Wes Streeting has stepped up his war of words with junior doctors by telling Labour MPs that strikes would be “a gift to Nigel Farage”.

In a hard-hitting speech to the Parliamentary Labour Party, the health secretary claimed ministers were “in the fight for the survival of the NHS“.

And he said that if Labour failed in its fight, the Reform UK leader would campaign for the health service to be replaced by an insurance-style system.

Mr Streeting‘s tough warning to Labour MPs came ahead of a showdown with the British Medical Association (BMA) this week in which he will call on the doctors to call off the strikes.

The BMA has announced plans for five days of strikes by resident doctors – formerly known as junior doctors – in England, which are due to begin on 25 July.

At a meeting in parliament at which he received a warm reception from Labour MPs, Mr Streeting said: “The BMA’s threats are unnecessary, unreasonable, and unfair.

“More than that, these strikes would be a gift to Nigel Farage, just as we are beginning to cut waiting lists and get the NHS moving in the right direction.

“What better recruitment agent could there be for his right-wing populist attacks on the very existence of a publicly funded, free at the point of need, universal health service? He is praying that we fail on the NHS.

“If Labour fail, he will point to that as proof that the NHS has failed and must now be replaced by an insurance-style system. So we are in the fight for the survival of the NHS, and it is a fight I have no intention of losing.”

The threatened strikes are in pursuit of a 29% pay rise that the BMA is demanding to replace what it claims is lost pay in recent years. The government has awarded a 5.4% pay increase this year after a 22% rise for the previous two years.

Earlier, appearing before the all-party health and social care committee of MPs, Mr Streeting said the strikes would be a “catastrophic mistake” and not telling employers about their intention to strike would be “shockingly irresponsible”.

He said BMA leaders seemed to be telling their members “not to inform their trusts or their employers if they’re going out on strike” and that he could not fathom “how any doctor in good conscience would make it harder for managers to make sure we have safe staffing levels”.

He said: “Going on strike having received a 28.9% pay increase is not only unreasonable and unnecessary, given the progress that we’ve been making on pay and other issues, it’s also self-defeating.”

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He said he accepted doctors’ right to strike, but added: “The idea that doctors would go on strike without informing their employer, not allowing planning for safe staffing, I think, is unconscionable, and I would urge resident doctors who are taking part in strike actions to do the right thing.”

Mr Streeting warned the strikes would lead to cancellations and delays in patient treatment and spoke of a family member who was waiting for the “inevitable” phone call informing them that their procedure would be postponed.

“We can mitigate against the impact of strikes, and we will, but what we cannot do is promise that there will be no consequence and no delay, no further suffering, because there are lots of people whose procedures are scheduled over that weekend period and in the period subsequently, where the NHS has to recover from the industrial action, who will see their operations and appointments delayed,” he said.

“I have a relative in that position. My family are currently dreading what I fear is an inevitable phone call saying that there is going to be a delay to this procedure. And I just think this is an unconscionable thing to do to the public, not least given the 28.9% pay rise.”

Reform UK is on the march.

Following a barnstorming performance in this year’s local elections, they are now the most successful political party on TikTok, engaging younger audiences.

But most of their 400,000 followers are men.

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I was at the local elections launch for Reform in March, looking around for any young women to interview who had come to support the party at its most ambitious rally yet, and I was struggling.

A woman wearing a “let’s save Britain” hat walked by, and I asked her to help me.

“Now you say it, there are more men here,” she said. But she wasn’t worried, adding: “We’ll get the women in.”

And that probably best sums up Reform’s strategy.

When Nigel Farage threw his hat into the ring to become an MP for Reform, midway through the general election campaign, they weren’t really thinking about the diversity of their base.

As a result, they attracted a very specific politician. Fewer than 20% of general election candidates for Reform were women, and the five men elected were all white with a median age of 60.

Polling shows that best, too.

According to YouGov’s survey from June 2025, a year on from the election, young women are one of Reform UK’s weakest groups, with just 7% supporting Farage’s party – half the rate of men in the same age group. The highest support comes from older men, with a considerable amount of over-65s backing Reform – almost 40%.

But the party hoped to change all that at the local elections.

Time to go pro

It was the closing act of Reform’s September conference and Farage had his most serious rallying cry: it was time for the party to “professionalise”.

In an interview with me last year, Farage admitted “no vetting” had occurred for one of his new MPs, James McMurdock.

Only a couple of months after he arrived in parliament, it was revealed he had been jailed after being convicted of assaulting his then girlfriend in 2006 while drunk outside a nightclub.

McMurdock told me earlier this year: “I would like to do my best to do as little harm to everyone else and at the same time accept that I was a bad person for a moment back then. I’m doing my best to manage the fact that something really regrettable did happen.”

