It is important to distinguish between New Labour and some Blairites. I have much respect for Tony Blair, having successfully won for Labour three general elections. He will be, rightly, considered with hindsight to be one of the best Prime Ministers Labour has had.

In sharp contrast, a minority of ‘Blairites’, but not all, have made very nasty and personal nasty attacks on people within Labour, with the clear aim of undermining their credibility and reputation. They have not sought to engage with the arguments at all, and in fairness they have been leveraged by editors of Labour’s blogs and, to a lesser extent, the national media.

Thankfully, the backlash started against them. They have lost momentum and respect. They have even lost the argument, but in fairness to them they have not produced a credible argument based on behavioural economics. Some people who have worked for Tony Blair are highly intelligent and knowledgeable individuals, and these “Blairites” do them a great disserve. Some of the Labour mainstream blogs are about as popular as the utility companies; they have customers, but because of the lack of competition, they can set the agenda, and can pretend to look popular. It’s just that some people feel they have no choice.

The tide has definitely turned in Ed Miliband’s favour. His team have won the economic argument, with worsening unemployment, stagnant growth, inches away from a ‘double dip’ and slump in domestic demand. As the public do not trust Labour on the economy, this is not an agenda for Labour to campaign on, however.

The agenda for Labour to work on is health. People have campaigned tirelessly to the point that Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband have seen the need to publish the NHS Registers. Not a single Risk Register has ever previously been censored. These are exciting times for Labour, and Ed Miliband has done more than take a populist agenda. It’s a popular agenda, and, as recent polling proves, it’s one which the public trust Labour more on.

Falling inflation is not an achievement for the Bank of England. It is the result of the Coalition, consisting of the Conservatives and the Labour, being untrustworthy with the economy. Increasing the rate of VAT throttled domestic consumer demand, and the only thing keeping prices are inadequately regulated utilities by the State. Public sector cuts which have yet to take full effect have partly contributed to soaring unemployment, devastating the personal lives of millions. More spending on unemployment benefits, with the additional factor of decreased tax revenues from people actually in work, means that the Coalition have created through their austerity agenda an incredible mess in the economy. George Osborne knows if the public understood that the general public would revolt.

It is therefore no wonder that we are now on “negative watch”. If the credit ratings, which George Osborne has been praising thus far, deteriorate, the cost of borrowing potentially could worsen, if we were not for the fact that the Eurozone bond market is much worse than the UK bond market. By the time unemployment hits the roof and the economy is still stagnant in 2015, with cuts to reach full potential, the Liberal Democrats will be totally unelectable. The destruction of legal aid and the NHS will not be forgotten either. The Tories and the Liberal Democrats cannot be trusted with the economy; the mess we’re in is directly their fault.

Nick Clegg could in fact finish the Liberal Democrats (‘LibDems’) for good this time. Reports of the death of the LibDems have been greatly exaggerated, but this time it could be for real.

Many now appreciate that Ed Miliband has a very good chance now of becoming the next Prime Minister, if Nick Clegg fails to oppose the NHS and Social Care Bill. This will have been an incredible achievement when one term oppositions are far from the norm. Most experts, including the BMA and the Medical Royal Colleges, agree that the Bill is not fit-for-purpose. The views of Tim Montgomerie, Clare Gerada and Andy Burnham MP have now gained considerable traction, and most expert commentators felt that Ed Miliband’s performance last Wednesday in Prime Ministers Questions was his best yet.

It is increasingly likely that the Conservatives will still retain their core support at the next election, but Nick Clegg will be certain to lead his Party to oblivion if he does not oppose the Bill. Recent reports in the FT of his reaction to the dissent over the Bill indicate that he is putting himself over the interests of his Party, nor indeed the wider views of the public.

The failing of Nick Clegg, along with his embrace of policies which have directly led to a slump in consumer confidence and demand and a catastrophic rate of growth, will have only marginally contributed. It is a pity that the legacy of brilliant liberals such as John Maynard Keynes and William Beveridge will have been disregarded in such an arrogant and dangerous manner.

