Wes Streeting’s 22 months in office was characterised by relentless media interviews, newspaper editorials and Department of Health and Social Care press releases. They portrayed a dynamic health secretary who was clearing up the mess he inherited in the NHS, pushing ahead with radical changes and making progress on what matters most to patients – accessing care when they need it.

Having initially declared the NHS “broken” – by the Conservatives – it is six months since he first declared that the health service was now, on his watch, “on the road to recovery” – a claim he has made regularly since. He included the gist of it again – a sort of greatest hits collection – in his resignation letter to Keir Starmer at lunchtime on Thursday.

The NHS’s target for reducing patients’ waits for planned hospital treatment in England?…