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The Liberal Democrats and UKIP should pledge to repeal the Health and Social Care Act
Ed Miliband, Andy Burnham, and the whole of Labour have pledged robustly that a direction to repeal the Health and Social Care Act (2012) will be made in the first Queen’s Speech of a new Labour Government.
It is said that David Cameron and Nigel Farage are to be issued with a joint challenge to declare that they will rule out any attempt to repeal the ban on foxhunting if they form a pact in the event of a hung parliament.
Evan Harris on 6 March 2012 identified the impact that the Lansley legislation would have to turbo-boost marketisation and privatisation of the NHS.
He warned Liberal Democrat colleagues not to touch it with a bargepole:
“It has no friends among even the non-party-political royal colleges, and has no mandate in those areas where it goes beyond the coalition agreement. The political impact will be to retoxify the Tory brand – which they are welcome to do, of course –, but also, by association, to damage the Lib Dems.”
The assurances given by Lord Clement Jones have turned out to be hollow:
“In putting down amendments, we have no hostility to competition as such, merely a desire to make use of the opportunities that the TFEU and European competition law offer member states to avoid the NHS being treated like a utility, such as gas and electricity.
Under the EU treaties, Article 106 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union states:
“Undertakings entrusted with the operation of services of general economic interest … shall be subject to the rules contained in this Treaty, in particular to the rules on competition, insofar as the application of such rules does not obstruct the performance, in law or in fact, of the particular tasks assigned to them”.
Member states have certain discretion as to which services are services of general economic interest. By ensuring healthcare services for the purposes of the NHS are services of general economic interest and that the “task” of co-operation between services is “assigned” to the healthcare providers, it should be possible to provide some protection from less desirable aspects of competition law.”
This year saw Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust awarding G4S Integrated Services a £3.9 million contract to provide domestic cleaning, portering and catering support across its property portfolio. The three year agreement, with the option to extend for a further year, will see G4S initially delivering services to 34 sites across Peterborough and Cambridgeshire, with further locations likely to be added in the future. Cleaning will be provided across the contract, with additional portering services and catering support at some specific sites.
Privatisation does not require a complicated definition. It’s simply the transfer of public sector resources into the private sector. Even the late Sir Keith Joseph, widely thought to be “brilliant” by the late Margaret Thatcher herself, and who was thought to be the principal “architect” of Thatcherism, ended up trying to keep afloat businesses in the public sector rather than privatise them. This was during his time as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.
There is generally a feeling that the Coalition government, a joint enterprise between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, went much further in privatising the NHS than the Thatcher government even dared to. And the worst aspect of this was there was absolutely no inkling that this would happen. There was no mention of this even in the Coalition Agreement of 2010.
There is no official policy by UKIP on the NHS yet.
This is absolutely staggering. The late Tony Benn used himself to warn people against voting for people who are ‘false prophets’. UKIP seem alarmingly reluctant to acknowledge the number of people from black asian minority ethic background who actually work for the NHS and bring value to it everyday.
It is now felt that there is quite a high chance of a ‘hung parliament’, although Labour activists are desperate to fight for a Labour government at Westminster with a healthy majority. It appears that the mainstream right-wing press have given up the ghost, in the form of David Cameron.
It is curious why the Conservative Party haven’t ditched their leader, like they did famously in 2010, but the most parsimonious explanation is that it would make sense to find a new leader after the expected catastrophe of the 2015 election. Ditching Cameron now might mean that they would have to ditch a new leader further in 2015. Besides, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have become a tried and tested product as far as the City are concerned.
The current Government, and people who sail with her such as BoJo, have fiercely defending the City’s interests in Europe as far as banker bonuses are concerned. They have resisted the ‘Mansion Tax’, which is widely thought to be introduced by Ed Balls as Chancellor in the first Budget of a Labour Government, as a windfall tax to produce a cash injection into the NHS. Furthermore, the City still has lucrative contracts in the form of the private finance initiative which have yet to be renegotiated properly from this Government; and also they have been very successful in promoting social impact bonds, the PFI equivalent for social enterprises, with the current Government which has used mutualisation to Trojan horse rent seeking in response to Mid Staffs.
Certain dividing lines have now got to be laid for the sake of the public good.
I feel that it is essential that David Cameron, Nick Clegg, and Nigel Farage are to be issued with a joint challenge to declare that they will rule out any attempt to resist the repeal of the Health and Social Care Act (2012).
Nigel Farage, for all his faux socialist credentials, seems unseen to resist formally the privatisation of the NHS; in fact his henchmen over the years have prided themselves on the ‘efficiency’ of the private sector, despite the growing allegations of fraud and inefficiency from the outsourcing companies used by the current government to deliver the smaller State.
Nick Clegg not only has a PR problem; he has a major issue with the content of what the Liberal Democrats stand for. It is widely known that there is discontent about his party’s ‘differentiation’ policy, which has seen the Tories and the Liberal Democrats telling the voters why each other party is clearly unfit for government. The charge sheet against the Liberal Democrats, including a weak economy (not enough till receipts from income tax to fund public services), demolition of legal aid, privatisation of NHS, misery for a mass of disabled citizens through botched welfare reforms, is substantial.
As a minority party, the Liberal Democrats would be asked to repeal the Health and Social Care Act (2012) which is possible but simply weird. It is clear that the Liberal Democrats, Conservatives and UKIP are clearly capable of running the NHS into the ground.
A lot of energy was put into fighting the Liberal Democrats on the toxic firestorm hospital closure clause, clause 119, which the Liberal Democrats were instrumental in protecting. Norman Lamb, for all his soothing words, has been the Minister of State in office while social care has imploded; the social care budget has not been ring fenced, coincidentally, since 2010.
There was a popular joke on Twitter this year that turkeys joked, “It’s like humans voting for UKIP”.
David Cameron, if he is still leader in 2015, or whoever is in charge of that toxic brand, will clearly be in no position to repeal the Health and Social Care Act (2012). The least worst option is that the Liberal Democrats and UKIP should pledge not to resist the repeal of the Health and Social Care Act (“Act”), but the hope is that a strong Labour government will have renewed vigour in assessing the political weather. Even better, they should pledge to repeal the Act.
That is, the component of the private sector in the mixed health and care economy has gone way too far. The health and care sectors should never be run anywhere for the benefit for shareholders offering care in 15 minute slots or below the minimum wage. The health and care sectors should not be so fragmented as they are now. People should be collaborating with each other to offer excellent clinical care, not competing with each other.