Nick Clegg has a very difficult political game of chess to play, but he can go for checkmate if he wishes.

He is indeed much more popular in the country than members of Labour would like to admit. A recent YouGov survey found that just 20 per cent of people say Ed Miliband is performing well as Labour leader, while 21 per cent think the same of Nick Clegg as leader of the Liberal Democrats, despite his party’s unpopularity.

Tim Montgomerie has produced an article in the popular grassroots blog ‘Conservative Home’, warning David Cameron that it has been a mistake to put the NHS at the centre of the political debate. Montgomerie has indeed used the term ‘potentially fatal’ in describing the potential impact of the Bill on the future electoral chances of the Conservative Party in 2015.

The poll ratings of the Liberal Democrats have been consistently poor recently. In June 2011, an ICM poll reported that the Liberal Democrats have plummeted in the public’s opinion suffering a 14-year low with a score of 12 per cent.

Nick Clegg has been important in enabling important amendments to the proposed Bill. For example, in May 2011, he opposed to the surprise of many the competition regulator. He also publicly criticised David Cameron for declaring his love for the NHS while taking advice from people talking up the potential for private profits.

Nick Clegg has been remarkably loyal to the Coalition, having pledged an ‘united coalition’ in that famous rose garden scene on 12 May 2010, vowing to provide ‘strong and stable leadership’. Clegg has repeatedly emphasised the function of the Coalition as acting ‘in the national interest’.

However, many interested parties have now united instead against the NHS Health and Social Care Bill, including the Royal College of GPs, Faculty of Public Health, British Medical Association, Royal College of Nursing and Royal College of Midwives, which all oppose the bill outright.

Interestingly, Tim Farron MP, seen as a critical figure within the Liberal Democrats, has voiced his concerns, stating clearly this was not a Bill that the Liberal Democrats would have introduced if they had been in power on their own. He added: “What we’ve done is to prevent the worst excesses, to stop the emphasis on competition and put the emphasis on quality. I guess my largest complaint is that it has taken 12 months and it has taken people’s eye off the ball when it comes to delivering health care at the chalk face.”

This political game of chess for Nick Clegg is therefore an extremely complicated one. If his party supports the Bill, he could be supporting legislation modernising the management of the NHS ‘in the national interest’. However, many MPs and activists from various parties have warned that this Bill is no longer fit for any purpose.

If Liberal Democrat MPs are successfully whipped to recommend the Bill for enactment, the popularity of David Cameron is very unlikely to be affected. Ed Miliband will have been handed a gift for the 2015 general election, and the Liberal Democrats might achieve their lowest poll rating ever. Despite the national interest, does Nick Clegg wish this to be his lasting legacy for the Liberal Democrats?

If, on the other hand he decides to urge his party to oppose the Bill, he will have strengthened the importance of the Liberal Democrats in the Coalition, and may indeed have done England a big favour. That might be a more fitting legacy.

I respect Tony Blair much. Indeed, he won three impressive election victories for my Party. Indeed, I like him as a person. I find his account of his family in ‘The Journey’ very moving.

However, as Frank Dobson MP points out in the video below, Labour started to lose support in the early 2000s, long before the Iraq War. I am in two minds about Tony Blair’s path to power. I believe it was important that the public were on his side, and you need to have the genuine support of followers to be successfully in power in government rather than to be simply in office. On the other hand, having vivid memories of Thatcherism in his heyday, prior to the Poll Tax, I believe that a donkey could have beaten John Major in 1997. I’m only surprised he won in the first place, which is indeed a tribute to him and the Conservative Party.

However, I firmly believe that New Labour was wrong on economics. The field of behavioural economics provides that there are irrational customers, and that’s all ‘rather complicated’. I am not interested in getting bogged down in an erudite discussion of ‘Nudge’ at this point – I disagree with Nudge too, as it happens.

