Reform are a threat and could replace Tories as our rivals, says Streeting

Wes Streeting said yesterday Reform was a real threat and could replace the Conservatives as the main opposition party by the next election.

- Rowena Mason

The health secretary said Nigel Farage's party was being treated as a "serious opposition force" after local polls in which it narrowly won a byelection from Labour and took 677 council seats, gaining control of 10 town halls. Reform took most seats from the Conservatives, who lost 674.

Labour lost 187.

Speaking to the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg, Streeting said things "take time and you don't turn around a country... in just nine months".

He added: "All I'd say to people is: we've got the message, we're not daft, we haven't got our heads in the sand.

All I ask people for is a bit of time and to give us the benefit of the doubt...

We are going at those challenges as hard and fast as we can." He said Labour knew that people would "look for change elsewhere" if the country did not feel different by the next election and the government would "go further and faster" on safer streets, more secure borders, falling waiting lists and improvements in the cost of living.