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“Ed Miliband’s Dad killed my kitten” (quoted by Ed Miliband)
Ed Miliband at the Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year Awards 2013
“Only a Belgian communist could have killed a kitten like that – the RED BASTARD!” says Ed Miliband, quoting from the article.
Miliband, who won a new prize called Political Speech of the Year (for the energy freeze pledge, which ‘transformed his fortunes’), took the opportunity to read out a Sunday Sport story.
This particular story had accused his ‘Belgian communist’ father of ‘killing a cat’ when cycling through the British countryside during the war.)
Ed Miliband’s ‘cost of living speech’ on 5 November 2013
** Check against delivery. **
It is great to be here in Battersea with you today.
Last Friday, I was in my constituency, at the local Citizens Advice Bureau.
And I talked to some people who had been preyed upon by payday lenders.
There was a woman there in floods of tears.
She was in work.
But she took out a payday loan for her deposit so she could rent somewhere to live.
And then disaster followed.
A payday loan of a few hundred pounds became a debt of thousands of pounds.
She still faces bullying, harassment and threats from multiple payday lenders.
Like the young mum I met who described sitting at home with her daughter and seeing an advert on the TV for a payday lender.
She said she was down to the last nappy for her baby.
She took out the payday loan.
And one led to many more, with her ending up spending most of the money she had each week on repayments and charges.
She was so frightened by the harassment she faced that she had given her mobile phone to her mum.
Her mum showed me the phone and told me that she’d had fifteen calls that day.
The woman who worked at the CAB said the problem had got far, far worse in the last couple of years.
She said: “payday lenders are running riot through people’s lives in this community.”
Yesterday Wonga released a film all about themselves.
And last night the boss of Wonga said he was speaking for the ‘silent majority’, who are happy with their service.
But the truth is he wants us to stay silent about a company where in one year alone their bad debts reached £120 million.
An industry in which seven out of ten customers said they regretted taking out a loan.
With half saying they couldn’t pay it back.
Payday lenders don’t speak for the silent majority.
They are responsible for a quiet crisis of thousands of families trapped in unpayable debt.
The Wonga economy is one of the worst symbols of this cost of living crisis.
And as I listened to these stories, my overwhelming thought was: how is this being allowed to happen in Britain, 2013?
Because these stories of payday lenders are just one part of the cost of living crisis facing families across our country.
Low skilled jobs.
Wages that are stagnating.
Predatory behaviour by some companies.
This isn’t just an issue for the lowest paid, it affects the squeezed middle just as much.
A country where a few at the top do well, but everybody else struggles.
This is not just an issue facing Britain.
It is the issue facing Britain.
It is about who our country is run for.
How it is run.
And whether we believe we can do better than this.
I do.
The Nature of the Problem
Now, David Cameron said recently that I wanted to “talk about the cost of living” because I didn’t want to talk about “economic policy.”
So we have a Prime Minister who thinks we can detach our national economic success from the success of Britain’s families and businesses.
He doesn’t seem to realise that there is no such thing as a successful economy which doesn’t carry Britain’s families with it.
And he obviously doesn’t get that the old link between growth and living standards is just broken.
Growth without national prosperity is not economic success.
The first and last test of economic policy is whether living standards for ordinary families are rising.
And the scale of the problem is familiar to millions of people in our country.
The official figures say that on average working people are £1,500 a year worse off than they were at the election.
And it has happened because prices are rising faster than wages.
In 39 out of the 40 months that David Cameron has been Prime Minister.
But the average doesn’t tell you the whole story.
We don’t just need average wages to creep higher than prices.
For people to be genuinely better off, we have to do much better than that.
Ordinary families are hit harder than average by higher prices.
They rely more on expensive basic necessities, like electricity and gas.
And ordinary families do worse than the average when it comes to wage increases.
Because those increases are scooped by a few at the top.
Chief executive pay went up by 7 per cent last year.
When everyone else’s wages were falling.
We can’t just make do and mend.
We need to do much better than we are.
Can Anything Be Done?
And that means we can’t just carry on as we are.
We have to permanently restore the link between growth and living standards for all of Britain’s working people.
This Government can’t do it.
And the reason is because they are wedded to Britain competing in a race to the bottom.
Listen to their silence on our plans for a living wage.
Nothing to say.
On the falling value of the minimum wage.
Nothing to say.
On zero-hours contracts.
Nothing to say.
On the exploitation of low-skill migrant labour which undercuts wages.
Nothing to say.
They’re silent because of what they believe in.
In his speech to the Conservative Party Conference, George Osborne described my argument that they believed in a race to the bottom as something straight out of “Karl Marx” and “Das Kapital.”
No.
He’s wrong.
It is about what is happening in this capital city.
Right here.
And towns and cities across the country.
Right now.
Now, they think that this low wage economy is the best we can do.
Because they believe doing anything about it means intervening in markets in ways that we shouldn’t.
I disagree.
A dynamic market economy, with profitable private sector companies is essential for creating the wealth we need.
But markets always have rules.
The question is: what do those rules allow?
And what do they encourage?
Do they encourage companies to create high-skill, high-wage jobs, as part of a race to the top?
And provide the support they need to do so?
Or do they encourage a race to the bottom of low wages and low skills?
Do the rules mend broken markets?
Or allow some firms to take advantage of broken markets at the expense of everybody else?
All governments set rules for what they want to see.
This Government does intervene in markets but in the wrong way.
They make it easier to fire people.
Water down rights for agency workers.
Turn a blind eye to the failure to pay the minimum wage.
Pushing companies to compete on low wages, low skills and worse terms and conditions.
They introduce tax cuts for the richest.
Defend bonuses for the bankers.
Stand up for a powerful few.
Supporting their belief that wealth will trickle down from those at the top to everybody else.
Don’t believe it when they say they are stepping away, they are stepping in all the time, stepping in to stand up for the wrong people.
High hopes for those at the top.
Low expectations for everyone else.
A race to the bottom.
When what we need is a race to the top.
Dealing with the Cost of Living Crisis: Jobs
To win that race to the top, we are going to earn and grow our way out of this cost of living crisis.
Not by spending money we don’t have.
Because we have to bring the deficit down.
But by building a different kind of economy.
One that really works for working people.
That starts with the jobs our country creates.
David Cameron is still on his lap of honour.
To celebrate how brilliantly he has done.
In the slowest recovery for a hundred years.
We still face a massive challenge of creating jobs in this country.
There are still nearly two and half million people unemployed in Britain and nearly a million young people are still looking for work.
And when we look at the jobs in our economy, too many are low paid, part-time and temporary.
Half of new jobs have been in low paid sectors of the economy.
