This week Baroness Casey is on the case, Nigel Farage hopes for reconciliation and Rachel Reeves has the January blues
Read all about it in this week's Who's Top Who's Not!
Top: Wes Streeting
It has been a big week for the health and social care sector. Alongside the recently launched independent commission into adult social care led by no-nonsense Crossbench Peer Louise Casey, Starmer also unveiled a new partnership between the NHS and private healthcare to reduce waiting times and improve the NHS App to give patients more choice over treatments.
The decision to partner with private industry was heavily influenced by Alan Milburn, former Health Secretary under Blair who was spotted roaming the halls of DHSC in October as the ghost of New Labour past, and is now the non-executive director of the department. Milburn’s influence may come to define Streeting’s tenure as Health Secretary, and signals to the party that he is preparing for battle with the unions, and with the left of his own party.
Casey’s commission has been set the task of finding ‘cross-party consensus’ on the NHS. Good luck, as they say, with that. Meanwhile, Streeting faces the risk of building expectations of reform which will be impossible to meet. Big picture thinking is all well and good, but the publication of the report is not due until 2028, which shows a lack of political urgency. An influx of stories of an NHS in crisis due to skyrocketing flu cases also shows that Streeting must be careful not to get caught up in the long-term thinking, and keep his finger on the pulse of the current NHS challenges.
Middle-ranking: Nigel Farage
In the latest instalment of their ‘will-they-won’t-they’ relationship, Nigel Farage finds himself in murky waters with on-again/off-again BFF Elon Musk after their first public tiff.
This weekend, Farage firmly distanced himself from far-right campaigner and former English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson despite Musk’s calls for him to be released from prison. The events caused Musk to proclaim to his 211 million followers on Twitter that the Reform leader “doesn’t have what it takes” and should immediately be replaced, leaving Farage heartbroken.
These events may have stolen Farage’s thunder, but he is still making the political weather on child grooming gangs, forcing the Tories to jump on the bandwagon. Taking a leaf out of Hollywood’s books, Reform insiders have claimed that this right-wing bromance was purely intended for PR purposes, and that there was never going to be a donation from Musk. Publicly distancing the party from Tommy Robinson may have also given the party a credibility boost. Farage will most likely weather the political storm and is due to attend Trump’s inauguration on 20th January.
Sinking quickly: Rachel Reeves
US political strategist James Carville famously said that if he were to be reincarnated, he would “want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody”. Rachel Reeves will understand this quote better than anybody after the week she’s had.
The pound has fallen to its lowest level in over a year, while UK borrowing costs hit their highest for 16 years. The Bond markets are playing havoc and the UK’s 10-year gilts rose to 4.82 per cent on Wednesday, the highest level since 2008.
Depending on your political and economic position, this is either a reflection of a global rise in the cost of government borrowing ahead of Trump-tastic tariffs, or a UK-focused reaction to an anti-growth Labour budget.
Regardless of the cause, the result is that the Chancellor must find the funds to service increasingly expensive government debt, and her ultra-tight budget left her very little rainy-day cash. If she’s going to stick to her fiscal rules (which she says she will do and which is important for reassuring the markets, especially at a time like this) and not raise taxes then she may have to cut spending.
Economic growth seems like a pipedream at the moment and mortgage costs are unlikely to drop anytime soon so the British public could well be feeling poorer in 2025 – not what a Labour government down in the polls wants to start the year.