Wes Streeting: ‘I was worried about God – fire and brimstone and going to Hell’
Wes Streeting is on a mission. As a son of teenage parents who sometimes struggled to provide for him, who missed out on school because his mum couldn’t afford the Tube fare, and yet still managed to secure a place at the University of Cambridge, he says wants to help other children escape the grinding poverty he endured.
Having just penned a memoir, at the age of 40, which he is discussing at the Cambridge Literary Festival, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary claims that he cannot separate his personal life from his political career - because these experiences are what drive him on.
In One Boy, Two Bills & A Fry Up, he brings to life the poverty, humiliation and incredible struggle for them choosing whether to feed the meter and heat the flat, put carpet on the floor, or food on the table.
Wes is also a committed Christian and his faith is a big part of this zeal for making improvements in society - but, he is at pains to point out, not in a way that limits people’s rights.
“My political life and my personal life are inseparable,” says Wes.
“This is a vocation. It’s a big, big part of my life. I feel hugely driven and feel like I have purpose in life by trying to make a difference through politics, and taking what I’ve learned through experience good and bad. If I’ve got one driving mission it is to make sure that kids that growing up in poverty from backgrounds like mine have the same opportunities as kids who come from the very wealthiest backgrounds, and I want to close that gap in opportunity and security for those kids.”
Those life experiences include growing up on a council estate in Stepney, living in a flat with cockroaches, being the only child at nursery who didn’t bring in a birthday cake because his mum couldn’t afford it, and being too ashamed to bring more well-off friends back to his home.
”I don’t want people to experience poverty,” he says. “I think people who haven’t experienced poverty don’t quite know just how suffocating and stifling it can be and the extent to which poverty is a trap; that it is very difficult to escape.
“I wish I could tell people that it’s just as simple as pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, and working hard and that hard work will get you out of poverty. That’s part of it. But how is it that a kid from a council house ended up in the House of Commons? It was because I had a great state education, because there was a social security safety net that supported my mum in difficult times.
“We had the security of a council flat over our head even if we have problems with cockroaches and fleas and not very nice conditions growing up. You know, the state can play a very powerful role as an enabler and in helping to break down those barriers to opportunities and success. And sometimes it can be just a smallest thing - not not being able to afford the Tube fare meant I missed out on potentially the opportunity of a lifetime to spend a week at RADA.
“At one point in my life my mum couldn’t afford the Tube fares for me to get to and from school. So I missed school. And I think it’s very difficult for people who haven’t experienced that to really understand what that’s like, and how we solve it. The book isn’t a political tome. It’s not my vision for Britain. It’s not a policy prospectus. It’s a real life story that I hope helps to give people a window into what it’s like growing up in poverty, and also a sense of hope and possibility that while poverty is a trap, it is also a trap we can escape. And that’s the underlying message I hope that people take away from it.”
Wes read history at Selwyn College, Cambridge, and began his political vocation as president of the National Union of Students. Afterwards, he became head of education at LGBTQ+ rights organisation Stonewall and served in local government, before being elected as Labour MP for Ilford North in 2015.
While his working class roots and experience of poverty form part of the basis of his beliefs, he has also been an Anglican Christian ever since attending a religious state school. In the book, he describes how this then led him to years of torment over the growing realisation that he was gay and fears that his sexuality may send him to hell.
He says: “I can’t remember when I first thought I was gay. I do remember how desperate I was not to be gay. And for many, many years, I tried desperately hard not to be gay, and to try and lead a different life and to be a different person. And there was a moment when I got to university, where the dam burst and I just could not go on pretending to be someone that I wasn’t.”
In his memoir, he describes how, having dated girls in sixth form, he went to Selwyn College and, following a night in a bar with a friend, texted him to say “I fancy you”.
“The moment I made that leap, I instantly knew as I felt the weight of the world lifted off my shoulders, and for the first time felt comfortable in my own skin, and recognised the face looking back at me in the mirror, I knew I’d done exactly the right thing,” he says.
He and the student, who was in his final year, were together for seven months.
