Summary
Starmer's speech on the NHS yesterday offered view of a man unprepared for office who sends out incompetent messages to those who now work in the organisation he leads and who has no comprehension of the economic environment in which he must manage healthcare.
It's not surprising that now the UK public is seeing Starmer in action that his popularity is falling. They can now see what was always obvious, which is that he is incompetent and wholly unsuited to be prime minister.
I listened to what Keir Starmer had to say about the NHS with growing bewilderment yesterday. I really wish that he had not created in me a sense that he is almost totally incompetent, and yet that is exactly what he did.
There were a number of reasons for this. Each of them would be serious in itself. In combination, they are almost staggering.
The first and most serious issue of concern arose from the fact that Starmer spoke about the report that Lord Darzi has supposedly written during the first eight weeks that Labour has been in office. This, supposedly, sets out all the faults that he thinks exist within it.
The problem with this is that Starmer has been the leader of the party for four years now, and this report could have been commissioned at any time during that period, with there being very little difference in what Lord Darzi might have said.
Of course, Covid happened, and of course, it made some things in the NHS more difficult whilst exposing many of the inadequacies that were already apparent by 2020 as a consequence of Tory underfunding, but Darzi's diagnosis and the very limited range of solutions that he was allowed to offer can come as a shock to no one. Nor, to be candid, can they have risen as a consequence of any significant new research undertaken during this period.
There was, in other words, no reason why Labour could not have known exactly what Darcy had to say well before it came into office. As a consequence, they could not only have got this stage of their review process out of the way long before the election, but they could have also got on to the next stage, which apparently involves them working out how to react to Darzi's unsurprising conclusions, well before the July election as well.
As it is, because of the lack of preparedness of Labour for office, we now have to lose a year whilst they work out what everyone (except them, apparently) knew would be required of them pre-July.
This failure to act in a timely manner is, in my opinion, the strongest possible indication of Starmer's incompetence, along with that of his Health Secretary, West Streeting. Fourteen years in opposition meant that they should have known exactly what they were going to do with the NHS after the election and have been able to announce precisely what it was the day after reaching office. As it is, the first year of Starmer's period in office will now be lost to dithering on this issue, and that is unforgivable.
What is also unforgivable is that what is being demanded of the NHS is that it apparently transform itself before the government might be willing to invest any further funds in it. This is quite extraordinary, but it is the only way I can interpret what Starmer said yesterday by using some very strange metaphors involving taps and plumbing.
What he implied is that everyone, including all those who work in the NHS, knows that fourteen years of Tory underfunding has left the NHS in crisis, but it is now, apparently, the job of those who work within our health service to transform the services that it supplies without any additional resources being provided to them to enable this to happen. Only when that transformation has happened will, apparently, those funds be given.
So, if the current problem that a part of the organisation faces is that it cannot meet demand because job vacancies are unfilled, it is apparently now required that the demand in question be met even though no additional people will be made available to help anyone do so.
Similarly, if the problem in a part of the organisation is outdated or inadequate technology, the problem that technology creates must be resolved by the existing staff of the NHS before they will apparently get any funding to improve the service.
These are impossible demands.
Whilst no one can pretend that everything that is happening within the NHS at present always functions to best effect, what we also know is that the majority of people working within it strive to deliver healthcare within the enormous constraints that have been imposed upon them. Starmer is apparently unappreciative of this. Instead, he seems to be saying that unless these staff can deliver the service that he and Wes Streeting require with existing resources, he will provide them with no more.
This is utterly crass people and organisation management: you simply cannot expect an organisation already at breaking point due to no fault of its own staff to respond in this way. It will not be able to do so. People cannot be treated in that way, and if they are, they will leave. I can only presume that this is what Starmer and Streeting want. No other interpretation is possible, but at least that way, the private sector alternative to the NHS will have a good supply of recruits. Maybe this is their aim.
Then, there is Stamer's incompetence when it comes to economics. I can only presume that he believes that if he spends what is required to deliver a proper healthcare service for the UK he will, as a corollary, deny the resources to the private sector that will enable it to flourish. This is economically ignorant.
