An evening with Labour MP and the Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting. Brought up on a Stepney council estate, the young Streeting saw his teenage parents struggle to provide for him. In One Boy, Two Bills and A Fry Up he vividly portrays the power of family and education to help him transform his life.

We pass another pub and push at the door. Closed. “We look desperate now, like winos walking down the street!” Does he drink? “Yes, that is my vice. I’ve never taken drugs.” Never? “Never. I can’t even do the Clinton ‘I didn’t inhale’ line.” Does he think he’s boring? “No, I don’t think I am boring. Hahahahaha! God, I hope that isn’t the headline. Hahahahaha.” He seems to laugh more when he is challenged than when he finds things funny. Does he dream of being leader?” “When I was younger I would have said absolutely, 100%. Now I say, only half jokingly, by the time there is a vacancy I’ll be too old.” Since his diagnosis, he has been watching his diet and exercise a little more carefully, he admits. But that does not stop him returning to his favourite kebab shop - Gardi’s - every time he visits Cambridge. Wearmouth, Rachel (17 July 2019). "Jeremy Corbyn-Led Labour Party 'Destined To Lose General Election', MPs Claim". Huffpost . Retrieved 28 July 2019.

I feel optimistic that we can find a way through that treats trans people with the dignity, the respect and support that they deserve at the same time as protecting the sex-based rights of women. And I’m sure we can find a way through, but I think we won’t do that in tweets. We will do that through good old fashioned conversations around the table.” In my constituency I’ve got local authority schools, free schools, academies, I’ve got a grammar school, I’ve got independent schools that aren’t far away – and the interesting thing is, whether I am walking into a local authority school or a free school or an academy, the name above the door matters less than what goes on inside the building. I think we would all agree that we wouldn’t start from here if we were designing an education system but this is where we are, and we have to make the system work. For example, I would like to see much more collaboration between different types of schools,” he says. This goes to a wider point about discourse in our country at the moment. I think we’ve got to relearn the art of constructive debate, respect, respectful disagreement and trying to find solutions, and compromise.

Wes Streeting knows it was the help and inspiration he received from the great characters that surrounded him, especially his paternal grandfather (also called Bill), that ultimately set him on the way to Cambridge and then Parliament. He knew he could draw on the strengths in childhood to eventually come out, and to go on and face his now successful struggle with kidney cancer. Would it affect my career? Would I catch HIV and AIDS? It didn’t take long for us to deal with any lingering awkwardness in our usual Streeting family way: with humour. I felt loved and accepted. Terrible newsRedbridge i – Local Election result, 2014". Redbridge Council. Archived from the original on 19 September 2016 . Retrieved 9 April 2015. Layfield, Luke (29 October 2004). "Architecture under threat at Cambridge". The Guardian . Retrieved 10 April 2020. Landin, Conrad (19 April 2016). "What an Argument About McDonald's Tells Us About the State of the Labour Party". Vice News. How much would Streeting like to lead the Labour party? “Hehehehehe!” That laugh again. “You couldn’t pay me to do what Keir has done in the last three years.” I don’t believe you, I say. “Put it this way, if I’d been leader of the party after 2019, I don’t think I would have been anywhere near as successful as Keir has been.” My polemic of the year is Victoria Smith’s righteously angry Hags: The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women

the vitality of the book lies in its directness and conversational candour... An engaging memoir' --- The Sunday TimesThe young Streeting at home in Clichy House, Stepney, London, 1986. Photograph: Courtesy of Wes Streeting

A] compelling story of overcoming adversity... Unexpectedly fascinating... amazingly inspiriting...' --- The Observer Rodgers, Sienna (14 May 2021). "Reshuffle: Keir Starmer's new Labour frontbench in full". LabourList . Retrieved 25 February 2022. Hill, Dave (23 May 2014). "Local elections: Labour wins control of Redbridge council for first time". The Guardian. London . Retrieved 20 April 2017.He and Pops were so different – Streeting a practising Christian and goody-goody, Pops a staunch atheist and anything but a goody-goody. Yet they got on so well. “We’d debate and talk as I got older. He was very well read and had strong views on religion and politics. He’d rib me mercilessly about believing in God. We had animated debates. It’s hard to reconcile that kind, clever grandfather with somebody who would strike terror into people’s hearts. He said later he really regretted the way he’d led his life. My mum said to him, ‘Don’t you worry about the impact you have on people when you commit these crimes?’ and he was like, ‘Oh no, they live such boring lives, I give them something to talk about.’” Streeting, Wes; Siddiq, Tulip (24 April 2017). "We've heard your anxieties loud and clear". The Jewish Chronicle . Retrieved 24 April 2017. Streeting grew up in poverty living in a council flat. [4] [5] He recalls Conservative Party politicians in the 1990s "denigrating single-parent families like mine, which I took quite personally." [2] He attended Westminster City School, a comprehensive state school in Victoria, London. He went on to study history at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge. Streeting previously had left the Labour Party because he opposed its decision to enter the Iraq War; however, he says Tony Blair did not act with malign intent. [6]