One of Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘trump cards’ was that Jeremy Corbyn’s personal vigour and attractiveness had attracted an unprecedented number of younger voters to the Labour Party. Lord Ashcroft’s recent breakdown of the demographics of the people who’d voted in the 2017 general election revealed that many older people, despite the policy disasters over the winter fuel allowance or the ‘dementia tax’, had decided to vote Tory. Critics of Jeremy Corbyn always insisted that these younger voters would never pull their finger out to go to vote Labour. Even when pictures appeared on Twitter of queues of young people voting in predominantly University towns, there remained a hardcore contingent who insisted nothing could be read into the turnout from such spurious anecdotal reports.

 

Owen Jones, to be clear, blamed himself as part of a collective failure ‘of the left’ to get their message across. But I disagree potentially with an important nuance of this. I don’t think it was ever held in doubt that it might have been unconscionable not to give nurses a pay rise. I believe even the most hardened belt-tighteners saw this as fair. John Rentoul for some time appears to have insisted, though I may be wrong, that ‘left wing policies’ are not instrinsically attractive. I think this needs some considerable qualification, even if you agree with the premise that there exists a very clear subset of ideas which are definitely left wing.

 

Supporters of Margaret Thatcher had for a long time resorted to drastic extremist arguments to make their points about state ownership. This varied, for example, from the ludicrousness of having a State removal van company such as Pickford’s, or how one would never contemplate a state-owned supermarket. But I feel this was the first step in taking voters for idiots. It was painfully clear that Southern Rail has been operating as a disaster. The Tories tried to discredit the costings of Labour of returning private rail into state ownership, but leading economists maintained that their criticisms were false.

 

It is well known that Andrew Lansley had in mind the utilities companies, such as British Telecom or British Gas, when thinking about ‘liberalising the market’ in the NHS. However, in economics, basic principles matter. The provision of healthcare is highly complex, and not everything is a homogeneous product such as water or gas. It is possible, conceivably, to hive off high volume and cheap services as hernia repairs into the private sector. But the issue boils down to whether you feel that market failure is a price worth paying for “market forces”. Tony Benn used to remark that whenever he saw a homeless person sleep under Waterloo Bridge he used to think of “market forces”.

 

If you leave anything to the market, there is always the risk that there will be large swathes completely not covered. For NHS patients, this is a disaster, if patients with rarer diseases bear the brunt of lack of coverage just because it is not profitable. This is the problem with taking a liberal view to the market, as indeed the Liberal Democrats had in 2012 pursuant to New Labour earlier.

 

Whilst it might appear easy to ‘ringfence’ younger people with younger issues, these are in fact issues which ‘cut through’ quite a large range of people. I ‘get that’ university fees are likely to affect predominantly people thinking about going to university imminently, but even this is not clearcut due to the mere existence of parents. The NHS is relevant to anyone for promoting health or fixing illness – or even delivering a baby. And the cut through continues for issues such as social housing too, where the purchase of a house to buy to build up your life is unaffordable.

 

The problem now for Labour is whether it develops a false sense of triumph from all of this. That would indeed be a disaster. It is true that Labour managed to make inroads last Thursday on results night in some weird and wonderful places, such as Kensington. It is overall true that Labour did in the end benefit from a ‘remainer’ vote – of people voting who perhaps saw Labour as an achievable way of slowing down a “hard Brexit”.

 

But the problem remains for Jeremy Corbyn for continuing to preach to the converted. There is an argument that ‘one last heave’ might well do it. It’s essential to remember that the Conservatives’ campaign was sensationally catastrophic. I am not sure whether it will become sufficient for Nick Timothy and Fi Hill to take the cop for the disaster, or whether the mission will creep to Sir Lynton Crosby and “strong and stable” Theresa May herself. The Liberal Democrats campaign was pretty dire too, although I don’t take away the achievement of Sir Vince Cable of returning to frontline politics. Remember it was Sir Vince’s acumen that had written off Jeremy Corbyn completely until only last week? The Liberal Democrats’ manifesto seemed to offer obfuscation for delivering Brexit, some spin on drugs of abuse, and little else. Oh yes, and it was launched in a night club surrounded by some controversy over gay sex.

