Click to listen highlighted text! Powered By GSpeech

Home » Posts tagged 'Shibley Rahman'

Tag Archives: Shibley Rahman

Don’t blame Liz Truss. It’s exactly what you voted for.



J Hunt

Enter man of the moment, Jeremy Hunt.

Jeremy Hunt is yet another very wealthy man, who really doesn’t need to be there in the centre of government. Like Liz Truss, Nadhim Zadhawi or Rishi Sunak, he would be able to ‘work from home’, and still draw a handsome salary from various options and dividends. He doesn’t need to lift a finger to ‘help’ the country. He already had plenty of scope to stop social care from haemorrhaging, or to stop the decline of the NHS by introducing a workforce plan. The fact that Jeremy Hunt declined to do so, despite plenty of opportunity, whilst waging war with the junior doctors, still speaks volumes. There is an absurd irrational hope that ‘holding the pursestrings’ to the Treasury he might be able to stop the depravity of NHS and social care funding. Judging on his past performance, I wouldn’t hold your beer.

OK, in the words of Tories doing their faux humility routine, I ‘get it’. Liz Truss said all along that she felt that by reducing the tax load on everyone, she could suddenly magic up growth. Her intention was stated explicitly as getting rid of the NJ levy and by stopping the Sunak increase in corporation tax, I think this stratehy is bananas, but she explained it on many occasions for the hustings she did over many weeks. This was not a surprise. It was her economic policy. She did not ‘go rogue’ at the last minute. The decision to appoint Kwasi Kwarteng came right at the end – but he did not ‘go rogue’ either. His economic ‘scorch and burn’ credentials were known for a long time. The approach was articulated in ‘Britannia unchained’. It was not a surprise that, as a person who had been active in Eton and the Cambridge Union, Kwarteng might be ruthlessly ambitious – a bit like his Oxford Union contemporaries described as ‘Chums’ in the Boris Johnson circle.

The media ‘lobby’ had all the opportunity in the world to dissect this approach. None of them chose to. I am not even sure that any of them are especially literate in macroeconomics;. As far as I know, the leading lights in the Institue of Economic Affairs are largely illiterate in economics too. And yet they profess to be big experts – exactly what is bringing Britain into decline. Michael Gove culturally made a massive mistake in denigrating experts, but maybe this was simply a Trumpian malign influence. None of ‘the lobby’ seemed capable of pointing out that the sums did not add up – borrowing, tax spending or public spending. Sunak knew, but wasn’t given the oxygen to explain himself. No wonder he is keeping his counsel now.

As you can see, I am launching into a ‘blame game’ – this is not particularly helpful now, but simply makes me feel good for ‘doing something about’ the reputation of Great Britain being trashed internationally. The words used to describe Britain now range from ‘farce’ to ‘basket case’. Previously, the ‘lobby’ had put this down to a very focal vendetta from the New York Times, but clearly the game was up when Bloomberg agreed, and then the markets hyperventilated when the ‘not so’ mini-budget was revealed (or rather unravelled). My point is that Liz Truss is a known contrarian. There is nothing there to be especially surprised about. Rishi Sunak was very clear on the arguments, although it is clear that he made some own goals himself, whether it was talking about educational aspiration or ‘levelling up’. The media went for it in attacking him, in their comparisons to Brutus in the Julius Caesar context, or his love of PRADA shoes. None of this post mortem especially helps the person whose standard variable rate mortgage dividends have shot up, or the person who has to put his business for sale as he cannot afford the energy bills. Not all of it can be levelled at Putin. The Tories are a mess.

No amount of bullshit from the Cameron supporters can make up for it. They are all out in force to defend why we had chaos under Cameron rather than competence under Ed Miliband. I feel that the Tories know the game is up, at a number of different levels. There is no sense of national pride, apart from, say, hosting Eurovision. The utilities are indeed now nationalised, except that they are owned by private equity abroad making unconscionable profits at the expense of the tax payer. Public services are not ‘world beating’. In fact, waits to see a GP, despite GPs leaving in droves due to the monstering they receive from hate incitement from the media, or to get to hospital in an ambulance if you have a heart attack, “are a disgrace” as Truss would put it.

There is absolutely no point having low taxes, if public services are on their knees. The Tories have zero reputation in either competence or integrity. I have always felt that their reputation for economic competence was a complete myth. Even now shills from the IEA refuse to acknowledge that the 2008 economic crash was global. They mislead on the circumstances where the IMF loan, quickly repaid, was given at the tail end of the Labour administration under Callaghan in the 1970s. Boris Johnson c completely obliterated the integrity image of the Conservatives. This was, as we were kept ob being told, was ‘factored in’, with him having previously made racist comments along the lines of ‘piccannies’. Partygate only confirmed what we knew along. His government’s approach to care homes spoke volumes, as did his vigorous shaking of hands at the beginning of the pandemic. The Tories saw him as a ‘winner’, but the votes were ‘lent’ on the basis of ‘getting Brexit done’. Brexit has been high risk for no return. There is yet to be a visible benefit from Brexit. Many industries have imploded due to Brexit. The economy is further screwed due to Brexit. Luckily, there is a complete media black out on what is possibly one of the most massive geopolitical and economic disasters in UK history.

The problem is – if you ask Labour what they would do, they religiously and sanctimoniously explain that they are not in government, and they haven’t ‘seen the books’. Labour is trying to look professional as a ‘safe pair of hands”, but many members in the party are equally sick about the fact that they are low on detail on how they might have done things differently. Starmer does not appeal to many, and this could still produce a final reckoning despite a superficial poll lead. It would not be altogether unsurprising if Labour fails to win an overall majority in 2024, and the SNP still command a powerful popular base in Scotland.

Liz Truss’ days are possibly numbered, depending on the success of an ever increasing membership of a collective political suicide pact which now includes Jeremy Hunt. Rishi Sunak for the time being, unsurprisingly, is keeping well away. Expecting Rishi Sunak to come back and clear up somebody else’s mess for the Tory membership would be like handing a dust pan and brush to a vomiting toddler who had just made a massive mess on your expensive rug. The point I’m making is that the Tory membership knew what they were doing when they voted for her, and the Tory parliamentary party knew what they were doing when they offered her aa part of the ‘final two’. The intriguing thing now is that the Liz Truss affair could ‘seal the deal’ for the annihilation of the political career of others.

It could be that this time next week Liz Truss won’t be there. Offering yet another Tory leader with such a dramatic departure from the 2019 general election manifesto would be palpably wrong, and would necessitate a general election.

The Tories can’t be allowed to hold the UK to ransom any more



pp

 

 

By playing fast and loose with the Northern Ireland protocol, and even wishing to overrule the international rule of law previously, it is clear that the current Government has no intention of being respected – or even liked – in the world. Even though Boris Johnson may feel a temporary grandiose delusion, pretty much in keeping with a narcissistic persona, of British exceptionalism when talking about his contribution to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, it is patently clear that if the conflict escalates to involve the European Union more including neighbouring countries things will change more. That is, Britain will ‘feel’ its identity as being a geopolitical loner. It already has had a taste of being a loner with the perception from France, and much of the world, that Britain is now a laughing stock. British people, especially Scottish and Welsh citizens, need to prioritise not being tarred with the same brush. British conflict with France means that Britain will remain unsuccessful in ‘securing its borders’. Immigration policy is fitting for Priti Patel’s Britain: having an immigration issue getting more out of control, and yet having a lack of freedom of people inwards to keep key industries going, whether that be lorry drivers, fruit pickers, or people to wipe your grandma’s arse in the care home.

