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Will Clive Peedell reply to Andy Burnham’s tweet?
It’s fairly well known that Ed Miliband is firmly fixed on the general election in the UK, to be held on May 7th 2015.
But, of course, he is aware of the impact that the European Elections can have, which can act as a useful barometer of the level of unpopularity at the current political incumbents.
On 29 December 2013, Andy Burnham MP tweeted at the NHA Party to ‘RT if you agree‘ if there needed to be a “broad campaign against market forces”:
It received 454 RTs.
But it did come across Clive Peedell’s RADAR. Clive is the co-chair of the National Health Action Party.
It was shared by Clive the same day in fact.
It received 20 RTs.
Clive has 12.1K followers.
Andy has 54.9 K followers.
To my knowledge, I don’t think the NHA Party or Clive ever took up Andy on the offer or replied to the tweet (but I could be wrong.)
But here, Louise Irvine, MEP candidate for the European Elections, who was the lead for the Save Lewisham campaign against Jeremy Hunt in the High Court and the Court of Appeal clearly has many of the same reservations as Labour and Andy Burnham.
Irvine is critical of how clause 118 (now clause 119), a legislative step would allow ‘unaccountable bureaucrats’ to make decisions about NHS reconfigurations, and an “acceleration of privatisation”.
She is also highly critical of the EU-US ‘free trade agreement’, which will ‘lock in privatisation, whereby ‘private companies could sue the British government”.
“Labour is in a muddle. It is a partly committed to the NHS, but feels it can flirt with privatisation.”
But Andy Burnham MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Health, recently rocked up at the Bermondsey Village Hall in 12th April 2014.
Burnham argued that “we need MEPs to protect the NHS from the EU-US free trade treaty.”
Burnham made special reference to the Lewisham campaign, mentioning a key campaigner in his speech, calling it a ‘famous victory… which was a message to an arrogant government.”
He also spoke of ‘unprecedented pressure in A&E’ in London, due to “massive cuts in primary care”.
And 8 mins 4 secs in, Burnham began a massive tirade on the aspects of the EU-US free trade treaty which he argued would damage our interests in the NHS:
“I have said that, before, even I think we let the market in too far into the NHS.”
“We can’t carry on letting this happen, or if – we do – it will devour the NHS and everything that is precious about it.”
“That’s why I am absolutely clear that the NHS has to be seen as a ‘preferred provider’. We repeal the Health and Social Care Act (2012).”
“Labour proudly stands for a public NHS again. That’s where we should be, and there’s where I want you to be too, fighting the privatisation.”
“That’s important for the European elections too. If we don’t get the European Parliament with our MEPs in it, the threat goes up to an whole different level.”
“Why? Our ability to protect the NHS moves to fall out of our hands. Why? – it’s because of this trade treaty that is being negotiated in Brussels right now; it’s between the EU and US which has some positive aims but, if it stays at it is, it could have the effect of opening up the NHS to US corporate entities.”
In the second Farage-Clegg debate on the BBC, Farage was vehemently anti-multinational corporations, but Burnham later remarks that UKIP have said previously the NHS should be ‘put out to tender’.
Burnham continues, “The issue – it’s the combination of the two entitires. The Health and Social Care Act having exposed the NHS to the full glare of the EU competition law, and then the US-EU free trade treaty, and then we are in a totally different world, and our ability, as I say, to protect the NHS has gone. It’s that serious.”
Burnham then talks about his ‘good hearing’ to argue for an exemption for the NHS from this legislation.
“They’ve said that the NHS should be in the scope of the EU-US free trade treaty. The LibDems have said nothing.”
The National Health Action Party appears to have blamed Labour too for contributing to the privatisation of the NHS.
However, it is currently unclear whether the Party as a whole is grandstanding as a protest vote in a ‘plague on all your houses’ way, or is offering constructive solutions to move things forward.
Clive Peedell has often spoken about his shared vision of Bevan for a public NHS.
Many of us in Labour like Clive much, so it will be interesting how things progress from here.
And why shouldn't we have multinational election campaigners to deal with a legacy of multinational corporations?
As UKIP representatives get an ever increasingly easy ride on TV sofas and in radio studios, pardon the imagery, one is left wondering what the fixation is in with the better relationship with Europe.
This is particularly timely, as we keep on being told about the benefits of globalisation.
Take for example, your video from China, your iPad from China, your TV from China, and your lamb burger from Korea.
The argument for the European Union was made by Nick Clegg.
It therefore was doomed for failure.
Clegg, fresh from his recent successes in the AV referendum and boundary changes, said that the five-year event horizon for the European Union was “much the same”.
Rather than talking about employment rights for unfair dismissal, neoliberal Clegg found enough muster to sing the praises of ‘roaming charges’.
The NHS has recruited from abroad at the top. Simon Stevens was at the top of a US multinational health corporation. The latest glitzy plan is to send the NHS’ top 50 executives to Harvard Business School.
But in fairness Stevens should be able to spot certain issues, one would think.
Cherrypicking.
Race to the bottom cost-wise.
Profitability.
How to give contracts, such as in technology or innovation, to the private sector.
How to have large companies feeding off underpaid workers with zero hour contracts in the care sector.
And so it shouldn’t be any different for the Labour Party.
There’s never any shortage of money for war, but we shut down hospitals with glee.
Thou shalt not kill, except when George Bush tells you to.