We have 1.4 million people working part-time when they want full-time work.
More than ever before.
And we’ve got more people in a temporary job because they can’t find a permanent one.
The Tories don’t think we can do anything about it.
They think it is the way we compete with China and India.
But they are wrong.
A Labour government will put all our country’s effort into winning a race to the top.
And that means taking action on both the quantity and quality of jobs that we are creating.
We can only win a race to the top if we transform our vocational education system and apprenticeships in this country, which is what we will do.
We can only win a race to the top if we radically transform the way we support business in every part of our country, with a proper regional banking system learning the lessons of Germany, which is what we will do.
We can only win a race to the top if we support the small businesses that will create the jobs of the future, by cutting business rates, which is what we will do.
We can only win a race to the top if we help parents get back to work and start earning to support their families by extending childcare for working parents to 25 hour a week, which is what we will do.
And we can only win a race to the top with a proper industrial policy, including for environmental jobs, which is what we will do.
All this is about re-engineering the British economy so that we make a difference to the kinds of jobs we create.
You can’t do it if you believe in a race to the bottom.
You can only do it if you believe in a race to the top.
Dealing with the Cost of Living Crisis: Wages
So dealing with the cost of living crisis starts with jobs.
But it is also about wages.
Wages for millions of people have been in decline for far too long.
I am talking about people battling to do the right thing and struggling and struggling.
Hard, honest work, in supermarkets, on building sites, in call centres.
Working harder, for longer, for less.
We have a low pay emergency in this country.
Five million people now paid less than the living wage.
Working for their poverty.
Up at least 1.4 million in just the last four years.
To one in five of all employed workers.
More of Britain’s poor children today are being brought up in working families than in jobless families.
And low wages aren’t just bad for working people.
They cost money in benefits too.
As the country has to subsidise more and more low paid jobs with higher and higher tax credits and benefits.
The government now pays more out on tax credits and benefits to those in work than it does for who are unemployed.
So to those who say we can’t afford to do anything about wages in our country today:
I say we can’t afford not to.
And many businesses now recognise that a low pay economy is bad for them too.
I was in Bristol last Thursday night talking to cleaners who are paid the living wage.
They told how proud to work for a firm like that.
Better pay means lower turnover of staff.
Higher productivity.
So we have to end the scandal of poverty pay in this country.
We would strengthen the minimum wage, which has lost 5 per cent of its value under this government.
We are looking at the case for higher minimum wages in particular sectors of the economy, like financial services, where they can afford to pay more.
And we will go further than that too.
That is why the next Labour government from its first day in office, will offer “make work pay” contracts to employers all over Britain.
It is a simple deal.
For the first year of a Labour government, we will say to every firm:
You start to make work pay, through a living wage.
And we will give you a 12 month tax rebate of 32p for every extra pound they spend.
Make work pay contracts will raise wages, keep the benefit bill down and tackle the cost of living crisis.
It is a good deal for workers, business and the taxpayer too.
And by tackling low pay we won’t just strengthen our economy, we will strengthen our society as well.
It is not good for our country for people to be working 60 or 70 hours a week, doing 2 or 3 jobs, not having time to see their kids.
We will change it.
Under a One Nation Labour government: work will pay.
Dealing with the Cost of Living Crisis: Broken Markets
And tackling the cost of living crisis is also about ensuring markets work for working people.
And that means fixing markets when they are broken.
This power station was built in the 1920s after a Conservative government intervened to fix a broken energy market.
That government, of Stanley Baldwin, knew that if government didn’t fix broken markets, nobody else was going to.
Stanley Baldwin knew it.
John Major seems to understand it.
But David Cameron doesn’t.
His response to Labour’s energy price freeze shows how out of the mainstream he is.
He took issue with the whole idea of government intervention in a broken market.
Ever since, on energy he seems to have had a different policy every day of the week.
But what we know is that we can never expect him to stand up to the energy companies, because they are a large and powerful interest.
It is not who David Cameron is.
It is not what he does.
He stands up to the weak, never to the strong.
For the next eighteen months, people will hear scare stories from the unholy alliance of the energy companies and David Cameron.
The Big Seven.
It will just reinforce in people’s minds who he stands up for.
The six large energy companies.
Not the 60 million people of Britain.
Today, new figures confirm that most of the recent price rises weren’t caused by government levies or by a rise in wholesale prices.
But are the direct result of a broken market.
For the average increase in the price for electricity and gas since 2011, over half went straight to the costs and profits of the companies themselves.
This shows exactly why we need a price freeze now.
Because only a price freeze will protect customers while we re-set the market.
A price freeze until 2017 will happen if Labour wins the election.
A freeze that will benefit 27 million families and 2.4 million businesses.
It is workable and it will happen.
And tomorrow, Parliament will vote on that price freeze.
So Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs could vote for it now.
And if they line up against it, the British people will know the truth:
This Government is on the side of the big energy companies not hard-pressed families.
And our price freeze until 2017 will pave the way for us to radically improve the energy market for the long term.
We will publish an Energy Green Paper for:
A regulator that can cut unjustified price rises.
A ring fence between the generation and supply businesses of the energy companies, so there is proper transparency.
Forcing energy companies to trade the energy they produce in the open market.
And a new simple tariff structure that people can understand.
So we will change the way the energy market works.
In a way that will provide long-term confidence for investors and a better deal for consumers.
And we will mend other markets that aren’t working in the public interest.
Opening up competition in banking.
A cap on the cost of credit in payday lending.
Proper regulation of our train companies.
Ending unjustified charges and fees in the private rented sector.
And new social tariffs in the water industry.
The Conservative Party defends broken markets and the few people that profit from them.
I am proud that the Labour Party stands up for markets that work for working people.
The next general election will offer a big choice.
A choice about whether we tackle the cost of living crisis or shrug our shoulders.
A choice about whether we run a race to the top or a race to the bottom.
A choice about whether we reform broken markets or defend them.
A choice about how we succeed as a country.
Above all, the choice will be about who our country is run for.
There is a Tory vision for Britain that has low expectations for what most people should be able to expect.
Payday lenders can prey on the vulnerable.
Millions of families see stagnating living standards.
Energy companies can just carry on as they are, ripping off consumers.
My vision is different.
We can run Britain in a different way.
Different from the past.
Building a different future for our country.
Where ordinary people feel the country is run for them.
In their interests.
And for their future.
Earning our way to a better standard of living.
Sharing rewards fairly.
And making markets work for people, not the other way round.
Britain can do better than this.
And that’s what One Nation Labour will do.
Ed Miliband should best avoid the Harold Wilson ‘razzle dazzle’?
This is when Harold Wilson lost the UK general election on June 18th, 1970.