The vote is the most critical weapon of influence any of us has. Even more than ever, it is vital that it is used wisely.
Everything Clegg does he loses. Let’s get him to campaign for NHS privatisation properly.
Everything Clegg does he loses. Now is probably an excellent time to get him to campaign for NHS privatisation properly. Nick Clegg’s party, with the help of Baroness Williams and competition law loving members of the House of Lords, helped to get on the statute books one of the most corrosive statutory instruments for the NHS ever.
No ‘worm’ is needed to tell you that.
But if you’re talking about worms, Clegg was bringing up Farage’s rear for most of the evening.
And, as for the other YouTube metric, Farage won hands-down, although there were no ‘knockout blows’.
Nigel Farage did have two tricks up his sleeve which were interesting from a socialist perspective, ironically a few hours before Tony Benn’s funeral at Westminster.
Farage railed against free movement of capital a number of times, making loud anti-corporacy noises.
This is highly significant as the growth of the multinational, even beyond the increasing provision of NHS services by the private sector, has been a major concern for many NHS campaigners.
There has been a tendency for NHS campaigners to focus on the battles of the past, rather than anticipating the battles of the future. However, the campaigns that some campaigners have fought, for example on section 75 or clause 119, have gone very well despite the end-result (an artifact of our parliamentary system).
Battles yet to be fought are what happens on hospital closures in the next parliament and whether multinationals manage to overcome ‘barriers to entry’ in private care. Another battle to be fought is whether Labour, if elected, manages to implement unified personal budgets merging health and social care budgets. This could be just the Trojan Horse for private providers many in the private sector have been looking for, although Labour are keen to point out nobody is actually wishing to implement this. But the runes are there, and I suspect the Labour 2015 manifesto will be as vague and imprecise on this as possible.
There is nver going to be a LBC battle between Clive Peedell and Nick Clegg, or similar, but an hour on the NHS would be interesting. The media have never considered the future of the NHS as fertile an areas as immigration, as evidenced by weekly media political debates, but such a debate would be incredibly interesting.
What tonight did establish was though a very uncomfortable truth. That Nick Clegg is now so toxic it’s untrue is going to be hard for the Liberal Democrats to contain. He is as in tune with voters’ concerns as leaders of leftie think tanks including Neal Lawson of Compass are as tune in with the concerns of most experts in health policy. Whilst it might be able to drop bits of jargon such as ‘coproduction’ and ‘accountability’ into strategically placed letters in the media, if the resulting letter has the intellectual gravitas of the Teletubbies nothing is going to come of it.
Everything Clegg touches turns to tin, whether it’s the AV referendum or boundary changes, and so it goes on. With his lucky streak, he should be encouraged to team up with Baroness Williams and other Liberal Democrat Lords, and finish the job they’ve started: the privatisation of the NHS. With their losing streak, and the public’s resentment against them, this final heave could stop the NHS being privatised for good.
“All it takes for evil to succeed is for a few good men to do nothing…”
“All it takes for evil to succeed is for a few good men to do nothing…” is the famous saying by Edmund Burke.
Burke despised the abuse of power, so one can only wonder what he would have made of the enactment of the Health and Social Care Act (2012).
It’s often forgotten that the original name of the Liberal Democrats Party is the ‘Social and Liberal Democratic Party’. Nick Clegg worked for Tory Grandee, Leon Brittan, so is bound to have been the recipient of right-wing ideological stardust. David Laws, Nick Clegg and others like them don’t like to describe themselves as “social democrats”, they prefer to describe themselves as Liberals favouring ‘the smaller state’ in the tradition of J.S. Mill. David Laws has described previous Labour governments as having too many collective social democrat experiments, and possibly feels as much hostility towards Labour as is probably felt towards ‘the Orange Bookers’ by Labour members.
The idea of Labour voluntarily wishing to go into a Coalition with the Liberal Democrats in May 2015 should frankly make you wish to throw up down the nearest toilet. Lord Andrew Adonis explains his version of events in the account in “5 days in May”, and from it emerges a clean narrative of how the Liberal Democrats only used their abortive negotiations with Labour to try to improve their bargaining hand with the Conservatives. The brilliant Matthew d’Ancona is consistent with his account too. Nick Clegg clearly wanted to ‘go right’, and not go left. Clegg had reached a judgment, despite policy overlap with Labour, that a Lib-Lab coalition was not going to work. To explain, in his book ‘In It together’ D’Ancona describes a tight social circle running the Tory side of the coalition – “old friends, their wives, ex-girlfriends, all joining each other for holidays and dinner parties and sharing childcare, now all ministers or Downing Street staffers.”
There were no negotiations between the Liberal Democrats and Labour on the ‘economic plan’. Vince Cable was not even on the LibDems’ negotiating team. Nick Clegg signed up to ‘faster and deeper’ cuts, and the full ‘Go large’ offer of welfare reforms. Clegg’s promise that he would negotiate first with the party which achieved the most seats had no constitutional precedent. This move was clearly to legitimitise an opening to the Conservatives, and to his own party.
The writing was always on the wall for the NHS too. Nick Clegg’s wife was formerly a partner in charge of competition law work for the large corporate firm DLA Piper. This global legal partnership has been heavily involved in European competition law is DLA Piper, who provide lobbying, public affairs and trade policy services, as well as advice on how to get access to public service delivery contracts. One partner of the firm who is part of the Liberal Democrat Peer who ended up being highly influential was Lord Tim Clement-Jones, in seeing new the competition regulations reach the statute books this year.
“Neoliberalism” is an updated version of the classical liberal economic thought that was dominant in the US and UK prior to the Great Depression of the 1930s. From roughly the mid 1930s to the mid 1970s a new “interventionist” approach replaced classical liberalism. It became the accepted belief that capitalism requires significant state regulation in order to be viable. And we are seeing Labour returning to the idea that unregulated markets do not act to the benefit of the consumer, in his attack on ‘energy prices’. The “cost of living crisis”, whilst not directly about the NHS, is entirely about the dialogue between the State and the markets, which has become so essential for the UK Labour Party to negotiate.