 

Whether it’s shrugging off “the past”, or a failure of teamwork with some people who clearly can’t tango either, Jeremy Corbyn has become the lightning conductor for everyone else’s faults in Labour. I feel that while Corbyn has not got everything right, and I have supported him like every Labour leader for all of my adult life, he has got some of it very right. He has tried to communicate his message through his rallies when it is clear that none of the mainstream media have given him the time of day, resorting to innuendo and further innuendo. And that message is highly relevant to many people. And he offered a vision that was understandable by many – the many who understood, as Nick Timothy identified, that austerity had failed, indeed caused further problems, and was accelerating the decline of England.

 

An unknown is whether the Conservatives would have won if they had got rid of the robotic memes from their campaign and looked as if they did not wish to punish the older vote. Being a longstanding voter on the Left, I can’t help feeling the Tories are a busted flush, but it will take just one single mutation of their offering, like making their leader Boris Johnson, to throw everything into turmoil. On a more pragmatic note, the ‘supply and confidence’ relationship with the DUP is not an ideological marriage made in heaven, and a Government which only just manages to get its Queen Speech passed cannot be considered ‘strong and stable’. It is just as well that Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker always thought that the argument that an increased mandate would mean a stronger negotiating position was complete and utter bollocks.

 

The adage is of course that oppositions don’t win elections, but governments lose them. There is little more to lose from Theresa May, who somehow branded herself into a toxic brand. The reality is that all of this has happened at a terrible time, when issues such as our membership of the single market or the customs union should not be decided by a Conservative administration which has lost its majority and to all intents and purposes on life support.  I entirely get that there will be people who will never vote Labour because of Corbyn, but I can tell you hand on heart there were plenty of people in Labour who felt they could never vote Labour because of Blair or Brown.

 

The fact that Corbyn did manage to win two leadership elections, and poll a share of the vote only second to Clem Attlee, is a disaster for all those pople who had diarised June 9^th as the start of the campaign to get rid of Corbyn. Of course the current MPs could take to the media studios, like they did in support of THAT chicken coup, to finish off this government. The truth remains that many of them did not get elected because they hid Jeremy Corbyn out of sight – but that Corbyn in fact spoke to their needs in a way that Tony Blair didn’t. A lot of them could pretend to support Jeremy Corbyn.  I suggest that those who want a senior job in his shadow cabinet at least make an effort to.

 

These are interesting times. What I disliked about the previous lack of support of certain journalists was the fact they knowingly were determined to extinguish my hopes as a well meaning left wing voter, but likewise there are plenty of people like Paul Mason, Steve Richards or Gary Younge who at least were sympathetic. But as far as I’m concerned it has to be water under the bridge. We now need a period of reconciliation to rebuild a country which has been savaged by war.

 

As I said, we live in interesting times.

 

 

@dr_shibley

 

 

A swing to Labour in Enfield?

No thanks to the ” solidarity ” of Ben Bradshaw or John Woodcock.

John “Labour is on course for a catastrophic defeat” Woodcock.

Yes – I deeply dislike you. I have no intention of ‘ uniting ‘ with you, mate.

Well done to others who tried to kill off Jeremy Corbyn but who kept their seats.

I have no respect for you either.

I won’t lie about this.

I can’t say I give a toss about Ayesha Hazarika’s pathetic apology for “getting it wrong”.

I am fuming at a number of people in our party who have done nothing other undermine the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott in the Labour Party.

Thanks to Hilary Benn’s “coup” of sorts, where we wasted months going through a pointless leadership contest for no reason apart from making Jeremy Corbyn ‘bulletproof’, for making us a complete laughing stock.

Yes – that’s right Jeremy’s electability was needed to compensate for all this incompetence from Blairite moderates.

I have voted Labour all my life.

I am 43.

I am totally disgusted at the 172 MPs who stuck the knife into Jeremy Corbyn. We then as the membership, some of which are loyal supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, have suffered gratuitous humiliation on a regular basis from the vast majority of journalists in the Guardian except from Gary Young.

Polly Toynbee has been worse than useless in supporting Labour through the pages of the Guardian, though she did managed to put in a feeble last minute support for Labour.

Yes, the manifesto was brilliant. The policies were socialists but they were popular.

