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Streeting will follow Labour’s well-trodden path 
LESLIE HUCKFIELD explains how the roots of the shadow health secretary’s affection for the private health sector can be traced back to Patricia Hewitt and her New Labour heyday
Labour shadow health secretary Wes Streeting in an ambulance, during a visit to the London Ambulance Station in Waterloo, central London. Picture date: Thursday December 14, 2023

HISTORY shows that the meaningful and lasting components of neoliberalism always come from the left.

Though political history will hardly rank Wes Streeting’s proposed dismemberment of the NHS alongside Francois Mitterand’s abandonment of his 1981 Union de la Gauche, Bob Hawke’s 1983 Prices and Incomes Accord with trade unions in Australia, Clinton’s 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act or Gerhard Schroeder’s 2003 Hartz IV reforms in Germany, for British politics Streeting’s ambitions go further than Tony Blair’s 1995 attack on Clause Four.  

As much as currently possible, this piece seeks to provide a political Ordnance Survey map of how he seeks to overcome its contours.  

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