David Dimbleby was doing an ‘inquest’, in Wilson’s own words, as to what happened.
Wilson attributes, partly, his election defeat to so many people ‘staying at home’, because there was a cigarette paper difference in policies between the Conservatives and Labour. The ‘millions of votes’ problem still persists to this day, arguably. For example, Labour and the Conservatives do not substantially differ on the McKinsey ‘efficiency savings’, free schools and ‘high speed 2′. Labour has not said it would reverse the closure of English law centres. Of course, Labour supporters and members will wish to point out that there are clear differences in areas of social justice, for example repealing the bedroom tax. At the time, the economy appeared to be recovering. Currently, the UK economy appears to be recovering, although not many people would like to hazard the epithet ‘green shoots’ for it.
Where Ed Miliband has a relative luxury compared to Harold Wilson is that his party is relatively united. Despite the issues about Labour wishing to reform its relationship with the Unions, it cannot be claimed that members of the Unions are at each other’s throats as in the old days. The Conservatives will be arguing, no doubt, that Labour should not be the beneficiaries of the ‘new-found’ ‘economy strength’ on May 7th 2015. The economy which Labour inherits in 2015 will have the same fault lines, however. There will still be competition problems in the privatised industries such as energy and water. Workers will have even weakened employment rights in areas such as unfair dismissal. Right-wing commentators still advocate that the Conservatives are ahead on the economy, but all the polling evidence suggests that Labour is ahead on issues to do with the economy, such as employment rights and utility bills.
In 1970, the Conservatives highlighted a different ‘cost of living’ crisis. However, the reasons for that particular crisis were rather different then:
The cost of living has rocketed during the last six years. Prices are now rising more than twice as fast as they did during the Conservative years. And prices have been zooming upwards at the very same time as the Government have been taking an ever-increasing slice of people’s earnings in taxation. Soaring prices and increasing taxes are an evil and disastrous combination.
Inflation is not only damaging to the economy; it is a major cause of social injustice, always hitting hardest at the weakest and poorest members of the community.
The main causes of rising prices are Labour’s damaging policies of high taxation and devaluation. Labour’s compulsory wage control was a failure and we will not repeat it.
The Labour Government’s own figures show that, last year, taxation and price increases more than cancelled any increase in incomes. So wages started chasing prices up in a desperate and understandable attempt to improve living standards.
Other countries achieve a low-cost high-wage economy. So can we. Our policies of strengthening competition will help to keep down prices in the shops. Our policies for cutting taxes, for better industrial relations, for greater retraining, for improved efficiency in Government and industry – all these will help to stimulate output. This faster growth will mean that we can combine higher wages with steadier prices to bring a real increase in living standards.
The issue of whether our economy is a ‘low wage’ one has now become a powerful issue given the ‘record number of people in employment’ claim. The number of people who are paid less than a “living wage” has leapt by more than 400,000 in a year to over 5.2 million, and this single finding contributes to the idea that the economic recovery is failing to help millions of working families. A report for the international tax and auditing firm KPMG also shows that nearly three-quarters of 18-to-21-year-olds now earn below this level – a voluntary rate of pay regarded as the minimum to meet the cost of living in the UK. The KPMG findings highlight difficulties for ministers as they try to beat back Labour’s claims of a “cost of living crisis”. The London mayor, Boris Johnson, has announced a new, higher rate for the living wage in the capital, while in a speech tomorrow, Ed Miliband, will flesh out how his party will create economic incentives for companies to adopt the living wage. There is therefore a curious political consensus emerging between Ed Miliband and Boris Johnson, in a way that will midly concern David Cameron at least.
A famous headline from “The Bulletin” of December 23rd 1964 states that, “Prime Minister Harold Wilson has confounded critics in Britain with razzle-dazzle tactics.”
The opening paragraph states that Harold Wilson greatly admired the election-winning tactics of the late President Kennedy. In November, it will be 50 years since John F. Kennedy’s assassination, and David Miliband has written a nice article in the Times to explain what JFK means to him. Whilst there has been some problem with this project accelerating from standstill, Labour seems on-track again to support the Conservatives over ‘high speed 2′. But, even not that long ago in August 2013, it was reported that the Institute of Directors had become the first large business group to call for the planned high-speed rail link between London and the north to be scrapped, saying the £50bn project would be a “grand folly”.
Whilst the circumstances surrounding the Harold Wilson governments are different today, one noteworthy criticism of the Wilson approach is that he seemed to promise simple solutions for complex problems. Ed Miliband is equally at danger of this, in claiming that he will be able to solve the energy prices problem with a price freeze. His team are at great pains to point out that the price freeze is only part of the strategy. The rest of it involves reforming the market and the regulatory framework overseeing the market. One of Ed Miliband’s favourite catchphrases, in as much that he has them, is that he wishes to be the person who ‘underpromises and overdelivers, not overpromises and underdelivers’. This is of course prone to accidental mix-up like his other catchphrase, “We promise to freeze prices not pensioners” (which has already been misquoted by Chris Leslie MP as, “We promise to freeze pensioners not prices”, on BBC’s “Any Questions” recently.)
In the criticism to end all criticisms, it’s been mooted that Harold Wilson was not in fact a socialist at all, but a Liberal. This may seem pretty small fry compared to the idea that Nick Clegg is in fact a Tory. But Ed Miliband may not be a socialist either. I still feel he is essentially a social democrat. Anyway, whatever label you decide to give Ed Miliband is not particularly relevant in a sense. Miliband’s first concern must be to win his election for his party and his own political career. Supporters of Wilson and Blair are keen to point out that they won four and three general elections, respectively. However, it is also true that many feel that their Labour governments were essentially trying to ‘do things better’ rather radically changing things. The criticism has been made of both periods of government that Labour let down the working class vote. The cardinal criticism is that their periods of government were essentially missed opportunities, even if Blair was more of a ‘conviction politician’ than Wilson.
Time will tell whether Ed Miliband will emulate the “successes” of Wilson or Blair; or whether he can go better.
The Good Ship Miliband is still unable to see those hidden icebergs
Antartica
Apparently one of the things which Enoch Powell, the late Conservative MP, use to rail against was the idea of inevitability. Tony Benn, in the trailer for his new film, said that he became disillusioned with politics when he realised that ‘all politicians wanted to do was to do things better’. Benn said that he wanted to change things, even if that made him unpopular.
Change is of course a hugely powerful force in politics. David Cameron used to some effect, though not enough to win the 2010 general election, this theme with his slogan, “We can’t go on like this.” Ed Miliband revamped the theme in this 2013 party Conference speech with the mantra, “Britain deserves better than this.”
