Wes Streeting

Wesley Paul William Streeting was born on 21 January 1983 in Stepney, London, England, to Mark and Corrina, aged 17 and 18 respectively. He has five brothers, a sister and a stepsister.

His two grandfathers, both named Bill, were key figures in his youth. His maternal grandfather, Bill Crowley, was a frequently imprisoned criminal who had served time with the Kray twins. He often engaged his grandson in lively discussions about religion and politics. Streeting's maternal grandmother became embroiled in Crowley's crimes and was incarcerated at HM Prison Holloway, where she shared a cell with Christine Keeler (a key figure in the Profumo affair). According to Streeting, they "stayed in touch, they became friends". His grandmother was released from prison to give birth to his mother at Whittington Hospital in London. Streeting's paternal grandfather served in the Second World War in the Royal Navy and later in the merchant navy before becoming a civil engineer. Streeting recalled: "He was the grandad I was closest to. He was a traditional working-class Tory."

He grew up living in a council flat. He recalls Conservative Party politicians, particularly Ann Widdecombe, in the 1990s "denigrating single-parent families like mine, which I took quite personally". He was educated at Westminster City School, a comprehensive state school in Victoria, London. He went on to study history at the University of Cambridge as an undergraduate student of Selwyn College, Cambridge, where he served as JCR President, graduating in 2004. Streeting briefly left the Labour Party because he opposed its decision to enter the Iraq War.

Streeting came out as gay in his second year of university. He was elected President of Cambridge Students' Union for the 2004–05 academic year, a sabbatical officer role. As president he campaigned against the proposed closure of Cambridge University's architecture department. After graduating, Streeting worked part time for the Labour Party-related think tank Progress for a year.

As president of the NUS, Streeting was a strong proponent of his predecessor Gemma Tumelty's proposed reforms to the NUS governance structures, which had been denounced and narrowly defeated by many left-wing groups in NUS as an attack on NUS democracy. His election was reported by The Guardian as "a move that will lend weight to the fight to modernise the union". During his term as NUS president he opposed academic strikes, "Given the effects of the current economic climate on the graduate jobs market, students need industrial action by university staff like a hole in the head".

Shortly after his election as NUS President, Streeting was appointed as a member of the government's Youth Citizenship Commission, chaired by Professor Jonathan Tonge of the University of Liverpool, which published its report in June 2009. Streeting supported university tuition fees as president, consistent with UK government policy during the New Labour years.

In 2009, while President of the NUS, Streeting posted tweets about wanting to push the Daily Mail journalist Jan Moir under a train.

After completing his term as President of the NUS, Streeting was subsequently a public sector consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which he gave up on election as a councillor, because Redbridge Council was a "current audit client" of the firm; this forced him to choose between keeping his job or forcing a second by-election. In 2010, shortly after leaving PwC, Streeting was appointed as Head of Policy and Strategic Communications for Oona King's unsuccessful bid to win the Labour Party's nomination to be its candidate in the 2012 London Mayoral election.

He then served as Chief Executive of the Helena Kennedy Foundation, an educational charity that promotes access to higher education for students from further education colleges. He went on to serve as head of education at Stonewall, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights charity (for one year and six months), where he led their Education for All campaign to tackle homophobia in schools.

In a July 2010 by-election, Streeting was elected for the Chadwell ward on Redbridge London Borough Council, having stood unsuccessfully for that council's Roding ward two months earlier. He held the Chadwell seat for Labour by 220 votes, winning with 31.5% of the vote on a 25.5% turnout. …

At the 2015 general election, Streeting was elected to Parliament as MP for Ilford North with 43.9% of the vote and a majority of 589. After being elected to Parliament, Streeting was elected Honorary President of the British Youth Council. In April 2016 Streeting criticised the Labour Party for refusing a £30,000 donation from McDonald's. According to Labour, the refusal was due to the company's poor record on worker's rights and hostile stance towards trade unions. Streeting campaigned in favour of the United Kingdom remaining in the European Union in the run-up to the 2016 EU membership referendum. He later campaigned for a People's Vote, a campaign group calling for a public vote on the final Brexit deal between the UK and the European Union.