Everytime I think of market forces, I think of cardboard boxes under Waterloo Bridge.
There’s no doubt that the free market has left a legacy.
This is not a legacy of ‘liberalising’ you as Steve Webb MP, pensions minister, sounded this week, in telling you how wonderful the pension industry might predict when you can die.
This is because Government increasingly is being populated by trumped up multinational junkies.
There’s no democracy any more. We’re simply represented by politicians.
And so it should not be any surprise that Labour has turned to the US for insights into the legacy left by multinational companies.
Yes, inequality is an anticipated result of fragmented private markets.
The failure of trickle down economics has been known for decades.
So Labour will undoubtedly like to feed into this through the Axelrod Effect.
But will they, once elected, go back to standing up for the concerns of hardworking people in the City?
Is the answer my friend blowing in the wind?
If Ed Miliband loses the General Election on May 7th/8th 2015, he’ll be toast.
It would change the mood music enormously. Dan Hodges would say something to the effect of ‘I told you so’. Len McCluskey might pull a rabbit out of his hat.
I know many people amongst grassroots Labour supporters and members, though, who would defend Ed Miliband to the hilt.
They dismiss criticism of him as ‘weird’ as merely a red herring, to be expected of smear campaigns.
They remind us that geeks will inherit the earth (though no-one can remember quite who said this – was it Jarvis Cocker?)
We’ve been told on numerous occasions to be patient for the meticulous deliberations of the Labour policy reviews. But there has been concern that the outcome might be the bland leading the bland, and is ideologically of no fixed abode.
Bill Bailey, the star of Black Books, predicting the results of the general election in 2015, he described Labour leader Ed Miliband, rather unflatteringly, as being “like a plastic bag caught in a tree.”
“No one knows how he got up there and no one can be bothered to get him down,” he said.
Bailey, who had appeared in Labour’s 2010 general election broadcasts, spoke about his growing dissatisfaction with the Labour party earlier this year.
“I find them increasingly frustrating because there seems to be a lack of direction,” he said in January.
The problem here is that this plastic bag might suddenly get blown off course with a forceful gust of wind. This bag could lead Labour into an ideological outer space, though it probably is more helpful of it potentially spending some time in the wilderness.
Ed Miliband, one knows, is capable of populist campaigns, such as on phone hacking or energy prices. But it is unclear whether these cumulatively lead to a sustained strategy.
David Cameron, love him or loathe him, does find it easy to score easily political points, such as this week reminding Miliband that he’s the first leader of the Opposition asking for someone’s resignation after he or she has resigned.
In as much Ed Miliband, or Labour, can be criticised, one of the key problems seems to be that, despite having had a clear success on energy prices, they do appear to lag sometimes on key political narratives.
One example is welfare, conceding a ‘benefit cap’ after the Conservatives. A second totemic issue is the economy, advocating a need for austerity, despite considerable opposition from a sizeable proportion of the membership of the Labour Party.
The Labour Party also seems to drift with ideological mist and fog on other key issues, such as privatisation. It complains about the operational mechanism of the flotation, though having been in favour of the Royal Mail privatisation.
Underlying this unease for Labour is that they should miles ahead in the polls by now. And yet they seem unable to fix their nails to the mast over issues they should have decided a long time ago. What are they going to do about the private finance initiative in hospitals? Also, do they agree with High Speed 2 while endorsing ‘efficiency savings’ in the NHS?
This might appear as if Ed Miliband wants to reveal all the ‘goodies’, such as proposals for a national living wage, nearer the time. But by that stage they might be so far down their chosen path that the plastic bag is likely to be blown away at any second.
There is no doubt that many people want Ed Miliband to succeed. There is no doubt that this current Government has not only made massive operational errors, but they have a nasty ‘out of touch’ image which refuses to go away.
But Ed Miliband knows that this will be insufficient to win a massive landslide on its own. He is personally liked by many, and is known to be far from trivial in his political outlook. He has also begun to identify something highly potent as an idea: that unfettered markets cannot always be trusted to work for the public good.
Ed Miliband needs to ‘go back to basics’. This doesn’t require open letters from think tanks. This requires common sense on his part, such as listening to and acting upon concerns of disabled citizens. This means listening to and acting upon the concerns of those citizens who find them insecure in any form of under-employment.
It’s actually low hanging fruit on the same tree with that same plastic bag. One is hoping that Ed Miliband is looking in the right direction.
NHS campaigners know that state ownership is ‘box office’ stuff, and a perfect way to win hearts not just minds
Labour’s business spokesman, Chuka Umunna, uttered in January 2014: ‘The big difference between 1979 and 2013 is that we are all capitalists now.’ Is he right? Have the Thatcher and New Labour years changed everyone? And the Guardian ran a poll to see if their readers agreed with him.
In response to Ed Miliband’s conference speech last year, Jonathan Freedland mentioned that he had witnessed “a new and emerging strain of left populism”. For Freedland, “It confirms Miliband’s larger ambition: not merely to win power the Blair/Brown way, within parameters set by Conservatism, but to redraw those lines, to shift the centre ground itself leftward.”