The NHS and social care have been totally unaccountable for their poor performance, despite the staff working extremely hard to keep the NHS safe. This has been nothing short of a miracle, but virtually no Doctor I know has faith in Jeremy Hunt. If he were a doctor, the General Medical Council might haver him referred for compromising patient safety.

And Ayesha Hazarika has done nothing but carp relentlessly and I’m sick of it.

Time for Tom Watson MP to go. He may have given a rousing speech which was wdelcomed in the Labour conference, but I currently have got ten friends who’ve blocked him on Facebook and can’t stand the common perception of his lack of support for Jeremy Corbyn.

We’ve all been fighting for the reputation of the Labour Party despite the pathetic specimens of MPs above.

I’m a remainer.

The Tories are for the time being are sxrewed, but they will rise like a phoenix from the ashes again.

Believe me.

But we must get down to business in Labour – a new leadership contest for Deputy Leader.

And Luke Akehurst can plot his next revenge attack.

Tom Watson, your time is up.

@dr_shibley

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Theresa May’s team can be congratulated on achieving one thing in particular.

 

That is, her team have produced an incredibly boring campaign.

 

The campaign can best be summarised as, ‘Vote for me because I’m not Jeremy Corbyn’. And – given the historic state of the opinion polls, and the past behaviour of the rebellious Labour MPs, this might have seemed like a bullet-proof strategy.

 

I’ve voted Labour all of my adult life. I am aged 43. I have indeed voted for Tony Blair’s national government three times. I’ll be voting for Jeremy Corbyn.

 

I apologise. I can’t write very well.

 

The Head of English at my school once wrote on my term’s report: “Shibley sometimes has very interesting things to say, but his approach is very vernacular.”

 

I was so disappointed, I looked up what ‘vernacular’ means.

 

It means ‘wooden’.

 

And that’s exactly how I feel when I see Theresa’s team campaigning – it feels ‘wooden’.

 

When I hear the phrase ‘strong and stable’ robotically activated, I despair.

 

I know people are on the whole uninterested in politics, but even a cursory glance at Theresa May’s record identifies her lack of strength and stability as a political force.

 

One is reminded of Groucho Marx’s famous saying, “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”

 

And May has done U turns which are too many to mention: like the funding of school dinners, whether to hold an election at all, whether to leave the European Union, and so on.

 

Whatever is the truth, I am in no doubt it is the public perception that matters.

 

When Gordon Brown ‘dithered’ about whether to hold an election or not, the media were flooded with complementary similar stories about how he cannot make his mind up about ‘dunking’ Hob Nobs.

 

And when you would have expected Theresa May to be ‘strong’ in defending an ideological stance, which indeed some in her own party will support, there’s not a “sausage”.

 

I am no clearer now than when the Conservative manifesto was published about why it is not a good idea to socialise the risk of getting a long term disability such as dementia – and we should make people with lots of money pay with their houses albeit after their death.

 

Theresa May has made it all about her.

 

You may dislike Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘style’ . Indeed, you don’t know how many times I have come to close to throwing rotten tomatoes at my TV set when he gets ‘angry’ when on his rallies.

 

But the content of Jeremy Corbyn is clear enough – whether you find it agreeable or not.

 

There are, however, reasons to be not so cheerful at Theresa May’s ‘strong’ style of communication.

 

Do you remember how she talked around the subject of whether a Trident missile had been misfired in the sea?

 

Or do you remember how she refused to explain, several times, how new money would be made available to the NHS?

 

To all intents and purposes, Theresa May seems to be ‘just about managing’ to keep her show on the road.

 

There can be no doubt that, even if one has grave reservations about the messenger, Jeremy Corbyn has sufficient patriotism and pride in his country not to see the NHS, social care, housing or schools go to pot in the next five years.

 

The narrative had been in 2010: “Give us a chance, and we’ll fix the economy. And you’ll live happily ever after.”

 

And despite valiant efforts from the BBC and Sky, and some judicious use of ‘smears’, this has clearly been outed to be a complete lie.

 

We have ‘paid’ through the roof for austerity – some more than others, ask any families of disabled citizens who have committed suicide because of the welfare reforms.

 

And national debt has gone through the roof.

 

Margaret Thatcher always used to talk of her ‘strong foundations’, but it is crystal clear that George Osborne’s legacy, apart from a personal knighthood, has been a gig economy kept alive through poor workers’ rights.

