areas, especially around aberdeenshire. with that cloud coming in, a cloudierfor tomorrow, rain or drizzle moving eastwards. most of the wet weather in the north—west with stronger wind, northern and western parts of scotland. temperatures higher than today for the eastern side, making eight celsius, that the west double figures, could make 13 in northern ireland. not a great deal of rain to come, weatherfront ireland. not a great deal of rain to come, weather front moving ireland. not a great deal of rain to come, weatherfront moving down across the uk week, but will linger and keep more cloud on tuesday in the facade, otherwise those places will see some sunshine. —— in the far south. will see some sunshine. —— in the farsouth. i will see some sunshine. —— in the far south. i will be back with more at the top of the hour. now on bbc news, it's time for some political thinking with nick robinson. "i should've been in prison, not in parliament," my guest on political thinking this week says. that is a reflection not just of the fact he was brought up in real poverty in london's east end, but that his grandfather was a convicted bank robber. wes streeting has been on quite a journey, not least this year when he had a diagnosis at the age ofjust 38 of cancer and was warned that his kidney would have to be removed. once he recovered, keir starmer told him he was the man that the labour leader wanted to be the next health secretary if labour win the election. already, he has shifted the party's approach to the covid pandemic, saying that this is the year in which the country has to learn to live well with the virus. wes streeting, welcome to political thinking. hi, nick. and i'm glad you added that context about the prison line. because i didn't want people to think that i'd made an admission of serious wrongdoing and should be behind bars for some crime i've committed! not yet, you haven't made the admission, but we've got quite a while to go in this conversation. we'll come to that extraordinary and fascinating background in a second. but what a year you've had! it must feel like an extraordinary roller—coaster. yeah, it has been, and i don't know how you felt when you came back from your experience with cancer, which was far worse than mine. but, especially having a cancer diagnosis at 38, although i was pretty clear from the prognosis that i wasn't going to die, that it had been caught early, that i would have an operation and recover, that time off that i had and that reminder of my own mortality made me think very hard about my life and what i want to do. and the way i want to live my life. and how i would feel if i had been given worse news, that my life would be coming to an end sooner rather than later. and so it made me think a lot about "what is it you want to achieve? how do you want to make the most of your time?" and the reassuring thing is that i didn't kind of think, "well, i've made a terrible mistake with all this politics stuff, i don't want to be doing this. and i don't want to spend all of my waking hours thinking about how to get labour into government and what we would do." actually, it was more of an affirmation of the choices that i've made. look, anybody who's had a cancer diagnosis remembers and will always remember where they were when they heard. yeah. i was actually waiting to collect bags at an airport — my children and my wife looking at me in that sort of "will you get on with it" sort of way that families can do. yeah. where were you when you were told you had cancer? a similarly sort of surreal experience in a way. i was in a car park in bury north, where i was about to go out knocking on doors for a friend of mine who is a local council candidate, and james frith, who is also a good friend of mine, who was until recently the bury north mp. and i was sat in my car park receiving this phone call from the hospital earlier than i was expecting and having them kind of tapping on the window, waving, saying "we're all here, we're ready to go." and they were all, like, really happy to see me. and i had this sort of almost suspended reality of having to engage with them as normal and not give them any appearance of anything being wrong, because i wasn't ready to tell anyone. i was absorbing the news, and, actually, i was in shock. because, although i'd had an inkling that there might be a cancer diagnosis coming from some of the earlier conversations i had at the kind of testing, scanning, diagnosis stage... yeah, it's different when you're actually told, isn't it? yeah. the hard bits, though, were telling other people, and telling people that i love and care about. and in fact, the very first person i told was matt, who runs my office and is my election agent and organises for the election. and the reason i chose to speak to matt first was because i was processing this news, i hadn't bawled my eyes out yet and i knew that the hardest conversation i'd have would be with my partner, joe, and with my parents. and i wanted to know if i could cope with telling them without breaking down. so i did a trial run on poor matt and told him that's what i was doing. and i thought, "well, i've got through this conversation, i'm not bawling my eyes out." i mean, inevitably, when i spoke to my partner and my parents i bawled my eyes out. and inevitably, you are a politician, you didn't know you were about to become shadow health spokesperson. but inevitably you kind of take a view, you look around you, you make an assessment. yeah. and what did you...? well, funnily enough, matt hancock was one of many people who messaged me. probably best not to dwell too much on matt hancock — but he was one of many people to message me, to wish me well, and i said to matt at the time, who was the health secretary at