Ed Miliband curiously decided not to bring up two legal defeats for the Coalition yesterday. It might have been ‘low hanging fruit’ to mention that the Secretary for State for Health, Jeremy Hunt, MP had lost in the Court of Appeal over the legal point about whether he acted with sufficient authority to sign off the Lewisham reconfiguration.
Or it might have been equally easy to pick on Iain Duncan-Smith’s defeat in the Supreme Court over the legality of his workfare scheme. The Department of Work and Pensions had utterly ruthlessly spun this as a victory for the Government, even they lost on all of the legal points save for whether the scheme had constituted ‘forced labour’.
It might be that Ed Miliband doesn’t feel particularly confident about matters of social justice, where it could be argued that traces of Labour policy ‘meat’ can be found in the Coalition’s policy of workfare and NHS reconfigurations.
Ed Miliband seems equally undeterred about the fact that it was Labour who contracted the market from fourteen to six, and reconfigured the market such that the generation and supply divisions were best set up to fleece the customer. Labour also helped to establish the market in the NHS, promoting its policy of ‘independent sector treatment centres’.
That Labour has rejected socialism is an easy criticism to make. Labour has been accused of ‘price fixing’ amongst the barrage of criticisms of its ‘price freeze’. However, whenever the State manipulates prices, libertarians and admirers of Frederick Hayek smell blood. They liken it to how the U.S. fixed ‘interest rates’, creating a perfect storm for the global financial crash of 2008. Therefore, the argument gets wheeled out that it is not the free market itself that is dangerous, but the State’s attempts to fiddle it.
This leaves Labour’s health policy still rather precarious. The fingerprints of ‘payment-by-results’ are all over New Labour. This is another prime example of the State wishing to interfere with the behaviour of professionals, turning patients into consumers, and Doctors into bean-counters. With the perpetuation of ‘NHS preferred provider’, the market will still not be abolished from the NHS, and many will think that this mission has not been accomplished.
Ed Miliband’s short term tactic therefore appears to be speaking up for the powerless, or the ‘squeezed middle’, but his long-term strategy over the extent to which he wishes to abandon the market still remains problematic.
Whilst it appears that Miliband is going to be buffeted at the last minute by unexpected unemployment or balance of payments news, as had been previously a problem for Ted Heath in his war against Harold Wilson, the good ship Miliband, many suspect, is still unable to see the hidden icebergs.
Like Nick Clegg, I was taught by ‘unqualified teachers’ at the same school. His hypocrisy stinks.
I was also taught by ‘unqualified teachers’.
I knew many of the same unqualified teachers Nick Clegg did in fact, like the late David Hepburne-Scott who taught me physics, Theo Zinn and Richard Stokes.
This is because I went to the same school as Nick Clegg MP. This is the same school as Tristram Hunt MP. That is Westminster School in the middle of London, SW1.
In my personal case, I think the biggest ‘education’ for me was waking up on the top floor of the Royal Free Hospital in London in the pitch dark. I had just been a six week coma. Thanks to the much maligned NHS, I had been wired up to a ventilator in ITU. I am lucky to be alive now, although I happen to live with physical disability since this coma.
I woke up to find that Tony Blair was no longer Prime Minister. There had also, separately, been an outbreak of Foot-and-Mouth Disease.
The Royal College of St. Peter in Westminster, better known as Westminster School and standing just behind Westminster Abbey in London, is one of Britain’s leading independent schools, with the highest Oxford and Cambridge acceptance rates of any secondary school or college in Britain.
With a history going back to the 11th century, the school’s notable alumni include Ben Jonson, John Dryden, Robert Hooke, Christopher Wren, John Locke, Jeremy Bentham, Edward Gibbon, Henry Mayhew, A. A. Milne, Tony Benn and seven Prime Ministers. Yes, I’m proud Tony Benn went there. He is a true socialist, who could teach the current bunch in the Labour Party a thing or two. In fact, I was a year below Dido Armstrong (who is ‘Dido’ the pop singer) and Martha Lane-Fox (social digital guru, who founded ‘lastminute.com’). Logically, therefore, they weren’t taught by qualified teachers either.
As I am nearing 40, with school having been left behind me like the latin ablative absolutes I was once able to translate, I am mildly amused about this war on unqualified teachers which has now erupted.
Like many at Westminster School, I went onto Cambridge. My ‘education’ at Westminster was great, and I achieved very good exam results. Whilst I have bene unemployed from full salaried employment for the last seven consecutive years, I do owe my relative ‘social mobility’ to the fact I was awarded a Queen’s Scholarship there at the age of 13, in 1987. This meant, in my case, I didn’t have to pay any fees. I took an exam otherwise known as the Westminster School “Challenge”. The last exam I ever took, in this complex entrance exam, was an Ancient Greek translation. I would of course not be able to do that exercise today, like all of my A level papers either. It meant that I was in College, the same ‘house’ as Adam Boulton was in. My politics are not from the same stable as Adam Boulton. Nick Clegg’s parents were fee-paying though as he was ‘Up Liddell’s’, a different (inferior) house.
I dare say the lack of qualified teachers did no harm to my school friends, one of whom is a Consultant in Radiology at University College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust on Euston Road, London, as we speak. Our class sizes were small, so therefore discipline wasn’t any problem ever in my five years there.
I do remember my teachers being amazingly intelligent though, paradoxically more impressive than my supervisors at Cambridge. They marked my homework (called ‘preparation’) meticulously. I didn’t ever think to doubt their academic abilities for some reason. I didn’t ask to enquire about their certificates.
But as I reach 40, I also wonder about the banality of academic qualifications. I have now nearly ten academic degrees and diplomas in medicine, law, natural sciences and business management, and I would say that it’s not about the knowledge. What it is about is an ability to learn how to learn. This doesn’t come easy.
As I reach 40, I also see people who are CEOs of medical charities who’ve never set foot on a medical ward, and yet are highly influential in medical policy (such as diagnosis of conditions, or how patients could pay for their treatment). Like unelected MPs, they are people who’ve largely played the system, and gone from one CEO job to the next, and there is no end to their fortunes.
I dare say Alan Sugar doesn’t miss his MBA. I dare say also, very controversially, that César Milstein doesn’t miss, that much, not being awarded a Professorship by my University, Cambridge, several years ago. His invention of monoclonal antibodies made a profound impact on the world of medicine and therapeutics, such that he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology. A delightful man. I remember his low cholesterol diet – we were both on the ‘Top Table’ once for some reason.
I can’t help feeling that Nick Clegg is throwing his toys out of his pram for effect. I suppose he is making a stand. I just wish he’d made a stand on the Health and Social Care Act (2012). The senior solicitor of a law centre I once did pro bono warned me to fight battles to the hilt, but she also advised me to choose my battles first correctly. Nick Clegg has clearly not done that.
