Wes Streeting, our new Health Secretary, posted this tweet yesterday:
I cannot believe that Wes Streeting used the language of trickle down economics, so beloved of neoliberals from the ‘80s onwards , so blatantly and so openly.
The claim that ‘a rising tide floats all boats' is a classic neoliberal trope. The argument is that whoever it is that might happen to get rich, everyone will benefit.
The problems with this claim are obvious.
Firstly, inequality has increased since 1980, when the pursuit of this policy began. This is from the Equality Trust:
Ten per cent of the population might have done very well. Most have not, or in proportionate terms might have done worse.
Second, for anyone claiming things have got better of late, this chart from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation suggests otherwise:
Thatcher increased inequality. Blair and Brown made things slightly better. And in the last 14 years the Tories appear to have left things as they are. That, though is misleading. This is also from the JRF:
Deep poverty is rising. In other words, not only have rising tides of wealth not helped most people, as is very clear some people are firmly anchored to the seabed as the supposed tide rises, and for them life is becoming impossible.
All of this is being ignored by Streeting, who is playing to his friends in the City, and not the people of Ilford who just returned him by a very small margin to the Commons.
What he has made clear is just where his priorities lie, and that is not with the majority of people in this country. And that is a deeply depressing start to this period of Labour government.
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He may or may not be right that a rising tide will (at least partially) float all boats but…
it doesn’t take into account the people with at best a leaky, undersized boat and those without a boat at all. They just drown as the tide rises.
It takes the phrase “Stop the Boats” to a whole new level.
If you think about it this is a singularly inappropriate phrase to use in justification of trickle down economics. Anyone who has watched a rising tide, especially in places like the Thames estuary where it comes in over a couple of miles of mud flats, will know that the small boats float first. They don’t have to wait for the large boats to allow tidal water to trickle down to them.
The first time this phrase appears in political speech seems to be in a speech by John F Kennedy in 1963 justifying a dam project in Arkansas in which he says:
“These projects produce wealth, they bring industry, they bring jobs, and the wealth they bring brings wealth to other sections of the United States. This State had about 200,000 cars in 1929. It has a million cars now. They weren’t built in this State. They were built in Detroit. As this State’s income rises, so does the income of Michigan. As the income of Michigan rises, so does the income of the United States. A rising tide lifts all the boats and as Arkansas becomes more prosperous so does the United States and as this section declines so does the United States. So I regard this as an investment by the people of the United States in the United States.”
In this context, the phrase makes perfect sense and it clearly has nothing to do with trickle down economics.
Crass use of trickle down analogy.
The visualisation is also a lie.
A rising tide floats all boats equally. Neoliberalism does not.
It does the opposite.
My low opinion of Streeting as ambitious apparatchik was reinforced recently by a tedious performance on R4 AQ.
W S is terrible and i so wish he had lost his seat. Not good that they are bringing Milburn back either !
Agreed on Milburn – who was really not good on health
The idea of Milburn is a total disaster. It was his initial creation of Foundation Trusts that have been part of the road to NHS privatisation and disastrous competition instead of full co-operation. He has spent his time post office in advising and consorting with private health providers. If he does get a role then privatisation will be accelerating.
I agree with all that
Streeting is completely unsuited to hold the post of Health Secretary. He has no relevant experience. In fact his previous involvement with insurance (NUS commercial business) and PWC in addition with his support for the abolition of Clause IV and the introduction of student fees is deeply concerning. His regular statements such as this only confirm his unsuitably.
Wes Streeting came within a few hundred votes of losing his seat to an independent. Sadly that seems not to have humbled him at all. Let’s hope he’s the first out of the door in any cabinet reshuffle.
It would be perfectly possible to set targets for poverty reduction and income distribution, its just that no politicians do.
Whatever else you think of it there has been a concerted attempt to reduce Pensioner Poverty by successive governments which has been reasonably successful so why not working age as well?
Streeting’s first test will be the doctors dispute – neither he Reeves or Starmer have shown any understanding of why the NHS is ‘broken’ – or how to fix it. He has to stop doctors and nurses leaving the service – he has to pay them properly and to invest in the latest health technology that many European countries have done. He has to get unemployed GP’s into work.
All the signs are that he will continue with the dire tradition of politicans meddling in teh NHS ‘structure’ – with his friends in the City slavering for yet more lucrative health contracts.
Many of the measured poverty trends don’t always capture the number in ‘absolute poverty’ or ‘destitution’ , in the sense of a family not being able to afford the absolute basics of food , shelter and warmth.