Today, Simon Stevens takes over the rôle from Sir David Nicholson of leading NHS England. It is known that Stevens used to be a SpAd to Frank Dobson MP, a former Labour Secretary of State for the Health. It is alleged that he used to be, at least, a member of the Socialist Health Association. It is clear that there is some sort of crisis on the right about the unpopularity of privatisation, for example this short piece by Ryan Bourne is head of economic research at the Centre for Policy Studies. Latterly, I’ve felt the public respond very well to emotions-based campaigning rather than cognition-based campaigning. For example, rather than thinking for ages about whether it ‘matters’ whether the NHS is ‘operationally delivered’ by private companies, the general public are more concerned about ‘State assets being sold off’, or even private and public limited companies ‘are able to profit out of your illness’. But there is an overlap: privatised railways can offer poor value for the consumer in a fragmented service, whereas people intuitively like the idea of a nationally-run well-organised State-run transport service.
So it is therefore noteworthy that ex-Employment lawyer, and poster boy for responsible capitalism, is so critical of the Royal Mail sell off. Royal Mail for many epitomises the best aspects of socialism – i.e. it sends as much to send a first class letter to Crewe as it does to Cowes. Companies, thus far, had not been bickering on who is actually going to deliver the letters – who funds for the postman. So Chuka Umunna’s standpoint of criticising the Royal Mail flotation is clearly bound to be anaemic for socialists in comparison. And yet it’s clear that the privatisation of Royal Mail has benefited hardworking hedgies. Vince Cable said it had achieved its primary objective of selling the shares and reducing the risk to taxpayers, but the inherent risk in privatising NHS services, defined as fielding out them to the private sector, is surely greater? Calls for the resignation of Vince Cable, a former socialist, came after the National Audit Office said too much emphasis was put on rushing the sale, at the expense of value for money. Royal Mail shares are more than 70% higher than the 2013 sale price. Billy Hayes, general secretary of the Communication Workers Union, said it was a “botched, panic sale” and the business secretary “should consider his position”. The anger for many is that Royal Mail had become profitable in the public sector, and now transferring it to the private sector will in reality benefit certain stakeholders predominantly.
As opposed to the NHS ‘sale of the century’, it’s been mooted that new era of public ownership of the railways could save the Treasury more than £1bn a year and deliver improved services and lower rail fares for passengers. England’s fragmented railway system be gradually brought back into public hands as franchises expire or companies break the terms of their franchise agreement. This movement had intensified after the TSSA union argued that Network Rail bosses could earn more than £10m in bonuses over the next three years under a new scheme – as well as RMT figures showing that 65% of Britain’s rail operators are owned by overseas companies, with 60% owned by European state rail arms. Since privatisation nearly 20 years ago, the cost of train travel has risen by 17% compared to a 7% drop in the cost of motoring, while in recent years the bill for the taxpayer of running the trains has shot up by 2 to 3 times.
The “Great Train Robbery” is said to be a blatant transfer of public money to private interests at the expense of the taxpayer and rail passengers, who are forced to endure the consequences of a deeply complex and fragmented system while ticket prices get bigger and bigger. And going back to the ‘raw emotions’ of it it’s known that Clem Attlee was a hugely popular Labour Prime Minister, and saw the benefits of state ownership. Attlee became prime minister on 26 July 1945 as the leader of a Labour party that had won a landslide general election victory with a majority of 144 seats. His government was a transformational one. Its strategy of maintaining high levels of employment, with major industries under public ownership, was the governing model in post-war British politics until Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government of 1979–90. And political parties do appear to swop ideologies – take for example George Osborne’s nostalgic return to full employment yesterday. Hot fast emotions are likely to make more impact than cold decision making, as recently discussed in the celebrated book “Thinking fast and slow” by Daniel Kahneman.
Tony Benn MP, much revered in recent days, was very scathing about the term ‘responsible capitalism’ in his final set of diaries, “An autumn blaze of sunshine”. Some call ‘responsible capitalism’ an oxymoron, as ‘responsible’ implies moral accountability while capitalism is driven by self-interest. Others insist that it defines the state’s obligation to balance social justice with individual freedom. And this is not trivial, as private investors seek to ‘pick winners’ through offering long-term debt finance through ‘social impact bonds’ for social enterprises. In truth, behind a bland phrase lurk there is quite a fierce discussion we mean by “socially responsible.” In Bush’s view, “socially responsible” means that large corporations should provide more jobs, pay better wages, compensate host communities for the burdens of resident corporations, stop polluting, and so on. And there is no doubt right to call these goals and objectives desirable. But Ed Miliband should not set his sights on ‘Being George Bush’ in a crazy form of ‘Stars in your Eyes’. NHS campaigners know that state ownership is ‘box office’ stuff, and a perfect way to win hearts not just minds. We may not be all capitalists now.
Should Lord Warner be finally expelled from the UK Labour Party?
It’s very important that people who bring the party into disrepute are expelled from the Labour Party. Imagine David Cameron’s delight if he were able to ask Ed Miliband how his plans to introduce a £10 fee were going? For squeaky clean Miliband this would be the worst thing to happen, after he has been agonising over policy for years, with some sort of climax at last expected in the National Policy Forum later this year. There isn’t much which unites the main political parties on the NHS, although critics of privatisation feel that they have a lot of neoliberal missions in common. However, one theme which they are all keen to be seen to be promoting is a NHS free at the point of need. David Nicholson, whose last week it is this week, has consistently said that he has thought that top up fees are likely to be kicked into the long grass.