the time, "don't worry, i'll be ok, but i'll do some nhs mystery shopping for you and tell you how i get on." and when i came back to good health and, obviously, sajid javid had taken over, i said to sajid javid, "i've got some feedback about the nhs experience." and you did? that's really interesting. he said, "look, this is what i can tell you." yeah, and i said this to my local trust, as well. and this is my view of the nhs as a whole. when you get a cancer diagnosis, this incredible machine kicks into gear and i felt almost like this rolls—royce machine kicked in, and from that moment, the diagnosis through to going into hospital for my operation, i felt very well supported. but my overall reflection is the bit leading up to the actual diagnosis could have been better. the experience since the operation could have been better. and i think, at the moment, that's where the nhs is. when it comes to big crises in your health, a machine kicks into gear. but the diagnosis phase and the after—care phase needs to be so much better. fascinating. i want to talk to you a little bit about how you're going to approach thisjob a little bit later. let's talk about the journey, though, you've been on. is that really right? that you might have been in prison rather than in parliament? i think statistically i was more likely to end up in prison than in parliament. so i come from two, in their own ways, traditional, stereotypical east end families that could not be more different. and that difference is probably best summed up with my two grandfathers, both called bill. one grandad bill served in the royal navy during the second world war, had a career as a civil engineer, was a sort of working—class tory, a sort of pull yourself up by your bootstraps kind of working—class tory who only ever voted liberal to keep labour out in tower hamlets. very proud of queen and country. i get a lot of my christian faith from him, a lot of my patriotism and views on law and order and those sorts of issues from him. very different to the other bill... you can say that again. ..who had a string of convictions for armed robbery. it turns out he was an armed robber throughout my mum's childhood, throughout my childhood. he evidently wasn't very good, because he was in and out of prison — so they always caught him. he had a very, very difficult life. he suffered real abuse as a child, which we didn't learn about until much later in his life, not long before he died. and one of the things i find frustrating about his life and experience is that when i would talk to my grandad as a kid, he was really smart, he had loads of views — especially on religion. i mean, he was a staunch atheist. but he had read in prison all of the major religious texts, he had a good understanding of philosophy of religion. so we would have really big arguments about it. and i thought, "how has someone so smart had a life that has been so wasted?" your grandmother as well ended up in prison, as well? yeah, he took her down... and this is, for me, the real injustice of the situation. the story is an extraordinary one because not only does she end up in prison, as you say, largely because of her relationship. who does she share her cell with? shares cells with christine keeler, who was at the heart of the profumo affair, which i didn't really have much understanding or awareness of growing up. not exactly an east end girl, was she? no, she wasn't. i know, talk about chalk and cheese. you had this working—class east ender in my nan, libby, and then you had christine keeler of high society. but i remember my nan talking about christine keeler and feeling very strongly that she had been a victim of injustice and that what had happened to her had been wrong. and they stayed in contact for many years after they had left prison. so you grew up, as a small child — they're your mum's parents — presumably there wasn't a lot of money around the house? no, not at all. that was very hard. and there are a number of layers to it. things like the electric going off and sitting in darkness. the money had run out and mum didn't have any money to put in the electricity meter. we had the advantage of a big east end family network around us, so we didn't go hungry in that sense, but it did mean kind of traipsing the hour—long round walk to my nan�*s to get food from there or to get food from my aunts or my grandad, my dad's dad, who lived not far away. because my dad's always been in my life. in fact, i spent my teenage years... i moved to live with my dad for the rest of my adolescence, and my dad would tell you far too long into my 20s before he could get rid of me. but this is poverty that is tough. on the other hand, people might say, "well, around the people you grew up with, it might not have been unusual. that might have been what it was like." did you feel you were just like everybody else? no. was it a badge of shame? oh, definitely a badge of shame. i was too ashamed to bring friends around to play because our council flat was so grotty. i'm fascinated by this other grandparent. your dad's dad. yeah. not the one in prison, in other words. you described him, ex—navy and merchant navy. he used to dress up smart to take you to school, i think, didn't he? he is without doubt the single most influential, important person in my life. and he was only in my life for a quarter of my life so far. he died when i was 11, which was, without doubt, the single worst day of my life. and he was the most loving, supportive grandparent you could ask for. he always looked out for me. he really, really fed my love of learning. he would come and collect me from school every friday afternoon and he would be fully suited and booted, and he would come to church on friday afternoons. because we had our school