He has since suspended himself from the party over allegations about his business affairs. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Later, two women who worked for another of Reform’s original MPs, Rupert Lowe, gave “credible” evidence of bullying or harassment by him and his team, according to a report from a KC hired by the party.

Lowe denies all wrongdoing and says the claims were retaliation after he criticised Farage in an interview with the Daily Mail, describing his then leader’s style as “messianic”.

The Crown Prosecution Service later said it would not charge Lowe after an investigation. He now sits as an independent MP.

A breakthrough night

But these issues created an image problem and scuppered plans for getting women to join the party.

So, in the run-up to the local elections, big changes were made.

The first big opportunity presented itself when a by-election was called in Runcorn and Helsby.

The party put up Sarah Pochin as a candidate, and she won a nail-biting race by just six votes. Reform effectively doubled their vote share there compared to the general election – jumping to 38% – and brought its first female MP into parliament.

And in the Lincolnshire mayoral race – where Andrea Jenkyns was up for the role – they won with 42% of the vote.

The council results that night were positive, too, with Reform taking control of 10 local authorities. They brought new recruits into the party – some of whom had never been involved in active politics.

‘The same vibes as Trump’

Catherine Becker is one of them and says motherhood, family, and community is at the heart of Reform’s offering. It’s attracted her to what she calls Reform’s “common sense” policies.

As Reform’s parliamentary candidate for Hampstead and Highgate in last year’s general election, and now a councillor, she also taps into Reform’s strategy of hyper-localism – trying to get candidates to talk about local issues of crime, family, and law and order in the community above everything else.

Jess Gill was your quintessential Labour voter: “I’m northern, I’m working class, I’m a woman, based on the current stereotype that would have been the party for me.”

But when Sir Keir Starmer knelt for Black Lives Matter, she said that was the end of her love affair with the party, and she switched.

“Women are fed up of men not being real men,” she says. “Starmer is a bit of a wimp, where Nigel Farage is a funny guy – he gives the same vibes as Trump in a way.”

‘Shy Reformers’

But most of Reform’s recruits seem to have defected from the Conservative Party, according to the data, and this is where the party sees real opportunity.

Anna McGovern was one of those defectors after the astonishing defeat of the Tories in the general election.

She thinks there may be “shy Reformers” – women who support the party but are unwilling to speak about it publicly.

“You don’t see many young women like myself who are publicly saying they support Reform,” she says.

“I think many people fear that if they publicly say they support Reform, what their friends might think about them. I’ve faced that before, where people have made assumptions of my beliefs because I’ve said I support Reform or more right-wing policies.”

But representation isn’t their entire strategy. Reform have pivoted to speaking about controversial topics – the sort they think the female voters they’re keen to attract may be particularly attuned to.

“Reform are speaking up for women on issues such as transgenderism, defining what a woman is,” McGovern says.

And since Reform’s original five MPs joined parliament, grooming gangs have been mentioned 159 times in the Commons – compared to the previous 13 years when it was mentioned 88 times, despite the scandal first coming to prominence back in 2011.

But the pitfall of that strategy is where it could risk alienating other communities. Pochin, Reform’s first and only female MP, used her first question in parliament to the prime minister to ask if he would ban the burka – something that isn’t Reform policy, but which she says was “punchy” to “get the attention to start the debate”.

‘What politics is all about’

Alex Philips was the right-hand woman to Farage during the Brexit years. She’s still very close to senior officials in Reform and a party member, and tells me these issues present an opportunity.

“An issue in politics is a political opportunity and what democracy is for is actually putting a voice to a representation, to concerns of the public. That’s what politics is all about.”

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Luke Tryl is the executive director of the More In Common public opinion and polling firm, and says the shift since the local elections is targeted and effective.

Reform’s newer converts are much more likely to be female, as the party started to realise you can’t win a general election without getting the support of effectively half the electorate.

“When we speak to women, particularly older women in focus groups, there is a sense that women’s issues have been neglected by the traditional mainstream parties,” he says. “Particularly issues around women’s safety, and women’s concerns aren’t taken as seriously as they should be.

“If Reform could show it takes their concerns seriously, they may well consolidate their support.”

According to his focus groups, the party’s vote share among women aged 18 to 26 shot up in May – jumping from 12% to 21% after the local elections. But the gender divide in right-wing parties is still stark, Tryl says, and representation will remain an uphill battle for a party historically dogged by controversy and clashes.

A Reform UK spokesman told Sky News: “Reform is attracting support across all demographics.

“Our support with women has surged since the general election a year ago, in that time we have seen Sarah Pochin and Andrea Jenkyns elected in senior roles for the party.”