Wes Streeting has said he felt like he was “hitting up against a brick wall” when he raised concerns about the war in Gaza while he served at the heart of Government.
The former health secretary’s claim comes after WhatsApp messages published on Monday revealed Lord Peter Mandelson had accused Mr Streeting of being “hysterical” about the conflict, which is believed to have resulted in the deaths of more than 70,000 people.
In messages released as part of the second cohort of the Mandelson files, the peer criticised Mr Streeting’s stance on Gaza while in discussion with senior minister Pat McFadden.
“Morally and politically, I think we need to join France (in recognising Palestine),” Mr Streeting said, in one message to Lord Mandelson.
He suggested Israel was engaging in “rogue state behaviour” and added, “let them pay the price as pariahs with sanctions applied to the state, not just a few ministers”.
The following day Lord Mandelson told Mr McFadden: “I received a wild long hysterical message from Wes about Israel. I pushed back. I can forward but reflects pretty badly on his maturity in my view.”
Mr McFadden responded: “He is very active on the MPs WhatsApp groups on this subject.”
Lord Mandelson later described Mr Streeting’s intervention as “pathetic” and added: “I think Wes is experiencing an early mid-life crisis.”
In a statement to the Guardian on Tuesday, Mr Streeting said he was “horrified by the war in Gaza”.
The newspaper reported that a note to the Cabinet about Gaza referenced in correspondence between Lord Mandelson and Mr McFadden was a dossier from three doctors laying out their experiences of working under Israeli bombardment in the Palestinian territory.
The dossier included multiple graphic images of children injured in the war, as well as claims by the doctors that half of all the casualties they saw coming in were children, the Guardian said.
In his statement to the newspaper, Mr Streeting added: “In Government, I did everything I could behind the scenes to get the Government to act with the moral urgency the conflict demands. That included sharing the eyewitness testimony of doctors on the ground in Gaza, whose accounts needed to be heard at the highest levels of Government to ensure that what was happening in Gaza wasn’t a war without witnesses.
“I wasn’t by any means the only Cabinet minister pushing for action, but we often felt like we were hitting up against a brick wall. Our concerns and motives were dismissed.”
Mr Streeting said he had “always supported Israel’s right to defend itself and Palestinians’ right to a state of their own”.
He added: “I’ve met survivors of October 7 and was the first shadow cabinet minister to visit Israel. I visited the West Bank a decade ago, I called for sanctions on Israeli settlements when I was a backbencher – this wasn’t some emotional or one-sided reaction; it is what I and other ministers believe.
“I was proud to be part of the Government that eventually recognised a Palestinian state, but we took far too long to get there.”