Good people have been expelled from the Labour Party before. With Labour in opposition Bevan’s patience with the Labour leadership, which he saw as timid and unambitious, ceased. In the years running up to the Second World War, Bevan established a reputation as a left-wing rocket. He became the parliamentary scourge of both the Tory party and the Labour leadership. Bevan’s fierce attacks on the official Labour line even led to his expulsion from the party for most of 1939. More than sixty years later, in 2003, George Galloway was expelled from the Labour party after being found guilty of four of the five charges of bringing the party into disrepute. On the fifth charge – urging voters in Plymouth not to vote Labour – Mr Galloway was acquitted. You can argue until the cows come home whether pretending to be a cat with Rula Lenska on Big Brother was ‘a step too far’, but many people have had enough with Lord Warner’s antics. While he has the Labour whip, he is able to tour TV studios as some sort of quasi spokesperson of Labour, and give the impression that his ideas of jet-propelled privatisation have some sort of traction in the Miliband Labour Party. Miliband may feel sympathetic to Warner’s views for all I know, and that is why he doesn’t want to expel him. But if on the other hand he feels that expelling him is the best way to protect the founding principles of Labour, and universality of the NHS is a totemic one, Miliband may be forced to expel Warner at last.
There is something much more sinister at play here. The revolving door between government and the private consultancies gives ample opportunity for political influence by the consultancies private sector clients. There’s a whole host of people who come of jobs in government only to advise private equity and venture capital companies. The private sector clients include not just private healthcare firms and pharmaceutical companies, but telephone and IT companies, data collectors, private care home congolmerates, insurers and financial brokers. Expelling Warner from the Labour Party would serve to clip his wings in policy downstream. He is at risk of bringing Labour into disrepute over his NHS views in the future, because he “has form”.
In June 2006, during a Labour government (strictly speaking a Blair government elected under the name of Labour), it was reported that a secret plan to privatise an entire tier of the NHS in England was revealed prematurely when the Department of Health asked multinational firms to manage services worth up to £64bn. The department’s commercial directorate had placed an advertisement in the EU official journal inviting companies to begin “a competitive dialogue” about how they could take over the purchasing of healthcare for millions of NHS patients. At the time, a certain Lord Warner, then a health minister, defended the policy in a statement; he said he was withdrawing the advertisement to correct “a drafting error”, but insisted the contracting out of NHS management would go ahead. The advertisement asked firms to show how they could benefit patients if they took over responsibility for buying healthcare from NHS hospitals, private clinics and charities. The plan would give private firms responsibility for deciding which treatments and services would be made available to patients – and whether NHS or private hospitals would provide them. This is critical now as Andy Burnham seeks to establish Labour as the party which can ‘save the NHS’, despite appearing to support the private sector through ISTCs and PFI in the past.
At the time, Lord Warner said: “The government has no plans to privatise the NHS.” He added that the contract advertised in the official journal would give PCTs access to expert help to improve commissioning of services, without going through expensive and time-consuming local tenders. But this is an ongoing lie of many, who are either stupid or malicious. Fast forward a few years, and Lord Warner announced he would vote against the Labour party in a key vote in the House of Lords on proposed NHS regulations that the opposition says will allow companies to bid for almost all health services. And he did.
Despite a three-line whip in the House of Lords on a so-called fatal motion to kill the government’s controversial NHS regulations, the former health minister Norman Warner said he would vote with the Conservative and Liberal Democrat peers. The question must be: why wasn’t the whip withdrawn then? Sources close to Burnham described Warner’s intervention as “unhelpful” and pointed out that “he has a track record to consider”, noting that Warner was the only Labour peer not to vote against the government’s sweeping changes to the health system. Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband should consider having ‘crisis talks’ to expel Lord Warner from the party now.
And now, in his latest stunt, everyone should pay a £10-a-month fee to use the NHS. Lord Warner called for the levy to be paid before anyone could benefit from free treatment. Patients should also be charged £20 for every night they stay in hospital, he added. Absolutely no thought has been put into the administrative cost of this exercise. Lord Warner, who previously advised Tony Blair on health reform, said the NHS was ‘unaffordable’, ‘out-of-date’ and unable to meet the needs of the population. Simon Stevens who takes over from David Nicholson very imminently, who also in a previous life had advised the Blair administration of “New Labour” before joining the leadership of a multinational, will wish publicly to distance himself from such comments, especially if Labour withdraws the whip. In a report written for the Reform think-tank, he estimated that a monthly £10 charge for using the NHS would generate £2billion a year. But Reform have been lobbing these moves, designed to pave the way for a private insurance-based system, for years. Lord Warner has referred to the fact there needed to be a ‘tough conversation with the public’ about new ways of funding the Health Service, but the tough conversation which must be had now is by Ed Miliband and Andy Burnham to expel him from the Labour Party.
Labour can make political weather on the NHS, but it shouldn’t be thrown off track by gale force winds
Political decisions will always be made, but are unlikely to be representative if certain people don’t wish to be part of the political process.
It is hard to know what has caused a decline in political engagement, but politicians not appearing to listen might be a major factor. The social media has empowered a plurality of opinions, which means that it is less easy for politicians to speak with a collective voice on issues. The traditional narrative is that people ultimately care about the economy, as economic competence is the sort of issue which can make or break political parties. However, it’s very likely that residents of Lewisham care about local hospital closures, and hospital campaigns can gain momentum and traction whatever the state of national politics.
