‘Cancer stories hit me differently now’: Wes Streeting shares emotional story ahead of new book

“We’re at that stage before the book comes out, where I’m now beginning to wonder if it was actually such a good idea.”

Wes Streeting is sitting in the Mirror’s newsroom, talking about his new memoir, One Boy, Two Bills and a Fry Up – and looks genuinely nervous about how it will be received.

“I’m in that stage of like, near terror,” he says. “Not just because of the usual thing that authors would go through of being nervous about things like reviews, or how well the book does – it’s because it is such a personal story.

“And not just mine, I think when people read it, they will see that this is very much about my parents and grandparents, their childhood, their lives, their upbringing, and when I was writing the book, I felt this enormous pressure and weight of responsibility to make sure that I took care in telling those stories, making sure they’re accurate, making sure that I kind of paint the characters in a way that’s true to them and true to life.”

The searingly honest book charts his journey from the East End to Cambridge University and Westminster.

And it tells the story of how his character and politics were shaped by family members – each of their extraordinary characters described vividly and warmly.

Streeting’s story is often reduced to “single mum, grew up in a council house” – overlooking, for one thing, that he lived with his father for years as a teenager.

But also left out of that reduction are the capital-A activism of his grandmother, whose political talents were stymied by having served time in prison.

Then there’s the two Bills of the title – first Bill Crowley, a habitual criminal who spent most of Streeting’s childhood in prison.

“I sometimes get bemused by the way in which sort of family connections, my family connections, in particular get written up in terms of, “oh, his granddad knew the Krays,” Streeting says.

“And I sort of roll my eyes a bit, partly because he did know the Krays, but they weren’t particularly close. That and actually there was a cast of other gangsters that he was in with, who you can read about in the book.”

On the other hand, his other Grandfather, Bill Streeting, was a hard-working civil engineer who served in the Royal Navy in World War II, and was a traditional Thatcher-era working class Tory.

Streeting says the book isn’t an “ideological tract.”

He says: “It’s not my kind of vision for Britain. But you can, I think you can tell through the book where my politics come from, and where my values come from.”

The book’s introduction recounts how doctors broke the news to Streeting over the phone, sitting in his car while campaigning in Bury.

It’s a darkly funny anecdote, that ends in Streeting thanking the doctor for delivering a “sh*t sandwich” of news – that he had cancer, but wasn’t going to die – very well.

Streeting tells the Mirror he is now all clear, and felt he’d been “lucky.”

“It’s a funny thing to say, when you’ve had a cancer diagnosis in your 30s,” he says.

“I just genuinely felt lucky. Really felt so lucky. I thought this could have been so different.”

He pauses for a moment, catching his breath.

“And cancer stories are so – I’m welling up now – other cancer stories hit me differently now,” he says.

“I find it very hard to read about cancer stories, to talk about cancer stories. It hits me much more personally. Partly because, you know, I know people who have or are currently going through it and their outlook is so different to mine.

“And there’s a real unfairness and injustice about it. And, you know, why is it mine was caught early and I’ve got to have hopefully a really great, long life?

“And why is it someone else had a diagnosis that was caught too late? There is an unfairness and injustice around cancer. It affects one in two of us.

“I lost one of my grandparents to lung cancer, it’s one of the worst things that’s happened in my life. So, you know, those stories kind of really hit me differently now.”

Since getting the all-clear, he’s joined a gym and got a trainer – trying to work out at least once a week.

And made some changes to his diet, cutting down on fizzy drinks and salt to avoid risks like diabetes and kidney disease, which would now be life-threatening.

But he hasn’t really slowed down. He’s been promoted twice since his operation – first to a shadow cabinet child poverty brief, and then to Shadow Health Secretary.

“I am a workaholic,” he admits. “I think the one of the things that I found reassuring was that it it made me think I’m really happy with what I’m doing and how I’m spending my life like I I have such a passion for what I do.

“And it is a six or seven day a week job most weeks. And I don’t I didn’t come back resenting that in fact, I came back determined to work even harder.

“And I think people I work closely with in parliament will probably notice, kind of when I came back, it was like all guns blazing.”

Streeting has been broadly positive about his experience of NHS cancer treatment – despite a few grumpy tweets about hiccups in the process.

“The poor nurses at Queen’s Hospital in Romford,” he says.

“I when I went in after tweeting once…I don’t write grumpy points of view letters. No, I just tweet and go “Oh, I can’t believe it was on my way to hospital and my scan results aren’t there”.

“And then I went into hospital and one of the nurses, when they didn’t have the scan results, she’s like, “Oh, you’re not going tweet about this, are you? Because we were doing our best. And when you tweeted before, we were really upset.”

“And I said “Look, whatever my frustrations, they are never with the people working in the NHS. I know it’s not their fault.”

With Rishi Sunak still stubbornly refusing to call an election, Streeting has lately taken to the unorthodox strategy of openly challenging the Tories to steal his ideas.

“I do think things are getting worse, not better. And that really worries me… What frightens me at the moment is I can’t see any semblance of a real plan to turn the ship around from the government. Ideally, I wish they’d nick some of ours. We’ve got a workforce plan that would double the number of medical school places and recruit more nurses and midwives. It’s fully costed, fully funded. Nick it. Take it.

“Even if Rishi doesn’t want to scrap the non-dom tax status because he’ll get grief at home, well, find a different way of funding it. I don’t care but do it. Like, get on with it.

“I’d say to those Conservatives that are counting down the days the election thinking “It’s probably all over for us”, at least do something good with your final days in office.”