 

And look at the state of A&E departments nationally.

 

Whilst the opinion polls were so bad for Jeremy Corbyn, in no small part due to the monstering Corbyn has had from all parts of the mainstream media, it has been easy to maintain the ‘Corbyn is incompetent’ narrative.

 

But the ‘Theresa May is incompetent’ narrative is much more damaging for the Conservatives.

 

If the Conservatives’ campaign is indeed all about her, it does matter if her answers to Andrew Neil as a whole are catastrophic.

 

I have racked my brains about how people who dislike Jeremy Corbyn feel.

 

I think their last throw of the dice was ‘unleash Corbyn’ in the hope that once the public truly saw what he was made of they would instantly find him repulsive.

 

People who dislike Corbyn genuinely find themselves between a ‘rock’ and a ‘hard place’.

 

The argument has long been: “He is unelectable” and “We can’t get rid of him.”

 

The “He is unelectable” mantra has been thrust at every opportunity – whether in the Manchester mayoralty race or the Stoke by-election.

 

And while Corbyn does seem to tap into something, it might indeed be difficult to get rid of him.

 

And that’s ironically where it all started.

 

Angela Eagle MP said it was all about ‘real leadership’, but few people can criticise Jeremy Corbyn for putting a good effort in a resilient performance despite having to re-invent his shadow cabinet several times.

 

And the leadership is authentic – and now we know it has a vision (whether you agree with it or not).

 

The wheels of the alternative vision are rapidly falling off – Nigel Farage is increasingly looking like a used cars salesman off ‘Only fools and horses’ and Katie Hopkins has ‘left’ her LBC show by ‘mutual agreement’.

 

With two weeks to go – there is all to play for. The disadvantage of the poll lead narrowing for Theresa May is that Tory voters will know that they cannot necessarily take victory for granted.

 

I must thank my friends and colleagues at this point, finally – including Paul Mason, “chunkymark”, Steve Topple, Dr Éoin Clarke, to name but a few.

 

Barry Gardiner, Angela Rayner, John McDonnell and Rebecca Long Bailey have tireless in interviews.

 

And also Liam Young – who has, even when Corbyn’s made was truly ‘mud’ – has heroically put the case forward for Jeremy Corbyn for many months now on the Independent.

 

That is where Owen Smith and Angela Eagle got it so badly wrong.

 

The strength in the Labour leadership is its collective nature. If you look at Theresa May’s team, you’re hard pressed to identify the other strong players – such as Boris Johnson or Phil Hammond?

 

There is something we can all learn from the damp squib nature of the May campaign.

 

But if she happens to win, there’ll be a lot of soul searching by many.

 

 

@dr_shibley

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

None of us know for certain what medical problems we’ll have, when or how they’ll be manifest.

Even precise genomics won’t be able to give us the full answer one day.

We all know there is a problem somewhere.

There’s been relentless messaging like ‘grey tsunami’ and ‘dementia timebomb’, reinforcing the notion that the ‘aged population’ (and immigrants) are the root causes of all that is wrong with Britain.

You know when things are bad for the Conservatives when they have to resort to “Google ads” to divert your Google search for the phrase “dementia tax”.

I’ve resisted from commenting on the ‘dementia tax’ as I have voted Labour all of my adult life. This means that I have voted for Tony Blair’s national government three times, and I intend to vote for Jeremy Corbyn in about twenty days’ time.

There are about 900,000 people living with dementia currently in the UK. I am united with them, not united against them.

I am also an academic physician in dementia and frailty. Nonetheless, I am loath to get involved in participating in participating in a highly emotive debate.

The issue which has caused the furore is essentially to do with elderly care. The media have not really helped by their conflation of ‘elderly care’ and ‘social care’. For example, social care is not just about ‘old people’. And the policy proposal conflated with ‘dementia tax’ is not entirely helpful either as not all people living with dementia need hugely excessive care costs and indeed dementia can affect young people.

But onto the actual heart of the issue.

I was left feeling that this policy announcement was either one of immense incompetence or sheer cunning from Theresa May, parliamentary candidate, and her inner circle reported to include Ben Gummer and Nick Timothy. The only reason at all we’re “taking a second look” is because the Tories themselves, and substantial parts of the Tory media, have complained about it.