Voices of Labour who are interested in social justice, solidarity, equality, equity, solidarity or cooperation are not in fact in a minority, whatever the current state of the Blairite arm of the political party. While think tanks prioritise concepts such as ‘accountability’ and ‘co-production’, authentic voices on the left do not feel that their brand of politics is irrelevant. The question inevitably arises – if the current party is doing what you want to do, why should you stand for election? It is possibly the case that many people will nonetheless vote for Labour, despite reservations on the ‘welfare cap’, because the modern political system does not offer them any realistic choice. ATOS were contracted to do welfare benefits in the last government, and it is likely that some other outsourcing company will assume the mantle.
Labour clearly will state that it is insufficient for political parties to lose elections for others to win them, and they should formulate coherent policies of their own. But likewise nobody will expect Ed Miliband to reveal his hand until much closer to the election. Many people do not come into contact with the NHS when young, although there are many who do, and it is possible that Labour will wish to hone its offering on general health issues as well as the National Health Service. The recent Clegg v Farage debates have highlighted some appetite for single issue politics, when charismatically explored in ‘leaders debates’.
The forthcoming European elections will give a good indicator as to the relevance of the NHS to people’s lives, arguably. The fate of Louise Irvine and Rufus Hound will possibly provide good clues as to whether people in the general public care as much about the NHS as much as NHS campaigners clearly do. The National Health Action Party – NHAP – to be national will need to have coverage throughout the country, but there has always been concern about whether they might realistically gain enough seats to prevent Labour from winning an overall majority. Nonetheless, this Party feels serious that the NHS is a major political issue, and it is a genuine policy issue what they feel they can achieve over and above what a Labour government might. It is possible that that the NHAP might prevent a Labour MP from being elected in Stafford. I met someone recently who was adamant that, with the right resources, NHAP could win in Stafford. Likewise, it’s possible that Clive Peedell could win against David Cameron in Witney, where arguably Labour do not have a realistic chance of winning.
With the second rabbit to come out of George Osborne’s hat in the form of pension reforms, the first being inheritance tax, it’s possible that Labour can’t take the running of the economy as a vote winner in the 2015 general election. Some people still blame Ed Balls as too intimately implicated in the economic policy of the last administration. It is therefore counterintuitive to imagine then that Labour will wish to ignore its potential strengths such as social justice. Despite the concerns over ISTCs and PFI in previous Labour government, and the events running to Mid Staffs, it is still controversial whether people feel strongly enough about Labour’s record not to vote for them. Even hardened Socialists might be keen to contribute to the election of a Labour government than to see the continuation of a Conservative one.
The £2.4 bn top down reorganisation resulting from the Health and Social Care Act (2012) is a major faultline in national policy. Most seasoned pundits are aware of the calamitous effects of competition on national policy, but it is far more likely that members of the general public are unconcerned about ‘section 75′. As sure as night follows day, it’s likely that Labour will oppose privatisation, but the logical conclusion of this is that it supports state ownership. Its inability to call for this publicly speaks volumes. And the people who argue that this country is fundamentally right-wing know they’re being economical with the truth. Unpopular policies from the right have included the astronomic pay of certain investment bankers, the cost of energy bills, the general failures of privatisation policies, perceived attacks on the welfare state, and an enthusiasm to introduce tuition fees in universities denying access-to-education. Whilst Labour is unlikely to voice loudly that ‘capitalism kills’, Labour potentially can make some political weather on the NHS and on health issues such as ‘whole person care’. This will require some strength in the leadership of the Labour Party, but it should not be thrown off course by the equivalent of gale-force winds.
For Labour, “going bland” is the only way they’ll hope to come to power? But it won’t work.
Did you read any of the party manifestos in 2010? The chances are you didn’t, if the experiences of most people are anything to go by. To give you some idea, I have in fact voted Labour continuously since 1992.
And yet it’s thought that the party manifestos potentially have a massive impact in influencing people’s opinions indirectly through political commentators. Commentators apparently wade through the documents and advise you on what it all means. If that is true, what happened last time? The NHS has just been through such a major change that Sir David Nicholson, retiring head of NHS England, said that the reorganisation could be seen from ‘outer space’. As many wellwishers come to London for socialist Tony Benn’s funeral, many also sympathise with how mute and supine the Labour Party have become. They are not a socialist party, just a front for a ragbag of incoherent corporate memes. The planks of free movement of capital and free movement of persons, despite the promises of ‘the living wage’ yet to be legislated for officially, are firmly running policy like letters in a stick of DNA. Under this ideology, you can easily expect socialist outlook for the NHS to be consigned to history in the movement of multinational companies making primary care more ‘efficient’ and ‘technologically with it’. Not all change is progress, and Labour’s reaction to the Budget last week demonstrated that it is happiest when doing limp and supine. It’s happiest when it’s doing nothing at all, but agreeing. It’s happiest when it’s taking it up the backside so hard it hurts.
