The last day of Labour conference can be a bit of a graveyard slot, given the leader’s speech has already happened. Not so this morning, which contained the two public services that the the party is keenest to talk about: education and the NHS.
The NHS has long been a comfort blanket for the party that founded it but often lacks the volition to reform it. Anyone hoping for a cosy, snuggly we-love-the-NHS speech today will have been jolted awake by Wes Streeting, who built on his theme that the health service is ‘no longer the envy of the world’ and is in an ‘existential’ crisis.
He tried to reassure delegates that the reason he was making these arguments was because he cared about the NHS:
Labour will never abandon the founding principles of the NHS as a publicly funded public service, free at the point of use.
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