The problem with the populist media, and the stereotype of the Red Wall, is that they collectively are dragging the rest of us down. The stereotype is that they’re at home watching Ricky Gervais, fist pumping attacks on ‘women’s with penises’, but all along they’re simply sticking two fingers up at the people who stole their jobs. Fine, this is a stereotype. But why has their war so far been on lawyers, NHS, GPs, the BBC, Starmer, people who care about equality, University academics, and so on. It is all nonsense. This all points to an arrogant Executive, loving their freedom of speech but suppressing the feelings and views of others, a deeply nasty autocratic authoritarian state. The fish rots from the head down and Starmer’s difficulty is that he has no interesting offering on the European Union, no clear strategy on improving the NHS and social care, no overall idea about how to win on inflation despite screaming rather sanctimoniously about his Windfall tax. Labour currently is a deplorable collection of has beens, some of whom are nasty, unpleasant, and so on, but they are needed. Britain needs to get out of one party rule. One Nation Toryism has turned into a tinpot dictatorship, where it feels impossible to get rid of Boris Johnson despite the fact he is unbelievably crap. Whether it be P&O Ferries, or the fact that the British automobile industry has imploded, the phobia to discuss how badly |Brexit has gone is now really rancid. It is stopping getting in the way of the country. The people who are holding the country to ransom are not the Unions who want to protect transport from being so automated that disabled people don’t have a chance. The people holding the country to ransom are the Tories.

Sunak probably has a skimpy idea of behavioural macroeconomics despite having had a well paid job in the City and access to lots of other money. But be in no doubt that his recent helicopter drug is an ideological addiction which will see inflation, coupled with Brexit, go through the roof. It does matter that Nadine Dorries does not have a clue, because her ignorance is totally dangerous to the rest of the UK’s (ironically) culture. The destruction of the BBC, enabled by its senior membership, has already begun. Look at CBeebies or BBC4. Not everyone has access or means to universal broadband. Yes, remember the nasty git who wanted to introduce a green economy, improved social care and NHS, rail nationalism to stop unconscionable fair increases, break up of the energy companies (a known issue since about 2014 and successfully ignored by David Cameron in the 2015 election to ‘get Brexit done’ and a load of other crap), national broadband, and so on? Yes, that evil Jeremy Corbyn. Thanks to the power house of intellectuals at the Guardian (I am joking), partly, and despite socialism going from strength to strength in Wales and to a lesser extent in Scotland, we now have permanent Tory rule in England. The Lib Dems, under Jo Swinson, have shown how toxic they can be. Back to the internet. Not everyone can watch Netflix, or the Disney Channel, so these kids definitely will be sorry to see the back of Hacker T Dog. Be in no doubt the Tories are holding the UK to ransom. Sure, you can blame it all you like on the COVID-19 pandemic. Or you could explain it through naked opportunism from a bunch of corrupt crooks with no moral compass.

It is undeniable that the Tories have unleashed a series of political fiascos that could accelerate the breakup of the United Kingdom. That’s ok with me, because it will remind these people that ‘take back control’ and tub thumping about national sovereignty can go in one direction. Talking of one direction, even musicians are feeling the pain of Brexit. But why the news blackout in talking about how dire Brexit is, costing about £400 million per week? Surely it’s time to call time on those who personally profited out of Brexit but who have happily seen the UK implode. Boris Johnson with his culture of corruption has to go. Even if the Guardian are complicit in keeping this lot in power, something radical has to be done to get rid of this lot. The Tories can’t be allowed to hold the UK to ransom any more.

Starmer and out?



I don’t have any skin in the game.

I voted Labour all my life – between 1992 and 2019. I’ve never voted Tory.

A small confession. I’ve never met Sir Keir Starmer. I have seen him sitting in the audience as he was supporting the then newly crowned leader of Labour, Ed Miliband.

Ed Miliband is somebody I could happily have as Prime Minister.  I remember David Cameron’s Twitter jibe, now infamous:

EEau-1AXUAAb1Di

That was of course he set in motion a chain of events that led to the referendum, causing Britain to exit out of the European Union. It is widely thought that Nigel Farage can be thanked for precipitating this. He of course is not especially happy how Brexit has gone now. And who can blame him, with fishermen losing business, pig culls, huge loss trade, marked shortages in certain sectors of the economy, to name but a few. Luckily for the current Conservative government there are voters who are desperate for Brexit to work, like they are for the Tories to reverse years of Tory austerity under the guise of ‘levelling up’.

I understand Rachel Reeves’ optimism about a possible Labour victory. I also have experienced this illusion of ‘one last heave’ – where one final push will guarantee a Labour government.

But having followed this for years, I don’t think we’re there yet.

There are a number of reasons.

If “Captain Hindsight” can only be offering ‘constructive criticism’ while continuously to carp irritatingly like a back seat driver, “General Sit on the Fence” hardly inspires confidence with his endless streams of boosterism and lies.

A rosette on a Starmer cannot explain the lack of input into policy on Brexit, coronavirus or even the reorganisation of NHS and social care. Starmer and the whole shadow cabinet are lost in action. Nowhere to be seen.

They indeed, like Hilary Benn was so obsessive about, seem to be more focused on winning power than turning heads with policy. The brut force of Michael Foot intellectually, or indeed Enoch Powell, offered something quite unpalatable politically – though in defense of Foot, he never wore a donkey jacket and much of his 1983 offering has now been assimilated into current policy.

I want a Labour government, more than a Johnson one.

I don’t think people are keeping diaries about what they think of their civil liberties, the vaccination programme, or the battle of the dinghies.

But the step before the public vote for a Labour government is them endorsing a new Tory Party under someone like Liz Truss. I thought nobody would ever vote for Boris Johnson, but it turned out the media loved him, and that people had ‘factored in’ all his misfeasance.

Starmer would prefer to keep his mouth shut on environmental issues, or human rights, or policing, or housing.

But this policy of muscular silence is going nowhere. Nobody knows what he or Labour stands for, much that they find this current Government sleazy and a bit dodgy.  It could be argued that Starmer has bus loaded in a lot of ‘serious people’ but I can’t name many of them apart from Yvette Cooper or Rachel Reeves who were instrumental in making my life hell for much of the 2010s for feeling guilty for being disabled.

The arithmetic is pointing to a solid SNP victory in Scotland, and it’s very hit or miss who will be the dominant party in England and Wales. Possibly Wales might save Starmer’s bacon, so to speak.

Dame Maureen and Dame Margaret are totally irrelevant to me.

Whilst the poll lead is welcome for Labour, I don’t think it is at all meaningful. John Rentoul, for all his brilliance, is badly wrong – or maybe it’s merely wishful thinking.