It is happy to sign up to McKinsey £20 bn efficiency savings though apparently objects to billions to be returned to the Treasury without having gone into frontline care? It objects to social care cuts, and yet is offering no big money to implement whole person care or integrated care. It says that it wishes to repeal the Health and Social Care Act (2012), making the ‘current structures do different things’. This is perfectly laudable as it doesn’t want the NHS to undergo another random re-dis-organisation, but it means a number of tranches of policy get away unscathed. The loathed private finance initiative, which sets fair for NHS Trusts to go bust over loan repayments allowing top CEOs to pay off their mortgage by implementing ‘efficiency savings’, carries on regardless. This is the same policy which sees junior nurses fight on the frontline like infantry in the Somme. And when push comes to shove, the regulators are only there for the officials not the infantry, as evidenced as a trance-like hypnotic following of compassion, and a lack of sanctions by the General Medical Council even over ‘thousands of needless deaths’ as alleged numerous times.
So if whole person care is revolutionary why is Labour keeping key details under cover? Does it or does not include unified shared budgets. Labour has already set the mood music about the need for personal choice, and it may be more of a Big Bang in a Webb Pension-esque manner than we first anticipate. But unified shared budgets with one part of the service claiming to be free at the point of need and universal being in a forced marriage with an altogether different social-care service could mean it’s unclear what you end up paying for. Like pensions, it could be a case of ‘shop til you drop‘, but it doesn’t want to produce another ‘longest suicide note in history‘. That party manifesto for 1983, under the auspices of the socialist academic Michael Foot, is fairly widely accepted to have been a disaster, and ironically Steve Hilton and pals narrowly avoided the Conservative Party manifesto being longer in 2010. For Labour, “going bland” is the only way they’ll hope to come to power?
There’s a growing sense that Labour will not say anything provocative or radical in its need to ‘save the NHS’ for the general election in May 7th 2015. Take for example its solution for hospital closures. One can only assume that Labour approves of hospital closure in some form, as it would be impossible to reconfigure secondary care for the whole of the NHS in England otherwise. And currently Labour is facing a dilemma over how far to back George Osborne’s plans to let people take large lump sums out of their pensions, with Dame Anne Begg, the chairman of the Commons work and pensions committee, joining senior figures warning of unforeseen dangers in the proposals. But Labour has already decided to lie down and become supine on the need for austerity, offering some weird version of ‘austerity lite’, inflaming the Unions but keeping hardworking hedgies. And disabled citizens are left wondering why Labour took so long to harpoon ATOS and wonder why Labour would much rather talk of scroungers on benefits than sticking up for disabled citizens, some of whom have allegedly committed suicide in reaction to this Government’s outsourced implementing of benefit assessments.
Rachel Reeves, shadow work and pensions secretary, has confirmed her party “supports” the principle of the reforms announced by Osborne that would give people more control over their money. As far as being an uninspiring wonkish technocrat, Reeves is on excellent form. She said the party would “trust people to make sensible decisions” as long as the government offers reassurance that the reforms are fair, cost effective and give people access to the right advice. For “sensible decisions”, read “bland”, and you might as well vote for the Conservative Party while the Labour Party offers virtually the same package of dogwhistle politics inspired by their corproate masters. The pension reforms appear to have given the Tories a boost in the polls, but Steve Webb, a Lib Dem pensions minister, admitted “a lot of detail” in the chancellor’s plans still needs to be worked out. But it was this electoral viagra, but over the inheritance tax, which meant Gordon Brown woosing out and delaying the election that never was – and the rest is history as they say.
What is definitely now history is “The longest suicide note in history”, his party’s 1983 election manifesto, which was more left-wing than usual. “The New Hope for Britain” called for unilateral nuclear disarmament, withdrawal from the European Economic Community, abolition of the House of Lords, and the re-nationalisation of recently de-nationalised industries like British Telecom, British Aerospace, and the British Shipbuilding Corporation. The epithet referred not only to the orientation of the policies, but also to their marketing. Labour leader Michael Foot decided as a statement on internal democracy that the manifesto would consist of all resolutions arrived at its party conference. Roll on 30 years, and John Mills, who has given over £1.5 million of his shares in 2013 to the Labour party, and has emphatically disclosed his opinion that party head Ed Miliband is highly ‘boxed in’ with his economic stance on different policies. Mills has called for the party to adopt a more radical approach towards their future economic policy, orelse they risked offering very little to the public than the Conservative party in the upcoming general election.
Ed has defended his party’s current policies, arguing that they have been ‘standing up’ for a multitude of different work groups and classes, rather than the middle class and wealthy orientated policies of the coalition. But while wonky technocrats come in with their garbage on ‘coproduction’ and ‘accountability’, while demonstrating absolutely no knowledge or interest in the problems of the NHS or social care, let alone specific issues such as the ‘funding gap’, Labour still deserves one fate – to be consigned to history.
Socialist Tony Benn may have had a long wait before he sees his party ever coming to power again. Labour can only be a productive government over a few terms if it has a strong mandate to deliver distinctive policies it believes in. Social democrat Miliband still has a lot to prove, or the party will have to remind him that they, and the public, are more important than him.
Andy Burnham needs a mandate to secure the future of the NHS
The media are obsessed about making immigration a make-or-break issue for political parties. Column inches are devoted to UKIP totally disproportionately to the number of MPs they actually have.
While George Osborne will squeak his aspirations for hardworking people, ‘putting right what so badly wrong’, the country is less than impressed. He will ask for credit while doing his lap of honour, completely oblivious to the cost-of-living crisis forced upon the British public through unfettered privatisation of public services causing distorted competitive markets. However, Osborne doesn’t understand the distress of disabled human casualties at the hands of ATOS. He is instead obsessed by a race to the bottom which has made insignificant progress in tackling corporate tax avoidance. He has made little progress in the exploitation of workers in zero-hour contracts.