In the 1970s the Old Religion of classical liberalism made a rapid comeback, first in academic economics and then in the realm of public policy. Neoliberalism is both a body of economic theory and a policy stance. Neoliberal theory claims that a largely unregulated capitalist system (a “free market economy”) not only embodies the ideal of free individual choice but also achieves optimum economic performance with respect to efficiency, economic growth, technical progress, and distributional justice. This idea has lingered on in the neoliberal policies of all three major parties, in “personal health budgets” which should be more accurately described as “individualised” budgets. With the combination of health and social care budgets likely to form a thrust of Labour’s “whole person care” policy, the neoliberal concept of choice is potentially very much alive and well, but it will be for Burnham and colleagues to swing the pendulum back towards the inherent socialist (and left populist) notion of putting a ‘national care service’ on an equal footing with health. In this narrative, which Labour had thus far been reluctant to question before Burnham noticeably started making strong ‘anti-market noises’, the State is assigned a very limited economic role: defining property rights, enforcing contracts, and regulating the money supply. State intervention to correct market failures is viewed with suspicion, on the ground that such intervention is likely to create more problems than it solves. If Ed Miliband’s concept of the relationship between the State and markets is anything to go by, and this itself represents a marked departure from Tony Blair’s viewpoint, Andy Burnham is likely to be able to make inroads into this socialist agenda.
The definition of socialism is in fact well known to all members of the Labour Party, by virtue of their membership card. It is worth noting that recent policy decisions have been promoting neoliberalism, and the net effect has been that the Socialist Health Association has been asleep at the wheel. Competition is a massive shoo-horn into neoliberalism. Nearly exactly one year ago, I described how section 75 of the Health and Social Care Act (2012) would be exactly the sort of legislative mechanism which would impose competition like never before on the NHS. As Lynton Crosby himself says, “You should lock in the base, and then go for the swing?” In my view, the base is competition, the swing is the free movement of capital.
My article on the Socialist Health Association website is here, long before Polly Toynbee and David Nicholson were reporting as thinking that competition was a problem. Once capitalism had become well established in the US after the Civil War, it entered period of cutthroat competition and wild accumulation known as the Robber Baron era. In this period a coherent anti-interventionist liberal position emerged and became politically dominant. Despite the enormous inequalities, the severe business cycle, and the outrageous and often unlawful behavior of the Goulds and Rockefellers, the idea that government should not intervene in the economy held sway through the end of the 19th century.
What explains this political difference between large and small business? The mood music appears to be that Labour is intending to refine its pledge of ‘being the party of business’. Ed Miliband in his conference speech of 2013 made quite a big play of ‘standing up to bullies’ rather than ‘the weak’. It would therefore make no intuitive sense for Miliband to become very pro-corporations and ignoring SMEs. And this makes complete sense when you understand the relationship of the symbiotic relationship between the State and big corporations. When large corporations achieve significant market power and become freed from fear concerning their immediate survival, they tend to develop a long time horizon and pay attention to the requirements for assuring growing profits over time. They come to see the state as a potential ally. Having high and stable monopoly profits, they tend to view the cost of government programs as something they can afford, given their potential benefits. By contrast, the typical small business faces a daily battle for survival, which prevents attention to long-run considerations and which places a premium on avoiding the short-run costs of taxation and state regulation. This explains the radically different positions that big business and small business held regarding the proper state role in the economy for the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. It is no particular surprise that some of the G8 dementia summit agenda has had textbook ‘corporate capture’, in going down the road of personalised genomics medicine rather than care.
To some extent, this “horse has bolted”, and it is to his credit that Andy Burnham MP has vigorously said the marketisation of the NHS went far too far. For example, in his first ever Healthwatch Conference speech,
“I think we let the market in too far. The time has come to say that and to draw a line and make a break with it. If you let this market in too far, I believe, in the end, you will destroy the whole, what is so fantastic about the NHS, that ethos that Danny Boyle captured so memorably at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.”
Andy Burnham, as Shadow Secretary of State for Health, has pledged to repeal the Health and Social Care Act (2012), which will go some way to discredit the extremely poor arguments for competition which have emerged from prominent healthcare analysts in recent years. There is no doubt, for example, that the merger involving Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch hospitals NHS foundation trust and Poole Hospital NHS foundation trust was a particularly low point. All the people whom I have spoken to in private think that Andy Burnham MP and all members of the Shadow Health Team really firmly believe what they’re saying, in standing up for the NHS. This should in theory be low hanging fruit for Labour as Labour is consistently many % points ahead of the Conservatives on the NHS. It should also be in theory low hanging fruit for the Socialist Health Association.
Having failed so triumphantly in having warned about the threat posed by this pro-competition legislative instrument, the Socialist Health Association is at risk of being asleep at the wheel yet again over a second and equally crucial matter. Some analysts argue that globalisation has produced a world of such economic interdependence that individual nation-states no longer have the power to regulate capital. Free movement of capital is described as being “at the heart of the Single Market and is one of its ‘four freedoms'”. According to the European Commission,
“It enables integrated, open, competitive and efficient European financial markets and services – which bring many advantages to us all.”
Tony Benn has described graphically how he considers “free movement of capital” to be a threat to basic democracy in socialism. Benn argues that this particular free movement imperialism under a new form: only the agents of imperialism are companies rather than countries. To this extent, the media excitement as to whether you should provide NHS treatment for migrants bring something to mind: “smoke and mirrors”.
And what about the EU-US Free Trade Treaty? This is the second big issue nobody wants to talk about, as it is the “swing” part of neoliberalising “our NHS”. The aim of the Agreement, according to the Commission, is to remove ‘unnecessary obstacles to trade and investment, including existing NTBs, through effective and efficient mechanisms, by reaching an ambitious level of regulatory compatibility for goods and services, including through mutual recognition, harmonisation and through enhanced cooperation between regulators’. (Art 24) It is mooted that the EU-US treaty would set in stone all liberalisation and privatisation measures already achieved at the time the treaty is signed and bring all future regulations within the restrictive provisions of the agreement. This treaty, if passed, would represent an enormous challenge to public-owned health services across Europe. There was very little awareness in Europe, even among those wanting to defend public services, to the implications of the EU-Canada agreement. Debbie Abrahams has become a lone voice virtually in discussing this in parliament. It would now be very desirable that campaigns in Britain pay serious attention to the US-EU negotiations and link up with campaigns in other EU states, and the Socialist Health Association as a national entity affiliated to the Labour Party should have a clear view on this. It would be even more helpful for its members if this settled view were consistent with a definition of socialism ‘as we know it’.
Whatever one’s precise definitions of privatisation and nationalisation, in the context of the NHS, it is clear that the public have some views about national identity and state ownership of assets. This is borne out by the electoral successes which are widely predicted for UKIP int the European Elections next year. So far, we’ve had the debate, but with no thanks to the BBC, of how the NHS is being outsourced and privatised without anyone’s knowledge. It is essential that the Socialist Health Association is fit for purpose in influencing Labour policy in 2014, in having a view on whether it wants to see primary care as well as services in NHS hospitals being run by private domestic and multi-national companies for maximisation shareholder dividend. This of course would be a tragedy in a year in the run-up to the General Election on May 7th 2015, though this is as much about a battle for the soul of the Labour Party as it is about winning an election.
