I am aware that I am a bit like a broken record when it come to criticising Labour right now, but it seems to be necessary. We have a failing government made up of incompetent (and worse) people and so focus has to be on the plans of the Opposition and yet those plans appear to be of little better quality.
Keir Starmer was talking about the NHS yesterday.
There are to be more people employed by it, even though applications for training places are well down, and there was no hint as to how this would be changed.
Targets will be met, although there is no hint as to how.
There will be more than 8,000 new mental health staff. But there was no suggestion as to when and where they will come from.
And, as a headline, suicide rates will be reduced, even though suicide is not in the vast majority of cases an issues that the NHS can address because the causes are to be found in social and economic stress rather than in illness as such, and he gave no hint as to how the stresses within society that drive people to suicide are to be addressed.
Nor was there any real hint on money.
We keep on waiting for the big ideas from Labour.
In the case of the NHS he got nowhere near the issue, which is marketisation that has brought the NHS to its knees and imposed endless waste on it. But on that there was nothing, because Blair and Brown were as much its architects as any Tory.
So was no big idea.
There was talk without money.
And the targets were almost all for unspecified dates.
There is an obvious question to ask, and it is whether or not Labour is ready for government? Right now it is not at all clear that it is.
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Agreed. He said last night the private sector would be involved.
I agree that more should be done to look at healthy living (imagine how the food industry and its addiction to sugar will fight that).
But the backlog and the disarray is something else and needs bravery, not brevity Mr Stymied.
It is actually worse than your not unkindly commentary would suggest.
Starmer and his Health shadow minitser have gone on record positively downplaying the primary need for increased funding as the major problem that the English NHS – for it is solely the English NHS which is in question here – has. That is the problem being non-addressed here. Plus there is their total failure to promise to rip up the disastrous 2012 Act, which removed the duty on the government to provide a comprehensive NHS and which pushed the floodgates wide to potential full privatisation. (All your points about Labour’s past guilty responsibilty.) Without a repeal of the 2012 Act and its replacement by one which reinstates the previous duty to provide a real, public NHS nothing – funding, structural improvement or improved recruitment and training will stem the disaster.
On Health – as on human rights – the lack of legislative bottle of the ‘Labour’ Party and its leadership tells the tale. These are careerists with no committment to the people or the public polity they would claim to ‘serve’. The situation is utterly woeful.
Accepted
I am too kind
I referred to Lansley and then decided not to go sown that rabbit hole, for example
I also cannot help thinking the message yesterday was ‘work harder’
Good post – your last words nail it: “These are careerists with no committment to the people or the public polity they would claim to ‘serve’.”
Liebore is vile-tory II. I did not waste my time reading Vile-Starmer’s G’ article – knowing that it would mostly contain imbecilic gibberings, confirmed by both your and Richards comments.
Liebore is unfit for gov and if elected, disaster will follow. People’s hopes will be elevated (mostly by cretinous Liebore-supporting MSM e.g. Nude Statesman etc) and then dashed, with the vile-tories making hay while Liebore fails. Cue, the usual “liberal” suspects wringing their hands & crying “oh dear”.
UK serfs & peasants deserve better – but they need to wake up and realise that a vote for Liebore is a vote for total & complete failure.
Yeah – Mr Mace has got the nail hit right.
You could argue that Laboured will not repeal the 2012 Act because the NHS is in such a parlous state that every ambulance chasing lawyer in the country would make a move on them.
But it is so typical of our political careerists to be ‘brave’ only when they smell a Westminster consensus – no matter how much it is driven by market dogma or received market wisdom.
I am not genned up on the organisation of the health service but much of the disastrous 2012 Health and Social care Act seems to have been replaced by the 2022 Health and care Act. CGC’s have been abolished and much of the change is claimed to have been from ideas coming from within the NHS.
One example of which I have heard is that pre-pandemic the various parts of the NHS in Croydon got together to make services work better and almost eliminated waiting times. I don’t know how true that was but I have more confidence in the ability of professionals to improve services rather than political think tanks or ‘management
consultants’.
Certainly no re-organisation of the NHS will free up enough money to properly fund it. We need not just AI and suchlike but over 100,000 ( 133,000 vacancies at present) extra people and to pay them well enough to stop them leaving or emigrating. We spend one point five to two percent of GDP less on health than France or Germany.
I don’t see how an ‘insurance model’ is going to improve things. It would more likely result in rationing and a two tier system. There are costs in contracting, billing and chasing up payments to put against any ‘efficiencies’.