Even the figures suggest Labour is more trusted on issues to do with the economy
It’s taken me a few days to think about the data which John Rentoul reported on a few days ago in the Independent. Aside from the headline figure that the Labour lead is only of the order of a few % points, the poll results make interesting reading even for those people like me who are normally totally uninterested in such rough population statistics.
As a disabled citizen, I am always quite touchy about the rhetoric of being ‘tough’ in the benefits system. This is because it took me approximately two years for my own disability living allowance to be restored, and this was only after I appeared in person at a benefits tribunal here in London. And yet the lead which the Conservatives have on benefits is massive: “Be tough on people abusing the benefits system: Conservative lead 39 points”. Here, I think usefully Labour can distinguish between people who deserve disability benefits for their living and mobility, whom they should be proud to champion, and people who are clearly free-loading the system. To try to get to the bottom of this, I tried to ask a 64-year-old friend of mine from Dagenham whether this notion of ‘benefits abuse’ is a real one. She explained ‘too right’, citing even that the council estates in Barking and Dagenham appeared to be stuffed full of immigrants who had somehow leapfrogged the social housing waiting list. I cannot of course say whether she’s right, but this is her perception. She went on to say that there were blatantly people around where she lived, who were making use of schools and hospitals, “to which they were not entitled.” The truth and legal arguments surrounding this feeling are of course longstanding issues, but the margin of the Conservatives’ lead on this is not to be sniffed at.
The finding that, “Keep the economy growing: Conservative lead 14 points”, is not of course particularly surprising. This is also a fairly robust finding. I suspect most people are still unaware of the enormity of the challenge which the last Government find itself confronting, such that Gordon Brown describes having to consult a few Nobel prize winners in economics at the last minute about his plans for bank recapitalisation (in his memoirs “Beyond the Crash”). How the £860 billion contributed to our famous deficit has been played out ad nauseam on Twitter, but such a discussion does not appear to have dented in the minutest sense the mainstream media. When Conservatives are faced with the question what they would have ‘done differently’, most do not even offer any answer, though true libertarians argue that they probably would have done nothing learning from the ‘Iceland experience’. But certainly one of the greatest successes of the political landscape has been converge all issues to do with the economy on the question, “Who do you trust on the economy?” The facts do actually speak for themselves, even though somewhat unclear. We may dispute we have had a double or triple recession since May 2010, but there is absolutely no doubt that the economy under this Coalition since May 2010 has done extremely badly (when the economy was indeed recovering in May 2010). That the economy may be dethawing a bit when the latest GDP ONS are released on Friday may not be a bad thing for Labour either. If voters are ‘grateful’ for an economy in recovery, and ‘trust’ Labour sufficiently, they may ‘hand over the keys’ to the Ed Miliband.
But would you like to give the keys back to the people who “crashed the car”? We, on the left, know that Ed Miliband, Ed Balls and Gordon Brown, did not single-handledly (or indeed triple-handedly), “crash the car”. Only, at the beginning of this week, JP Morgan was handed an eye-watering fine by its regulator over securitised mortgages. Nonetheless, this IS the public perception, and there are no signs of it shifting yet, given the sheer volume and brilliance of the lies from professional Coalition MPs. When you turn to issues to do with economy, which face, “real people”, the poll results produce an altogether different narrative. Whilst the media and Westminster villages enjoy GDP figures and “the scale of the deficit”, most hardworking people in the UK don’t go to work thinking about the deficit. Car drivers may think about the cost of filling up a tank of petrol in their car, or worry about the monumental scale of their energy bills.
This is why in a sense it’s payback time which Labour intends to take full advantage of. The Conservatives are clearly hoping for ‘analysis through paralysis’, where voters will be bored to death over what is exactly causing such high bills, including ‘green taxes’. The fundamental problem is, arguably, reducing the competitive market from 14 to 6, in part, but the public appetite for blaming Labour for this appears to be surprisingly weak. The public appear to have gone somewhat into “I don’t care who caused it, but please do sort it out” mode. Therefore, the poll finding, “Keep gas and electricity prices down: Labour lead 20 points” is striking. The market is not anywhere near perfect competition. It is an ‘oligopoly’ as it has too few competitors, which means that they can arrange prices at a level suitable for themselves. This is called ‘collusive pricing’, and it’s notoriously hard to regulate. That’s why the ‘price switching’ approach is so banal. As soon as you switch from one energy provider, you can land with another energy provider who is teetering on the brink of putting up energy prices themselves. They can do that. The latest intervention by Sir John Major provides that Ed Miliband has identified the right problem but arrived at the wrong solution. The irony is that Major himself has probably himself arrived at the right problem, but many disagree with the idea that a ‘windfall tax’ will ultimately benefit the consumer because of the risk of taxes and levies being indirectly handed down to the end-user. Nonetheless, it will make for an interesting Prime Minister’s Questions at lunchtime today.
The poll finding, “Protect people’s jobs: Labour lead 16 points”, also represents another powerful opportunity. The finding that there is a ‘record number of people in employment’ has always had a hollow ring, but Channel 4’s “Dispatches” programme managed to explain lucidly how millions were being duped into jobs with poor employment rights by multinational companies seeking to maximise shareholder dividend. The use of ‘zero use contracts’ has also raised eyebrows, as well as the drastic watering down of rights for employees under the unfair dismissal legal framework of England and Wales. And yet these are fundamentally important issues to do with the economy. Political analysts who do not comprehend this idea, in perseverating over their question “Who do you trust with the economy?”, are likely to be underestimating the problem which Cameron and colleagues face on May 7th 2015.
Whatever the public’s eventual ‘verdict’ on who runs the economy or issues to do with the economy better, the Conservative-led government is clearly running out of time. In a week when they should be fist-pumping the air over the GDP figures, three years down the line, they are bogged down in a debate over ‘the cost of living crisis’. That is, because all of his ‘faults’ in leadership, Ed Miliband has managed to choose which narrative he wishes to discuss. Whatever the precise understanding of voters over complicated issues of economics, this Conservative-led government are proving themselves to be excellent at one particular thing. They appear confidently self-obsessed and ‘out-of-touch’ with ordinary voters. Recent announcements, also relating to the economy, such as the decision to build a new nuclear power plant and the privatisation of the Royal Mail, have merely been interpreted as Cameron and ‘chums’ looking after his corporate mates rather than having the interests of consumers at heart. Whereas the Independent poll did not examine the issues to do with the NHS, it is clear that Jeremy Hunt’s relentless smear campaign has not even produced the slightest dent in Labour’s substantial consistent lead. With an imminent A&E crisis over Winter, actions will speak louder than words anyway.