The lowest x% may have not changed much in terms of % of total national income – but the relative changes in price of basics – especially food and rent and energy has plunged many more into absolute poverty.
Much to agree with
Wes Streeting is wrong – Richard would save himeslf a lot of time and effort over the coming months and years by making this a sticky post at the top of the blog…
That Aurelian blog post linked to by Colonel Smithers the other day nailed Streeting to a T. It is instructive that he has already added uber Blairite Alan Milburn to his advisors.
Came accross this speech by Frank Dobson the other day which nails the New Labour hostility to the NHS. Well worth a read. Dobson, Health Secretary in the first Blair administration and another who would not be welcome in Starmer’s LINO was corsucating about his successor Milburn and his NHS plans: https://www.catalystforum.org.uk/events/dobson.html
Thanks
I might post that
Thats a good reminder – had forgotten all this internal market stuff began so far back with Blair, and Milburn.
After 2014 , even the Tories began to row back on the ‘internal competition”s disastrous Lansley version –
Bringing Milburn back with his long record of supporting private health creaming off profits from NHS contracts, PFI, – and receiving personal income from private health companies – shows where Streeting is heading – as feared.
It all fits in with the Starmer/Reeves illiterate ‘only the private sector creates growth’ etc.
Agreed
Do they really believe that? They would be a bit more credible if the did not personally benefit from the wealth the private sector creates.
Maybe this should mean that tax avoidance will also trickle down allowing the poorer to level up!
As the lack of money will inevitably be given (ad nauseam) as the main reason for not tackling various critical issues, hopefully whenever this no money/trickle down lie is endlessly spouted, the response will relentlessly be the same, namely highlighting the various ways in which tax lies at the root of the cause and significant solution to a supposed lack of money. Start with the most obvious ones.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/06/hmrc-offshore-tax-avoidance-uk-wealthy
I suspect and hope that you’ll be blogging a lot (even more) about tax over the coming months & years. Lies hate the light of day more than anything else.
I plan to do so….
Excellent Tweet by Dr Phil Hammond
@drphilhammond
“The NHS may be broken, according to
@UKLabour
@wesstreeting
but here’s how to fix it:
Prevention, Prevention, Prevention, Prevention….
1. Prevent poverty. It’s the single biggest determinant of ill health, and health and social care demand, both now and in the future. Blair and Brown made good progress in reducing it. So it can be done.
2. Prevent illness, with a relentless focus on living well, self-care, mental health support and tackling the commercial determinants of illness. Dental disease is the commonest cause of childhood operations, and yet it’s almost 100% preventable.
3. Prevent existing risks and diseases getting worse, with evidence-based screening and a substantial shift in resources to primary, community and social care
4. Preventing waste and medical harm, by ensuring patients receive the right care, in the right place, from the right people at the right time. This is the toughest nut to crack, as it requires adequate numbers of well trained and well rested staff working in safe, clean environments with the right equipment. We currently spent three times as much litigating harms from maternity care than we do on maternity care. This is a permanent disaster and would be a very good place to start. Instead of repeating our mistakes, we need to learn from them.”
If only ….
Very good
As pointed out by Bernard Hurley, above, this metaphor of Political Economics originated with John F. Kennedy, and if JFK was a Market Fundamentalist (a “Neoliberal”, except, how can “Neoliberal” be a correct and meaningful name for that lot, given that if you scratch one, you almost invariably find they are also “Neoconservative”?), then surely I am the late Tsar Nicholas the Second, back just in time for Tea.
My reply to our gracious host would be, that his rebuttal of Mr. Streeting’s cheery optimism is, alas, quite entirely the wrong rebuttal — for, as seen from way over on this side of the Atlantic, and as supported by all the economic statistics and graphs which Mr. Murphy kindly provides in his original blog post, the metaphorical Economic Tide has been ebbing in the United Kingdom for quite some time now (decades), and it would seem by now to be quite plain that it is Market Fundamentalist policies (gratuitous, pointless, literally counterproductive, and eventually simply cruel governmental austerity, etc.), such as Minister Streeting and the new Labour government of which he is a part do not find to be as horrifying as they perhaps ought, that are the cause of the continuing decline.
In other words, the source of the cognitive dissonance one feels in reaction to this anecdote, does not lie with the metaphor itself, but rather with the entirely inapt application of it by Minister Streeting to a situation where there is not now, and given the generally Market Fundamentalist outlook of the new Prime Minister and his Cabinet, there is unlikely any time soon to be, any sort rising economic tide in the UK, whatsoever.
I like that