In 1945 Herbert Morrison was given responsibility for drafting the Labour Party manifesto that included the blueprints for the nationalsation and welfare programmes:
“The Labour Party is a socialist party and proud of it. Its ultimate purpose at home is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain – free, democratic, efficient, progressive, public-spirited, its material resources organized in the service of the British people.”
But also – all it takes for evil to succeed is for a few good men to do nothing.
My blog on ‘Living well with dementia’ is here.
“All it takes for evil to succeed is for a few good men to do nothing…”
“All it takes for evil to succeed is for a few good men to do nothing…” is the famous saying by Edmund Burke.
Burke despised the abuse of power, so one can only wonder what he would have made of the enactment of the Health and Social Care Act (2012).
It’s often forgotten that the original name of the Liberal Democrats Party is the ‘Social and Liberal Democratic Party’. Nick Clegg worked for Tory Grandee, Leon Brittan, so is bound to have been the recipient of right-wing ideological stardust. David Laws, Nick Clegg and others like them don’t like to describe themselves as “social democrats”, they prefer to describe themselves as Liberals favouring ‘the smaller state’ in the tradition of J.S. Mill. David Laws has described previous Labour governments as having too many collective social democrat experiments, and possibly feels as much hostility towards Labour as is probably felt towards ‘the Orange Bookers’ by Labour members. The irony is, of course, that the “fixed term parliament” to run from May 7th 2010 – May 7th 2015, has only led to everyday being a phoney election (rather than bringing stability). This is in doubt continue for 2014.
The idea of Labour voluntarily wishing to go into a Coalition with the Liberal Democrats in May 2015 should frankly make you wish to throw up down the nearest toilet. Lord Andrew Adonis explains his version of events in the account in “5 days in May”, and from it emerges a clean narrative of how the Liberal Democrats only used their abortive negotiations with Labour to try to improve their bargaining hand with the Conservatives. The brilliant Matthew d’Ancona is consistent with his account too. Nick Clegg clearly wanted to ‘go right’, and not go left. Clegg had reached a judgment, despite policy overlap with Labour, that a Lib-Lab coalition was not going to work. To explain, in his book ‘In It together’ D’Ancona describes a tight social circle running the Tory side of the coalition – “old friends, their wives, ex-girlfriends, all joining each other for holidays and dinner parties and sharing childcare, now all ministers or Downing Street staffers.”
There were no negotiations between the Liberal Democrats and Labour on the ‘economic plan’. Vince Cable was not even on the LibDems’ negotiating team. Nick Clegg signed up to ‘faster and deeper’ cuts, and the full ‘Go large’ offer of welfare reforms. Clegg’s promise that he would negotiate first with the party which achieved the most seats had no constitutional precedent. This move was clearly to legitimitise an opening to the Conservatives, and to his own party.
The writing was always on the wall for the NHS too. Nick Clegg’s wife was formerly a partner in charge of competition law work for the large corporate firm DLA Piper. This global legal partnership has been heavily involved in European competition law is DLA Piper, who provide lobbying, public affairs and trade policy services, as well as advice on how to get access to public service delivery contracts. One partner of the firm who is part of the Liberal Democrat Peer who ended up being highly influential was Lord Tim Clement-Jones, in seeing new the competition regulations reach the statute books this year.
“Neoliberalism” is an updated version of the classical liberal economic thought that was dominant in the US and UK prior to the Great Depression of the 1930s. From roughly the mid 1930s to the mid 1970s a new “interventionist” approach replaced classical liberalism. It became the accepted belief that capitalism requires significant state regulation in order to be viable. And we are seeing Labour returning to the idea that unregulated markets do not act to the benefit of the consumer, in his attack on ‘energy prices’. The “cost of living crisis”, whilst not directly about the NHS, is entirely about the dialogue between the State and the markets, which has become so essential for the UK Labour Party to negotiate.
In the 1970s the Old Religion of classical liberalism made a rapid comeback, first in academic economics and then in the realm of public policy. Neoliberalism is both a body of economic theory and a policy stance. Neoliberal theory claims that a largely unregulated capitalist system (a “free market economy”) not only embodies the ideal of free individual choice but also achieves optimum economic performance with respect to efficiency, economic growth, technical progress, and distributional justice. This idea has lingered on in the neoliberal policies of all three major parties, in “personal health budgets” which should be more accurately described as “individualised” budgets. With the combination of health and social care budgets likely to form a thrust of Labour’s “whole person care” policy, the neoliberal concept of choice is potentially very much alive and well, but it will be for Burnham and colleagues to swing the pendulum back towards the inherent socialist (and left populist) notion of putting a ‘national care service’ on an equal footing with health. In this narrative, which Labour had thus far been reluctant to question before Burnham noticeably started making strong ‘anti-market noises’, the State is assigned a very limited economic role: defining property rights, enforcing contracts, and regulating the money supply. State intervention to correct market failures is viewed with suspicion, on the ground that such intervention is likely to create more problems than it solves. If Ed Miliband’s concept of the relationship between the State and markets is anything to go by, and this itself represents a marked departure from Tony Blair’s viewpoint, Andy Burnham is likely to be able to make inroads into this socialist agenda.
The definition of socialism is in fact well known to all members of the Labour Party, by virtue of their membership card. It is worth noting that recent policy decisions have been promoting neoliberalism, and the net effect has been that the Socialist Health Association has been asleep at the wheel. Competition is a massive shoo-horn into neoliberalism. Nearly exactly one year ago, I described how section 75 of the Health and Social Care Act (2012) would be exactly the sort of legislative mechanism which would impose competition like never before on the NHS. As Lynton Crosby himself says, “You should lock in the base, and then go for the swing?” In my view, the base is competition, the swing is the free movement of capital.
My article on the Socialist Health Association website is here, long before Polly Toynbee and David Nicholson were reporting as thinking that competition was a problem. Once capitalism had become well established in the US after the Civil War, it entered period of cutthroat competition and wild accumulation known as the Robber Baron era. In this period a coherent anti-interventionist liberal position emerged and became politically dominant. Despite the enormous inequalities, the severe business cycle, and the outrageous and often unlawful behavior of the Goulds and Rockefellers, the idea that government should not intervene in the economy held sway through the end of the 19th century.