service on friday afternoon. and, i mean, my friends love him as well. he was just a truly great and inspirational man. you say that he was a working—class tory, that he only voted liberal to keep labour out. what do you think he would think of you? trying to get a labour government in. i think about this a lot. i think, first and foremost, i have no doubt, because my dad is in many ways — increasingly, physically, as well — the spitting image of my grandad. and my dad is very proud of me — although the only time my dad has ever voted labour was when streeting was on the ballot paper. and he made it very clear he was voting streeting, not labour. do you see it as a challenge, in a way, to change the labour party in a way that your dad could vote for them? that your grandad could have voted for them? yeah. i mean, it definitely gives me... it has always given me an insight into that working—class tory tradition, which i think is very relevant today when the tories have reached into new areas of the working class in parts of the country outside london and the south—east. but that's also in some ways even more relevant experience, having fought and won a marginal council seat from the tories, having won a majority in redbridge for labour for the first time in the borough's history. and having won my parliamentary seat from the tories at a time, in 2015, when the tide was going out for labour. we lost seats at that election. you won in ilford north. we won in ilford north. we bucked the trend. so i'm used to talking to tory voters and i recognise the only way labour ever wins is when you squeeze the smaller parties on the progressive left, but also you persuade people who voted tory to vote labour. it's the only way you ever win. what is it labour has to say to those people? i think it's the same challenge that every labour opposition faces, which is people assume that the labour party's got its heart in the right place, but they always need reassuring that we've got her head in the right place, too. and what i mean by that is, they instinctively know we're the party of public services and tackling inequality and injustice. they know that's in our dna. but they always need reassurance that we can be trusted with the money, trusted on law and order, and trusted with national security. now, as a labour politician and particularly from the mainstream centre—left tradition of the labour party, i find that frustrating in that i believe that spending people's money wisely, being tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime, and standing up for our national security are labour positions, and traditional labour positions you can trace back to the attlee government. let's turn to yourjob, then, and what you have to do, before we return to some more fascinating things about your life as well. you now have to shape labour's message on this continuing pandemic. you've used a phrase about living with the virus. interestingly, it's a phrase the prime minister has also used. what do you mean by it? we've got to learn to live well with covid. that means having a plan to take us through the next year and beyond, knowing that coronavirus is here to say, restrictions don't need to be here to stay, but there are a number of things we need to do in terms of vaccination, testing, sensible public health measures that don't impact on people's liberties, like ventilation. and ultimately vaccinating the world in order to live well with covid. that's what i mean. it's about having a plan to make sure we're not constantly doing the hokey cokey on restrictions. you said just before christmas that you were breathing a sigh of relief that christmas could continue as normal, which sounded to quite a few people like you thought the prime minister was right not to bring in yet further measures before christmas. and that you maybe didn't agree with labour's mark drakeford in wales, who did say you could only go to a pub if you had table service and if groups were six max. that nightclubs would have to close, that there would be no fans at live sporting events. is there a bit of you that says, "actually, labour uk—wide doesn't have to agree with labour in wales?" and the other way around. but actually, i don't criticise mark drakeford one bit. i think one of the reasons labour did well in the last welsh senedd elections is because of mark's leadership in the pandemic. i think i did recognise that these were finely balanced judgment and difficult judgment calls. we never called for restrictions in england for christmas. we listened to what the scientists were saying and we listened to the mood music coming out of government, which was, "we're going to do restrictions after christmas." so, at that point, i was saying, "if you're going to do restrictions after christmas, let people know before so they can plan." in the end, we've got into the new year without the need for further restrictions. i hope we can keep it that way. if you do get a shot at being health secretary, you will hope, we will all hope, that by the time that happens the pandemic is receding, even if it's not over. you'll probably face, if you do become health secretary, massive waiting lists. now, this has happened before. when alan milburn was health secretary under tony blair — huge waiting lists. now, he turned, where, to get them sorted? to the private sector to help. are you willing to do that? well, it's interesting, isn't it, how we come full circle? conservative governments come in, ratchet up the waiting lists, and labour goverments have to sort them out. and you're right, that's exactly where we'll end up having to be. i think there are three things at the forefront of my mind in terms of bringing down waiting lists. first is dealing with the essential workforce