But for Labour things appear to be ‘on the right track’. Even the figures suggest Labour is more trusted on issues to do with the economy, even if the answer to ‘who do you trust more on the economy?’ does not appear to be at first blush in Labour’s favour. What is, though, interesting is that Labour appears, at last, to have some ‘green shoots’ in a political recovery after one of its worst defeats ever in 2010.
Does Labour think too much?
One of the things I learnt quite early on in my recovery from alcohol was that it was easy to ‘think too much’. Or as it became known in my recovery group – a bit ironically – “over-intellectualise”.
I feel that people generally will find excuses not to vote Labour, rather than robust reasons.
Take the economy for example. The conversation normally starts, by them: “Well, Labour ruined the economy didn’t they?”
Then you have to explain how putting the money into the banks cost £1 trillion, but the deficit had been roughly similar to all previous governments.
“Oh.”
“By the way, do you remember how the Conservatives opposed that policy at the time?”
Complete silence.
Labour is currently doing a detailed policy review, and I think the results will be incredibly interesting.
I am not particularly impatient for the results of this any more, nor for what eventually appears in our 2015 manifesto.
I think many policy strands are in a continuous state of confusing flux. The policy on ‘free schools’ by the main parties appears to change rather frequently.
But it’s pretty true, from where I’m sitting, that people are sick to the eyeballs by this government.
I am sure that Ed Miliband and his team know what they’re doing. And I wish them luck as usual. However, going into massively detailed discussions about our policy is always going to be a waste of time if we can’t communicate them.
I personally don’t believe that the only way is neoliberalism.
However, many supporting in the Labour Party don’t think so either.
But anything must better than this shower.
Do the ‘sunny uplands’ of Labour’s NHS demonstrate ‘the dividend obsession’?
With Andy Burnham MP ‘restored’ as Shadow Secretary of State for Health after the latest Shadow Cabinet reshuffle, one can only assume that ‘responsible capitalism’ has not totally subsumed UK Labour’s health policy. For now, Chuka Umunna remains where he is. And Burnham can remain resisting the latest weekly smear campaigns (usually timed, to clockwork, on Twitter nowadays for Tuesdays).
Burnham himself talked this year at the Labour Party Conference of the need to put ‘people before profit’.
With many significant contracts being awarded under section 75 Health and Social Care Act (2012) to the private sector, and with section 164(1)(2A) of the same Act allowing the non-NHS income cap to be considerably higher than before, it is an important policy issue to revisit the ‘dividend obsession’.
Hardworking nursing union members might like to consider, now, quite how much hardworking taxpayers’ money is being siphoned off into the hands of private equity and venture capital firms through their companies.
Labour’s history with business can best be described as: “it’s complicated.” Goldman Sachs recently boasted on Twitter of their involvement with Chuka Umunna, the Shadow Secretary for Business, Innovation and Skills. And in the past Lord Mandelson has claimed to be ‘intensely relaxed’ about business.
Labour’s ‘track record’ on “inequality” still fuels discussion. Tony Blair’s ‘Journey’, an autobiography possibly as exciting as Morrissey’s, doesn’t mention the word “inequality” once.
British Gas announced yesterday that it is to increase prices for domestic customers, with a dual-fuel bill going up by 9.2% from 23 November. The increase, which will affect nearly eight million households in the UK, includes an 8.4% rise in gas prices and a 10.4% increase in electricity prices.
Energy company bashing has become the new banker bashing (and investment banking is another poorly regulated oligopolistic market). Nevertheless, Labour also wishes to be seen to encourage wealth creation. It perceives any message that it is ‘anti-business’ as dangerous. The political message is reconciled if Labour is able to divorce very large corporates which are perceived to be ‘shirking’, from small businesses which are perceived to be ‘striving’.
There is no doubt, however, that Labour instinctively wishes to be seen to be on the side of the employee/worker too. The evidence is that Labour warns about a growing number of people in part-time employment. They have also held their nose while the current Government have tried to implement the ‘Beecroft’ proposals. For the employer, an ability to sack an employee is seen as ‘flexibility’, so that a business plan can adapt easily to changing circumstances. For the employee, the ‘readiness to fire’ is seen as an indication that employers don’t actually give a stuff about employment rights, and the threat of insecurity for staff.
This is why the Fabian Society, in their analysis of why Gordon Brown became so unpopular, tried to hang their thoughts on the ‘aspiration vs insecurity’ scaffold. Interestingly, Ed Miliband has wished to emulate the ‘aspirational dream’ of Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher once claimed that, for every socialist who woke up, there had to be a Tory who woke up an hour earlier to work.
Any business these days needs to have due regard to its environment and its workforce. This is called ‘sustainability’, and this comprises the ‘people, profit, planet’ mantra of corporate social responsibility. It is a well established concept, which far precedes the ‘responsible capitalism’ now belatedly “accepted” after Miliband’s famous “high risk” conference speech in Liverpool in 2011.
The Conservatives have thrown everything but the kitchen sink at this attack on energy prices. The problem for Cameron is that this lunge is not only popular but populist. It frames the question ‘whose side is the government on?’ in an unappealing fashion. Error after error has seen the notion of a Conservative-led government being ‘out of touch’ being reinforced. This has perhaps been symbolised ultimately by Tory MPs simply re-tweeting on Twitter press releases from energy companies.
Whilst leadership theories both here in the UK and US are well articulated, the literature on the involvement of stakeholders in business is relatively embryonic. Freeman and Mendelow are generally accepted to be the ‘fathers’ of ‘stakeholder theory’.
But the tension of who runs the company in English law is noteworthy in two particular places. One is section 172 of the Companies Act (2006) which attempts to draft a primacy of shareholder dividend with regard to ‘stakeholder factors’. The second is the relative ‘paralysis of analysis’ which can occur with too many conflicting opinions of stakeholders, in relation to shareholders, in relation to the business plans of social enterprises.
Ed Miliband used the following as symbolic as the war against energy companies, which is perhaps more accurately described as a war against unconscionable profitability of shareholders. Cue his quotation from “SSE dividend information” this week in Prime Minister’s Questions:
The Right continue to argue that the war is a phoney one, given that Ed Miliband introduced these ‘green taxes’ in the Climate Change Act in the first place. A problem with this is that David Cameron voted for these taxes. The Right continue to argue that the market is ‘not rigged’. A problem with this is that David Cameron wishes to encourage the ability of a customer to ‘change tariff’, which presumably would be totally unncessary if the market were not ‘rigged’?