It is said that the civil service are already making plans for a Labour government on May 8th 2015. Anyone who has lived through Lord Kinnock asking ‘Are you all right?’ in the Sheffield Rally of 1992 will know not to count their chickens while they are still in the incubator.
Jeremy Hunt’s strategy of trying to frame Andy Burnham for all the woes of the NHS has spectacularly backfired. Hunt, trapped by the legacy of Lansley’s “Health and Social Care Act” which he dares not mention, gets nostalgic about Mid Staffs in the same way that motorway drivers slow down on the opposite carriageway at the sight of a car crash, but he has offered no constructive solutions about how efficiency savings don’t turn into dangerous staffing cuts. Hunt is also spectacularly lacking in insight as to why NHS whistleblowers don’t appear to be protected, despite all the promises. He talks and acts like somebody who has little experience of how the medical and nursing staff do their professional work and seems unconcerned about citizens losing their local hospitals.
The media have also been given a free run in running down the NHS. Memes such as ‘the NHS is unsustainable’ have gone unchallenged remorselessly, with think tanks known to be sympathetic to private health providers offering impassionate advice. The statement ‘the NHS is unsustainable’ has become dangerously confused with the statement ‘the NHS is underfunded’, with NHS Trusts running a deficit more of a sign of the notion we can’t afford the NHS rather than we’re giving it sufficient resources. Once you frame the narrative in these terms, it gets extremely dangerous for right-wing politicians. The debate no longer is about cutting your coat according to your cloth, a phenomenon clearly familiar to people with low incomes, but instead the debate turns into the people with the higher incomes in society not ‘pulling their weight’. The public seem keen to ‘out’ the nonsense of Osborne’s claim “we’re in it together”. And the right – even though there is no evidence that the left believe the opposite – certainly don’t want to go down the road to looking as if they’re unpatriotly running the country down “because we cannot afford it”.
And of course we are never going to be able to trust the Conservative administration when legislation appears from nowhere to implement a £2.4 bn reorganisation. We seem to be able to afford this, and yet we cannot afford a pay rise for the majority of nurses in the NHS. And if we can’t afford the NHS, how come many Trusts are running the bare minimum of frontdoor staff, while millions are returned unspent to the Treasury? Managers might be fulfilling their four hour target but medical teams in the rest of the hospital are left picking up the pieces over investigations not requested or results not followed up. For many, the economy and the cost of living crisis are huge issues. But the NHS also remains a totemic issue for Labour.
Andy Burnham needs to establish a few basic groundrules. He has pledged to repeal the loathesome Health and Social Care Act, and to remove clause 119 ‘the hospital closure clause’. He definitely needs to pledge to make sure that the NHS is not privatised further under his watch. He needs to be unashamed of securing an adequate level of funding, even despite the neoliberal fetishes of austerity currently.
This might stop ill-informed political commentators from spewing out their corporate memes for the duration of a Labour government. But time is running out – for those of us who wish to protect the NHS, we need to stop looking inwards, but need to start campaigning hard.
I think as far as the SHA is concerned Tony Benn was respectfully indifferent.
I’m a Bennite.
In the last few days, I’ve heard a lot of commentary from Blairites and supporters of the SDP criticising Tony Benn for making the Labour Party unelectable.
I have spent much time listening to all of his audiobooks again and again. Some of the analysis has been spot on: see for example the comments by Steve Richards. But some of it has been quite dreadful.
Tony Benn had a rare gift. Whatever your strong views on how much damage he did, maybe, he was very good at explaining his perspective, and not being ashamed of it. He boasted of talking with Keith Joseph and Enoch Powell, even though he profoundly disagreed with them.
There’s been a lot of ‘his eloquence was brilliant’.
For me, it’s worth saying he was a very good orator, but he had a clear vision. In terms of journalism, his copy was good. That’s why he was a charismatic leader – he had his own vision, and his own followers.
While the old tired arguments are rolled out about how his proposed industrial legislation was unworkable, and how he was in the dock of the unions like a weirdy cult, it cannot be dismissed that there are many who agree with him.
A lot of it can be seen as motherhood and apple pie stuff, but his feelings of solidarity, co-operation and social justice are clear cut.
He could negotiate even the most problematic issues for socialists.
On equality, he said famously on the radio that he did not feel this meant that everybody should be equal; this meant that “obstacles in your journey” should be removed, which would have made even the most erudite of commentators on social mobility blanche. You can hear him voice this comment in person in a programme recently presented by David Davis MP about the political outlook of Benn.
Tony Benn MP was never a member of the Socialist Health Association (SHA). I don’t think he would’ve been ‘sickened’ as such. It’s just that in close to seventy years of his diaries he never mentioned the Socialist Medical Association or SHA once.
I think as far as the SHA is concerned Tony Benn was respectfully indifferent.
Some of the more famous phrases which Benn uses to set out his viewpoint, which some feel produced an unworkable synthesis, I feel demonstrate what would have been his concerns about the modern day policy of the Labour Policy.
I am mindful he does in fact mention Prof Allyson Pollock and Dr Julian Tudor-Hart in his final set of diaries “An autumn blaze of sunshine” as people he likes.
