Timing is everything in politics. So it was intriguing to see Wes Streeting – the great hope of Labour moderates – being given prime billing on the morning of Keir Starmer’s big speech. The Health Secretary’s 20-minute address was so perfectly pitched to his audience’s prejudices that you might have thought it had been created by the AI he lauds so frequently. All of Labour’s buzzwords were there: talk of 1945, attacks on Nigel Farage, a war on health inequalities and Streeting’s own council estate back story. There was even glutinous praise for Angela Rayner. ‘We need her back’, he told the party faithful, to inevitable rapturous applause.

Streeting’s appeal as a communicator has been his ability to deliver the government line in an interesting and original way. A health secretary at a L

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