The unconscionable profits, in economic terms, come about because it is alleged that the competitors, relatively few of them that there are, act in a coordinated way to set prices amongst themselves. It is further alleged that the competition regulators currently are unable to regulate this oligopolistic market effectively. Miliband’s ‘price freeze’ gives the Labour Party also some ‘breathing space’, in which to tackle the OFGEN problem.
Oligopolies are crowded markets with a relatively small number of competitors. This is why pricing can be ‘collusive’ in manner. They are notoriously hard to regulate.
We know about the whopping profit margins of key personnel in some of the markets like energy already, for example the front page of today’s Mirror newspaper. It is certain that exactly the same thing will happen in privatised health too in the UK. It’s no accident that the usual suspects run prisons, probation, workfare, benefits, security, and so on.
Fundamentally, Miliband’s narrative is extremely uncomfortable for the Conservatives. Far from being ‘liberalising’, in Miliband’s World, the markets end up fettering the behaviour of citizens. And this is a problem if citizens in Cameron’s World increasingly become mere consumers. If the market doesn’t work for Cameron’s consumer, the whole ideology collapses.
The Tories superficially may worry that the Hayek’s ‘Road to Serfdom’ has become a ‘Road to Slavery’, but ultimately their success depends on delivering a programme which benefits the big business and the City. Why else would Boris Johnson wish to go to legal war against Europe about banking bonus caps?
The narrative that Ed Miliband wishes to pursue of ‘putting people first’ is theoretically an amicable fusion between social democracy and socialism. While there are still clear faultlines in the approach, for example the maintained marketisation and privatisation of the NHS since 1979 (but which Burnham seems to wish to reverse), this narrative could prove to be even more popular and populist yet. Cameron’s World may just have been disrupted.
The work of Burnham and Kendall will be futile if Reeves carries on like this
The contrast with the content and style of Liz Kendall’s talk to the Fabian Society, at the headquarters of Scope in Islington last week, could not be more striking. For many citizens, hardworking or not, Ed Miliband was finally beginning to show ‘green shoots’ in his leadership. His conference speech in Brighton was professionally executed, and it largely made sense given what we know about his general approach to the markets and State. Amazing then it took fewer than a few weeks for his reshuffle to ruin all that.
Parking aside how Tristram Hunt MP had changed his mind about ‘free schools’ such that they were no longer for ‘yummy mummies’ in West London, Rachel Reeves MP decided to come out as a macho on welfare. She boasted on Twitter that she was both ‘tough and fair on social security’.
Rachel Reeves’ article was immediately received by a torrent of abuse, and virtually all of it was well reasoned and fair. Yes, that’s right. In one foul swoop, we managed to conflate at one the ‘benefit scroungers’ rhetoric with an onslaught on ‘social security’.
Being ‘tough and fair’ on the “disability living allowance”, in the process of becoming the ‘personal independence payment’ is of course an abhorrent concept. I only managed to be awarded my DLA after a gap of one year, after it had been taken away by this Government without them telling me. At first, it was refused through a pen-and-paper exercise from the DWP. Then, it was successfully restored after I turned up in person at a tribunal in Gray’s Inn Road. This living allowance meets my mobility needs. My walking is much impaired, following my two months in a coma. It also meets my living requirements, allowing me to lead an independent life.
I don’t want to hear Reeves talking like a banker, as if she doesn’t give “a flying fig” about real people in the real world.
For once, the outrage on Twitter, and the concomitant mobbing, was entirely justified. I had to look up again what her precise rôle was – yes it was the shadow secretary for work and pensions, not employment. Many members of Labour were sickened.
However hard Liz Kendall and Andy Burnham manage to convince battle-weary voters that Labour is “the” party of the NHS, certain voters will not wish to touch Labour with a bargepole.
The sentiment is accurately encapsulated by Laurie Penny here:
A spattering of people, would-be Councillors in the large part unfortunately, didn’t see what the fuss was about. They reconciled that ‘the sooner we face up to this problem, the better’. The media played it as ‘the hard left of the Labour Party are upset’. The “Conservative Home” website played it as a sign that the Labour Party were belatedly adopting the Conservatives’ narrative, but it was too little and too late. Like Ed Miliband being booed at conference, a backlash against Reeves’ article can euphemistically be indicative of Labour’s success at ‘sounding tough’.
At yet, this is ‘short term’ politics from a national political party. The social value of this policy by Labour is not sustainable. In the quest for instant profit for headlines, it will actually find itself with no income stream in the long term. For all the analysis with Labour marketing must have done through their ‘think tanks’ and ‘focus groups’, it is striking how Labour have missed one fundamental point. That disabled bashing in the media is not populism from the Left, actually. Conversely, it could LOSE them votes from their core membership. If they learn to love disabled people, they could WIN votes.
Simples.
So what’s the fuss about? She didn’t mention disability. Well – precisely. Disabled citizens of working age are known to form a large part of the population, as Scope reminded us this week in their session on ‘whole person care’ with Liz Kendall MP, so why did Reeves ignore them altogether?
Is it because she has only been in a brief only a few days? Some of us in life have taken the bullet for incidents in life which have lasted barely a few minutes.
What will it take for Labour to ‘get it’ on disability and welfare? Possibly, the final denouement will be when Labour finally realises it can’t ‘out Tory’ the Tories.
The Twitter defenders of the indefensible cite that ATOS are being ‘sacked’ – well, yippedeeeday. ATOS, who were appointed by Labour, are finally being sacked. When negotiating a contract in English law, the usual procedure is to ensure that there are feedback mechanisms in place to ensure the contract is being performed adequately? You can bet your bottom dollar that Labour wishes to do a ‘Pontius Pilate’ on that, in the same way PFI contracts were poorly monitored at first.
This is a disastrous start by Reeves, but ‘things can only get better’. It’s not so much that Rachel Reeves is Liam Byrne in a frock that hurts. It’s the issue that shooting the messenger won’t be the final solution in changing Labour’s mindset on this.
It is all too easy to blame the ‘subeditor’, but the subeditor didn’t write the whole piece. Any positive meme from Reeves, in a ‘well crafted speech’ to “out-Tory the Tories” (such as scrapping the ‘Bedroom Tax’), has been instantaneously toxified by the idea of people ‘lingering on benefits’. The most positive thing to do was to explain how people might not be so reliant on benefits, such as work credits, if we had a strong economy. Reeves chose not even to mention pensions, which is a large part of her budget. Because the article was hopeless from the outset, it could not even get as far as how to get the long-term unemployed (or the long-term sick) safely back to work. It was an epic fail.
