Wes Streeting's gamble with the NHS is greater than any play for Downing Street | Gaby Hinsliff

<p>The health secretary has embarked on a high-stakes reorganisation. It could be a model for rebuilding public services – or a nail in his and Labour’s coffin</p><p>Everybody has a horror story about NHS waiting lists. If it isn’t you, then it’s probably your neighbour, your friend, your elderly parent; trapped in an anxious, miserable limbo for months longer than they should have been, getting passed from pillar to post. The only thing we <em>don’t</em> all know about waiting lists, it turns out, is that actually they’re coming down.</p><p>Barely a quarter of Britons knew waiting lists had fallen in Labour’s first year in power, according to recent polling for the Health Foundation thinktank in September: <a href="https://www.health.org.uk/reports-and-analysis/briefings/mind-the-gap-public-perceptions-of-the-nhs-and-social-care">more than a third</a> thought they had just kept going up, presumably because that’s what we have become gloomily resigned to. Since waiting lists are one of those <a href="https://www.health.org.uk/features-and-opinion/podcasts/alan-milburn-on-the-10-year-health-plan">emotional yardsticks</a> by which people judge whether the country is falling apart or not, you would think the government might like to mention this, and indeed this week it planned to. But then someone close to Keir Starmer chose to accuse the health secretary of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/11/keir-starmer-allies-ousting-pm-would-be-reckless-fears-leadership-challenge">plotting a coup</a> two days before a planned speech on NHS reform, accidentally ensuring that Wes Streeting’s pre-booked stint on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/12/wes-streeting-denies-plotting-oust-keir-starmer-prime-minister">breakfast telly</a> was mostly spent debating whether the prime minister is toast or not. Streeting eme