Firstly, it should be obvious to anyone that a workforce suffering from ill health, stress, uncertainty, delay, and inadequate healthcare is bound to function at well below any optimal level that can deliver the growth that Starmer so apparently craves.
Secondly, what he should understand, at a quite instinctive level, is that if only people can be sure that they can rely on the NHS they will not need to save for private healthcare - which saving removes demand from the economy and so denies him growth.
Third, he should understand the multiplier effects of having a healthy workforce - which pays returns well above the cost of any intervention in the NHS.
These issues were not mentioned in his speech - and I have read it.
So what we end up with is a view of a man unprepared for office who sends out incompetent messages to those who now work in the organisation he leads and who has no comprehension of the economic environment in which he must manage healthcare.
It's not surprising that now the UK public is seeing Starmer in action that his popularity is falling. They can now see what was always obvious, which is that he is incompetent and wholly unsuited to be prime minister.
We only have five more years of this to go.
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I suppose he would say that in opposition they don’t have access to all the information. How much access to civil servants and hospital boards, etc does a shadow health secretary have? Should they have more so they can make a cogent policy from day 1 of Government?
It is bizarre as you say, how Starmer is reading a report saying decades of underinvestment has led to the current state of the NHS, and he then says, the answer is no new investment – indeed it is to take away money from crumbling hospitals and put it into primary care.
Yes it really was (and is) dire.
He gave us three strategic objectives, which might have been the basis of a coherent reinvestment plan. But to say that he then bottled it, is being very charitable.
From analogue to digital – okay, but then he gave us a series of whizz-bang examples of digitisation of public healthcare that have already been achieved – so it’s a work in progress, the NHS is already on the case, and if it is to continue, it obviously needs more government investment, now.
From hospitals to communities – again, okay if he’s talking about decentralisation, more local clinics, better integration between healthcare and social care at local level – but he doesn’t specify; and any such radical change will require a huge redeployment and retraining programme which, again, means more money and more investment.
From treating illnesses to preventing illnesses – sure, we’re all in favour, but not a single mention of the baleful influence of our food and drink industry on our society – his deep political cowardice is obvious.
Then, as you say, the economic illiteracy: “working people can’t afford to pay more tax”. Which ones? Has he asked them? “So it’s reform or die”.
Has there ever been a more idiotic political slogan than this?
Much to agree with
Pulling of agreed funding is already happening within the NHS. This is effecting new infrastructure and staff training and progression. Without this services will continue to decline as will recruitment. Insane!
“This failure to act in a timely manner is, in my opinion, the strongest possible indication of Starmer’s incompetence,”
I disagree.
As previous blogs have noted, LINO is “owned”… & in the area of the NHS it is “owned” by those that want it privatised (ditto e.g. BBC). Delay allows the corporates to “line up their skittles” as it were. There will be no “dithering”, Streeting, Starmer and their drones will follow the orders laid down by their masters. This winter may, or may not be “bad” – providing more excuses for “action” (= privatisation) – with Reeves laying the financial tarmac (no money, TINA etc).
I have no doubt that the corporates must have wet themselves with laughter as UK serfs gave Starmer/LINO a landslide.
If the serfs understood what was happening, the tumbrils would roll – but they don’t & they won’t until it is far far too late.
Streeting has been wittering on about the need for REFORM” without ever spelling out what exactly he meant. IF Streeting wanted to release money he could buy out the PFI deals, get rid of the CQC and bring a lot of outsourced contracts back into the NHS. SADLY I doubt if any of this is what he will do. I imagine he is hoping the private sector will e setting up community diagnostic centres, and the tests will be read by AI so no need for well trained staff and more NHS budget will go into the private sector.
And check out Blair’s proposal for single huge GP practices (remote from most people!) and the use of a chat box to deal with :most of your health issues!,!!!
Totally agree with everything you say, Richard.