 

@dr_shibley

Jeremy Corbyn and the whole of Labour has become the ultimate nightmare for the Tories



DKgKcGAXoAATXFo.jpg-large

 

 

 

As Emily Thornberry said this morning, “There is nothing stronger than a person of principle…. Thanks to Jeremy Corbyn’s inspirational leadership, and the efforts of all the people in this room, it’s time to put Labour values back into government.” Everything has now in fact changed. This is not merely because the Conservative party, and their bullshit such as £350 million re-invested in the NHS, is a ‘busted flush’. It’s much more than that. I first went to the Labour party conference in 2010 in Manchester. It was in fact a few months before my father was to die. I remember my time there crystal clearly. I remember meeting John Prescott for the first (and only) time in a curry restaurant in the Curry Mile, and various people who were both very young and very energised about being in the Labour movement. David Prescott kindly helped me across the street, avoiding being run over by the trams. I had become newly physically disabled at the time, due to meningitis. In fact, I remember going to a fringe event at breakfast time in Manchester Town Hall on the subject of how to engage ‘missing voters’. Ellie Mae O’Hagan was there. Some brilliant contributions from Matt Zarb Cousin stuck in my mind. I wonder what happened to him.

 

At the time, I was in the ‘top ten’ Labour blogs. But now is much better. I think this Labour conference in 2017 in Brighton is full of optimism and hope. Labour for the first time in ages, I feel, has a realistic chance of being the party of government. I think we very mostly agree Jeremy Corbyn has turned ‘pro’. He batted away questions on striking from Andrew Marr with amazing ease yesterday morning. The hacks have made it an open secret that they have no conflict to discuss. The observation that Brexit is not one of the motions for debate is the only thing that desperate hacks can cling onto, but you only have to look at the list which has emerged – which includes the NHS, social care, growth and investment and employment issues – to see that there is no existential crisis in the Labour Party. Not at all. It is a party which is prepared to govern for the many, not the few.

 

The Tories’ economic model of delivering shareholder dividend with rocketing prices, suppressed wages with inflated cost of living, is not appealing to the vast majority. The ‘work til you drop’ approach is terrifying. The way in which disabled citizens have lost their personal independence payment is nothing short of the ultimate in unacceptable morally. Corrupt capitalism has had its day. Grenfell paid testament to that. Outside of the hall, it is very clear that many delegates have been speaking to some of ‘the many’. There has been a strong sense from speakers from the floor to speak out about issues of social justice, in the quest for equalities and fairness. There has been reference to homeless people, which Tony Benn famously used to congratulate market forces for. There has been a clear drive to reset the narrative to appreciate and value migrants and asylum seekers. The Momentum festival has been well received. There is no sense that Polly Toynbee needs to visit it to provide it with external validation. Trade unions defend public services, campaign to prevent abuses of workers and employees, and are no longer a ‘dirty word’.

 

I voted for Jeremy Corbyn twice as leader of the Labour Party, and, like many, it is tempting not to forget so easily the time which has been wasted in setting out the case for Corbyn again and again and again, the carping and criticism from 170 or so Labour MPs, or the whingeing from senior people in the Labour Party keen to ‘blame’ Corbyn for Brexit. Nor is it quite so easy to forgive and forget the amount of time, effort and money taken by the NEC to stop people voting for Corbyn as leader out of fear that all the new members of Labour were Marxist throwbacks from the 1980s. But the surge in membership of the Labour Party is entirely genuine, making Labour a massive democratic party. This is an especially amazing achievement, given the context of how parties such as ‘Alternative for Deutschland’ with an anti-Muslim and anti-migrant, far right, agenda have garnered support to fill the ‘political space’. True that the Labour Party is not entirely a socialist party, although it has socialists in it. But it is also true that there are many more people are loud and proud to be associated with the socialist ideals and values which have been promoted by the current leadership of the Labour Party.

 

Whilst the ‘we want a Jobs first Brexit’ is in danger of being a vacuous phrase, there’s no doubt about the dependence of certain sectors, not least the NHS and social care, on EU citizens living in Britain. If it turns out that the Conservatives are simply unable to negotiate a meaningful settlement with the European Union within two years, it is quite possible that the Labour Party will have to do something drastic about deciding upon a post-Brexit future. Jeremy Corbyn openly explained on #Marr yesterday that it was possible that state aid rules had not made it possible to intervene in industries as he would have liked, and actually had helped to privatise certain industries such as rail. It wasn’t that long ago, after all, that there had been concerns about how TTIP might stitch up a trade deal with the US over the NHS, but now the threat to the NHS from Donald Trump and Jeremy Hunt is far greater. Free movement of workers has had problems also with employees, particularly of multi-national corporates, effectively leading to wage suppression, but this fundamentally was always a problem presented by employers. But Labour is well aware that the UK economy could easily tank on Brexit especially on leaving membership of the signatories to the rules of the “single market” or “customs union”, and the devaluation of the pound sterling and exodus of jobs abroad are both already alarming. But if you think to choose who you want driving the car – Boris Johnson, David Davis and Priti Patel or Sir Keir Starmer, I know who I prefer.

 

Members of the media have consistently been spitting bullets at Corbyn. James O’Brien on LBC spent substantial daily effort into rubbishing Corbyn. The 2017 Labour manifesto was a massive triumph, propelling Labour to its largest vote this century. The Tories claim they even put Jeremy Corbyn on the ballot paper the first time around. Various people sneered at the rallies held by Corbyn across the country, claiming simultaneously that Corbyn had a ‘bunker mentality’ which prevented him from meeting the general public, and saying that there was no such social movement. But it is clear that there is something material and significant happening under the RADAR, as Jess Phillips, Clive Lewis and Laura Pidcock are treated like rock stars rather than members of parliament. Paul Mason, I remember, was often criticised for claiming that “strong and stable” Theresa May would not be returned with a stonking majority, and Paul Mason’s views and opinions, for example, on topics ranging from tuition fees to bellicose nuclear speak from Donald Trump are taken with considerably more gravitas than other commentators. The whole team are pretty awesome now, including Barry Gardiner who is prepared to call out people talking nonsensical crap.

 

Gains such as Canterbury and London Kensington and Chelsea have been amazing. Amber Rudd’s seat in Hastings is now up for grabs. Nobody can fault how amazing Andy Gwynne has been. Of course, much blood has been spilt and this is to be expected from a broad coalition of sorts.  I no longer speak to the Socialist Health Association because of their open support for marketization of the NHS, PFI and Owen Smith. Tom Watson is no longer on Len McCluskey’s Christmas card list. I think critics within Labour have really got the work cut out if they wish not to help Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party prepare for government. You can tell from the reception to the limp interventions from Ben Bradshaw and Heidi Alexander over the single market that they are not the future now. But supporters of Labour fundamentally know that they did not introduce austerity. Vince Cable, on the other hand, did. The Liberal Democrats cannot be absolved from their blame on the bedroom tax, either.  The Fabians, with their star turns, are having trouble trying to reverse the deluge of criticism they have doshed out to Corbyn and colleagues. The Twitter community, with Chunky, Rachael, Steve, Matt, Tom, Peter, Liam, “Scouse Girl”, EL4JC, Michael, WowPetition, Éoin, Matt, Ellie, or Paul, of course going from strength to strength. Labour’s policies speak to the concerns of the many not the few – such as personal debt, only today, being worked up by John McDonnell and Rebecca Long-Bailey. I agree with Jeremy Corbyn that he will need at least two terms of government to get the UK back on course, but there is a real sense of energy, positivity, drive and optimism which means that Labour and its social movement deserve every success.

