Zack Polanski, not Wes Streeting, should be Britain’s first gay Prime Minister

Like many LGBT+ people, I’ve spent my whole life hoping I’d live to see the day an openly gay Prime Minister moved into 10 Downing Street.

Now, there is a very real possibility of it happening – and it couldn’t feel further from the celebratory moment once imagined.

Wes Streeting, never shy about his ambition to take the top job, has reportedly told Sir Keir Starmer that he is ready to replace him after local election results proved apocalyptic for Labour. 

It has become abundantly clear that, despite his big relaunch speech this morning, Starmer cannot lead Labour into the next election, and the party is desperate for an entirely new direction. 

But I don’t think Streeting is the man to take us there. 

For a start, if Peter Mandelson casts a shadow over Starmer, Streeting isn’t exactly in the clear.

Mandelson was a horrifying representative of the LGBTQ+ community, using his sexuality to claim he was unaware of the activities of peadophile Jeffrey Epstein. 

Streeting may have played down their relationship since Mandelson was sacked as the UK’s ambassador to the US, but the chummy WhatsApp messages the Health Secretary shared suggest otherwise. 

Now, with Starmer on the brink, replacing him with someone also tainted by the Mandelson scandal would be self-defeating for Labour. 

But for me, it’s more than that. Streeting represents the same betrayal that lifelong Labour voters like me have felt under Starmer: a party far more interested in appearing electable to the centre than putting working-class people first.

Not only do I believe he is incapable of rebuilding Labour, but if he were to become Britain’s first openly gay Prime Minister, it would be a cause for concern, not celebration, for so many LGBT+ people. 

Those of us who yearned for that moment, in the hope that, after decades of persecution and marginalisation, the highest office in the country might one day be held by someone who understood our struggles and embodied the compassion, solidarity and courage that define our community.

One of our own as Prime Minister should be someone who respects and defends every part of the LGBTQ+ community, not someone willing to sacrifice the most vulnerable among us in pursuit of political ambition.

For me, Streeting has done more damage to the LGBT+ community as Health Secretary than some of our loudest political opponents. JK Rowling might have a platform, but Streeting has the power.

At the first available opportunity, he threw the trans community under the bus – defending the indefinite ban on puberty blockers for trans children and describing their previous use as a ‘scandal’.

He has suggested trans women should be excluded from single-sex female hospital wards, pledging trans-inclusive spaces, but in my view furthering a narrative that parts of our community are a threat to others. 

Streeting was also quick to retreat from his previous assertion that ‘trans women are women’.

Whatever your position on that emotive issue, it should be deeply concerning that someone can U-turn so drastically – and with such gusto – in pursuit of electability. 

It reflects one of the defining problems with this Labour Party, particularly for the LGBTQ+ community, when we have welcomed its leading figures to march with us at Pride only for turn their backs on us when it becomes convenient. 

Green Party leader Zack Polanski may not be without his red flags, but his integrity and determination to fight for his community embodies everything I once hoped to see in the first LGBTQ+ Prime Minister.

One of the things I have always loved most about the LGBT+ community is our solidarity: the understanding that we survive by fighting for one another, especially when the world has so often told us we do not belong.

If I ever see the day an LGBT+ person Prime Minister walks through the door of Downing Street, I want it to be someone who reflects that spirit – someone who understands that progress means lifting all of us, not abandoning the most vulnerable for political convenience.

Wes Streeting has spent years proving he is not that person. He is not the Prime Minister our community has dreamed of, and he is not the Prime Minister the country needs.

He has repeatedly shown that he places his own political ambition above the needs of the LGBTQ+ community at a time when many of us are increasingly frightened that the rights we have fought so hard for are being eroded away.

Many of us trusted Labour and voted for them in good conscience at the general election because they offered hope – hope that they would be different, and that they would always treat queer people with respect and dignity.

Streeting was one of the first to break that trust, and the damage feels irreparable.

Should he replace Starmer, I fear I will look at Britain’s first openly LGBTQ+ Prime Minister with the same disappointment with which I have viewed every Prime Minister since Gordon Brown.

It will not be a landmark moment. 

It will feel like the end of the hope that one day a Prime Minister might embody our community, not betray it. 

At least, until Zack Polanski walks through the door of Number 10. 

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk. 

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