Ed Miliband at the 2014 Hugo Young lecture: Labour can't sell its vision on the NHS because it doesn't have one

One of the most famous criticisms of Gordon Brown that he was less concerned about the manner in which he delivered the argument, so long as he was ‘right’.

Tony Blair realised that Gordon Brown was ‘to the left’ of him quite early on.

In 2001, Blair and Brown had a tussle over ‘top up fees’ in higher education. Brown was against them, and Blair was in favour of them. There was a concern that this might lose Labour seats.

Fast forward onto 2014, and Ed Miliband presents disabled people being in control of their budgets. Of course, the idea of personal budgets has been progressing steadily for the last few years. But austerity presents a new opportunity for the personal budget: always presented as a method of empowering persons and patients with choice, it now gives the Labour Party, and a possible Liberal Democrat partner, a chance to mix up health and social care budgets. The beauty of this is that with the opportunity of top-pay payments in health, previously called ‘copayments’, slimming the State is sold as choice.

This has been briefed as being an aspect of Ed Miliband’s Hugo Young Speech to be given this evening.

The Clement Attlee government, in implementing the National Health Service, was accused of always having to combine ‘a vision’ with sheer improvisation.

Ed Miliband’s outlook on the NHS, while clearly obsessing in general about the interaction between the States and market in a curiously academic way, is now threatening to be full of improvisation, but no vision.

Andy Burnham MP is doing as much as he can do in selling Labour as ‘the party of the NHS’, and opposing competition, privatisation and hospital closures. But there’s curiously a complete lack of vision of what is going to take its place, apart from a rather nebulous concept known as ‘whole person care’.

Tony Blair often boasted about how people’s satisfaction of the NHS could often have nothing to do with political ideology. For example, how long you have to wait in A&E is surely something which should not depend on your political make-up?

Quite ironically, the theme of ‘abuse of power’ is common to both the left and right of political ideology, as is well known to ardent followers of E.P. Thompson and Edmund Burke respectively.

Even Churchill commented at the height of reaction to Bevan’s “vermin speech” that the Conservatives “might be vermin”, but did support the NHS.

The Labour perspective is full of inherent contradictions. This was for example seen in all its glory when Ed Miliband triumphed in the notion of ‘One Nation’, while launching quite an unpleasant attack on the Conservatives. One Nation is not, of course, completely possible while different devolved NHS systems are running in England, Wales and Scotland.

Ed Miliband’s populist left speech this evening manages to identify the “pantomime villains” of the outsourcing companies, without explaining why it might matter who delivers the NHS services?

Tony Blair always boasted how his great work on the public sector combined ‘reforms’ with ‘investment’.

But making money is not an ideology. Introducing neoliberal budgets, but saying it’s not individual consumerism, is laughable.

There’s clearly going to be some resentment from the general public to see hardworking taxpayers’ money invested in public services only for these to be privatised at some later date (e.g. HS2, Royal Mail).

When Blair proudly said he wished to see the NHS as a business, it’s an ideology of sorts; but in the same way you might wish to see education as a business, or war as a business, or prostitution as a business.

Blair of course disingeniously couples with this the idea that he wants to see the NHS as more ‘innovative’. This is of course is to assume that socialism can never deliver innovation, which is an unworkable concept because of the emphasis which socialism places on solidarity, cooperation and collaboration.

It’s all very well combining Arthur Daley with Citizen Smith producing ‘power to the people with cheque books’.

But the idea of accountability in the NHS is an utterly fraudulent one. Local people have absolutely no power on budget sheets of PFI hospitals being engulfed with regular interest payments, such that safe staffing levels cannot be enforced.

Local people have no power when it comes to a complaints system in the NHS which does not action any complaints.

The major problem is that Labour can’t sell its vision. That’s because it doesn’t have one. To execute its agenda, maybe a Labour-Liberal Coalition might in fact be the best thing for it.

