This week in Westminster: Streeting is in the spotlight, Starmer faces a balancing act and Reeves is hit with a reality check.
Read all about it in Who's Top, Who's Not
Top: Wes Streeting
Wes Streeting is wasting no time in government. While junior doctors prepare for yet another round of strikes, the new Health Secretary is on a dual mission: soothe the workforce and supercharge the system.
This week’s launch of the Life Sciences Sector Plan is classic Streeting—big on economic promise, louder on NHS reform. The £200 million package pledges faster drug approvals, better clinical trials, and a data overhaul that could drag the NHS into the 21st century.
Keen to ensure Labour are not being seen as the party of tolerating activists (more on this later), Streeting is also scrambling to head off next week’s planned doctor strikes. Talks are under way, and while the public brace themselves for the strikes, Streeting does look authoritative as he positions himself as a deal-maker, not a bystander.
Within Labour, it strengthens his position as the standard-bearer for the party’s reformist wing. He’s long signalled that Labour must be unafraid of private sector partnerships —now he’s delivering.
Middle: Keir Starmer
Keir Starmer’s war on the party’s past continues. This week, veteran MP Diane Abbott confirmed she’s suspended — and claimed she stands by the comments on race that got her suspended in the first place.
The new Labour government has a strong mandate—but the cracks are already showing. Critics argue the leadership is intolerant of dissent, whereas many of those not on the left say that Starmer needs to show consistency, even if it comes at the cost of expelling stalwarts like Abbott.
This comes after Starmer withdrew the whip from four MPs after they consistently voted against the government and organised rebellions, even after concessions were granted. Much has been made about these suspensions being public punishments and an attempt to show rebellious Labour MPs that the government means business. In truth, it is as much a way of showing loyal Labour MPs that the government has their back and that even though backbenchers may be facing a tough time with their constituents at the moment, they need to stick with the government if they want to get elected and deliver on labour’s missions.
Not: Ian Byrne
It was meant to be a moment of justice. Instead, it ended in silence.
Ian Byrne’s long campaign for a new Hillsborough Law—promising truth, transparency, and accountability after public disasters—has failed to make it onto the statute book within Labour’s first year in parliament. Despite Starmer promising to have introduced the legislation before April this year, and emotional backing from victims’ families, the draft bill has been shelved. Byrne is now calling for Starmer to introduce the Bill before conference season takes place in Liverpool: a tall order given how few days parliament is sitting between then and now.
Byrne, once a central figure in Labour’s policy machine, is left explaining why a flagship justice measure didn’t survive the transition to power. Campaigners (including Byrne who was at the Hillsborough disaster when he was 16) likely feel betrayed.
It makes political sense why the Bill wasn’t prioritised. Say what you like about the Labour party, but you can’t deny their legislative programme was absolutely barnstorming – nationalising rail, reforming children’s social care & schools, reforming digital markets – and hundreds more vital policy proposals made their way through parliament this year. It’s also highly unusual for Private Member Bill’s to become law, and most fall.
The Hillsborough Law has broad public sympathy, but little economic or electoral upside. The Labour government has been ruthlessly focused on high-impact headline-friendly reforms: growth, NHS, migration. The party can’t do it all, and it certainly won’t be likely to introduce the Bill before conference season.
Even if the move is justified, Byrne and others on the left will be sat wondering what the significance of the law not being introduced says about the kind of Labour Party that has taken office, and if it is not introduced as a priority now, when will it be?