You might be interested to read Geoffrey Robertson’s comments about Starmer.
https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/07/keir-starmer-prime-minister-geoffrey-robertson
You might also like to see a copy of the Rejoin Campaign’s newsletter. We have another elective dictator who’s in the process of accelerating our spiral of decline.
https://www.rejoinandreform.co.uk/september-newsletter
Best regards
John
It was damning…
Darzi auto corrected to Darcy.
Darcy might have offered a better set of options methinks !
I hope the above analysis and absolutely justified ridiculing of expecting unreasonable and superhuman performance from NHS staff before any new funding is available, is copied and sent to every civil servant in Health, and tattooed across Streeting’s forehead.
I thought I had got rid of all of them….very annoying
Don’t worry, the private health care sector – that has grown fat on NHS money – will be able to step in and take more lucrative work.
They were too busy with “making the Labour party represent working people” (sarcasm) i.e. going after people who are pro worker and anti-vested interests, people who try to hold the PLP to account, than to bother themselves with anything meaningful. Starmer is a terrible leader, no vision, no positive messages, a total lack of creativity or compassion. People say “Thank God the grownups are in charge now”, but the only kind of grown he is behaving like is the bad kind. Imagine being a “leader” in any organisation or family and doing nothing to protect those under you…
That’s a very long, very accurate, summary!
I agree with your analysis. After Starmer was elected as leader of Labour, I listed to what he said and wrote (as with his circle of allies – Reeves, Rayner and Streeting) and came to the conclusion that he was as you say incompetent and unsuited to be Prime Minister. He is a fifth rate politician. He has no understanding of economics at all and it appears other policy areas.
I find it sad that some people who voted Labour are still thinking he know what he is doing. As for ‘We got the Tories out’ well Government ministers sound exactly like a number of Tories and believe in the same policies!
To misquote Tolstoy “Good Prime Ministers are all alike; every useless Prime Minister is useless in their own way.”
But Labour CAN’T claim they got the Tories out..! Reform etc got the Tories out.
This is an argument that reminds me of the old joke about two bald men arguing over a comb. If the alternative was an empty Commons Chamber, the Conservative government would not have survived the election. The electorate were going to eject the discredited Conservatives, no matter what.
The problem is, it seems that Labour is desperate to boot themselves out of office, at the first opportunity. People are beginning to think of the Conservatives as an actual Opposition. If Labour keeps this up, people will begin listening to the Conservatives; and that is a definition of Labour failing in two months. The Conservative Party isn’t fit to survive, still less function as a serious opposition. That itself is a serious Labour blunder.
Whatever they have seen or not seen, Labour is spooked, or this is the Plan (God help them, and us if this is it); or they have completely lost the plot; or all three at once. Take your pick, then bin it.
“If Labour keeps this up, people will begin listening to the Conservatives;”
I think people will start listening more and harder to the Reform Party.
The Conservatives have an advantage over Reform between elections; they are the Official Opposition, they can ask Starmer the awkward questions; six per week. And that is what is reported by the media, every week.
“I listened to what Keir Starmer had to say about the NHS with growing bewilderment yesterday. I really wish that he had not created in me a sense that he is almost totally incompetent, and yet that is exactly what he did.”
Me too!
The worst (or best!) of it is I honestly believe his support for the NHS and it’s continuation as a public service free at the point of contact (as he stated clearly in his speech) is sincere and genuine.
Which leave me to conclude – as you do – that he is indeed incompetent in his present role, having apparently been persuaded of the over-riding need to balance the books at all costs. Rachel Reeves has to go – and the sooner the better.
Labour’s unpreparedness for dealing with the NHS’s problems is out-shadowed only by the Chancellor’s ignorance about the state of the UK’s finances and the so-called “black hole”. This ignorance rendered everything they said and promised in their election campaign almost entirely redundant as soon as they took office. Rather reminds me of the “10 pledges” Starmer made before elected leader of the Labour Party.
Reality Dodgers favourite expression “black hole” absolves them of any need to think consequences through or indeed have any plans to tackle the serious issues facing the country which the rich are of course in denial about! “Black hole – no need to do any thinking we can just relax and attend the junkets and wallow in the rich folks’s media treating us as wise people!”