What explains this political difference between large and small business? The mood music appears to be that Labour is intending to refine its pledge of ‘being the party of business’. Ed Miliband in his conference speech of 2013 made quite a big play of ‘standing up to bullies’ rather than ‘the weak’. It would therefore make no intuitive sense for Miliband to become very pro-corporations and ignoring SMEs. And this makes complete sense when you understand the relationship of the symbiotic relationship between the State and big corporations. When large corporations achieve significant market power and become freed from fear concerning their immediate survival, they tend to develop a long time horizon and pay attention to the requirements for assuring growing profits over time. They come to see the state as a potential ally. Having high and stable monopoly profits, they tend to view the cost of government programs as something they can afford, given their potential benefits. By contrast, the typical small business faces a daily battle for survival, which prevents attention to long-run considerations and which places a premium on avoiding the short-run costs of taxation and state regulation. This explains the radically different positions that big business and small business held regarding the proper state role in the economy for the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. It is no particular surprise that some of the G8 dementia summit agenda has had textbook ‘corporate capture’, in going down the road of personalised genomics medicine rather than care.
To some extent, this “horse has bolted”, and it is to his credit that Andy Burnham MP has vigorously said the marketisation of the NHS went far too far. For example, in his first ever Healthwatch Conference speech,
“I think we let the market in too far. The time has come to say that and to draw a line and make a break with it. If you let this market in too far, I believe, in the end, you will destroy the whole, what is so fantastic about the NHS, that ethos that Danny Boyle captured so memorably at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.”
Andy Burnham, as Shadow Secretary of State for Health, has pledged to repeal the Health and Social Care Act (2012), which will go some way to discredit the extremely poor arguments for competition which have emerged from prominent healthcare analysts in recent years. There is no doubt, for example, that the merger involving Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch hospitals NHS foundation trust and Poole Hospital NHS foundation trust was a particularly low point. All the people whom I have spoken to in private think that Andy Burnham MP and all members of the Shadow Health Team really firmly believe what they’re saying, in standing up for the NHS. This should in theory be low hanging fruit for Labour as Labour is consistently many % points ahead of the Conservatives on the NHS. It should also be in theory low hanging fruit for the Socialist Health Association.
Having failed so triumphantly in having warned about the threat posed by this pro-competition legislative instrument, the Socialist Health Association is at risk of being asleep at the wheel yet again over a second and equally crucial matter. Some analysts argue that globalisation has produced a world of such economic interdependence that individual nation-states no longer have the power to regulate capital. Free movement of capital is described as being “at the heart of the Single Market and is one of its ‘four freedoms'”. According to the European Commission,
“It enables integrated, open, competitive and efficient European financial markets and services – which bring many advantages to us all.”
Tony Benn has described graphically how he considers “free movement of capital” to be a threat to basic democracy in socialism. Benn argues that this particular free movement is simply “imperialism” under a new form: only the agents of imperialism are companies rather than countries. To this extent, the media excitement as to whether you should provide NHS treatment for migrants brings something to mind: “smoke and mirrors”.
And what about the EU-US Free Trade Treaty? This is the second big issue nobody wants to talk about, as it is the “swing” part of neoliberalising “our NHS”. The aim of the Agreement, according to the Commission, is to remove ‘unnecessary obstacles to trade and investment, including existing NTBs, through effective and efficient mechanisms, by reaching an ambitious level of regulatory compatibility for goods and services, including through mutual recognition, harmonisation and through enhanced cooperation between regulators’. (Art 24) It is mooted that the EU-US treaty would set in stone all liberalisation and privatisation measures already achieved at the time the treaty is signed and bring all future regulations within the restrictive provisions of the agreement. This treaty, if passed, would represent an enormous challenge to public-owned health services across Europe. There was very little awareness in Europe, even among those wanting to defend public services, to the implications of the EU-Canada agreement. Debbie Abrahams has become a lone voice virtually in discussing this in parliament. It would now be very desirable that campaigns in Britain pay serious attention to the US-EU negotiations and link up with campaigns in other EU states, and the Socialist Health Association as a national entity affiliated to the Labour Party should have a clear view on this. It would be even more helpful for its members if this settled view were consistent with a definition of socialism ‘as we know it’.
Whatever one’s precise definitions of privatisation and nationalisation, in the context of the NHS, it is clear that the public have some views about national identity and state ownership of assets. This is borne out by the electoral successes which are widely predicted for UKIP int the European Elections next year. So far, we’ve had the debate, but with no thanks to the BBC, of how the NHS is being outsourced and privatised without anyone’s knowledge. It is essential that the Socialist Health Association is fit for purpose in influencing Labour policy in 2014, in having a view on whether it wants to see primary care as well as services in NHS hospitals being run by private domestic and multi-national companies for maximisation shareholder dividend. This of course would be a tragedy in a year in the run-up to the General Election on May 7th 2015, though this is as much about a battle for the soul of the Labour Party as it is about winning an election.
In 1945 Herbert Morrison was given responsibility for drafting the Labour Party manifesto that included the blueprints for the nationalisation and welfare programmes:
“The Labour Party is a socialist party and proud of it. Its ultimate purpose at home is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain – free, democratic, efficient, progressive, public-spirited, its material resources organized in the service of the British people.”
But also – all it takes for evil to succeed is for a few good men to do nothing.
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.
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 feees.
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 didn’t do any 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.
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.
Nick Clegg is bound to defend the Tory record, as he's a Tory. It doesn't matter to us.
It is beyond delusional that Nick Clegg is proposing to the voters of Britain that British voters are better off with a coalition government, with him as a permanent fixture as the Deputy Prime Minister. It may be spun that ‘behind the scenes’, he is known to favour David Cameron as he has worked with Cameron, but seriously? You must have surely worked with people that you’ve come to hate? It is, rather, well known that Nick Clegg is a Tory. He is utterly spineless, and has no liberal principles of his own. That is why many people serious about Liberal values have left in droves – or rather hundreds of thousands. Liberal does not mean snoopers’ charters. Liberal does not mean control orders. Liberal does not mean secret courts. Liberal does not mean propelling competition to be the overriding principle of a NHS which outsources as much as possible to the private sector, when the Liberal Democrat’s own constitution emphasises the principle of collaboration.
The question is: what will it take to get rid of Nick Clegg finally? Thanks to the legislation of the fixed term parliament, we already know that he will have to honour his promise to go the full distance. Vince Cable may offer sunny uplands in the form of the Coalition early, but it is merely a mirage. Many activists are worried about armageddon, which is widely predicted for the European elections. Oakeshott will be there to tell you he told you so, and Nigel Farage will yet again be the new messiah. However, none of this fundamentally changes anything. Nick Clegg is a Tory, and what he wishes to do after May 8th 2015 is utterly irrelevant.
