Farage is ‘a con artist’ and country faces ‘fight of our lives’ – Streeting

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is a “con artist” and the country faces “a battle of progressives against reactionaries, patriotism versus nationalism”, Wes Streeting has said.

Speaking at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, the Health Secretary told delegates Mr Farage was a “snake oil salesman” who wanted to create an insurance-based health system.

He also used his speech to praise the work of former deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, adding: “We want her back.”

Mr Streeting said Labour founders of the NHS had created a national health service to “provide the people of our country with the care they need, not just the care they can afford”.

He added: “I’m here today to defend that promise and, friends, we are in the fight of our lives, not just for the NHS or even for the survival of this Government, but for everything we believe in.

“It is a battle of progressives against reactionaries, patriotism versus nationalism, hope not hate.

“Our country is being confronted with choices about who we are and what we stand for, and nowhere do those choices come together more starkly than our National Health Service.

“The founding principles of the NHS are now contested for the first time in generations.

“Farage wants to replace the NHS with an insurance system.

“His vision for healthcare is a system that checks your pockets before your pulse and asks for your credit card before your care.

“Well, it might be right for Mr Moneybags. We know he can afford it, but what about those who can’t?

“We should know by now that man is a con artist posing as the voice of the people whilst working for the interests of the powerful.

“And be in no doubt. It’s not reform he’s offering, it’s retreat. He says we can’t afford in this century the National Health Service we could afford in the last.

“Well, if that’s the fight Farage wants, I say ‘bring it on’.”

Mr Streeting said he was at the conference not “simply to defend a service, but to uphold our values – a publicly-funded public service, free at the point of use, back on its feet and fit for the future.”

He added: “Those are Labour’s values, those are Britain’s values, and this is a fight we will win.”

Turning to what he called the “poison of post-truth politics”, Mr Streeting referenced  Dr Aseem Malhotra, who linked the Covid vaccine with cancer in the Royal family during a speech at Reform’s conference.

Mr Streeting said “these anti-vax lies have consequences” and had led to the return of diseases such as measles and whooping cough.

He added: “When Farage was asked whether he’d side with medical scientists, he said, ‘I wouldn’t side with anybody’.

“Anti-science, anti-reason, anti-health.

“Nigel Farage is a snake oil salesman of British politics, and it’s time to stop buying what he’s selling.”

Turning to people working in the NHS who originally came from overseas, Mr Streeting said Mr Farage is also “coming for” them.

“If you earn less than 60 grand a year and came from abroad, Farage wants you gone – the doctors, the porters, the nurses, the people who care for us in our hour of need and kept this country going when everything else stopped.”

The Health Secretary said he had received a letter last week from a consultant at Great Ormond Street hospital in London, who has spent the last three decades “caring for children, but now tells me that Reform’s health policy is making him consider leaving our country”.

Addressing the doctor and others like him, Mr Streeting said: “Thank you. Thank you for your service. Farage says ‘go home’, we say you are home.

“I’ve got your back. We’ve got your back, and at the next election, we’ll send Farage packing.”

Mr Streeting said the next decade will bring “centuries worth” of change in healthcare.

“Medicine is being transformed before our eyes,” he said.

“We now have genetic tests that can predict a child’s risk of illness before they ever fall sick.

“We’re on the brink of vaccines that could one day cure cancer.

“Weight loss jabs could help us finally defeat obesity.

“And this isn’t just a medical revolution, it’s an industrial revolution, a technological revolution, one that will shape the next century of jobs, industry and public health.”

On weight loss jabs, Mr Streeting reiterated his view that more people should be able to access them on the NHS, and medical advances in general.

He said “the wealthy” talk about how weight loss jabs have transformed their health “but seriously, what about the millions who can’t afford them?”.

He said that meant a “return to the days when health was determined by wealth, when some had access to the best care money can buy while others waited, and suffered.”

He added: “And I say never again. Because our historic duty and our modern mission is to ensure that the best science, the best healthcare, the best innovations are available not just to some but to all.

“So we will make the UK the home of the next generation of medical breakthroughs — discovered here, developed here, and delivered here on the NHS.”