@dr_shibley

Does Jeremy Hunt wish to ‘save the NHS’? Most definitely not.



J Hunt

There is nothing more embarrassing than for hardworking clinicians in the NHS and practitioners in social care than to hear of Jeremy Hunt going to New York to lay the groundwork for a transatlantic trade deal or to go to international conferences to preach to others on patient safety. Whether the longest serving Secretary of State for Health chooses to admit or not, and he doesn’t, there is nothing to boast about in 20 hour trolley waits, or people being asked to sit in a toilet or corridor before being given a hospital bed. If the definition of patient safety is that nobody has died unnecessarily yet, then expectations are indeed very low. Indeed, Sir Robert Francis, whom Hunt used to quote all the time, now says another Mid Staffs is “inevitable”.

To be honest, this is the perfect storm which prominent campaigners, including junior doctors, themselves have been warning about. It might seem beyond ludicrous that Jeremy Hunt can shamelessly say that the performance of the NHS is ‘unacceptable’, but as far as he is concerned he is not responsible for the performance of the NHS. And the purpose of the 2012 Health and Social Care Act (2012) was not to promote the highest quality clinical care – symptomatic of that is the fact in the 500 pages of legislation the legislation found time to devote only one clause to patient safety, and that was to abolish the National Patient Safety Agency. The legislation instead was put in place to turbo-boost the transfer of NHS services to the private sector. This is – wait for it – the definition of ‘privatisation’. It also provided legislation for clinical commissioning groups, where is no statutory mandate for clinical skill. These clinical commissioning groups, which are even definite in size of population in law, are merely insurance entities which happen to reside in the public sector, assessing the potential risk of illness in a certain geography. In other words, this highly contentious Act of parliament, on which billions of £ were ultimately spent in a top-down reorganisation that nobody as such voted for, laid down the infrastructure for harmonisation between the public sector and the private sector for the ultimate piecemeal sell off of the NHS.

The ultimate issue that successive governments have had to face for the last three or four decades has been a desire not to go ‘public’ about transferring the NHS to the private sector, so that the NHS simply becomes a badge for the state deliverer of services, not the state provider. In an ideal world, Jeremy Hunt MP does not even want to be involved with anything to do with the NHS. Hunt, and many others of the same ideological ilk, would be perfectly happy for different providers, e.g. Capita, Virgin, G4S, in some corporate plutocracy to run the NHS using the NHS logo if need be.

Jeremy Hunt’s faux disdain at the performance of the NHS is completely understandable, if one realises that Hunt thinks the public will blame the fact the NHS is in the public sector rather than him for the poor performance of the NHS.  And, to be fair to him, there are people who ring up local radio phone shows to say that the problems of the NHS are entirely due to mismanagement, the fact that the general public take no responsibility for their own health (a completely irrelevant argument if someone is born with a congenital disease such as heart problem or lung problem). And, furthermore, more in the post-facts milieu, the hope is that nobody can discern fact from fiction. In other words, with the help of a compliant media, the general public can be manipulated into thinking that the root cause of the NHS being overloaded is entirely due to the immigrant population. There is no discussion of non-indigineous doctors or other healthcare professionals in this utopia, just ‘small talk’, albeit dangerous UKIP pillow talk, of an aspiration of Jeremy Hunt to reverse decades of the NHS being propped up by foreign clinicians to train ‘home grown’ doctors. Mainsteaming British Doctors for British patients has never been easier.

But back to the fundamental issue of why I believe Jeremy Hunt does not care about the performance of the NHS is that his thinking rests on three assumptions. And, whilst a sizeable number of people in parliament think the same way as him, the likelihood of a cross-party commission on the NHS will come to the conclusion that some form of privatisation of the NHS, whether in terms of co-payments, vouchers or full blown increase in capacity of private insurance providers, will occur, rubber-stamped by all the political parties (except for some this time). It might, for example, be seductive for irritable, cranky people to ‘charge drunk people for attending A&E’, but think about the actual practical implementation of this policy – by what measure would you define the tipping point from ‘quite tipsy’ to ‘quite drunk’? Is it, for example, either feasible or desirable that healthcare professionals, including GPs, to carry Visa card or passport readers in addition to their numerous other duties?

A number of assumptions can possibly be made about this current Government and recent ones too:

1. There is no distinction between private and public providers in the NHS.

2. The Government believes in a ‘small state’ and low taxation.

3. The NHS is expected to make efficiency savings in keeping with an austerity approach.

That there is no distinction between private and public providers in the NHS is why Jeremy Hunt resents being in a centre of a tsunami about junior doctors’ pay. In an ideal world, he would like there to be complete harmonisation between private and public sectors, so that doctors could come and go as they wish in terms of employment. This is entirely the drive for the 24/7 NHS, which is why Jeremy Hunt is do keen to promote any fake research news coming out of the BMJ to further his ideology. You do not need to be an expert in sophisticated mathematical modelling techniques to realise that if you were to stretch out the already woefully inadequate resources for a 5-day elective service into a 7-day one the consequences on patient safety would be diabolical. What, furthermore, is quite incredible is for the current Department of Health to be so oblivious to the fact there already exists a 7-day emergency service running at full throttle, hence their need to spend valuable resources in making further metrics to measure A&E performance by.

Where junior doctors can come and go as they please, like where consultants can come and go as they please, or where nurses come and go as they please, is a strategy which is the direct opposite to the public sector keeping its workforce loyal, wellbeing promoted and well educated, and being contained budget-wise in terms of salaries. We already know that the agency spend has become out of control, due to poor planning of the Department of Health over many years, and to the weird hybrid private-NHS market we currently have. And all this is to ignore completely that private providers take no responsibility for,  financially or otherwise, for the education and training of the workforce the vast majority of which start in the NHS. This is entirely in keeping in why Hunt is so intensely relaxed about applications for nursing training going through the floor after his devastating nursing bursary initiative – Hunt does not ideologically believe the Government should be safeguarding against a minimum body of doctors, nurses or allied health professionals in the workforce. The problem now of course for him now is #Brexit unless it looks like he can poach staff from the Asian subcontinent; but word is spreading fast how bad the working conditions of the English NHS are.

2. Unfortunately, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were able to converge on the ideology behind the Health and Social Care Act 2012 and the mirage that economic competition would drive up clinical quality because of the robustnesss in their belief in the small State. This does not envision the State to be a supportive thing to promote the health and wellbeing of its citizens, including so that they can be healthy enough to be in ‘gainful employment’ and be ‘productive’. This instead pre-supposes that everybody wishes to pay very low taxes, somehow living in a world where public services are still magically working well. But this falsehood is very easy to put in place if the main political parties are able to blame a ‘common enemy’ for all of their problems, e.g. immigrants. Such politicians want to divorce the link between improved public services and paying for them, which is why the Conservatives invest so much effort into depicting the Labour Party as incompetent (whereas the national debt under the 7 years of Conservatives has ballooned way above the previous 13 years of Labour).