Whilst it is comforting to think of things in terms of the supply-demand graph, real economics provides that price, cost and value have different definitions in modern economics. Furthermore, the Nobel Prizes for economics in 2001 and 2002 respectively, with Joe Stiglitz and Dan Kahneman, offer a convincing argument for information asymmetry in decision-making and loss aversion in decision-making.

This is particularly relevant now when it is erroneous to compare apples with bananas in the NHS. It’s difficult to compare the costs and value of chronic dementia care with the cost of a hip operation, and it may be dangerous to leave this entirely in the hands of a free market which operates under law to maximise shareholder dividend. If I had to pay for the medical care for my six week coma due to meningitis in 2007, I would owe the private health company millions probably. I think we do need some sort of shared risk/insurance system, but the NHS currently is not paid out of National Insurance to my knowledge. The sooner the Blairites appreciate this the better – otherwise their exercise is being run by shabby marketing people who don’t even understand economics like good marketeers do.

Despite some low points, I am still very proud to be supporting Ed Miliband. I voted for Ed, and indeed this video is of Frank Dobson at his last ever hustings when he was campaigning to be leader of my/our Party. And yes, and I came top in the MBA in economics and marketing last year in case you’re wondering..

From this morning’s Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme, an interview by Justin Webb of Andy Burnham MP Shadow Secretary State for Health.

This transcript is to the best of my ability, and is (c) of my blog and cannot be reproduced without my express permission. There are precise words here in this particular transcript.

Justin Webb

Labour’s view is clear. Mr Cameron himself must show leadership, grasp the nettle, and drop the Bill. The Bill being the Health and Social Care Bill, the hugely controversial reorganisation of the health service in England, and that Bill being back before the House of Lords today, with Labour hoping to damage it further by getting the government defeated on crucial provisions – including a new rule which would allow hospitals to raise up to 49% of their income from private patients, provided that money were ploughed back into NHS services. The Government says that Labour is launching an opportunistic attack, with no real sense of a properly thought-through alternative. The Shadow Health Secretary is Andy Burnham, and is on the line now. Good morning to you.

Andy Burnham

Good morning.

Justin Webb

Can we deal with that 49% thing first – what is it that you object to? You allowed, didn’t you, hospitals to make some money from private patients, but it was capped quite low. The Government simply wants to raise that cap.

Andy Burnham

We did Justin. We did Justin but it was carefully controlled, activity at the margins of the hospital. This Bill would take it up to a whole new level allowing the hospital to earn up to half of its income from treatment of private patients, so that’s 1/2 of appointments, theatre times, beds, car park spaces, devoted to the treatment of private patients.

Justin Webb

But  no – they’d have to build extra to do it. They wouldn’t be taking existing NHS beds and turning them private?

Andy Burnham

That’s the point isn’t it? They wouldn’t have to. The effect could be that NHS waiting lists get longer, and people simply won’t accept that with hospitals built with taxpayers’ money which should be focused on treating NHS patients.

Justin Webb

Why would that be? They wouldn’t be focused on it, they’d be raising money from it which would be ploughed back into the NHS.

Andy Burnham

The Government’s Bill is producing a competitive market. They’re essentially saying to all hospitals that they’re on their own. You’ve got to find the money to survive. That’s a big break with NHS history. We’ve had a system which has been collaborative where systems support each other. They’re saying, with this Bill, to hospitals that they’re on their own – they’re saying to them that it’s a competitive market, you’re on your own, and you have to use these freedoms to protect your bottom line. My fear is that they would begin to devote more time for private patients squeezing NHS patients out, and that will be a return to the bad days of the NHS where people were told ‘wait longer, or go private’.

Justin Webb

But again, under Labour, independent sector treatment was introduced, wasn’t it? In NHS hospitals, treatment centres were introduced,  run by private organisations, some would say they worked rather well, an element of private competition introduced by Labour and working?

Andy Burnham

That’s true we did, and that capacity allowed us to deliver lowest-ever waiting times in the National Health Service. The context was different, Justin. Let me explain that. We introduced those providers within the context of a planned collaborative system, so that the extra capacity was managed. And by the end of our time in government, around 2% of operations were conducted in the private sector. That gives you an idea of the type of scale we introduced.