The starting point is that the divide between ‘health’ and ‘social care’ is an untenable one.

It cannot be morally acceptable that cancer and dementia are viewed differently – cancer as a health issue will not cripple you financially like dementia as a social care issue. Also, many conditions, considered ‘health conditions’ such as emphysema, might have a formidable social care component, say if accompanied by physical disability.

Also – dementia very rarely ‘travels alone’. A person with dementia with substantial care needs is likely also to be living with various medical co-morbidities.

It can hardly be expected that good policy will come out of a general election announced at shotgun notice. After all, we’ve had countless and commissions looking at the same thing, all producing imperfect conclusions.

This new proposed policy on elderly care, conversely, does not appear to have come out of any policy commission. But ‘seemed like a good idea’.

And this contribution is not only disappointing in itself, but also in that it was signposted as a massive new contribution, so much so there was nothing substantial in the Budget.

As a society, the social contract between us individually and the State is that we all pool risk together.

We as a society decide not to punish financially those who get unwell through no fault of their own.

I can see exactly why this new policy is going down like a plate of cold sick on the doorsteps. It goes against a generation of people encouraged by Maggie Thatcher to buy their own houses.

Now the equivalent value of the house that people have saved for will now be surrendered to pay for the event of huge care costs.

In a way, these Conservatives are being disingenuous in that they would prefer to be bailed out by the State against excessive social care costs rather than using their money in an entirely individualistic way.

This is the policy as stated in the Conservative manifesto 2017.

“Under the current system, care costs deplete an individual’s assets, including in some cases the family home, down to £23,250 or even less. These costs can be catastrophic for those with modest or medium wealth. One purpose of long-term saving is to cover needs in old age; those who can should rightly contribute to their care from savings and accumulated wealth, rather than expecting current and future taxpayers to carry the cost on their behalf. Moreover, many older people have built considerable property assets due to rising property prices. Reconciling these competing pressures fairly and in a sustainable way has challenged many governments of the past. We intend to tackle this with three connected measures.

First, we will align the future basis for means-testing for domiciliary care with that for residential care, so that people are looked after in the place that is best for them. This will mean that the value of the family home will be taken into account along with other assets and income, whether care is provided at home, or in a residential or nursing care home.

Second, to ensure this is fair, we will introduce a single capital floor, set at £100,000, more than four times the current means test threshold. This will ensure that, no matter how large the cost of care turns out to be, people will always retain at least £100,000 of their savings and assets, including value in the family home.

Third, we will extend the current freedom to defer payments for residential care to those receiving care at home, so no-one will have to sell their home in their lifetime to pay for care.”

In other words, the ‘family home’ is vulnerable, even if it is not during the course of your lifetime.

As an academic physician dealing with dementia, I have been struck with the difference between global policy from the United Nations and World Health Organization and the cheereladers of English charity on ‘dementia friendly communities’. In global policy, the notion of enhanced care at home or supported living, as part of the United Nations sustainable development goals, is actively embraced. However, the model of dementia friendly communities is predominantly one large charity in England endorsing their model of what a dementia friendly community is, with symbolic recognition of how dementia might bring Nudge-eque competitive advantage (e.g. dementia friendly leisure, shopping, banking, tourism), to the point that the relentless cuts in social care and NHS (unmatched for demand) have become an eyesore in the PR that ‘the UK will the best place to have dementia”.

There are only 8 years until David Cameron reveals his cure for dementia as part of the 2012 Prime Minister’s Dementia Challenge. But I expect Cameron’s cheerleaders ought to be and will be held to account even this means through the academic version of pitchforks.

The English dementia policy is entirely in keeping with a Small state ideology, with contraction in the promotion of clinical specialist nurses, a cure ‘round the corner’, and the annihilation of social care.

It is tragic that the social care profession has had its wings clipped, when it could be given the resources to enable and protect people diagnosed with dementia and care partners.

But the Prime Minister Dementia Challenge also failed in the way it did not adequately recognise dementia advocacy services. This is ironic, given the proliferation of an added tier of rent-seeking middle men involved in the vague concept of ‘dementia awareness’.

