Rishi Sunak clearly thinks that people in the UK are more worried about the 40,000 or so people a year trying to get here in small boats than they are about the 25,000 people who will likely die in the coming year as a result of NHS underfunding, and the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, more who will have to suffer for the same reason.
I know this because in his ‘vision' speech yesterday Sunak made legislation on small boats a priority. He claimed the NHS already had all the money it needed, when that is glaringly obviously not true.
I find this reading of the public mood bizarre. I can, however, only presume that is what the focus groups report. I always wonder how they find the people they ask to take part.
Why make this point? Three reasons. First, Sunak did not promise to solve the small boats problem. He said he'd pass laws to stop it. Since those laws will no more stop desperate people trying to enter the UK than existing penalties already do he has by definition set himself up to fail on this issue.
Second, he has also set himself up to fail on the NHS by ignoring the current crisis within it and instead making his target the reduction in long term waiting lists, which goal will be achieved over an unspecified period. Meantime, the deaths, suffering and agony will continue. He really cannot duck responsibility for that.
Third, both issues are indication of another matter which he singularly failed to address, which is chronic underfunding of public services. If migration services were properly funded with speedy prior vetting of applicants being readily available in Europe before anyone need approach the Channel then the small boat problem could be solved. That is not going to happen though. It will be said that will cost too much.
And in the NHS, more than a decade of underinvestment needs to be addressed. It's really not hard to work that out. But Sunak denies it. And so the shambles will continue.
Sunak's vision was of a country bereft of ideas, understanding, empathy and an economic policy fit for the twenty first century.
I wish I could feel more optimistic about Starmer's alternative, coming this morning. I don't as yet, and Rachel Reeves was dire on the media this morning, keeping on implying that £4bn of tax from non-doms will solve all problems, when that is obviously not true.
But I will reserve judgement on that until later. Sunak is failing. I will appraise Starmer later.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
If there is one thing worse than Sunak, then its Keir Stymied.
With Larry Elliott bemoaning the lack of government investment over the low interest rate years in the Guardian this morning and a report about Stymied making a statement about not opening the government cheque book to address Tory failure – well – a perfect storm of incompetence and corruption will be followed by one of mediocrity and timidity it seems. It’s obvious that money needs to be put back in to sectors of the economy. Money – and its velocity – is in the wrong place.
Great!!
Our society is like being trapped between two huge ideological ships and is being crushed between them as they sail too close to each other.
And then did you see the Reform Party leader Richard Teece on C4 news last night? His idea to boost wages for NHS staff was enable them not to pay taxes!! Technically, in a society that believes that taxes pay for things, he was actually going down the same road as Truss and Kwarteng!! Unbelievable!
Such is the ‘quality’ of our politicians these days!
Reform can talk twaddle knowing they are only playing to the ERG
I find it amazing how quickly the polling for reform has increased when I’ve barely heard of them. I know we all tend to get split into our own bubbles online, but people are hearing about them somewhere.
Agreed
I meet some ripe for their ideas around here
“Reform”? Relatively few are even aware of their existence.
Rachel Reeves has been dire since day one. I am about as optimistic about Starmer as you are. I would like to see him replaced, but I don’t know by whom. Any suggestions?
Zara Sultana would be my choice – a young black woman, MP for Coventry, with energy and passion for socialism. The guileless charm of Audrey Hepburn with the certainty of Joan of Arc. She is also pro proportional representation.
However, there seems no way to acheive a change of Labour leader at present.
If a vacancy occurred so many leftwingers have been thrown out by Keir or departed in despair.
Only Union action remains affective to oppose the Tory regime.
Feeling a bit cynical this morning, so my feeling is that Sunak’s speech has nothing to do with talking to the people of the UK, or any real plans for governing them in any useful way. It addresses the questions: “What do I need to say to stay in Downing Street for the next 6 months?” and “Who needs to be kept onside?”. He might also be thinking “What do I need to say to stop the Tory Party imploding?”.
“The people” are just collateral damage in this struggle.
You may well be right
I am sure that most of us are familiar with the dictum that, nature creates food shortages but it takes men to create a famine.
Looking for something else yesterday I chanced upon an account of the Irish Potato Famine.
I was struck by the similarities between its causes and the problems the UK has today.