Justin Webb

Yes, but that’s terribly important. You say collaborative, but it wasn’t entirely collaborative, in that there was an element of competition – which was terribly important wasn’t it? The point of doing it was to “gee-up” the NHS, in order, in this specific case … to get waiting lists down, which it did, didn’t it? It wasn’t entirely collaborative, in that there was an element of competition then that was terribly important.

Andy Burnham

Competition was with controls, that’s my point. The Bill takes the controls away – takes the brakes away off the system. This Bill would throw up the NHS to the full force of NHS competition law where every contract which takes place will be open to competitive tender. That is a huge change from the NHS we left behind – we had collaborative NHS with good standards of care. That’s the question that I keep on coming back to: why on earth are the Government turning it upside down? They inherited a self-confident NHS, and in just 18 months they’ve turned it into an organisation which is demoralised, destabilised and fearful of the future.

Justin Webb

Here might be why. While there was increasing spending and waiting lists came down, there’s no doubt that productivity reduced? It is actually inconceivable that the NHS can carry on in the future in the way that the NHS is organised currently. We won’t be able to afford it, and if we want to be able to provide the health for ourselves, run the health service for less than 10% of GDP which you do as much as the Government does, we have to find a way of delivering the service in a better way, and a more productive way?

Andy Burnham

I am afraid I don’t accept the premise of your question. NHS is one of the most efficient systems in the world. That’s what the independent experts tell us.

Justin Webb

The National Audit Office in 2010 said that taxpayers were getting poorer value for money than 10 years previously.

Andy Burnham

Well, the Independent Commonwealth Fund makes a comparative study of health systems around the world, and repeatedly tells us that the NHS is one of the most efficient systems in the world. We do spend less than 10% of GDP, but that’s not the case in other countries in France, the Netherlands, and certainly not in the United States. That’s why market-based systems tend to cost much more, A National Health Service gives you an ability to control costs. If you break that, the market runs riot. More broadly, you mention efficiency. It was a catastrophic mistake, in my view, that, when the NHS is facing such huge financial challenge, they’ve allowed existing systems to disintegrate.

Justin Webb

In a word, then, you think the Bill can now be defeated?

Andy Burnham

Yes I do. All around there is a consensus that it is better to work through existing systems than to carry forward this dangerous re-organisation. The Government has abjectly failed to build a professional consensus behind the Bill. My offer still stands, Justin. I have no objection to building GP-led commissioning. This Bill will damage the NHS at this particular time.

Justin Webb

You’ve already introduced that in the past, haven’t you?

Andy Burnham

Yes I have. This Bill will damage the NHS at this particular time.

Justin Webb

Andy, we’ve got to leave it there. Thanks.

It has always been this clause of the Coalition Agreement that has caused many people a lot of discomfort.

The creeping marketisation (and monetisation) of the NHS continues to cause dismay amongst senior Liberal Democrat peers, reflecting the prominent opposition by Nick Clegg in 2011. Baroness Liz Barker described on the blog ‘LibDem voice’, in 2011, that the Liberal Democrats would “continue to argue that there should be nothing in the Bill that will open up the NHS to challenge by large private healthcare companies“. The latest salvo comes from Lord Tony Greaves this evening.

The biography of Lord Tony Greaves is fascinating.

Lord Tony Greaves has been a grass-roots Liberal activist since he joined the Liberals in 1960 (at university at Oxford and at home in Wakefield, Yorkshire). He says that for the past 40 years he has been a “mainstream Grimond-era radical Liberal) and looks with amazement at left-wing friends from the 1960s who have now leap-frogged him to the distant right to cuddle down with New Labour.

He was born and lived as a young child in Bradford but transferred his political allegiances to the North West when living in Manchester many years ago. He was a leading Liberal member of Lancashire County Council for some 25 years (Liberal group leader for a time) and a local Councillor on Colne and Pendle Borough Councils over most of the last three decades of the 20th century (with a spell as leader of Pendle Council).