Mervyn Hyde

For anyone who has read the Orange Book can be in no doubt that Co-payments are part of their NHS strategy, as is an insurance scheme and top up payments.

Ed Miliband is utterly disingenuous, and the proof of the pudding is in his secret memo involving old Blairites such Alan Milburn in deciding on health policy. The key part of the deceit being that the memo was secret until exposed in the Guardian.

Blue Labour can’t be trusted with the NHS, and Andy Burnham is also totally unconvincing, if he had an ounce of credibility left, he would resign from office for being overridden by Alan Milburn.

Excellent article Shibley.
http://legal-aware.org/ Shibley

Thanks Mervyn. Was about to tweet you the article, but it looks as if you beat me to it!
http://www.careif.org Albert.Persaud

Dear Shibley,

Excellent piece; It is a bit like a patient with poor vision, you have blurredness, blind spots and sometimes uncertainty. Unfortunately it is a similar phenomenon for Labour, across all aspects of social, education and health sectors. Labour could start by engaging with those from these sectors to help them construct a / the vision. The Tories did it in 1991, when they created the Health of the Nation; again Labour did it in 1997, when they created Modernising the NHS. It worked as it made sense and those involved shared the vision. I know this because I was involved and helped to craft the vision, policies and implementation; albeit in Mental Health.
( HoN, Honos, NSF, MHA,).

Time for Labour politicians to roll their sleeves up and start acting.

However most pressing for Labour is to ask themselves, as to, what are the problems of the country that the public see the Tories as the answer.

Albert Persaud– rtd after 40 years in NHS
soon to publish Is Bevan’s NHS under threat?
http://legal-aware.org/ Shibley

Thanks Albert.
With very best wishes, shibley
http://gravatar.com/christoclifford christoclifford

http://touchstoneblog.org.uk/2014/02/30424
A different view
- Mervyn Hyde
  
  I joined the Labour Party in 1974 to campaign against what I saw then as an attack on public service provision.
  
  Most in the Labour Party at that time supported public provision over private because they understood that private overheads(shareholders) were greater than public administration, it didn’t take an Einstein to work it out.
  
  Although that said here is what he said in 1949: http://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism
  
  During the early seventies Milton Friedman had a series of programmes on the BBC spelling out his theories on monetarism and why the private sector was better placed to serving people than the public sector. Most of us rejected that nonsense and could see it for what it was worth, little did we know then just how deeply the political agenda had penetrated the political establishment.
  
  Clearly the Neo-Liberal agenda was being driven by politicians within the Labour Movement just as they are today but at a slightly lesser extent in those days. In the Eighties I attended a meeting in my Brother inlaw’s constituency (Norton Radstock) where David Owen spelled out the problems as he saw it in the Labour Party, saying “the party is over” meaning that public spending could not be sustained and that austerity was the answer.
  
  Not long afterwards he formed the Breakaway SDP, and that has been passed into history, the remaining faction though has continued to gain influence over the years and now dominate(Neo-Liberal) policy in the Labour Party.
  
  This trend has brought this country to economic collapse, not by accident but by design, as Naomi Klein spells this out in her book “The Shock Doctrine.”
  
  Public services have not failed because capitalism is better, but deliberately undermined by underfunding and political castration.
  
  In one sentence Ed Miliband’s duplicity can be seen from his claim to want more public accountability; by giving parents the rights and power to sack head teachers, as if the public are experts in teaching practice and understand the day to day management of underfunded schools.
  
  Especially when politicians themselves are responsible for the social problems that schools have to deal with on a daily basis, Ed Miliband is utterly disingenuous, and is hoping people will fall for these kinds of attacks on people dedicated to doing their best under circumstances beyond their control.
  
  I am not deceived by Ed and am sick of hearing platitudes before an election only to find that what I thought I was electing is no different from the previous charlatans.

Ed Miliband at the 2014 Hugo Young lecture: Labour can’t sell its vision on the NHS because it doesn’t have one