“I was frightened of lots of things. I was scared of the reaction from family and friends. I was also worried about whether or not I would be discriminated against, in the future, whether it’s at work or just going about my life,” he says.
“And I was worried about God. You know, fire and brimstone and going to hell. It’s taken me years to finally reconcile my sexuality with my faith, and I feel now at the age of 40 I am finally at ease with who I am, and with my faith and belief, and I don’t feel there is any contradiction whatsoever between being gay and being Christian, but it took me a long time to get to that point.
“I’m still a member of the Church of England. It is not always a comfortable place to be gay. I think the church has made progress and I think the Archbishop of Canterbury has tried to make gay people feel loved and welcomed and accepted. ”
While he has reconciled his faith with his sexuality, he has found the public has been less willing to accept a politician who is religious. After an interview in which he declared himself a Christian the reaction of social media was “desperately sad”, he said.
“For lots of people out there, they see religion - especially in politics - through the prism of taking away people’s rights or clamping down on their freedom or disapproving of their identities, whether that’s opposing a woman’s right to choose or supporting LGBT equality. And I think that’s a real shame because I think the fundamental driving message of the New Testament is about love, acceptance and inclusion, not hatred, exclusion, damnation, condemnation and judgement. I don’t think it’s anyone’s place to judge but God and that’s my belief as a Christian.”
He credits his strong and loving family background with giving him the strength of character to beat the odds stacked against him with his working class background so he could make it to an elite university.
His mum, Corrina, was just 18 when she fell pregnant with Wes and was under pressure from her family to have a termination.
The fry-up in the title of his memoir is not just a typical East End breakfast but the meal he credits with saving his life as on the morning of her appointment, Corinna made a decision.
Wes says: “I definitely come from a matriarchal family. And I was very fortunate to grow up around kind of strong women. I hope one of the things that comes through really strongly in the book is sort of the pride I have in my mum and my grandmothers, and in particular, the courage my mum showed as a teenager, under enormous pressure from the entire family to have an abortion.
“She kept me, which is good! And she worked really hard to prove herself as a mum and she made lots of sacrifices to make sure that I had the very best start in life. When people see the book’s title, they will probably just think: that must be his favourite breakfast. But people discover when they read it that it is literally the fry-up that saved my life because it was basically my mum’s insurance against being browbeaten and taken to the hospital. She was literally unable to go through with the termination because she’d had the breakfast and she wasn’t supposed to eat beforehand.”
Later, when his mum was in a relationship with a man who turned out to be a domestic abuser and finally kidnapped her, it was Wes’s nan who sprang to her defence.
“My five foot two-and-three-quarter-inch tall grandmother confronted the man who basically was battering my mum,” he says.
“She turned up on the building site where he worked and gave him a taste of his own medicine. And as she beat him black and blue with a heavy oily bicycle chain, she was making it very clear, in very colourful language, what the beating was for. And not a single builder on that site intervened to stop her when they saw what was going on and what it was about. And look, people shouldn’t condone vigilantism but I can’t help feeling proud of my grandmother for the way in which she stood up for my mum and the courage that she showed, especially back then in the 80s - reporting it the police, going to court and getting him put behind bars. I mean, it’s just incredibly courageous.”
Is this incident, and others in the book in which women in the family suffered domestic violence, why Wes has said he believes author JK Rowling should not be cancelled for talking about women’s rights to safe spaces?
Wes explained: “I don’t think I made that direct link in my mind at the time. But growing up with women who’ve been through hell at the hands of abusive men, I think it has given me an empathy that I think frankly, all of us should have. And what I was saying about JK Rowling and her intervention in the debate about trans rights was that whatever people might think about her position, whether she’s right or whether they agree with all of the language that she’s used, or the way she’s put her argument, when she wrote that first extended piece, at the heart of it was her own awful lived experience of abuse.