When he was made a life peer in the list of “working peers” in the spring of 2000 he adopted the territorial designation of Pendle, the famous Lancashire Pennine hill that overlooks much of the mill towns and moors that make up the Borough itself.

Lord Tony Greaves feels that there is a fundamental flaw at the heart of the NHS Bill.

However, Lord Greaves has just given a very sobering interview on BBC’s Westminster Hour. On some good news, he feels that there has been a lot of safeguards to be welcome. For example, the Secretary of State is directly responsible to parliament.

Andrew Lansley would like to deliver a huge increase in productivity through commercial activity. However, Lord Greaves fundamentally believes that this would lead to privatisation of the NHS, and feels that this could lead to profits being returned to the private sector. Greaves feels that the regulation of this would be extremely difficult. There is going to be a steady seepage of services through to the private sector, according to Lord Greaves.

Lord Greaves feels that ultimately there have been so many changes in the Bill that it is likely that no party is going to be satisfied with the Bill. Lord Owen threatened the Bill did not go to Report, but now it looks as if the Bill is going to be passed in a substantially different Bill. Lord Greaves is further concerned about the use of the Financial Privilege being misused, making the Lords’ attendance redundant. However, Lord Greaves feels that the amendments have taken place due to a huge amount of compromise.

Lord Tony Greaves is ultimately concerned about the fragmentation and privatisation of the Bill. A lot of medical organisations have made it clear what they want, and it is hard for the Bill to be killed, without making Lansley go.

In November 2011, as described in the GP magazine, the Information Commission ruled that the Department of Health breached the Freedom of Information Act by failing to provide a copy of the risk register requested by former shadow health secretary John Healey. The Department of Health’s response to why they would not wish to publish the Risk Register is provided in this blog article. The analysis provided in this letter is markedly at odds with Andrew Lansley’s own headline of an article published in the Guardian in 2010 here: “An open, transparent NHS is a safer NHS”.

In ‘Any Questions’ on Friday evening, Tim Farron himself discussed the improvements in the Bill which had resulted as a result of the Liberal Democrats’ intervention, citing the influence of Shirley Williams and Paddy Ashdown, and explained that he was not in favour of marketisation of the NHS. He further explained that he wished for stability, and did not wish for ‘doctors and nurses to be mucked around by politicians’. Indeed, Nick Clegg has previously provided that the intervention in the NHS legislative process is a victory for the Liberal Democrats in the democratic process.

Neil Foster on the highly influential ‘Liberal Conspiracy’ website has written as follows:

Many Coalition MPs and Ministers will be wondering how they can save face and pull back at this late stage.

There is one way: publish the Department of Health’s Risk Register. The unpublished advice and projections in the Risk Register are likely to reveal an array of unknowns and significant potential for spiralling costs and deterioration of patient care.

If not, then why is the Health Secretary so keen to avoid the instructions of the Information Commissioner to release it?

The ‘last-minute revelations’ from the Risk Register should enable Coalition MPs to say with a reasonably straight face that they have taken on board the warnings alongside those of the Health Select Committee.

However without the publication of the Risk Register there is no plausible exit strategy for MPs who have ignored pressure to repeatedly vote for such a controversial Bill.

The EDM reads as follows on the UK parliament website:

That this House expects the Government to respect the ruling by the Information Commissioner and to publish the risk register associated with the Health and Social Care Bill reforms in advance of Report Stage in the House of Lords in order to ensure that it informs that debate.

The details of this EDM are as follows. As you will see, despite the problems with the parliamentary system of whipping allowing the Liberal Democrats to stand up for the views on the NHS, a number of Liberal Democrat MPs have indeed put their name down.

