Wes Streeting

Wes Streeting describes himself as an “atypical” politician. Born in Tower Hamlets, he paid his way through university with jobs in retail. Stewart is in the tiny minority of Cambridge graduates who received free school meals: whilst there he became president of the Cambridge Students’ Union, later becoming president of the NUS in 2008, following a couple of years serving as the organisations’ vice president (education). The Guardian described his presidency as “a move that will lend weight to the fight to modernise the union”, and he reversed and revised some of the reforms that his predecessor had made. Streeting held numerous senior roles during his presidency, including being a non-executive director of UCAS. He went on to serve as a councillor for the Chadwell ward on Redbridge City Council, eventually becoming deputy leader of the council. Streeting was an outspoken critic of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, once urging him to stand down as leader to “give Labour a chance of winning the next general election”. In 2020, he was briefly shadow Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury and was later appointed shadow minister for schools in October 2020.