challenge. we went into the pandemic with the nhs with 100,000 staffing vacancies, 112,000 in social care. so, without a workforce strategy, you don't have aplan for the nhs. the second thing we've got to do is to sort out social care. i think in november there were over 400,000 cases where people were able to be discharged from hospital into the community but couldn't because the care home wouldn't take them or community settings and support wasn't there. so you've got to deal with the late discharges. and the third is, in terms of the private sector capacity, as the last labour government showed, using the private sector to bring down nhs waiting lists is effective, its popular with patients, but it comes at a cost. so no doubt the government will turn to the private sector, no doubt the next labour government may have to use private sector capacity to bring down nhs waiting lists, and i won't shirk that for a minute to get people better health outcomes. but i will be pretty furious at the costs involved because it shouldn't be the case that, because tory governments run down the nhs, we have to spend more taxpayer's money than would be necessary in the private sector because we haven't sorted out the public sector. that will be my focus. that's fascinating, because essentially it's the value for money argument. whereas, for some people, it's deeper than that. it's in their gut. keir starmer sat in that chair not so very long ago and told the story of his very sick mother in intensive care. he said to me, "it was touch and go, she held my hand and she said, �*you won't let your dad go private, will you?”' as a former nhs nurse, that sense that going private was a betrayal. you're saying labour can't afford to have that view? i feel viscerally in my heart the same, and my approach to private health is the same as private education and private schools. i don't like it, i don't like the fact that people have to pay for what they see to be a better experience, but i'm also pragmatic enough. and so my head kicks in over my heart to say, "we're not going to abolish private schools and we're not going to abolish private health. you'd spend a huge amount of time, money and legal battles trying to do something that doesn't actually make anyone's experience better." my ambition as health secretary will be to make the nhs so good that they don't have to go private. in part, we're having this conversation because covid hasjust changed everything, hasn't it? in your own case. i'm suffering in that sense, in that i was supposed to have my six month follow—up scan. we're now approaching month eight. no scan and no appointment yet. now, i'm not lying awake at night thinking about this, because i'm on a low risk pathway. it's very unlikely the cancer�*s come back. but there are lots of other people who are in those waiting lists or who are on secondary care. even with the critical incidents declared this month, they may see their cancer treatment disrupted in some ways. so i'm not complacent about this. and my own experience has made me even more passionate about bringing down waiting lists. i want to end by talking about something that on one level is deeply personal — but actually becomes increasingly political. which you've referred to — your sexuality. you've talked about your partner, joe. we'll come to the politics in a sec. let's just talk because you have talked openly about this in the past. given your christianity, was that a conflict? did you feel for a while, as a young man, that these two things about you where in conflict? massively. it's one of the reasons why i didn't actually... it wasn'tjust that i delayed coming out until i was at university. it took me years and years to accept myself and to reconcile these two parts of my life and identity — my faith and who i am. and in the end, i came to a conclusion that this wasn't a phase and it wasn't a choice, and i'd been asked, especially when you do school visits and often young people will ask you, is this nature or is this nurture? the only way i can describe this is that i spent years and years choosing not to be gay and trying desperately hard not to be because of my faith, and in the end i came to the conclusion that i had been made in this way and that i have not made a choice to be gay — this isjust who i am. i think i have been made in god's image in that sense and i have reconciled my faith and sexuality. but that took a long time. it's interesting, because you will know that for some people, they think there's a continuum between the massive change that's happened in attitudes and the law towards gay rights and a deeply divisive debate now about trans rights. do you see it in that way? or do you regard them as separate issues? i think we can learn from thatjourney. in terms of this debate between gender identity on one hand and sex—based rights on the other, i think in the end we're going to have to do something akin to what we did around the equal marriage debate, where sexual orientation and religious freedom were in conflict with one another. which is find a way through which nobody loves but everyone can live with. and i think that requires a lot more listening, a lot more discussion, a lot more empathy and respect than i see opening up on social media. so the parallel you're drawing is between the debate about gay marriage, where there were even some gay campaigners who said, "look, we don't need to go down the route of marriage, we've got civil partnership. if it offends notjust christians but people with a religious view, we won't do it." you see a parallel with that sort of conversation? yeah, i think so. i think one of the ways that parliament really did its job was that those views came to the fore of the discussion, were negotiated, debated