At the snap 2017 general election, Streeting was re-elected as MP for Ilford North with an increased vote share of 57.8% and an increased majority of 9,639. Streeting is a vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism, a co-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Jews and a supporter of Labour Friends of Israel. He is also a co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims and a supporter of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East. In September 2018, he held the last in a series of London-wide consultations to create the Working Definition of Islamophobia. In July 2018, Streeting called for "targeted economic sanctions" against Israeli settlements in the West Bank in response to the Israeli government "grossly infringing on the human rights of Palestinians". In July 2019, Streeting was reported in the media as using abusive language towards a non-Jewish antisemitism campaigner.

Shortly before the 2019 general election, Streeting told a Labour First meeting that the party faced electoral oblivion in any snap poll due to the leadership's poor handling of Brexit and allegations of antisemitism. At the election, Streeting was again re-elected, with a decreased vote share of 50.5% and a decreased majority of 5,198. …

Streeting has said he suggested "working with the best of British business to reform the worst of British capitalism". In 2020, Streeting said he wanted to tax capital gains on the same basis as income and suggested replacing inheritance tax with a lifetime gifts tax. He supports an increase in corporation tax. He has promoted the establishment of a Good Work Commission to bring together the relevant stakeholders to negotiate a new employment rights settlement.

Although Streeting is considered to be on the right of the Labour Party, he said in 2022 he objected to being labelled a Blairite: "There's no future for the Labour party if it's locked in a battle between two competing visions of the past. I don't like being pigeonholed." Following his election, Streeting was described as a "long-time critic" of Jeremy Corbyn, who was leader of the Labour Party from 2015 until 2020. He accused Corbyn of a "flat-footed and lackadaisical attitude" to tackling antisemitism, which was "simply unacceptable". Streeting was among the 70 per cent of Labour MPs who nominated Owen Smith in the 2016 party leadership election. In 2022, Streeting said, "I always thought that Jeremy Corbyn was unelectable and there was a fundamental moral objection to where he was on anti-Semitism."

Streeting is pro-devolution, supporting the idea of providing local authorities with greater control over public policy. He is a member of the Fabian Society.

In May 2026, Streeting backed a social media ban for under-16s in the UK.

Streeting campaigned in favour of the United Kingdom remaining in the European Union (EU) in the run-up to the 2016 EU membership referendum. In 2018, he stated that a hard Brexit would address voters' concerns regarding sovereignty and migration but would provoke significant economic harm. Streeting appeared in The Sun and tweeted a link to the article saying he would be "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime". …

Streeting lives in Redbridge, London, with his partner Joe Dancey, a communications and public affairs adviser. He has been engaged to Dancey since 2013. In October 2023, Dancey was selected as Labour's prospective parliamentary candidate for Stockton West at the 2024 general election, although he was unsuccessful.

Streeting, who is a practising Anglican, has said his faith is "about compassion, not walking by on the other side", and that it caused serious problems when it came to his sexuality: "My faith was a really big obstacle to accepting myself ... I spent many years choosing not to be gay."

In May 2021, Streeting revealed he had been diagnosed with kidney cancer and would be stepping back from frontline politics while he received treatment for it. He had received a phone call from his urologist informing him that tests, initially for kidney stones, revealed he had kidney cancer. He was on a campaign visit at the time. However, because the cancer was noticed early, his prognosis was good even though he needed surgery to remove the kidney. On 27 July 2021, Streeting announced that he had been declared cancer-free, following an operation to remove one of his kidneys.

Streeting published his memoir One Boy, Two Bills and a Fry-Up, in June 2023. The book received generally positive reviews. Rachel Cooke of The Observer described the book as "both a little bit boring and unexpectedly fascinating". Jason Cowley of The Sunday Times praised Streeting for telling "his story with emotional intelligence. He is never self-aggrandising, yet part of his appeal is his naked ambition; in a 2024 interview he was unequivocal about wanting one day to be prime minister. This is the self-made East End boy speaking." Robert Colls of Literary Review was more critical, writing that "There are few ideas here that might take us deeper or wider. Streeting is a self-confessed Christian geek who never stopped reading and who wore his school merit badges with pride, but I was left searching for the intellect on which all his achievements were built. Maybe it will be in the next book."