• Session: 2010-12
• Date tabled: 30.01.2012
• Primary sponsor: Morris, Grahame M
• Sponsors:
• George, Andrew
• Mearns, Ian
• Mulholland, Greg
• Sharma, Virendra
• Vaz, Valerie

At the time of publication, the following MPs had signed up:

For an excellent article from Thursday on this, please refer to Eoin’s blog here.

This apparently is an epigram by Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr in the January 1849 issue of his journal Les Guêpes (“The Wasps”). Literally “The more it changes, the more it’s the same thing.”

In the same way, James MacIntyre, John Rentoul, Mehdi Hasan and Sunder Katwala will always be there, Labour will always be there. Or maybe not – Luke Bozier has recently departed.

Not much has fundamentally happened in fact. The Unions are still ‘angry’ with Labour, but actually no union is ‘pulling out’. Ed Balls still feels that the cuts are ‘too fast and too deep’, and this explains why he’s not surprised that the deficit will be paid off in 2017 at the earliest. The Tories pretend to be against the Human Rights Act, but they know full well that even if they scrap the Act the jurisdiction of Strasbourg will still exist – unless we leave Europe. Talking of which, are we leaving Europe? No, don’t be silly.

The parties are still appalled at bankers’ bonuses, except nobody really wants to do much about it. The law regarding renumeration and corporate governance has not changed. However, we do know now that the clause obliging Hester to get a huge bonus does not as such exist, despite what the Coalition has been spinning for the last couple of years at least.

It’s still the case that Labour ‘overspent’, but hold on Labour still spent money to recapitalise the banks to stop the banks imploding. And George Osborne wouldn’t have stopped the fall of Lehmans or Northern Rock, either. It might have been possible that the Conservatives might have wished to maintain spending in NHS and state schools, indeed that is why they matched Labour’s comprehensive spending review of 2007.

I am of course being disingenuous. The Liberal Democrats are on 8% in the polls, although Nick Clegg remains ever popular when polling data are actually analysed. Ed Miliband still fails to impress apparently, and the Labour/crossbench Lordships are still able to create trouble for the Welfare Reform Bill despite the fact the LibDem peers voting with the Government. The NHS Bill is still a disaster, with the majority of the public and the Royal Colleges opposing it.

So the Government will get its legislation through, the deficit will get worse so long as unemployment increases and welfare benefits spending increases, the Unions continue to fund Labour, the Tories deny that emergency recapitalisation of the banks was necessary and deny that public spending was a good idea, and the Liberal Democrats become increasingly unpopular. The regulation of the media is a bit faulty at least, but will Leveson encourage state legislation? Probably no.

So are we just playing for time now? Yes.

With massive regret, and I’ve been willing Ed along for ages, but I have decided once-and-for-all that time has run out for Labour under its current leadership.

Sending out a message that we have to agree with the cuts agenda for 2015 gives us no room for manoeuvre, and straight-jackets the unions into looking impotent. They are the paymasters of Labour, but more importantly Ed has failed to make the case that they represent important stakeholders in our society. Ed has also shown absolutely no leadership in explaining the problems with the NHS Health and Social Care Bill, which poses very complicated issues about price, quality, cost, competition and health. More importantly, the private limited company in English law is there to maximise shareholder dividend, and Ed Miliband has failed to get his head around this simple concept as to who exactly profits from the NHS. Under legislative proposals, corporate entities from abroad could be honoured with an ability to make a ‘fast buck’.

Ed had a very potent theme in his conference speech on a topic known to be important to us in business and law, corporate social responsibility, but the sheer delivery of it was terrible. In an issue which matters to me, welfare reform, it was left up to bloggers Kaliya Franklin and Sue Marsh with others to bring us the #Spartacus report, and on the destruction of universal legal aid, there has been no credible discussion as to how to solve the legal aid funding disaster that faces England. As a disabled citizen, I will not have access to legal aid for the DLA which has been stopped without any notification, and I personally am disgusted.

Labour had plenty of time to get a new leader. The new leader had plenty of time to get some policies. Regrettably, I feel it is now time to get rid of Ed, before lasting damage is done to my party. Maybe Luke Bozier was right after all…