This advocacy was, and is, essential for advising for people who lose legal mental capacity. At a time when global and international policy is overall preferring people with dementia to make their decisions known at a time when they retain capacity, as opposed to a third party making the decisions for them, it is shocking that England is in such a parlous state with dementia advocacy. Dementia advocacy, from regulated professionals, was and is essential for people with dementia upholding their legal rights, especially when the State might be interpreted as overzealous in taking these rights away – see, for example, the deprivation of liberty safeguards.

I fully agree with the desire to close the ‘diagnosis gap’. For people with dementia to live better after diagnosis for longer, they should be diagnosed at the last minute.

In my experience, in answer to the question ‘what do you want ideally?’ to a person with dementia, I receive the answers ‘hope’ and ‘time’.

If dementia services had properly matured after 2012, with the same ‘accelerator’ fervour so rampant from Pharma, medical advocacy through colleagues in palliative care might see advance care planning to be seen as routine and acceptable, rather than odd ball and luxury.

Advocacy would also have protected the human rights and democratic citizenship of people with dementia. The attack on the human rights legislation is one thing, but at the moment “contained” in as much as Theresa May does not wish us to leave the European Convention on Human Rights.

But people with dementia, if/when they lose the ability to make decisions according to the Mental Capacity Act, need some degree of protection. Indeed, the Care Act (2014) contains useful statutory guidance on safeguarding.

Theresa May in her 2017 manifesto has introduced unfortunately another element requiring safeguarding. Her policy effectively is one of equity release, with delayed payment, until proven otherwise.

An example of current guidance, for example, on this is this:

“A deferred payment agreement is an agreement with us which could help you to use the value of your home to fund residential care costs. If you are eligible, subject to the council being able to obtain a first legal charge over the property, the county council will pay a sum agreed during your financial assessment towards your residential care home fees on your behalf. You can delay repaying the council until you choose to sell your home, or after your death. The amount you are assessed as having to pay for your care and support is delayed and not ‘written off’. The costs of your care and support will still have to be repaid by you or someone on your behalf at a later date either when you choose to sell your house or 90 days after your death.”

However, for the first time, this rule will now also apply to so-called domiciliary care – care at home – if the Tories win the election.

All of this is the end result of market failure from successive governments. There is no yearning for a private healthcare insurance market which is contracting rather than expanding.

This policy offering from the Conservatives is most dangerous because at first it had no upper cap. Now that, as of yesterday, there is a cap, but we don’t know what the cap might be even after questioning. And this cap is necessary to make sure there is some State intervention in excessive care costs.

Closing the ‘diagnosis gap’ is fine as long as people with dementia are given the proper care and support following diagnosis. It is clear that there is still much to be done, despite “Cameron’s cheerleaders”. To give you an example of how problematic English policy is at the moment, look at how the NHS Transformation Network “The well pathway for dementia” simply omits “caring well” from its structure.

With no upper cap, the State is in a position to repossess your house at some later stage if you need to pay for care costs.

The State will argue that it will guarantee you do not lose more than a modest sum in the process, but the devil is altogether in the detail.

Who for example is going to pay for the surveyors’ costs of your family home? Which lawyer, given the annihilation of legal aid following the Legal Aid and Sentencing of Offenders Act 2012, is going to help people with the legal paperwork which accompanies this?

The ideal of universal coverage is that we all put in and it’s luck of the draw what we pay out. Some people indeed hardly ever need to use the NHS or social care. But as a society we should worry, whatever political allegiance one is, about a policy which clearly acts to the detriment of a group of people because of their medical diagnosis, such as dementia?

But this is a policy which clearly benefits those involved in the private home equity release financial products, and where there are potential conflicts of interest from Government and “associated persons”, it would be helpful if these conflicts could be clearly identified if transparency is indeed the best disinfectant.

It happens that this is a policy which acts to the detriment of a protected characteristic under the Equality Act (2010), and is therefore potentially unlawful for indirect indiscrimination. The label “dementia tax” has somehow stuck, and is extremely effective during this general election period, but is not strictly speaking wholly accurate.

The Tory manifesto policy proposal does nothing to bring integration of health and social care closer (though this criticism by some was also made of the Dilnot recommendations). It also fundamentally does not address issues of quality of domiciliary care which could be affected by a number of disparate factors, such as implementation of the national living wage, lack of financial reimbursement for carers, ‘burnout’ of carers, abuse through zero hour contracts, poor financial sustainability of healthcare providers.