Agreed, but free at the point of use doesn’t exclude US-style private insurance!
C4 News pointed last night that Darzi explicitly mentioned the under funding of the service in his report.
I think that what is happening is that Stymied is effectively sending out a message to the NHS hierarchy that there will be changes coming in that they must not get in the way of but at the same time making this look to the public like the NHS’s refusal to change (how many times is it now) has been the cause of its problems. Added to that was also another message – this time to the private health care sector.
The C4 part of Stymied’s speech mentioned the use of agency workers as an added cost. So if that stops, who will pick up the work? Well, people will be going increasingly to private hospitals maybe, but no private practitioners (including nurses) will be working in NHS ones?
And have you noticed that even though in reality our ministers are still in charge of the NHS, it is the NHS who are being blamed for treating rather than doing more on prevention? But who dictates policy and the funding for that policy arena? People like Streeting supposedly.
If I was to sum up Stymied’s Labour(ed) party I would use one word: Cynical.
Yet again surprise!!
Why?
Did anyone expect anything except the full destruction of the remaining notion of a National health service free at the point of need?
Did anyone believe that two generations of Propaganda against efficiency and affordability of public services in favour of privatisation and profits for global corporations was going to be reversed by this arch neo con /lib tool of Washington?
A bastard son of Blair and Thatcher.
Why the constant surprise as the still breathing NHS in its coffin was awaiting a Labour government to nail the lid on it ! So the Tories would not be blamed for it in history. Delayed by half a dozen years because of JC.
The only thing that can change this is a mass revolt in parliament; with mass protests/general strikes in the streets.
We have been prepped, as are the Europeans who also implemented post war such public services, for the inevitable that is now clearly on the horizon. Energy costs quadrupled. Industries choked. Austerity as a whip.
Brave Sir Keeve, has been chosen to lead the latest version of the charge of the light brigade folly, that will officially be the defeat of the thirty year unipolar imperialist war to conquer the whole world! Which has instead led to our Collective Waste. That will be used as the excuse for further austerity forever.
We are to be left wearing the hair shirt Services, that Yankees have long been moulded to accept is the only way – ultra rich who get everything for free anyway. Followed by their servile ‘new middle’ classes, who get medical insurance for being good. Who dare not complain incase they lose their jobs and the blackmail of their families medical insurance.
They are followed by the multi job classes who barely can afford it and die early and in great distress as slaves do.
A return to the Old European ways of aristos and servility if you will.
It was woeful. It piled impossibility on impossibility and used flakey slogans as though they constituted real policy. It effectively ignored Darzi’s main economic conclusions and his evisceration of Lansley’s entirely destructive Act – memorable for its insidious removal of the actual responsibility on the Minister of Health to provide a National Health service in its opening clauses.
The emperor’s clothes fell off immediately Channel 4’s health correspondent asked the simple question of where and when were Startmer’s plans for a national care service to solve the glaring problem of blocked hospital beds. Starmer’s non-answer was every bit as gross as Trump’s flannel about having “concepts of a policy” for improving Obamacare. Streeting was equally woeful and gasped air for seconds, when asked, in an otherwise soft interview with Channel 4, if we should be afraid of getting ill.
As with so much of Labour’s ill-prepared absence of meaningful action, I am constantly reminded of the old Private Eye cartoon with a clearly undernourished mother, children clinging to her skirts, standing in an opened doorway with cup in hand saying,”I wonder if you could let me have a little cup of money?”
Much to agree with
Well selected insight on Streeting. He looked like a goldfish, out of its bowl of water; he was internally gasping for air; his eyes said everything. That would be acceptable if he was offering a policy that was not lining up people to suffer; including pensioners without WFA, who will probably end in A&E, in the crisis winter months you cannot afford to block the beds. Clive Parry makes the point that growth needs infrastructure in order to happen. I could add, a fit and healthy workforce, or one not distracted by concern for elderly, disabled, or very young children (for example, obliged to go to hospital to have their rotten teeth removed).