Unfortunately, a hypothecated tax for the NHS would necessitate a debate about hypothecated taxes for everything else such as national security or education, and is well known to be yet another ‘zombie policy’ which won’t go away. Finally, whilst the Government gives the impression that the debacle in social care, causing delayed transfers of care from hospitals to care packages in the community, is seen as a ‘local authority’ not national problem, say for example through the ‘precept’ or the Surrey referendum, the impression is reinforced that social care is out of control, and its catastrophic state impacting on the performance of the NHS is nothing which can be reversed essentially.

3. Stephen Dorrell MP already has said that the NHS efficiency savings, first proposed by the management consultants, McKinseys have never successfully been tried before – and indeed many blame this drive for efficiency and for ‘foundation trust’ status to be at the heart of how disasters at Mid Staffs and other Trusts happened. It is a plain fact that if budgets are under enormous strain in providing a skeleton workforce (e.g. one junior doctor to cover all the medical wards in one large teaching hospital AND cover the cardiac arrest bleep), and to pay massive unconscionable private finance initiative payments (a form of a Corporate Wonga), something will have to give. There might be a temptation for such cuts to be hidden by commissioners and managers in mental health, despite all the Twitter infograms and rhetoric about ‘parity of esteem’ – unless of course there happens to be a spike in uncontrollable demand for mental health beds or suicides. So far, all the main English political parties have been very loyal to ‘efficiency savings’ – but this is essentially ‘austerity’, and a political choice for the NHS not an economic one.

If the ultimate aim is to increase transfer of public assets to private entities (the definition of privatisation), keeping the NHS at a low unsafe level of funding reinforces the impression the NHS is ‘unsafe in public hands’. That is why rolling coverage by the BBC of ‘specials’ of a NHS and social care system at breaking point might lead people to blame the public funding of the NHS, not Jeremy Hunt. This is of course fully intended, so that the green light can be given for a blatant privatisation of the NHS.

The correct conclusion, of course, is that the NHS has been chronically underfunded for years, and no Government wishes to admit they want to privatise the NHS as it’s so politically toxic.

 

@dr_shibley

 

 

Some thoughts on Jeremy Hunt



Hunt

 

I’m a card carrying socialist. I don’t know whether I’m a Marxist Trot, but my views are in keeping in what most people would view as for the public good but not in a way dictated by markets free or otherwise.

Not that it matters, but I’ve always voted Labour. The defining event for me was in fact going to Margaret Thatcher’s last ever Prime Ministers Questions. I lived mainly in London in 1990, a stone’s throw away from Leicester Square – and I remember the Poll Tax riots and the tail end of the Thatcher government vividly. I remember the politics of the 1980s vividly, as a child, and I committed never to vote Tory again. I fulfilled that promise, as it happens.

It’s well known I’ve spent far longer as a NHS patient, with an adult onset physical disability as a result of meningitis in my mid 30s, than as a practising junior doctor, though I remember my time as a junior doctor with disproportionate affection. Hospitals for me provoke mixed emotions – I survived a six week coma in one, I saw my father have the cardiac arrest team around him before he did in the same hospital as it happens, and it’s one where I have much goodwill for their ‘dementia friendly’ approach given my current interest as an academic physician in dementia predominantly.

I am not a ‘celeb blogger’ – but then again I loathe the media, and the media hate me. I tweeted recently that ‘I don’t believe a word that Jeremy Hunt says’ – this is on the basis of how his legal team had emphasised he had never imposed the NHS #juniordoctors contract despite him saying on numerous occasions he was imposing it.

But the thing to remember for me is that Jeremy Hunt as such does not ‘act alone’. He went into Theresa May’s first cabinet reshuffle expecting to be dropped like a lead balloon – hence the lack of lapel on his jacket – but he emerged happily in situ. So Jeremy Hunt is fallible – he expected to be sacked.

He sincerely believes what he does – which I think is ‘liberalising the market’, ensuring that Mid Staffs never happens again, producing a workforce less dependent on immigration, and so on.

As it happens, I profoundy disagree with his view on the NHS. I dislike the fact he rarely comments on the idea that provider competition has not improved quality in the NHS, how he has a total blindspot for the social care profession, how he seems in total denial about the catastrophic finances of the NHS, how his electronic IT programme is way off track, and so on.

But again I wonder to what extent this lack of trust in him is entirely his fault. For example, I don’t think the BMA acted par excellence, and I myself wondered how on earth these strikes were not impacting on patient quality or safety. But then again if it’s the case that NHS Providers and NHS hospitals can send out strongly worded letters with impunity then that is that.

The General Medical Council don’t appear to wish to comment much on rota gaps, and general morale, or how #juniordoctors might refuse to sign a contract if they feel uncomfortable, and so on. I’m not in fear of the Council, it’s just I have nothing much to do with them. My personal view is that they could have been far more respect and responsive of the patient safety views of doctors, that’s all.

It says in our code of conduct that if we feel uncomfortable about resources we should say so. Some of us have repeated this ad nauseam  – so now what?

I like James Titcombe hugely. I find the story of Joshua incredibly fertile in what we could do for learning from mistakes from the future. But, despite the best will in the world, if Katrina Percy refuses to resign having won once a HSJ award that’s where we are. If I can live with a mistake for the rest of my life, and others don’t, so be it.

I like Deb Hazeldine equally hugely. I can’t even begin to imagine what she feels everyday.

I enjoy my work which is basically advocating for people with dementia. As a carer myself, I am interested in that too. But I know my boundaries. Me ‘hating’ Jeremy Hunt will achieve nothing – he is doing his job albeit with a workforce some of which want to emigrate.

Cuts and low morale I think are a threat to patient safety – but if the General Medical Council feel comfortable with that in their remit, nor with giving proper support to Chris Day’s whistleblowing case, there’s not much many of us can do about it.

I don’t actually ‘hate’ Jeremy Hunt. He MUST, I’m sure, know that the NHS and social care need more money, the workforce largely don’t trust what he says, doctors in India no longer wish to work in the UK whether or not he needs them, and so on.

But it’s Jeremy Hunt – too surreal to fail.

A new dawn has broken



SONY DSC

I’m 42 – and I’m a lifelong Labour voter.

And I’ve also never known a leadership election like this.

At his victory speech at the Labour election-night party, Royal Festival Hall, London, 2 May 1997, Tony Blair uttered the now famous words, “A new dawn has broken, has it not?”

However, the way in which this particular #LabourLeadership election was run was dreadful.

As Dr Éoin Clarke had tweeted,

I’ve known Liam Young, who supports Jeremy Corbyn, for a long time. His recent piece in the Independent details in full gory detail how, despite his best efforts otherwise, he ended up not voting. I can vouch for Liam’s commitment, having known him for years.

“I have been a member of the Labour for the last six years, and involved with the party for as long as I can remember. I remember heading to party conference in 2010 at the tender age of 15, and my grandparents often fondly remind me of the times they used to take me out canvassing in my pushchair – my grandfather was the leader of the local city council and mayor at one point. I had countless unrelated “aunties” who I grew up with, assimilated into my extended family by virtue of the Labour work they did with my relatives.

So this month, I was surprised when I didn’t receive my ballot in the normal timeframe for this leadership contest.”