I think he was therefore interested in the future direction of the NHS under Labour, the political party he always supported despite his parents being Liberals. It was his wish that he should see a Labour government next, and in fact he had his diary marked with the date of the 100th birthday he would ultimately never witness.
Tony Benn was not on an advocate of global markets, but rather an advocate of domestic sovereignty. He always believed in the concept of people being to vote out laws legislated for by elected officials. That’s why he resented the European parliament so much.
That’s why what he would thought about Andy Burnham MP going to Strasbourg next month to negotiate an opt out from TTIP is so interesting.
This is simply a personal view, and not meant to represent any views of anyone apart from me.
“If we can find the money to kill people, we can find the money to help people.”
This is directly relevant to all the endless talk, mainly under successive Conservative governments, that the NHS is unsustainable or unaffordable. And yet Benn used to remark often that you never hear of Generals running out of money to bomb citiess.
“In the course of her life, Mrs Thatcher took on half of the British population and tried to coerce them to her will and she did not succeed. But she was a conviction politician, a sign post not a weather cock; but one that I always felt was pointing the wrong way”
Tony Benn is reported as having said that the Labour Party is not inherently socialist, but there are socialists in it, in the same way there are Christians in the Church of England (according to him.) Nye Bevan was indeed a visionary, who has been rarely, if at all, been matched in calibre since. Benn often referred to the ‘spirit of ’45’ in which quite radical visions, such as the founding of the NHS, had been proposed.
“In the course of my life I have developed five little democratic questions. If one meets a powerful person – Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates – ask them five questions: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?” If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system.”
Accountability has always been a problem for the top echelons of the NHS, so I wonder what he would have made about the seeming lack of responsibility for disasters such as Mid Staffs. The official line was that it was inappropriate to ‘blame’ anyone for Mid Staffs, and that we should adopt a culture of learning from failure.
“I now want more time to devote to politics and more freedom to do so”
This, for me, is quite reminiscent of what friends of mine who are no longer on the Central Council of the SHA feel about their own personal continued devotion to a socialist NHS in contradistinction to the progress of the SHA.
Anthony Neil Wedgwood “Tony” Benn, PC (3 April 1925 – 14 March 2014)
Trust has become totemic for the NHS, so a promise to preserve it would pay dividends
The CEO of the English National Health Service, Sir David Nicholson, sent out a stark warning in the Guardian today:
“Public support in this country for our healthcare system is greater than in almost any other country in Europe, and that’s so important for a taxpayer-funded system. My worry is that if it gets worse, before you know it you get to a place where a minority of the people support it and then people who can afford to [do so] will go elsewhere for their healthcare. In those circumstances the question of how sustainable the NHS is becomes a much more difficult one to deal with. That’s my worry.”
Various aspects of what Nicholson has said have in the past made me conclude Nicholson is definitely a Socialist, and not merely a Social Democrat.
At the end of a recent interview with Jeremy Paxman, Nicholson referred to how a private insurance system based on complicated genetic diagnoses would simply not work for the healthcare system, referring to imminent issues such as the growth in prevalence of the dementias.
Some even say that the private healthcare companies do not wish themselves a private insurance system; in that, they currently benefit from having some of the work outsourced to them in a controlled manageable way.
Ed Miliband said two highly significant things yesterday.
One was that he would take NHS policy out of the claws of EU competition law.
That is going to be essential if Labour is to have a manageable approach to ‘whole peson care’ or integration.
“We recommend that the benefits are considered of a single regulator covering issues of both care and economics, whilst recognising that is not feasible at present. We believe that the Office for Fair Trading’s role in reviewing competition decisions should be withdrawn.”
With an eye-watering contract having been put out to tender only this week, it is going to be essential that the Government tightens up the law in this area, as integration might offend EU competition law.
The second thing which Miliband said, about electoral priorities in 2015, was equally interesting.
Miliband said he wanted the 2015 election to be about ‘the cost of living crisis’ and the NHS, and not whether he would hold a referendum on EU membership.
Whether or not the media will allow this to happen is another matter, but there has been considerable concern over NHS issues during the course of the parliament.
Firstly, Andrew Lansley against all the odds enacted his vanity project, now known as the Health and Social Care Act (2012); only this week, Jeremy Hunt managed to bring in his ‘fast track to hospital closure’ mechanism in the Care Bill.
As long as contracts continue to go out to the private sector, Miliband will be unable to pledge no further privatisation of the NHS. Labour can pledge to repeal the Health and Social Care Act and Clause 119, but this is different.
If the Labour government wishes to pursue ten-year contracts using the ‘prime contractor’ model, it is likely that many of these contracts will subcontract to the private sector.
The NHS ‘preferred provider’ plan, which Andy Burnham has been advocated, may indeed have limited scope if the TTIP (EU-US free trade mechanisms) are negotiated in the favour of the multinational corporations.
The bungle over #caredata has further demonstrated the need for politicians to be transparent with the public.
Angela Eagle may wish to talk up the progress she is making in overcoming the ‘democratic deficit’, the millions of lost votes and so forth, but essentially Ed Miliband’s Labour will rightly come under some scrutiny in the election leading up to May 7th 2015 regarding the NHS.
David Nicholson is a true socialist. He has spoken his mind about the public’s affection for the NHS. Hunt never talks about the Lansley legislation.
If Labour is unable to pledge much on this, it might at least pledge a term of government where the NHS is free at the point of need and paid for entirely through general taxation.