Do people really care whether he wants to be in a Coalition with Ed Miliband? I strongly suspect Ed Miliband doesn’t wish to work with Clegg in a million years. The practical issue is inevitably how Nick Clegg is going to lead his party to vote with Labour to reverse a series of legislative steps from the present Coalition. It is inevitable that Labour will have to repeal the Health and Social Care Act (2012), and given the strength of feeling one cannot conceivably imagine LibDem MPs will now be whipped to vote against the legislation they originally delivered. Whilst it is common currency that most politicians are ‘professional’ and do what they are told, irrespective of what the country feels, Norman Lamb had no problems in implementing a £3bn top down reorganisation of the NHS when the political priority should have been to implement as soon as possible the Dilnot recommendations over the future of social care.
Say you’d submerged the Concordia, would you attempt to take credit for lifting it out of the waters? Say you’d driven a high speed train in Spain off the tracks, would you attempt to take credit for finding the ‘black box’ recorder? Nick Clegg incessantly criticised the economic policy under Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling in the dying days of the the final recent Labour government, and did his best totally to misinform the public. It could be the case that Labour did a dreadful job in explaining how the £860 billion was deemed ‘necessary’ in keeping the banks afloat, whilst maintaining a record level of satisfaction in the NHS. However, Nick Clegg, Simon Hughes and Danny Alexander did a splendid job in a coalition of lies with George Osborne and David Cameron in arguing that Labour had bankrupt the UK and we were close to the Greek situation. It is therefore not a great achievement that we have a feeble recovery. The argument that ‘Ed Balls does not even agree with Ed Balls’ has not reached lift off despite the best peddling from Tim Farron and Nick Clegg, and the BBC, because the facts speak for themselves. Whilst they proudly boast that the UK economy did not have a double dip or triple dip, it is incontrovertible that the UK economy had actually been recovering in May 2010.
So what Nick Clegg wants is irrelevant. In as much politics can be politicised, Clegg has become a figurehead for anger amongst a wide variety of issues important to Labour voters. While Clegg maintains his stuck record mantra of ‘lifting people out of poverty’, the list of cock ups from Clegg is truly lamentable. It is impossible to know where to start – but you could try the UK economy, the scrapping of the employment support allowance, the shutting of libraries, the scrapping of Sure Start, the scrapping of ‘Building Schools for the Future, and the destruction of the network of legal centres in England. Clegg’s horrific, even if he is a ‘great reformer’ of sorts. He represents all that is fundamentally sick with unprincipled, undemocratic politics. He is a sickening ‘career politician’ who built a brand of ‘no more broken promises’, while breaking a promise he publicly signed a pledge for regarding tuition fees.
Ed Miliband continues to be slagged off by the Liberal Democrat hierarchy, though less so by some on the left of the Liberal Democrat Party. Why should he particularly wish to embrace them as part of the progressive left? The reason he might is that Ed Miliband is a social democrat who doesn’t particularly mind standing up for principles he believes in, even if this means antagonising the Blairite press such as David Aaronovitch or John Rentoul. He called out ‘irresponsible capitalism’ in an universally panned conference speech in Manchester in 2011, much to the ire of the Blairite critics (surprise surprise), but nobody can dismiss how this important concept, passported from the seminal work of Prof Porter at Harvard, has taken root. The ‘transformation’ of ‘reforming’ the public sector in outsourced services has been incredibly unpopular with the general public, who are much better informed than the Coalition politicians would like to believe. You’d have to be on Mars not to be aware of the fraud allegations of A4e, Capita, Serco or G4s.
The public will not give credit to the Liberal Democrats for the economy. They might conceivably give some credit to the Conservatives. And yet the picture of the UK economy is not clear. The total number of people in employment has been rising consistently for many years now, irrespective of who is government. The Conservatives will have real problems in establishing living standards, as the cost of living has risen exponentially due to privatised utilised creaming off profits in the utilities industries. These utilities industries are typical ‘oligopolies’, where the product is virtually the same for the end-user whoever the provider is, prices are kept artificially high by all the providers (but proving collusion by the competition authorities remains virtually impossible), and shareholder profits are shamelessly high. Norman Tebbit have dug out a trench in no foreign ownership of Royal Mail, but there is no such legislation about foreign ownership of the utilities nor indeed the NHS.
Nick Clegg may have been the future once. But he’s now finished.
Nick Clegg is bound to defend the Tory record, as he's a Tory. It doesn't matter to us.
It is beyond delusional that Nick Clegg is proposing to the voters of Britain that British voters are better off with a coalition government, with him as a permanent fixture as the Deputy Prime Minister. It may be spun that ‘behind the scenes’ he is known to favour David Cameron as he has worked with Cameron, but seriously? You must have surely worked with people that you’ve come to hate? It is, rather, well known that Nick Clegg is a Tory. He is utterly spineless, and has no liberal principles of his own. That is why many people serious about Liberal values have left in droves – or rather hundreds of thousands. Liberal does not mean snoopers’ charters. Liberal does not mean control orders. Liberal does not mean secret courts. Liberal does not mean propelling competition to be the overriding principle of a NHS which outsources as much as possible to the private sector, when the Liberal Democrats’ own constitution emphasises the principle of collaboration.
The question is: what will it take to get rid of Nick Clegg finally? Thanks to the legislation of the fixed term parliament, we already know that he will have to honour his promise to go the full distance. Vince Cable may offer sunny uplands in the form of the Coalition early, but it is merely a mirage. Many activists are worried about armageddon, which is widely predicted for the European elections. Oakeshott will be there to tell you he told you so, and Nigel Farage will yet again be the new messiah. However, none of this fundamentally changes anything. Nick Clegg is a Tory, and what he wishes to do after May 8th 2015 is utterly irrelevant.
Do people really care whether he wants to be in a Coalition with Ed Miliband? I strongly suspect Ed Miliband doesn’t wish to work with Clegg in a million years. The practical issue is inevitably how Nick Clegg is going to lead his party to vote with Labour to reverse a series of legislative steps from the present Coalition. It is inevitable that Labour will have to repeal the Health and Social Care Act (2012), and given the strength of feeling one cannot conceivably imagine LibDem MPs will now be whipped to vote against the legislation they originally delivered. Whilst it is common currency that most politicians are ‘professional’ and do what they are told, irrespective of what the country feels, Norman Lamb had no problems in implementing a £3bn top down reorganisation of the NHS when the political priority should have been to implement as soon as possible the Dilnot recommendations over the future of social care.
