NHS restructure is greatest danger to Streeting’s effort to revive service

Health secretary still confident of success but critics say scrapping of NHS England has been ‘a total car crash’

• NHS to miss targets for cutting A&E wait times and performance in England

In the Great Hall at the University of East London last Wednesday, the perennially upbeat Wes Streeting was exuding even greater positivity than usual. After years of neglect under the Conservatives, he said, the NHS was starting to revive thanks to Labour’s medicine.

In a bravura performance in front of an audience of health service bosses, policy experts and student nurses in their blue and green uniforms, Streeting reeled off a long list of improvements in his 20-month tenure as health secretary.