The Brexit induced by the Tory government 2015-7 has advantages and disadvantages as far as this policy is concerned. Firstly, if there were some delay in implementing this policy, the legislation might escape the EU gender directives (we know that more women on the whole are affected by dementia, so by escaping EU anti-discrimination law private insurance companies can ensure that women pay higher premiums to offset problems in paying out). Secondly, there might still be problems in getting enough people to be prepared to be paid carers if the UK stops free movement of workers.

The Tory manifesto proposal is sick as we don’t pool risk in the same way we do for the NHS, and yet the divide between health and social care is untenable. And definitely doesn’t address the problems so inherent in the lack of integration between health and social care, such as delayed transfers of care.

The sad thing is – I expect at the end of all this we won’t be much further forward. But at least some attention on social care, as opposed to the vast amount of attention normally given to the NHS, is welcome.

 

@dr_shibley

 

We now know that if Ed Miliband indeed had a million conversations at the time of the 2015 general election he was not very good at acting on the answer.

 

Before Jeremy Corbyn came along for the (two) leadership elections, the Labour Party was immersed in a smorsborg of banality.

 

Let me make a powerful confession.

 

I support Jeremy Corbyn.

 

This doesn’t make me a Corbynista or Corbynite. I am interested in winning elections. That would be totally counter-intuitive, IF I were interested in politics and I was disincentivised by success.

 

Please don’t hate me.

 

There has been a cruel, vindictive criticism that people who ‘follow’ Jeremy Corbyn are in a cult.

 

First thing to say is that it is not uncommon for leaders to have followers.

 

Second, Corbyn would not be the first person to want to be popular.

 

Look at Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson who were ‘intensely relaxed’ about being chummy with friends in the City or Republicans in the United States.

 

And talking of cults.

 

What is Mayism?  Journalists were so busy fawning over Theresa May at the launch of the 2017 manifesto document, they embarrassingly forgot to listen to the answer.

 

The answer, incidentally, began in a Thatcher-esque baritone, “There is no such thing as Mayism”.

 

Soon there’ll be no such thing as society – nor even the United Kingdom, if the Conservatives carry on with their direction of travel.

 

As it happens, I don’t think Corbyn likes rallies because he is ‘popular’. He is probably happy with ‘preaching to the converted’ as his narrative is genuinely what he believes in. His voting record shows that.

 

Corbyn recently made it clear he gets paid generously for what he does, but more or less implied he gave it away to good causes without saying so as much in a recent TV interview.

 

My late father used to warn me that bad dancers always blamed the floor – that is when I tended to blame anyone but me for my triumphant mistakes.

 

But it is true that the David Cameron and George Osborne era has largely escaped meaningful criticism.

 

That is even though the legislative reforms of Lansley on the NHS or Iain Duncan Smith on welfare reforms have been both costly and catastrophic.

 

All the people who spend everyday criticising Jeremy Corbyn in the Guardian should remind themselves of where Labour came from in 2015.

 

At the time, David Miliband’s reaction to the general election was “We need to own the future. We turned the page back when we should have turned the page forward.”

 

And meanwhile Tony Blair said, “We must own the future. We must make the future our comfort zone.”

 

To give Blair credit, there were some very important achievements too in his period of government.

 

John Cruddas’ post mortem was, “We should now go to some very dark places to find out what went wrong”.

 

And Liz Kendall MP’s pitch in the first Labour leadership made a pitch for leadership on the basis of the fact she went to school in Watford.

 

Tristram Hunt said, “We appeared irrelevant. Now we must appear relevant.”

 

I campaigned for Ed Miliband in the 2015 general election. I voted for Tony Blair three times as leader. I have voted Labour all my adult life, every general election since 1992.

 

Now that we have a twice democratically elected leader, I would suggest something to senior members of the Labour Party.

 

Please don’t be arseholes.

 

Your time with us is temporary.

 

The Labour Party collectively is more important than you.

 

I will be voting for Jeremy Corbyn. I have always supported the democratically elected leader of my party. I think it is simply unforgiveable and unprincipled for Kezia Dugdale, John Woodcock or Ben Bradshaw if they are going round their constituencies telling people to vote Tory.

 

Blair,  Brown and Ed Miliband all had one important thing in common.