We have atrociously bad government management, of just about everything. We can all see it; we know it, and that needs fixed fast. But achieving results in the economy. or from growth will need to begin with investment to achieve anything real or substantive. Investment is not the bit not-necessary, nice-to-have, but self-indulgent bit the comes at the end; it is required to turn all the concepts, ideas, plans; whatever they, are into real productive returns. Government triggers everything; if it didn’t the Conservatives and the Single Transferable Party wouldn’t fight so hard, and spend so much, just to be, or stay in power. Even they know – Investment will NEVER come first, from the private sector. It hasn’t in fourteen years. And for the ten before that the private sector squandered money on bad investments, and bust the economy. The private sector hasn’t invested, or produced growth, with interest rates at the lower bound (c0%), or at 5%. They only invest when the public sector invests – first and provides the guide ropes. competitive markets are not the centre of action; they are the incidental sideshow; the fragile best that folds at the first sign of choppy water. And PFI is the worst form of rip-off ever seen. Money blown on making a handful obscenely rich. You just can’t trust private investment. It runs away at the first sight of trouble, or real competition. In Britain it ran away from competition from the East, long ago. Private investment is a follower, not a leader. It need protection, often even from itself, and always from brutal competition. The private sector as the robust, invincible core of the modern economy, is a fake. Faced with staying with the ship and duty, or jumping the private sector will always follow Conrad’s Lord Jim; and jump.
“I could add, a fit and healthy workforce, or one not distracted by concern for elderly, disabled, or very young children (for example, obliged to go to hospital to have their rotten teeth removed)”.
That, I notice could read as if I was careless or indifferent of “distraction” of people by the elderly or of children with rotten teeth; as if it was an inconvenience. For the avoidance of doubt, I mean by “distraction” the sheer effort and stress in looking after people, including family members, for so many people; because the government has run down everything into the ground, and between a decayed infrastructure, terrible management of Government money, and the basic lack of provision of essential services; people can nl longer function effectively in employment because they are overwhelmed by the difficulties of family life.
The crucial point is that the public services dismissed as of little value to the economy, are actually more important to economic effectiveness than much of the so-called competitive economy. or of “markets”.
Whatever the report said, and whatever Starmer said about it yesterday, I can’t help feeling that the main outcome in practice will be more privatisation. Like the Tories, before them, LINO don’t actually believe in the NHS except as a treasury of public resources to be diverted to the private sector – a process that continues apace in the hospital where I work.
For me, the worst thing about Labour now (not just Starmer – it must be a party ‘on message’ instruction) is the way they present ‘taxing working people’ as the only alternative to continuing to squeeze essential public services. Not only is this dishonest – there are many alternative taxes that won’t affect most ‘working people’ – eg. in your own Taxing Wealth suggestions – but it continues to reproduce a right-wing framing of public finances that if not challenged will facilitate a right-wing return to government. It’s crazy.
Much to agree with
Starmer, Liz Truss without being obviously bonkers
Just because Starmer does allow stupidity to spew from his mouth (as do Johnson & Truss) does not mean he is not bonkers.
As far as I ca now understand it, Starmer is not unprepared. Rather this is his strategy; because of past Labour experience (of Conservatives being dumped out of office, leaving Labour to clean up their mess, then sailing back in after one term, with Labour having then taken all the blame and flak for any consequent pain). Starmer is determined that the Conservatives take the full, deservedly irrecoverable blame for the mess – now; but with one twist. Labour intend to execute Conservative fiscal rules, and Conservative austerity. Here Starmer hopes his grave warnings, his “well meaning” promises of an upside at some unspecified time too far away to promise; and emphasise endlessly blaming the Tories, will distract sufficient attention from the fact that he is simply executing Tory economic and monetary policies under a different label, with a lot of reassuring waffle as compensation.
It isn’t that he doesn’t understand, or doesn’t understand. THIS IS THE PLAN. What you see is what you get, and will keep getting, as Britain sinks lower, and lower. Growth? You might as well talk about a British manned flight – to Mars. Meanwhile, if Scotland has sufficient control over its budget to do anything worth while, we could have a very successful world small-payload space centre; a function of Scotland’s natural advantages, and capability in modern industries, given any opportunity free of The Treasury Folly.
