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