Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said that Labour will ‘send Farage packing’ at the next general election, calling the leader of Reform UK a ‘snake-oil salesman’.
Streeting was speaking during the third day of the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, where he outlined his vision for the future of the NHS and contrasted the modernisation proposed by Labour with what he said were unfounded policies proposed by Reform UK.
“Be in no doubt. It’s not reform [Farage] is offering. It’s retreat,” Streeting said.
“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.”
“If you earn less than £60,000 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 – tearing families apart, our friends, our neighbours,” he said.
Streeting addressed people in this group directly, especially acknowledging their contribution to the NHS and healthcare in the UK. He said that while Farage was saying to those immigrants working in the health service they must ‘go home’, Labour believes they are home.
“I’ve got your back. We’ve got your back, and at the next election, we’ll send Farage packing,” Streeting said.
‘The snake-oil salesman of British politics’
In his speech, Streeting contrasted the ongoing Labour party conference with the recent conference held by Reform, which he said was rife with misinformation and platformed dangerously fallacious ideas.
“At Reform’s conference, a discredited doctor claimed that the Covid vaccine gave our royal family cancer,” Streeting said.
“This man wasn’t just some fringe figure – he’s Reform’s health adviser.”
He argued that this vaccine misinformation has consequences, leading to the return of diseases thought long-defeated, such as measles and whooping cough.
Streeting called Farage’s policies, particularly his stance around vaccines and healthcare, ‘anti-science, anti-reason, and anti-health’.
“Nigel Farage is a snake-oil salesman of British politics, and it’s time to stop buying what he’s selling,” he said.
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