The comments to this article make for desperate reading. Most authors, especially ones for The Guardian newspaper, never read the submitted comments, but I strongly suggest Liam has a look.

Here is a typical comment.

comment2

The whole Owen Smith campaign was a fiasco.

Buzzfeed charted the entire car crash of the anti-Corbyn camp brilliantly.

In fact, what happened from the time at which Hilary Benn threw his early morning temper tantrum was a full blown disaster.

Believe it or not, I had not intended to blog much about this #LabourLeadership election, though I’ve doing some sort of Labour political blog for about 7 years now.

Looking back on it now, the entire anti-Corbyn campaign imploded from the very beginning. The ‘challenger’ was implausible, the policies half-baked, the campaign sodden with gaffes, and, put simply, an insult to the wider Labour Party membership “electorate”.

I charted some of this mess in various blogposts including “Saving Owen Smith“, “The inevitability of death, taxes and Jeremy Corbyn’s re-election as leader of Labour“, and “Owen Smith MP must surely have been aware that the NHS is being rapidly privatised?“.

Some of my time had been taken up the desperate moves of the NEC to thwart people voting in the law courts, and that was before the #LabourPurge2 had gathered full momentum (pardon the pun).

The mainstream media were reluctant to cover the bare essence of the illiberality of the legal manoeuvring, astounding given the overwhelming ‘liberal’ press.

Such blogposts included “The Court of Appeal judgment was profoundly illiberal, and the issues need scrutiny notwithstanding“, “Nobody is above the law not even in the Labour NEC“, and “Tom Watson MP says he doesn’t believe in conspiracy theories, and nor do I“.

Ed Miliband MP, like other failed leadership contenders Liz Kendall MP, Lord Neil Kinnock and Gordon Brown (2010), stuck the boot in, possibly even adding to Jeremy Corbyn’s credibility, viz. “The overall incompetence of Ed Miliband’s opposition should still raise alarm bells“.

But there was no doubt at all, that if Owen Smith MP was the answer, the question was not even worth thinking about.

The Owen Smith MP candidate was the talk of the town – for all of the wrong reasons.

It never gained any credibility.

For example, I wrote on “Why has Owen Smith MP lost all momentum in his leadership campaign?“, “Owen Jones’ interview reveals Owen Smith MP is dangerous for the nation’s health“, “The Parliamentary Labour Party cannot cope with the decline and yet further decline of New Labour“, “Owen Smith’s campaign blowing up on lift-off is not a good look“, “Owen Smith is ‘reconstituted Labour’, but still a disastrous recipe“, and “Owen Smith MP is swimming in the deep end with armbands. We can’t go like this.”.

And it seems now that Angela Eagle MP’s leadership was merely now a ‘bad dream’.

This is where it all started:  e.g. ““Saving Labour” or “Crushing Corbyn” – that is the question?“, “Why the level of vitriol against Jeremy Corbyn?“, “Angela Eagle’s “Contrived Leadership” was overbranded and under authentic“, “The emphasis of Hilary Benn on “winning” ironically explains a lot Labour’s failure“, “For me, Angela Eagle is part of the problem for Labour’s electability, not the solution“, and “If Labour can’t unite behind a democratically elected leader, it doesn’t deserve to be in government“.

I feel hugely excited about this morning. I have had enough of trolls suddenly popping up on Twitter, and lying to me – I don’t have to waste hours trying to work out why they are shilling on behalf of a certain lobby any more.

I don’t have to think about reasons why Corbyn would be a ‘disaster for Britain’, or why Jeremy Corbyn ‘does not believe in winning’, or how Labour ‘has become the party of permanent protest’, or how Labour is now full of far left Trotskyist individuals allegedly, and so on.

Lies.

Lies.

Lies.

For me, it feels as if a noose has been finally removed from my neck. There’s about 10 or so Labour MPs I think their local constituencies should examine as to their suitability for parliamentary election. I don’t think any candidate should be renominated under duress if (s) he disagrees strongly with party policy. Democratic re-selection is very healthy for the party. As in all good teamwork, it’s a question of give and take. I don’t see a case for the parliamentary Labour Party having bullied their way into this all-consuming leadership election, detracting attention from the split and division within the Conservative Party, to call any shots. Most scandalous of all, the entire NHS is collapsing, grammar schools are on the way back, the foreign policy with Libya for example has been utterly discredited, and Owen Smith MP is obsessed about talking about he (not the House of Commons or Lords) ‘won the PIP debate’.

Too many people in the Labour parliamentary party love themselves, especially the ones who are now acting like spoilt brats having been to one of the big 4 accountancy firms.

I don’t mean him…

JohnMcD

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or Andy – who has been utterly brilliant throughout.

Andy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The other bunch of loudmouth talentless Labour MPs, the “deplorables”, rather need to step up to the plate, contribute policy – or else get out of the party.

They should stop fanning their own egos in TV studios with vitriolic bile against Corbyn.

They need to do  some actual work in making Labour look like a serious political party. The membership are overwhelming sick of their narcissistic putrid selfish self-centred behaviour, rotten to the core.

Some journalists, especially at the Guardian, should stop preening their feathers, and stop spewing incessant negative junk in their low circulation papers.

Basically – anyone who is not up to the job of helping Jeremy Corbyn has overstayed his or her welcome -…

and should get out now.

And what have we learnt from all of this?

We now know that this man

paulmason

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

doesn’t want Seumas Milne’s job now, nor in the future, here or in any other parallel universe.

As was in the statement to the press on arriving at Hillsborough Castle for the Northern Ireland talks, 7 April 1998, Tony Blair said, “A day like today is not a day for, sort of, soundbites, really – we can leave those at home – but I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders, I really do.”

Wherever Labour goes from this point onwards, today is a very special day.

 

 

@dr_shibley

Saving Owen Smith



It’s all been an incredible mess.

Take for example Owen Smith MP talking about the EU referendum with David Dimbleby last thursday on the BBC’s flagship programme Question Time.

DD: You said you would like to see Labour going into the next election saying our party policy is to go back into the EU.

OS: Yes.

DD: You ignore the Brexit vote.

OS: Exactly.

DD: Exactly?

OS: Exactly. We need to find out what it is. The Brexit vote set a direction, if we like. We don’t know where we’re going.

DD: You know where you are going. You are going back in.

OS: Well, I hope we are. And I think we should be strong about that.

You could probably fill an entire blogpost with Owen Smith MP’s greatest gaffes. But this is no time for such hilarity.

The latest journey into the Trump school of campaigning involved Owen Smith MP ‘winning’ at something. Yes – winning at getting married.

@abiwilks

Cast your mind back to a long time ago – when Owen Smith MP tried to ‘counsel’ Jeremy Corbyn before launching his leadership bid. That bid was to prove it was all about winning.

Remember this?

winning

Embarrassingly, the man whom Owen Smith MP derides for “not winning” is, according to polls which have been known to be unreliable in the past, perhaps on the brink of winning by a landslide.

For me things got so testy I even wrote a non-abusive tweet complaining about Owen Jones MP!

@chunkymark often refers to ‘the man behind the curtain’. This is a reference to that classic scene in the Wizard of Oz, one of my favourite films.

Here, the man behind the curtain included our so-called friends at the Mirror.