Firstly, the influence of bad ideas. Then laissez-faire economics and today its modern form, the market is the best/only solution to every problem.
Secondly, the problems caused when those that have power choose to use it use to ensure that they have lives that are totally separate from those they rule over. Then absentee English landlords and today, offshore types who never meet the people they exploit and use their wealth to ensure that things stay that way.
The Irish eventually put an end to this vicious greed and stupidity, will the English, the Scots and the Welsh ever do the same?
I reject the term famine for Ireland
There was no famine: there was a starvation
Agreed. They don’t call the union jack ‘The Butcher’s Apron’ for nothing.
The horrors of Ireland’s appalling starvation tragedy – ‘An Gorta Mor’ – have been extensively analysed and reported. Much less well-known is that they were repeated on a smaller scale in Scotland’s Western Isles and Highlands in the winter of 1846/47. I was educated in a Scottish school in the 1950s and knew nothing of these events (we were largely taught about UK and Empire history with snippets of Scottish history here and there) and only became aware of them when I recently bought a very detailed and thoroughly researched book ‘Insurrection – Scotland’s Famine Winter’ by the historian James Hunter.
The cause of the problem was the same as in Ireland – failure of the potato harvest – exacerbated by the diversion of plentiful grain supplies from Caithness and around the Moray Firth to the more profitable markets of Edinburgh and London, which left the local populations with nothing to eat. Their defiance and obstruction of the grain trade alarmed the authorities, so the Army and Navy were brought in to control the masses, with ‘control’ including use of firearms against civilians armed, at best, with stones. Ringleaders were jailed or deported to Australia and local resentment was huge but little known elsewhere.
In the Western Isles (which were in large part owned outright by rich individuals who lived elsewhere) large tracts of land and whole islands had been bought for commercial exploitation. At first this was the harvesting of kelp, which was carried out by the island people who were disposessed of the lands they had farmed for centuries. These lands were then turned over to sheep farming and, in time, when kelp harvesting became obsolete with the development of industrial processes to create alkalines, the native people became totally dependent on the landowners for survival. In some places emergency grain provision was organised with landowners contributing to costs, but in others, like Barra and the Uists, the owners’ refusal to co-operate resulted in large-scale deaths due to famine. Survivors were encouraged to emigrate to Canada, which they did in droves as there was no prospect of survival in their homeland.
I was completely unaware of that Ken
Here’s what the BMA thought about Sunak’s proposals (I call them ‘proposals’ because they don’t merit ‘policies’ never mind ‘strategies’):
BMA press release on 4 JANUARY 2023: ‘Prime Minister shows ‘baffling lack of urgency’ in addressing an NHS in crisis, says BMA’.
‘Responding to the Prime Minister’s five promises, one of which pledges to cut NHS waiting times, Professor Philip Banfield, BMA chair of council, said “THE PRIME MINISTER TODAY SHOWED A BAFFLING LACK OF URGENCY IN ADDRESSING A CRISIS THAT THE WHOLE COUNTRY CAN SEE with their own eyes has brought the NHS to its knees. HE REFUSES TO EVEN ADMIT THERE IS A CRISIS. He mentioned the upcoming workforce strategy sometime “early this year” as if it is something we can afford to wait for. We must be clear that retaining and growing the workforce, as soon as we possibly can, is our way out of this mess.”
And goes on: “Our members are telling us that THE NHS IS IN THE WORST STATE IT’S EVER BEEN; patients are being treated in cupboards, hospitals are running out of oxygen cannisters, and staff, rushed off their feet, are breaking down in tears mid-shift. Although Mr Sunak said he is aware of the acute pressures facing emergency departments, THERE WAS ABSOLUTELY NO ATTEMPT TO OFFER ANY IMMEDIATE SUPPORT, or to encourage those currently working in the NHS to return for another shift.
“THE NHS IS COLLAPSING BEFORE OUR EYES, BUT TODAY’S SPEECH LACKED THE DETAIL STAFF NEEDED to know that they haven’t been abandoned, and that the health service will be given what it needs to survive. Mr Sunak said he wants to be held accountable, and we are happy to oblige. He will be held accountable, as this crisis inevitably worsens and more staff and patients suffer as a result.”