and reconciled in law, and we've ended up notjust changing laws but changing hearts and minds in the process. that's where i think we need to get to on trans rights. as an lgbt politician — i'm not all four but i'm a gay politician — i see myself as part of an lgbt community. i will always stand up for trans rights and for a community that doesn't have representation in parliament, is at the worst end of all the statistics on things like mental ill—health, physical abuse, sexual abuse. i will always stand by them, speak up for them. but what i would also say to my own community is that if we're also trying to win round hearts and minds, and to persuade people and to negotiate the future of lgbt equality, don't try to shut down people's voices. we've got to engage with this. sometimes it can feel unfair, this idea that you have to justify your own existence orjustify rights that you believe are inalienable and a core part of human rights. but in the end, the only way you win an argument is by having a discussion and a debate. tonally, i think lots of people will welcome what you're saying, but there will be plenty of people saying, "hold on, women are women and there isn't a compromise to be had. women's rights must be respected." and i don't disagree that women's rights must be respected, and i think the lgbt movement has got to better empathise with that perspective and to understand why a whole generation of campaigners who fought for women's rights... i think sometimes when people are thinking about what's the answer on trans rights, things like changing language around breast—feeding or talking about parents instead of mothers, it's an unnecessary erasure of language and identity, and i think people have to be sensitive to that. similarly, it's perfectly legitimate for people to disagree withjk rowling and her position on this, but you've got to ask yourself, if you're in the business of winning hearts and minds, if someone likejk rowling has written a deeply personal piece in which she outlines very personal, painful experience of abuse, do you really think the way to win an argument for trans equality is to try and shut her down when she's made an argument in that context? so i think there's got to be a lot more empathy and understanding, and it does cut both ways. imean... just two seconds, there. for people listening to this, we're listening to the former head of education at stonewall. you are saying listen tojk rowling, hear her, understand her, don't cancel her? and it works the other way around. the end i would also say two very prominent feminist campaigners and people who are genuinely worried about sex—based rights, and you've got to take people at face value, people are worried and fearful and anxious, meet them there and try and address those concerns and take them on a journey. that's how you win hearts and minds. and i would also say to some of the prominent feminist campaigners who've used quite dehumanising language about trans people, it's so gratuitously obnoxious and deeply offensive, especially because we're talking about a group of people in the trans community who are not great in number. where they are great in number is when you look at those statistics on abuse and harm and pain and mental ill—health. and that's what i want to address. you are a politician shaped in stepney. yeah, that's definitely true. like a certain clem attlee. i will take that compliment! it makes a nice change from the criticism. for the record, listeners, you compared me to attlee, i am not comparing myself to attlee. next year is going to be another exciting one. wes streeting, thank you forjoining me. what makes the shadow health secretary remarkable is notjust extraordinary personal story but a rather unusual, unfashionable you might say, willingness to answer difficult question. we will see if that is the making or the breaking of him. thanks forjoining us. it will turn cold quickly be seen across the eastern side of england and wales, if you showers to move away then we will have clearer skies for a while, more cloud come in from the west, from the atlantic, bringing rain into western areas, by the end of the night ten beaches will have lifted across the eastern side of the uk, these territories by the end of the night, and early frost and eastern areas, especially around aberdeenshire. it looks a lot cloudy out for tomorrow, like rain or drizzle moving eastwards across england and wales, most wet weather in north—west with stronger wind, mainly north and western parts of scotland. temperatures higher than today, eastern side of the uk making eight celsius, further west double figures, could make 13 in northern ireland. not a great deal of rain to come, whetherfront ireland. not a great deal of rain to come, whether front moving ireland. not a great deal of rain to come, whetherfront moving down across the uk very weak, lingering, keeping cloud on tuesday in the far south, otherwise most places will see some sunshine. this is bbc news. the headlines at four. the education secretary for england backs reducing the covid isolation period from seven days to five. the australian government did not give assurances to novak djokovic that he could enter the country without a vaccination according to documents filed before tomorrow's court hearing. an afghan baby separated from his parents in kabul during the chaos of the us withdrawal is reunited with relatives. russian troops arrive in kazakhstan — there is relative calm there after six days of violence that killed 164 people. the golden globe awards take place tonight in hollywood — but there's no red carpet, no stars and it's not on tv. and it's a draw for england and australia in the fourth ashes test. england trail 3—0 in the series with one test to play.