“And I just thought we are not going to be able to have a constructive debate about LGBT equality and women’s spaces and sex-based rights If we shut down or try and silence a victim of domestic violence in the way that I felt some people were doing. I felt a starting point should be, even if people disagree with JK Rowling, to say, ‘This is absolutely awful, what’s happened to you. And it’s taken enormous courage for you to share that experience’. Acknowledge that upfront and then you can go on to say, ‘I respectfully disagree about some things and can we talk about it?’
“This goes to a wider point about discourse in our country at the moment. I think we’ve got to relearn the art of constructive debate, respect, respectful disagreement and trying to find solutions, and compromise.
“As an openly gay politician, someone who feels very much part of the LGBT community, I want us to build bridges, not dividing lines. And I think we’ve got a government at the moment that tries to divide people and set people apart. And I think it’s surely our job to try and bring people together.
“We found a compromise on equal marriage. Same-sex marriage rights were kind of pitted against religious freedom. We found a compromise that maybe not everyone loved, but certainly everyone could live with.
“I feel optimistic that we can find a way through that treats trans people with the dignity, the respect and support that they deserve at the same time as protecting the sex-based rights of women. And I’m sure we can find a way through, but I think we won’t do that in tweets. We will do that through good old fashioned conversations around the table.”
The shadow health secretary has experienced the sharp end of NHS treatment recently as he was diagnosed with kidney cancer two years ago and has since been successfully treated. He was grateful to feel “this amazing NHS machine kick into gear” and had nothing but praise for the “brilliant surgeon, and brilliant clinical nurse specialist who really supported me through the process”.
However, follow-up appointments were less successful, with several scans being late and at one point he was sent for completely the wrong scan. On another occasion an appointment to receive results was cancelled on the day, when he had already taken time off work.
“What I definitely saw throughout my experience was an understaffed NHS, one that’s creaking at the seams and one that is struggling to provide the level of kind of access and timeliness of care that patients deserve,” he says.
In 30 years time, when he writes his next memoir, he would like it to be about how he transformed the NHS while serving in a Labour government as health secretary.
“If my place in the history books is about taking the NHS from its worst crisis in history and making it fit for the future, I’ll be more than happy to look back on a life well lived, when I’m ready to retire or in the departure lounge of life.”
Since his diagnosis, he has been watching his diet and exercise a little more carefully, he admits. But that does not stop him returning to his favourite kebab shop - Gardi’s - every time he visits Cambridge.
“I absolutely love Fitzbillies and on visits I’ve gone in there for a cup of tea and, and a bun or cake, and the other place that I’ve got a real real affection for his Gardi’s, the kebab shop. When we came back for our 20-year reunion at Selwyn, we all drank far too much wine and despite having had dinner, we wandered into town and all went to Gardis to have doner meat and chips. That is the ultimate – the feast of kings on a night out as far as I’m concerned. Again, that terrible messaging for the prospective health secretary. This is why I get myself into trouble!”
It was at Cambridge that Wes was finally able to be himself, and for that reason he is still fond of the city and the university.
He says: “Every time I come back to Cambridge, I feel I just feel like there’s magic in the air. I spent four of the happiest years of my life at Cambridge. And there’s an irony actually for a university that’s had to work really hard to persuade kids from working class backgrounds that they can apply, that they will be welcomed and that they will be fit in. It is an irony that having grown up on a council estate and experienced poverty, Cambridge was the first time in my life that I felt comfortable in my own skin and able to be myself.
“I go back to Selwyn fairly often and I’m really proud of the progress that the university has made to diversify its intake, recruiting underrepresented pupils from working class and disadvantaged backgrounds, not just recruiting the kind of the middle class kids from the top performing state schools in the world in the leafiest areas.
“I am evangelical about Cambridge, and I spend a lot of time talking to kids in state schools in my constituency and actually working class kids from across East London from backgrounds like mine, telling them that the sky’s the limit that they should go as far as their talent and ambitions will take them that they should aim high and that Cambridge is absolutely a place where they will feel welcome, accepted and included.”
Wes Streeting is speaking at the Cambridge Literary Festival on Monday, July 3 at 6.30pm in The Palmerston Room, at the University of Cambridge. Tickets are available at cambridgeliteraryfestival.com.