One criticism I have heard of the 2022 Act was that private sector people are involved in the planning and this could be the wedge for more privatisation. The King’s fund site here downplays it. But it seems much of Lansley’s Act has been undone.
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/health-and-care-act-2022-make-sense-legislation
The BMA was less keen, acknowledging that while some issues had been improved, the government failed to act on others such as too few resources, the need for more staff and on social care.
https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-workforce/integration/the-health-and-care-act
Thanks
there are various ways that this bear of little brain might attempt to resolve the interminable NHS Crisis, but starting by looking at the number of Doctors and Hospital beds per thousand of population in most Western European nations and moving us towards that figure is a pretty basic way to start.
Yes….
I think another very important point is the number of patients per GP. This has been rocketing with “Primary Care Hubs” also making patients travel further.
Much better primary care and also public health also alleviates some of the stress on hospitals
As we near the end of 13/14 years of Tory misrule (the virtual norm, though not with the PM count) I’m much less negative about the prospect of a Labour Government. Though I do hope that Starmer has read your views on imaginative public funding. There are only so many conventional sources to mine.
Thanks
Has anyone seen anybody support Starmer’s plans, apart from Streeting, of course?
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/sir-keir-unveils-plan-to-make-nhs-fit-for-future
Speaking to people who have recently retired from the NHS, there is a case to suggest that it is being dismantled as much from within the service, via senior corporate staff (as opposed to clinical staff) The expectations of the former are that they will be offered some kind of CEO style post in a privatised incarnation of a regional franchise. However, they seem to be shitting their eyes to the obvious – as with most TUPE transfers, the new company only wants the former employees until their skills and knowledge are transferred – and this will apply to executive staff as much as anyone else.
I think that entirely plausible
My heart sank too in reading Starmer’s speech.
https://labourlist.org/2023/05/keir-starmer-read-watch-speech-full-today-nhs-health-mission/
It’s framed of course by the self inflicted “fiscal chains” you have spoken so well against.
He thus has to resort to the old tricks:
1. The claim that primary and community care can substitute for acute care.
Its been tried for forty years. The evidence for it is very thin indeed. As it is the urgent drives out the desirable.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10198-021-01329-6
2. Technology as the get out of jail card.
The NHS underinvests in technology , employing out of date PC’s losing pace with the tech industry pace of updates. Similarly with modern buildings and modern equipment. It costs a fortune to keep up and the NHS cannot afford it without extra resources. But it cannot manage the technology industry in a decentralised NHS structure that uses technological barriers to preserve local autonomy.
3. Preventing ill health. It would be a good trick to pull off, if it were possible. Unfortunately the population is ageing rapidly , requiring more care; exacerbated by a toxic environment that is increasing morbidity faster than ageing; in a sick society plagued by increasing levels of inequality , stress, and debt; made worse by poorly built and insulated houses, high energy costs and high inflation on food and energy; and fed by a population made fat and ill by the “British diet” provided in our supermarkets.
He may have some positive suggestions but they are unconvincing as sufficient (and no evidence is provided that they will be ) and therefore only provide good intentions and virtue signalling.
It’s not good enough.
The obvious way to help is to loosen the fiscal chains. By setting his face against this he is dooming his mission before it gets out of harbour. If you excuse the mixed metaphors…
Agreed Roger
No one in the NHS seems to believe a word he says
Not many more do outside it
Labour is an empty vessel into which people can put what they hope for without contradiction. Its flag of convenience says ‘not Tory’. Remember how Corbyn/McDonnell were labelled far left, which they were not, but even so were such a threat to the rich and powerful that they had to be eliminated as a potential government by any means fair or (mostly) foul. Starmer got himself elected as LOTO by pretence: another EU referendum, Corbyn a friend, the 10 pledges from the 2017 manifesto – all dumped. The same elite will still be pulling the strings though if a Labour majority is small those MPs on the left will have some influence on changes and things will be marginally better. The pretence of democracy will be maintained. It’s up to us to keep demanding better and not accepting the crumbs on offer.
I take a tip from Dylan Thomas.
“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
I know the context is different but it fits here too.
Good poem
And appropriate
Not everyone in the labour party thinks like Starmer and Streeting.
There is an eventbrite meeting run by Labour Assembly Against Austerity, with Nadia Whittome, MP, John Puntis from Doctors for the NHS, John Lister and Chloe Brooks , a labour student rep.
It’s on June 7th starting at 6.30. The link is impossible.