It is, in fact, an epic fail on all three planks of Ed Miliband’s personal mission of ‘One Nation': the economy, not recognising the value of disabled citizens of working age to the economy; society, not recognising disabled citizens as valued members of society; and the political process, totally disenfranchising disabled citizens from being included in society.
Somebody better stop Reeves triangulating (but to the Right), before she brings the whole Labour Party down with her before May 7th 2015.
#Lab13 Stop #NHS2?
Whilst many of us find the concept of the NHS being outsourced and privatised to the highest bidder quite revolting, there is also a vocal minority, with cumulatively sufficient numbers of them to hold office if not power, who believe that the Health and Social Care Act (2012) and concomitant “top down reorganisation” bring innovative, free market forces to make the NHS a “global brand leader” in the competitive world of healthcare. They believe it’s simply about making the new NHS, ‘NHS2′, “fit for purpose”, and it was only a matter of time under the two main parties (Labour and Conservative) that yet a further reorganisation of the NHS would become necessary. Arguably, the public would learn to love its benefits. Similarly, the public would learn to love HS2, “high speed 2″. Problematically, despite supportive noises from Osborne and Hammond about HS2, HS2 could still become derailed.
As the UK Labour Party hit their latest debacle of a Philip Morris stand at conference, having wished to make a stance on standard packaging of cigarettes, the tensions between populist stances maximising Labour’s electoral chances on May 7th 2015 and highly principled strategic stances based on policy have arguably never been stronger. If you’re not in Brighton for the Labour Party Conference, you might have caught sight of the “#stopHS2″ campaign in the social media. Also, if you have been spending time looking at tweets about Labour’s health and social care policy, you can see the criticism of Labour over the accelerated privatisation of the NHS is not without its critics. Even intelligent well-meaning Labour supporters have been collecting electronic clippings of the continued interest in the private finance initiative (and the involvement of Coopers and Lybrand in the Major and Blair governments) and the independent sector treatment centres of the Blair government. At a time when Labour is seeking to restore faith in the political process under Lord Ray Collins of Highbury, the question that Labour is so strapped of cash that it needs Philip Morris support remains an irritating one? The notion of the ‘democratic deficit’ is seen in both HS2, as such a policy issue not even mooted in the 2010 general election which seems to have gathered cross-party support (a bit like ‘personal health budgets), and in ‘NHS2′, the top-down NHS reorganisation implemented by the Conservatives with the Liberal Democrats aiding and abetting. So if nobody voted for either policy, where did the policies from? It might not be quite the “smoke-filled rooms of beer and sandwiches”, but powerful lobbying of private commercial interests are likely to have been proven influential in the past.
Whatever the official party positions on HS2 (and this has been subject to flux in recent months), both HS2 and NHS2 have formidable national grassroot campaigns in places. Stop HS2 is the national grassroots campaign against HS2, the proposed new High Speed Two railway. Theri mission is To Stop High Speed Two by persuading the Government to scrap the HS2 proposal and to facilitiate local and national campaiging against High Speed Two.Their supporters come from a wide range of backgrounds and from across the political spectrum. The “Stop Section 75 campaign” from 38 degrees aimed at thwarting the major competitive tendering construct of the Health and Social Care Act (2012), but it was ultimately unsuccessful. 38 Degrees is the one of the UK’s biggest campaigning communities, with over 1 million members. They share a desire for a “more progressive, fairer, better society”. They tried to argue earlier this year to all MPs and members of the House of Lords that our NHS is precious – and the public overall don’t want it privatised. Privatisation for both HS2 and NHS2, here, essentially means diverting of state resources into private sector hands.
Both HS2 and NHS2 are staggeringly expensive projects in this day when we keep on having austerity rammed down our throats, but admittedly the scale of spending of each project is different. Nonetheless by anyone’s standards, £32 billion as an estimate for #HS2 is an eye-watering amount of cash. It works out at well over £1,000 for every single family up and down the United Kingdom, and large numbers of us remain unconvinced that this will be money well spent. The exact cost of the NHS2 top down reorganisation is in its own different way unclear. Following on from Labour’s claims of ‘hidden costs’ last November, Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham claimed that the reorganisation planned in the Government’s Health and Social Care Bill (as it was then) amounted to costs of £3.5 billion, far more than the £1.2 – £1.3 billion claimed by the Government. Minister of State for Health Simon Burns branded this figure a ‘mistake’, reasserting the Government’s own figures as the correct estimate.
Also, both policies HS2 and NHS2 are “unpopular” with the general public. This is reflected by the fact they have never been openly discussed with the public before implementation. The public remain unconvinced about the actual rationale for HS2 to bring greater equity between London and regions of England (critics argue that the plan would benefit London more than the regions). Likewise, at a time when the ‘cost of living’ has been thrust into pole position by Ed Miliband, the cost of non-NHS providers providing NHS products and services for a cost which enhances shareholder dividend, the case for pimping out the NHS to the private sector has never been more badly timed. A YouGov poll into spending cuts commissioned by the TaxPayers’ Alliance last summer found that 48 per cent of people supported cancelling plans for HS2, with barely a third wanting to press ahead with the scheme. And it’s hardly surprising that the public remains so reluctant to support it. Andrew Lansley’s NHS reorganisation is unpopular both with the public and health service staff. Such a large scale reorganisation (likened to “throwing a grenade into the NHS”, by Conservative MP Dr Sarah Wollaston) would be difficult even in the Blair years of increased funding.
Research published by the TaxPayers’ Alliance last year into the hidden costs of HS2 further set alarm bells ringing, highlighting, for example, the billions of additional funding that would be necessary to mitigate the environmental effects of the line by running more of it underground or through tunnels. Andy Burnham, Shadow Health Secretary, spoke of a “bruised and battered” NHS that was in a “fragile” state. Burnham believes there is now a choice to be made about whether we want to allow the inexorable advance of competition in the market, or whether we want to hold on to a planned national system that many successive generations in England have benefited from.
Both HS2 and NHS2 pose fundamental problems for the Labour policy review, still currently underway. They poses problems for the UK economy – how much benefit are we actually going to get from this surge of spending to implement them? They also pose problems for the public’s institutions. Both the railway network and the NHS are cherished by the public but in different ways. Many citizens, whether they are Labour voters, think that the privatised railway industry has become costly, fragmented and essentially a shambles following Tory privatisation, and some would fundamentally like it in state ownership. While Burnham has consistently said the dichotomy between public and private is a false dichotomy, he has also reiterated his affirmation for the ‘NHS preferred provider’ policy which is a small attempt to mitigate against the loss of a state-run comprehensive universal National Health Service.
Both HS2 and NHS2 are ‘elephants in the room’, and it is merely a question of time for how long they may remain hidden.