Say you’d submerged the Concordia, would you attempt to take credit for lifting it out of the waters? Say you’d driven a high speed train in Spain off the tracks, would you attempt to take credit for finding the ‘black box’ recorder? Nick Clegg incessantly criticised the economic policy under Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling in the dying days of the the final recent Labour government, and did his best totally to misinform the public. It could be the case that Labour did a dreadful job in explaining how the £860 billion was deemed ‘necessary’ in keeping the banks afloat, whilst maintaining a record level of satisfaction in the NHS. However, Nick Clegg, Simon Hughes and Danny Alexander did a splendid job in a coalition of lies with George Osborne and David Cameron in arguing that Labour had bankrupt the UK and we were close to the Greek situation. It is therefore not a great achievement that we have a feeble recovery. The argument that ‘Ed Balls does not even agree with Ed Balls’ has not reached lift off despite the best peddling from Tim Farron and Nick Clegg, and the BBC, because the facts speak for themselves. Whilst they proudly boast that the UK economy did not have a double dip or triple dip, it is incontrovertible that the UK economy had actually been recovering in May 2010.
So what Nick Clegg wants is irrelevant. In as much politics can be personalised, Clegg has become a figurehead for anger amongst a wide variety of issues important to Labour voters. While Clegg maintains his stuck record mantra of ‘lifting people out of poverty’, the list of cock ups from Clegg is truly lamentable. It is impossible to know where to start – but you could try the UK economy, the scrapping of the employment support allowance, the shutting of libraries, the scrapping of Sure Start, the scrapping of ‘Building Schools for the Future, and the destruction of the network of legal centres in England. Clegg’s horrific, even if he is a ‘great reformer’ of sorts. He represents all that is fundamentally sick with unprincipled, undemocratic politics. He is a sickening ‘career politician’ who built a brand of ‘no more broken promises’, while breaking a promise he publicly signed a pledge for regarding tuition fees.
Ed Miliband continues to be slagged off by the Liberal Democrat hierarchy, though less so by some on the left of the Liberal Democrat Party. Why should he particularly wish to embrace them as part of the progressive left? The reason he might is that Ed Miliband is a social democrat who doesn’t particularly mind standing up for principles he believes in, even if this means antagonising the Blairite press such as David Aaronovitch or John Rentoul. He called out ‘irresponsible capitalism’ in an universally panned conference speech in Manchester in 2011, much to the ire of the Blairite critics (surprise surprise), but nobody can dismiss how this important concept, passported from the seminal work of Prof Porter at Harvard, has taken root. The ‘transformation’ of ‘reforming’ the public sector in outsourced services has been incredibly unpopular with the general public, who are much better informed than the Coalition politicians would like to believe. You’d have to be on Mars not to be aware of the fraud allegations of A4e, Capita, Serco or G4s.
The public will not give credit to the Liberal Democrats for the economy. They might conceivably give some credit to the Conservatives. And yet the picture of the UK economy is not clear. The total number of people in employment has been rising consistently for many years now, irrespective of who is government. The Conservatives will have real problems in establishing living standards, as the cost of living has risen exponentially due to privatised utilised creaming off profits in the utilities industries. These utilities industries are typical ‘oligopolies’, where the product is virtually the same for the end-user whoever the provider is, prices are kept artificially high by all the providers (but proving collusion by the competition authorities remains virtually impossible), and shareholder profits are shamelessly high. Norman Tebbit have dug out a trench in no foreign ownership of Royal Mail, but there is no such legislation about foreign ownership of the utilities nor indeed the NHS.
Nick Clegg may have been the future once. But he’s now finished.
The LibDems' USP is, apparently, "a fair society and a strong economy". Their party name is a misnomer, but the USP is clearly fraudulent.
If you tell a big one, tell a big one!
One lie leads to another!
Choose your adage, and run with it. At two separate points, I thought of these sayings this weekend. The first time was when Nick Clegg was interviewed by Sophie Raworth about various issues, including the economy. Clegg wasted no time in criticising the previous Labour administration in the running of the economy. The second time was when I finally read the article in the Independent about David Laws writing the next Liberal Democrat manifesto of 2015.
David Laws and Nick Clegg believe that the the unique selling proposition (USP) of the Liberal Democrats is “a fair society and a strong economy”.
Let us take first the economy because of the famous saying, “It’s the economy stupid”. It is a fact that if you look at the actual figures Labour spending prior to the economy was in fact comparable to Ken Clarke and Norman Lamont. George Osborne went on record to say that he would match at least the spending plans of Labour, and possibly exceed them, in the last government. There was a £1tn bailout in the UK economy which all experts concede was due to the emergency measure of recapitalising the bank.
The argument for doing this massive bailout was to stop the banking system imploding. The argument runs something like follows: all banks are heavily in debt (leveraged), and therefore when one bank can’t repay its debts, the bank to which it owes its debts can’t then repay its debts, and so you then have a domino effect. Northern Rock and the collapse of Lehman Brothers, a failure of the international securitised mortgages, saw the beginning of this dangerous situation. George Osborne puts a lot of store on credit ratings, ignoring the fact that Lehman Brothers had the top rating the second before it went bust.
Also, the Liberal Democrats’ economic policy has shared ownership with the Conservatives’ economic policy. They state clearly that their raison d’être of being in a Coalition is to reduce the deficit, even though the deficit has been going up due to falling tax receipts and increased levels of welfare payments. This policy, which has been criticised now by Ed Balls and the Labour Party, the head of Goldman Sachs, Prof. Stiglitz and Blanchflower, Lord Skidelsky and the trade unions, amongst others, has spectacularly failed, and the Liberal Democrats should be reminded at all opportunities about the mess they created following May 2010. They had inherited economy which was in a fragile recovery, squandered it, and for them to claim they aspire for a ‘strong economy’ is a disgusting laughable claim.
For the Liberal Democrats to have an ounce of credibility in the “damage that Labour did to the economy” argument, they must answer that one. True libertarians, it is argued, might have followed an argument akin to “creative destruction”, and allowed the banks to fail as per Iceland, a country which George Osborne praised before the Iceland economy went bust. It is argued by true libertarians that the best way to ‘cure’ the system overall is to allow the failing banks to fail, otherwise you unnecessarily give the wrong people money, and you’re in effect rewarding failure.
