he is facing a swelling leftwing grassroots challenge, with particular focus on the Gaza war, from the charismatic independent candidate Leanne Mohamad.

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He is visibly annoyed by the idea that a landslide is baked in and that voters on the left can comfortably back smaller parties in order to push Labour to be bolder.

“I think that where some of our critics on the left get it wrong is they see our fully costed, fully funded manifesto as a kind of concession to caution and betraying a lack of ambition, but what our manifesto speaks directly to is the cynicism of millions of people who’ve given up hope that politics can change anything and that change is possible and affordable,” he said.

“I think that there are people on the left who are in danger of allowing their idea of perfect to be the enemy of good. They have got to be, in the quiet privacy of that voting booth, honest with themselves that a vote for anyone other than Labour is a vote for the Conservatives. We cannot let these people back in again.”

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Many of the voters on the doorsteps in Leicestershire do spontaneously bring up their fears about a Labour government overspending and stress about the state of economy. Streeting says Labour’s manifesto has to be targeted at those voters who have lost faith in government being able to do anything other than cut spending and raise taxes. “We spell out very clearly promises that we can keep, promises that the country can afford.”

He is acutely aware of how quickly things could go south for a Labour government if the kinds of scandals that dogged the Conservatives were to continue with his party and add to the degradation and disdain people have for politicians.

“This country is in a bad place when it comes to trust in politics and, actually, institutions more broadly,” he says. “And then you look at populism sweeping across Europe … The only thing that’s standing between our country and the sirens of rightwing populism, calling the ship to the rocks, is real change with Labour.

“I’ve been an MP for nine years during one of the most turbulent periods in modern British political history. And there have been many times in the last nine years where I’ve been ashamed of politics in our country, and have felt ashamed to be a politician.

“And yet, my conviction that politics can be a force for good and must be a force for good has never wavered. I really do believe in the power of politics to change people’s lives. And I look at the size of the NHS waiting lists now and compare it to the size of the NHS waiting lists under the last Labour government, and say to people: don’t tell me that we’re all the same.”