JAN MOIR: Wes Streeting, his threat to throw me under a train – and his pompous, self-serving non-apology

Wes Straating and I. We go a long way back. We go back almost 15 years, me and Wes, and we do that too.

We never met, nor spoke on the phone, nor exchanged an electronic message, nor a single word or look. Yet we are still trapped here as one, an annoying fly on a spiral of glue paper, twisting in the wind.

I like to think this says more about him than it does about me, but you have to make a decision. I’m not here to convince anyone to vote either way, to take my side, or to choose Wes (right) politically or morally.

I gave all that up years ago. What I have learned is that people start to think what they want to think; they will follow their belief systems and coddle their own prejudices until they arrive at the assumptions they find most comfortable, whether based on truth or not.

But for Wes and me, our shared past is used as a weapon against us both, by those who wish to harm or do us both. And if the election is getting closer and the star of the ambitious Streeting is rising, things are getting worse. Jan and Wes’ unholy alliance is popping up more and more on social media and in newspapers, flaring up in bitter little fires across the great divide.

It’s gotten to the point where people often ask what I’m going to do about Wes Streeting and so far my answer has always been: nothing at all. However, standing still is no longer an option. I’ll have to talk about the fact that the current Minister of Health once publicly insinuated that he wanted to kill me.

“There would be nothing natural about Jan Moir’s death if I shoved that bigoted old bag under a train,” Wes Streeting once tweeted.

It happened after my column about pop star Stephen Gately was published in 2009 and was wrongly interpreted by many as homophobic. Infamously, it caused one of the very first Twitter storms and was front page news on TV bulletins for days, not that I’m proud of that. The column was investigated by the Press Complaints Commission, by the Met Police and also – good Lord – by the Crown Prosecution Service, which examined every word and comma to see if a crime had been committed.

The PCC did not rule that the column was homophobic, the police and the CPS both concluded that there was no reason to respond and, in my defence, it was not unlikely that someone who had been a journalist for over twenty years would publicly supported gay marriage and wrote thousands of articles without even a hint of homophobia, suddenly, like the alien that burst from John Hurt’s chest, turned into a raging homophobe overnight?

But Streeting thought he knew better. “There would be nothing natural about Jan Moir’s death if I shoved that bigoted old fart under a train,” he tweeted, managing to be viciously offensive, ageist and sexist in one sentence. Truly, I take off my Glenda cap to him; none of us professionals, the old fraternity as he might call us, would dare go for the triple crown of outright odium in so few words.

He was referring to my claim at the time that there was “nothing natural” about Gately’s death. What I meant was that the natural length of the 33-year-old’s life had been tragically shortened in a way that was shocking and extraordinary. Certainly his death was unusual enough to involve a coroner, and the reports all pointed to enthusiastic consumption of drink and drugs.

In my original, unpublished column I had referred to the kind of dangerous party drugs then popular in gay nightclubs that were becoming a public health problem – could they have been a factor?

A coalition of Mail executives and lawyers – acting with the best of intentions – removed these paragraphs because they felt they were in poor taste. I know. Cue blast from the world’s largest irony meter. This cut, which was intended with sincere compassion, only succeeded in giving the column a different complexion. It made it easier to negatively misinterpret my words if that’s what you wanted to do, and many people were – perhaps understandably so.

Ambitious Wes Streeting, photographed as a student, harbors leadership aspirations for Labour, writes Jan Moir

It will always be a matter of regret to me that the death of this innocent man became the subject of such feverish speculation – and that mistake is entirely my fault.

Still, I maintain that it was more homophobic to conclude that I had been homophobic, and if you want to be outraged about that, then be my guest. There is so much more I want to write and say about all these events, but this is neither the time nor the place. We’re here for Wes’ story.

Wes tweeted that he wanted to push me under a train, and later under a bus, so you can’t say the guy doesn’t know his way around public transportation.

He later compared me to Geert Wilders, the far-right Dutch politician who was on trial for discrimination and incitement to hatred at the time and who had been denied a visit to Britain. Come on, Wes. I admit that my column was poorly timed and poorly judged, but I am not trying to wipe Islam off the face of the earth.

It is becoming increasingly clear that Streeting’s ambitious ambitions harbor Labour’s leadership aspirations.

In light of this, he has come under pressure to apologize for his alarming history of offensive tweets against me and others.

In no particular order, he has threatened to hit people, hit people, “use a gun” on tax evaders and set fire to the flat of anyone who annoyed him.

Last month, during the London mayoral election, he tweeted that a victory for Conservative candidate Susan Hall would be a “victory for racists, white supremacists and Islamophobes around the world” — a disgusting and inflammatory claim that Hall said put her “in danger ‘ brought. and ‘in danger’.

Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer and health spokesman Wes Streeting could take control of the entire country in the not-too-distant future

‘I wish the Tories who lined up to condemn my tweet were as vocal in their call [sic] the abuse Sadiq (Khan) receives,” he measured on Twitter, a typical Wes

piece of creepy hurray. He has a way of apologizing without apologizing, of seeming contrite while actually doubling down

about his latest violent threat or absurd transgression.

He’s had to apologize for calling Jeremy Corbyn senile, for saying trans women are women, for changing his mind and now believing women can’t have a penis, so at least there’s some progress. In 2022, he exceeded all expectations by apologizing to a third person by proxy for what he had written about me. It was a contender’s masterstroke, an expression of regret that was really an orgy of apologies to no one but himself.

I was still “deeply homophobic, disgusting and offensive,” so nothing changes there, boohoo. However, his spokesperson insisted that poor, misunderstood Wes “regretted the way his anger and anger over this piece was framed.”

Real? What pompous, selfish nonsense. I understand why politicians need to muck out their stables every now and then, but is it entirely fair for Wes Streeting to burnish his reputation and try to make himself more electable and agreeable at the expense of myself and others he has abused?

Here he is, rushing for power, his hands outstretched as he prepares to take control of the NHS, the Labor Party and possibly even the entire country in the not-too-distant future.

Yes, you are right. It’s a terrifying thought. But not as devastating to me as the knowledge that, despite the lack of personal contact or consensus between Wes and I, our names are now and forever intertwined, a few tarnished links in a charmless bracelet of unfortunate circumstances.