The Liberal Democrats are entirely silent on this matter.
The second part of the USP is no less fraudulent. The enactment of the Legal Aid and Sentencing of Offenders Act has seen law centres going out of business on the high street. Such law firms are essential for basic access-to-justice across a range of social welfare issues, not least disability and other welfare benefits, unfair dismissals and other employment disputes, immigration and housing matters, for example. In another Act, which only obtained Royal Assent because of the Liberal Democrats, the massive increase in the rôle of the private sector in running outsourced services for the NHS has become law, already leading to the marketisation and fragmentation of services offered by the NHS. This is a massive attack on the notion that the NHS is comprehensive, and even has threatened some services being “free-at-the-point-of-use”.
Disabled citizens do not feel that the LibDems have created a “fair society”. The Welfare Reform Act was steamroller-ed through Parliament and the House of Lords by the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. The appeals over people deemed ‘fit-to-work’ continue, as do the stories of inappropriate decisions, successful appeals, and, tragically, suicides.
The LibDems’ USP is, apparently, “a fair society and a strong economy”. Their party name is a misnomer, but the USP is clearly fraudulent. It is sick, disgusting, and needs to be scrutinised carefully in the next election campaign.
How one lie led to another – we'll be clearing up the economic mess Clegg left
Nick Clegg falsified the story, thereby rewriting history. He then got himself into Government, and then ruined the country.
It is easy to see the magnitude of Clegg’s failure when you refer back to the Budget debate for 24 March 2010, prior to the 2010 General Election (as recorded in Hansard). The context is some quibbling over the growth figures in David Cameron’s response:
This is in fact what has happened since May 2010. In April 2012, new figures revealed that Britain had plunged into the first double-dip recession since 1975 and is enduring its longest economic slump for a century. This was in fact the first double dip for 37 years and a nightmare scenario for Chancellor George Osborne, who predicted a rapid return to growth when he embarked on his austerity programme, and Mr Cameron, who had previously declared Britain ‘out of the danger zone’.
Source: tradingeconomics.com
It suited Nick Clegg and Vince Cable to defer as much blame onto Gordon Brown for the recession, rather than to blame global factors.
Indeed, Cable, Clegg and Osborne have been wishing for the Eurozone to implode much more than it has, in the same way that they have always hoped for the GDP figures to be ‘revised upwards’. Northern Rock, indeed in 2007, was one of many banks throughout the world to take on risky investments. Many of the assets that these banks had on their balance sheets started to lose their value (like ‘loans gone bad’ or securities derived from mortgages and other loans). The Bank of England became the last resort for the British banks as liquidity froze throughout the global market due to a lack of confidence. The global crash was predicted by Roubini (2010) who said: ‘As homeowners defaulted on their mortgages, the entire global financial system would shudder to a halt as trillions of dollars’ worth of mortgage-backed securities started to unravel’ but the United States and the United Kingdom refused to acknowledge sub-prime mortgages as a threat to the economy’ (N. Roubini and S. Mihm (2010), Crisis Economics: A crash course in the future of finance, Allen Lane, United Kingdom, 2010, p.15). At the time, Nick Clegg criticised the Labour government for not having done anything about getting banks to lend:
However, Clegg is being utterly disingenious about the UK government’s ability to lend money given the overall international climate. Firstly, banks are affected by Basel Capital rules that financiers keep complaining about; subtle reforms on, say, liquidity coverage ratios are also “biting hard”. This overall, it is argued, makes banks far more conservative about lending money and fearful about how they manage their balance sheets. Gillian Tett in the Financial Times in October 2011 gave a very elegant overview of the situation, as it was then. Nick Clegg appears now to have some sort of weird amnesia what had caused the deficit to balloon, but he was very clear about the bail-out at that time.
Clearly then, the “deficit” story is the one to base the entire credibility of the raison-d’être of the current Coalition, but the facts clearly state that prior to the global financial crash the deficit being run by Labour was comparable to that run by Norman Lamont and Ken Clarke, as clearly shown here:
Therefore, it is perfectly clear that David Cameron and Nick Clegg have hugely misled the UK on the situation it is currently in, and ‘one lie leads to another’ unfortunately. The Conservatives, Andrew Neil and the Spectator, have been fixated on whether or not Ed Balls knew there was a structural deficit in 2008, whereas English law fundamentally relies on there being a presumption of innocence. Ed Balls is convinced that he, and the Bank of England, did not realise there was a structural deficit in 2008, and indeed the more relevant situation is what to do now. For example, in its twice-yearly fiscal monitor, the IMF said that for countries including the UK: “If growth should fall significantly below current projections, countries with room for manoeuvre should smooth their planned adjustment over 2013 and beyond.” This represents conditional support for Mr Osborne’s deficit reduction plan so long as growth does not disappoint again. Indeed, Andrew Neil and colleagues then curiously perseverate on how much Ed Balls knew then, whilst being completely obvious to any of the arguments about why the GDP remains stagnant now, why the banks fail to lend, and how a failure in securitised mortgages caused a global recession.
“To summarise, both governments presided over a fiscal strengthening in their first three years in office followed by a weakening over the following eight. But we should note that Labour has used more of its borrowing to finance capital investment rather than current spending than the Conservatives did. Under the Conservatives, the structural budget deficit continued to deteriorate until year 14 (1992–93). It remains to be seen when it will reach its trough under Labour.”
This rather begs the question: what was Mervyn King actually worried about in 2008? King in a speech at a dinner hosted by the IoD South West and the CBI at the Ashton Gate Stadium, Bristol in 2008 provided the following:
“The low level of national saving is apparent from the current account deficit – our new net borrowing from overseas – which in the third quarter of last year was, relative to GDP, the biggest in the past fifty years and the largest in the G7. It is possible to run a current account deficit for a considerable period. Australia, for example, has done so in every year since 1974. But our own position is becoming more difficult. For some years we have been able to finance current account deficits by borrowing, often through banks, at unusually low interest rates on world capital markets.”
In other words, he appeared to be confident about our “paying off our deficit” due to “low interest rates on world capital markets”. Of course, one lie leads to another, and we’ll now be clearing up the mess that Clegg left in 2015. Clegg will probably defend successfully his seat in 2015, but, as the Liberal Democrat Party implodes, there’ll be nothing left for him to defend, and he will better off in the House of Lords or Europe. Meanwhile, it is quite likely that some sort of austerity plan will be mid-way until 2018, and the disappearance of our AAA coveted credit rating (as warned by Fitch recently) will have been a direct pack of lies we have been fed for the last few years.