 

They left the ideology of the Labour Party in a mess. I would go so far as to say they left it in a vacuum, which might explain why so many in the UK voted to leave the European Union.

 

But the Guardian, and senior political editors at the BBC, have made it into a passion criticising Jeremy Corbyn in an amazingly comprehensive hate campaign.

 

They are so keen on this hate campaign, they would not mind if this country went to the dogs.

 

That’s patriotism, the Tory way.

 

We are where we are with Brexit.

 

The Liberal Democrats insist that they are not ‘re-running Brexit’, but they do want to put to some sort of vote what our post Brexit existence could be or should be.

 

Indeed, whilst those who voted in the EU referendum in the most part wanted to vote out of the European Union, there is currently no clear mandate on leaving the single market.

 

If Labour or the Conservatives do not win the 2017 general election on their own, it is possible that the race becomes one of a race between (Tory and LibDem) or (Labour and SNP).

 

We can assume that the Conservatives have mentally written off the idea of ‘paying back the deficit’ on their third attempt (by 2025).

 

This incidentally is also the year David Cameron and his colleagues in big charity have promised to deliver a ‘cure for dementia’.

 

Labour  had become triangulated, up until and including the departure of Ed Miliband, to ‘paying off the deficit’.

 

But that led to annihilation of any enthusiasm and vision under the Labour membership.

 

With the ideology of ‘paying off the deficit’, everything else follows – including making the State totally underfunded. Cuts and austerity have been euphemistically dressed up as efficiency.

 

This current general election in 2017 is truly astonishing.

 

Theresa May wants to use the 2017 general election as a blank cheque for a ‘small state’. This explains why May does not consider it important to deliver a universal entitlement on winter fuel payments or to deliver an elderly care system where we pool risk equitably.

 

Is it ‘patriotic’ of May to put people with dementia on the financial breadline in this way?

 

Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, on the other hand, have produced a brilliant vision for government – whether you agree with it or not. It is fully costed – none of the 60 promises in the Conservatives manifesto have been costed, and the overwhelmingly right wing media do not care.

 

This is tragic.

 

The double standards further extend to Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell allegedly being ‘terrorist sympathisers’. So why did Michael Fallon go to meet the dictator Assad in 2007?

 

Whatever you think of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, they have taken the level of debate much further on the risable twaddle from years ago.

 

The first question after George Osborne’s omnishambles budget from Nick Robinson was, “Prime Minister, have you ever eaten a Cornish pasty?”

 

Ed Miliband, and his shadow cabinet, were control freaks. None of them could ever go passionately off message. Take for example their tortured messages on the ‘cost of living crisis’.

 

The tragedy, however, was that Ed Miliband was also right in his way too.

 

This year, prices will far outstrip wages. There is definitely a phenomenon called ‘the cost of living crisis.

 

And we know that the energy market is broken. The inflated prices from large oligopolies demonstrating near monopolistic behaviour show that.

 

Ed Miliband recognised that too.

 

Even ‘Red Tory’ Theresa May recognises the housing market is ‘broken’.

 

However, we know that her superior, Mrs Thatcher, perhaps referred to as ‘selfishly individualistic’ in May’s manifesto, sold off the housing stock.

 

Now Maggie’s children are having to sell off their houses to pay for their own elderly care, because successful governments obsessed with a small state and free movement of capital have neglected to safeguard the infrastructure.

 

Let’s vote May out, and then we can discuss what ‘Mayism’ is at our leisure.

 

A few days ago, somebody aged above 70 said he would not be surprised if Labour actually defied the odds – like when Clem Attlee won in 1945 with an extraordinary vision, when good Mr Churchill was expected to win.

 

Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.

 

Strong and stable? My arse.

 

Just ask the junior doctors, nurses or teachers.

 

I think it is time to give the robotic ‘strong and stable’ Theresa May the boot, and send a giant rocket to her equally unappealing and unimpressive Cabinet.

 

This is not a once in a lifetime opportunity.

 

This is a once in many lifetime opportunities.

 

Even if the BBC and Guardian can’t be arsed to give you the facts about the manifestos (sic), seize the opportunity to divert the UK from being an offshore banana republic off the shores of the European Union.

 

Time to give Theresa May ‘nil points’.

 

 

dr_shibley