Except the man behind the curtain was shouting above the real story, and was not that impressive after all. Cr68ZUgWIAAp36C

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You name any policy area, and Owen Smith MP has made a mess of it. Owen Smith ended up trying to defend why he wanted to back increasing funding to the failed PREVENT policy, accused of causing further problems for UK muslims, in the Question Time debate last week.

 

This was reported in “The Canary” 

 

Audience member:

You say definitely Owen, you’re the one that endorsed the Prevent strategy…

Victoria Derbyshire Show, Owen Smith MP in the Labour leadership debate on 11 August:

…consider the issue of terrorism: I’d invest in our communities. The Prevent strategy, that is grossly undermined and under-resourced in this country, ought to be at the forefront of Labour’s policy, making sure we foster better community relations in Britain.

Owen Smith MP says he dislikes slogans, when he has often repeated the same slogans ad nauseam in the live TV debates. He accused voters in TV debates several times, “you’re wrong”, even flying completely in the face of all evidence. He has persistently denied that the orchestrated mass resignation of the majority of the Labour PLP was not contributing to the general poll ratings of Labour.

Unsurprisingly the members of the Socialist Health Association had backed Owen Smith. I have experience of that organisation which is the most pale, male, stale and useless Labour-affiliated entity currently in existence, having been of ABSOLUTELY NO USE in criticising policy, such as the outsourcing clause of the Act of 2012 or the private finance initiative. – or about as much use as a chocolate teapot or fireguard, being more generous.

Owen Smith MP’s campaign has been so shambolic it now looks as if, incredibly, it will be worse than Zac Goldsmith’s. And he resoundingly lost. The problem now for the PLP after September 23rd will be try to heal the rifts in the meantime, when this fiasco they have created has diverted news media attention away from Tories fighting like ferrets in a sack over the meaning of #Brexit, the introduction of an ill-thought out and highly divisive policy on grammar schools, and catastrophic financial performance of the NHS as a whole. Members of the parliamentary Labour MP now need to get a grip, or they deserve to be deselected. Had they actually done their job properly, and if Corbyn had lost 2020 monumentally if only because of the boundary changes, they could have easily blamed Corbyn. John O’Donnell MP has signalled that he and Jeremy would not be sticking around if Labour lost in 2020, but at the moment the parliamentary Labour Party have no moral integrity to call the shots. Perhaps some in the NEC will call this comment ‘abusive’, but in a healthy democracy, free speech should be welcomed. New members to Labour, say from the Green Party, should be welcomed, many feel, to build a strategic force to end Conservative rule. OK, the Labour PLP can put up their stooges for the shadow cabinet, but it should be remembered in this no-more-something-for-nothing world, if Labour MPs are not up to the job, they should be booted out. I strongly suspect, anyway, that Owen Smith MP having been pushed under the political bus by the Labour MP will be chucked out by the voters in Pontypridd in any case.

@dr_shibley

Why I voted for Jeremy Corbyn



Corbyn

My decision to vote for Jeremy Corbyn was not easy. I have learnt to desensitise myself from the hyperbolic shrill of Twitter, and the numbskull hashtag bandwagon campaigns.

 

First of all, I am mindful that voting for Jeremy Corbyn will be seen by some as a betrayal of the legacy of the Labour Party having made itself electable in the turbulent years in the since the mid 1980s. I should not go so far as to say ‘a pig with lipstick’ could have won the 1997 general election, but I do agree with a sentiment expressed in Liz Kendall’s final speech that Labour did not really have an adequate discussion of what it stands for for a very long time. Whether you agree it or not, there is a perception that Labour to get itself elected is ‘Tory Lite’. This is perceived as huge insult to those who believe in the policies which swept Tony Blair to power in 1997 by some.  But it is the reluctance of those same people to ignore how ineffective we have become in opposition which truly worries me.

 

Get this. I am physically disabled, and I had to apply three times including a tribunal in Grays Inn Road to get my disability living allowance restored. I found my experience with welfare benefits traumatic, but this cannot have been said to be anywhere as traumatic as those people who took their own lives. Like the MP who spoke elegantly in the debate on assisted dying yesterday, I am loath to say ‘commit suicide’ in the linguistic conflation with the criminal law, such as ‘commit manslaughter’ or ‘commit murder’. I cannot think it is necessary for you to be physically disabled to understand the mental pain which has been brought about by the welfare reforms. but it sometimes feels like it.

 

When three of the candidates abstained on the welfare reform bill, it really was a massive kick in the groin for me. If anything, Andy Burnham’s explanation of the ‘reasoned amendment’ made it a million times worse. I am not a subscriber to Len McCluskey and UNITE but I felt more than a smidgeon of sympathy when he said he felt like sending Harriet Harman MP the dictionary definition of “opposition”. This single vote was a game changer for me. I had to look very hard to support Andy thereafter. I think his idea to bring together health and social care is much overdue. The reason for this is that the problems in the social care system have a direct effect on the operations of the NHS. But it cannot be ignored by me that Labour did much to bring about the mess of privatisation of social services either. I do not agree with the Foundation Trust policy, introduced by New Labour, as it is my perception that there are NHS Trusts, such as Mid Staffs and Morecambe Bay, which were more interested in their Foundation Trust status than their record on patient safety, and the ability of the clinical regulators to bring anyone to account for clear misfeasance is woefully inadequate. Foundation Trusts, and what has happened, a high proportion of Trusts in deficit in a market gone wrong, is not a legacy of New Labour I can agree with. I am sorry to lay this at the door of Andy Burnham partly, and I would not have minded had it not been for his stance on the private finance initiative (PFI). Andy uses PFI to argue that Labour mended the roof while the sun was shining, but it is shockingly and absorbingly transparently the case that the loan repayments have been unconsionably poor value, as admitted by Margaret Hodges’ committee, something has to be done about it fast. The fact that there are City traders who trade in equity in PFI tells you something about the machinery New Labour put in place over the NHS.

 

Jeremy Corbyn spoke to my values. I get the fact that he is very old (but that surely should not be a problem unless you are profoundly ageist which I am not?) I think the fact that he disagrees with PFI is a factor, but so is the idea that you invest in people. I remain aghast at how many people seem to think that nurses pay is a trivial idea, mainly from people who have never done had a hard day’s work in the NHS ever. But let me tell you one thing which is very important – nurses’ mental welfare is very important, and rewarding nurses for their difficult job is a step towards that, more useful than yoga classes or whatever the latest out of touch managerial initiative from NHS England is. I think also it IS a problem that Russian oligarchs can buy up new builds in London, and Boris Johnson for example is prepared promote that, at the expense of shoving up house prices in London making social housing in London unaffordable for many. The Blair Twelve, for all their verbal masturbation about how disastrous a Corbyn government will be, have never offered anything constructive on social housing. This is not an issue of “Blairite vs Brownite” for me, it just happens that the abuse from some of those people who have been classified as Blairite has been for me completely unacceptable. Likewise, I think the abuse that Liz Kendall has received is simply disgusting, on account of her standing up for her opinions legitimately.

 

Economists disagree. I know a reasonable amount of economics, to the point I came top in economics in my own MBA. I think the way people have dismissed a ‘people’s QE’ out of hand distresses me, as it shows that they are more driven by securing their own ideology than potentially helping others in society. It does distress me even more that we have continued with the destruction of delivery of legal aid as we “cannot afford it”. Remember – Sadiq Khan MP, newly elected Labour Mayor candidate – was unable to pledge the reversal of cuts to legal aid when Shadow Justice Minister. And so it goes on. There’s a Labour refusal to say that the £20n efficiency savings, now £30bn, is now unworkable because of the desperate need to hang onto austerity. I have found Yvette speaking too much ‘shrill’ in the debates, and, apart from her interesting anecdote about her Haribos factory, I have found her uniquely uninspiring in the debates. Cooper for example had nothing of interest for me to say on the NHS or social care. And we do know that austerity has failed in numerous jurisdictions – Osborne’s own plans for austerity have failed numerous times, as our national debt has exploded far more than under Labour. Cooper may want to reduce the ‘people’s QE’ as ‘PFI on steroids’ but the way in which Labour implemented QE was itself ‘on steroids’. As Jeremy Corbyn rightly points out, signing up to the Conservatives’ economic plan in 1997 meant us signing up to PFI at the time, and a huge number of contracts were introduced under Labour (even thougjh the Major tenure originally introduced it in 1993).

 

I think Jeremy Corbyn is a good speaker. He is a Facebook friend. Sure, I ‘get’ the concerns about him potentially leaving NATO and wider foreign policy, but I note that he has never said recently he will definitely leave NATO. For me, he has spoken much sense on the refugee crisis. I expect his Shadow Cabinet to be kept in check by a strong Shadow Foreign Secretary, as I think Hilary Benn MP might be. I as it happens feel that Angela Eagle MP would make an excellent Shadow Chancellor. It’s clear that Scotland rejected Labour. I think the SNP is nationalist rather than socialist, and will do anything to further their nationalist ambitions. But I do think Corbyn does have a chance in speaking to disaffected Labour voters who voted SNP or UKIP recently. I think Corbyn is far from perfect, but he himself has urged the need for a united party, where policy is going to be driven by the grassroots. One of my own personal unpleasant experiences was in the Socialist Health Association where I felt it was impossible to have your contributions valued despite the wealth of experience you can bring. I have no truck with this method of working from the SHA, and I think the whole Labour machine has been like that.

 

I would like to give Jeremy Corbyn a chance. I am genuinely sorry to those of you who will feel offended by this.

Jeremy Corbyn might even win in 2020, so get over it.



JC

And so, as Mahatma Gandhi said once, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

I remember watching the BBC Newsnight Labour leadership hustings when they first happened, quite some time ago. I recall Jeremy Corbyn MP being introduced derisively as the old candidate who’d only just managed to make it onto the ballot sheet. And yet as I listened to Jeremy’s responses it became clear to me that his answers were addressing that significant electorate; those people who felt totally disenfranchised by Labour in the last ten years.

The odd thing about ‘choice’, so exuberantly espoused by both the Conservatives and Labour Party, in recent years is that you come in for rather heavy abuse, some of it of a rather personal nature, if your choice disagrees with someone else. I really can’t rationalise how Tony Blair came to think it was acceptable to state that if your heart is with Jeremy Corbyn you need a heart transplant. But as the campaign has progressed, things have been increasingly desperate. Every man and his dog from New Labour, including Alastair Campbell and David Blunkett, have been wheeled out to deride Corbyn. I am particularly puzzled how David Blunkett came to think he could produce the deal maker for the Blair era, when he has been happy being paid as an advisor on corporate social responsibility for the Murdoch operations.

That the main Union leaders wish to support Corbyn does not surprise me.  That Keynesian heavyweight Lord Skidelsky has produced a coherent argument to explain why ‘Corbynomics‘ is not as extreme as some present does not surprise me either. That serious heavyweights in economics wish to lend their support to Corbynomics is not a shock, in addition. This was to be expected with the huge social movement which accompanied the work of Prof Kate Pickett and Prof Richard Wilkinson, for example “The Spirit Level”. 

What I was seriously caught out by is how wise leading commentators, particularly at the Guardian, were so keen to sneer at Corbyn. I can understand the thing about not wanting to jump on the bandwagon, but their position was totally untenable. There was little attempt to engage with the actual policies, or to query why so many members of the general public had engaged in what was patently more than a mass hysteria ‘Corbynmania’. This does disappoint me, as some of the commentariat included bright people, sympathetic to the aims of New Labour and the Blair governments, who really could not meet half way with Corbyn.

If it happens that Jeremy Corbyn wins, and let’s face it the polls have been wrong before, I am hoping that members of Labour will pull ranks to help Corbyn. I as it happens have voted in this election, as I was entitled to as a Labour member. Not being offensive, but it might have helped that I haven’t left tweets and Facebook posts banging on about how wonderful the Greens are.

Rupert Murdoch commented in a tweet that Murdoch seems to be the only one who seems to be very clear about what he stands for. Corbyn has had plenty of time to rehearse the arguments in the front of the bathroom mirror, but I dare say he has thought exactly why he felt unable to support tuition fees, Iraq, or the private finance initiative, even having been elected on the same ‘disastrous’ Michael Foot manifesto which first saw him elected together with Tony Blair.

The arguments are very well worn. If there is money for war, why is there no money for social care? The criticism should not be why Corbyn is able to go over the same territory as the 1980s politically, but why these arguments have particular traction now. It is simply the case that the opposition from Labour has been unacceptably weak on the destruction of social care, which is a calamity in itself, but also disastrous from the perspective of how the National Health Service functions.

Repeated apologies for misdemeanours and misfeasance from the past have their place, but only if correct and authentic. The candidates for the Labour leadership have clearly been unable to settle with united voice on the actual reason Labour should be criticised; despite ambitious spending on public services (such as Sure Start or the infrastructure of hospitals), it was unable to regulate the City of London stringently enough. It happens that the Conservatives agreed with this light-touch regulation, and levels of public spending too, but that is not really the point as they were neither in office nor in government at the time.

Labour has never ‘apologised’ for the Iraq War, despite the sequelae, presumably on the basis that it feels it has nothing to apologise for. But there were screw ups in decisions from Labour.  Many in the general public find it inconceivable that the Labour leadership, apart from Jeremy Corbyn, aren’t making more of a noise about the destruction of the Independent Living Fund; and abstaining on the welfare reform bill is testament to how some feel there is no alternative to austerity.

Currently a large proportion of NHS Foundation Trusts are in deficit. Many feel that some Trusts, in chasing targets and wanting to become Foundation Trusts,  became extremely dangerous from a patient safety perspective, and this legacy from New Labour must not go unchallenged either. Whether or not Jeremy Corbyn can actually win in 2020 is in a way irrelevant to the huge strides forward in re-establishing socialist principles back on the political map. It could indeed be the case that Sir Keir Starmer QC MP is parachuted in just before the 2020 general election, but the ‘political left’ should not by this stage feel disappointed about their progress here. This progress might not have been what Progress wanted, but giving disenfranchised people a voice is a meritorious goal too.

And he might even win with the clarity of his arguments, even if you disagree with them. So get over it.

 

Click to listen highlighted text! Powered By GSpeech