I agree, accusations of incompetence or of no vision miss the point – this, as you say, is the vision, it is the plan, and it’s working. Not agreeing with what is being done does not make it incompetent. Starmer, Reeves and Streeting know what they’re doing. It’s just that what they’re doing is repulsive and destructive to many. However, there is a more fundamental problem here to solve than “getting the right people elected” (and nowhere have I ever read any explanation as to how exactly that is to be done, and ditto so many great ideas – there’s never an answer to how it gets implemented). And that’s the more fundamental problem. The three Stooges are in government, and cannot be removed by the electorate except by voting. As has been noted, there are five more years of this to go. And whatever the outcome of the next election, there will, I’d wager, be five more years of something worse. And so on. And still no explanation as to how to get the right people elected, or otherwise get good ideas implemented. The fundamental problem is an entire population ceding so much power to a tiny, easy-to-buy cabal. Labour can and will, if they so choose, destroy the NHS and continue to degrade people’s lives and, despite this, millions of those affected will continue to believe in and support the very system that allows that to happen with impunity. Which pretty much sounds like a definition of insanity.
Mr Willetts,
I agree. The underlying problem is that our Parliamentary democracy is entirely dependent on a Party system that is, and always has been in its essentials corrupt; the first PM who completely mastered Parliament and established the principles on which modern Party depends, Walpole used patronage (advancement) as the weapon of choice, because it works so well. For the recalcitrant there is the Whip’s office. This has origins in the seventeenth century; and by in the eighteenth century it became a tool to compensate for the weakness of Party in the Commons. By the nineteenth century:
“There was also a growing tendency for members to grow restive about the activities of
the party Whips. The ‘Whippers-in’ as they were called were already hard at work in
1815, but their activities attracted little attention until the 1860s, probably because the
late nineteenth-century practice which gave the government nearly 85 per cent of parliamentary time had not yet come to be recognised for what it was, a permanent feature of Commons life. Thereafter, MPs became increasingly aware of the extent to which their own comfort depended on the quality of the government and Opposition Whips. It was they who arranged the timetable of the House, gave members permission to go home or go on holiday, and arranged the order of speakers in debate. Memoirs of parliament in the 1890s are full of comments on the Whips of the day, and by 1910 they had come to be among the best-known parliamentary figures. Critics of parliament were prone to suggest that the Whips exercised a sort of tyranny over private members, and that they had, destroyed the independence of the Commons. The truth was less picturesque. Before 1832 it had been not uncommon for the government to be very weak in the Commons or for the members on the government benches to be very much divided.” (HJ Hanham, (1972),’ The Nineteenth Century Constitution’, p.139).
The Whip’s Office is now a menacing operation that has largely abandoned encouragement for the threat of punishment; Party banishment is only the most obvious example.
Party has essentially corrupted the constituency Parliamentary system; and therefore has corrupted Parliament, and our democracy. Party is a disease; the problem is replacing it, because it is destroying us. Power has discovered that if it can influence, fund or infiltrate Party, it can take them over; for vested interests. That is why we now have a Government and Official Opposition that are, in reality a Single Transferable Party. The mere voter has no influence, compared with Patronage and the Whip’s Office. QED.
I do not have a neat, fast solution to the problem; but Party is destroying democracy around most of the advanced, democratic world. The corrupt are fleet of foot, and as they have abandoned values, their adaptability is endless.
What is becoming increasingly clear is that Starmer is unbelievably bad at judging people. For whatever reason, in Reeves and Streeting he has chosen two people completely unable to handle their jobs. Even if they screw up so badly that they are fired, will his next picks be any better? It’s hard to see any good future until he’s replaced as Prime Minister.
Rather than blathering about taps and plumbing – a simpler analogy:
Pharaoh Starmer, don’t demand the Hebrew slaves make bricks without giving them the necessary straw!
Has anyone in Labour (or Tories before them) bothered to ask health professionals, working in the NHS, or in academia, or in health unions, or other professionals with expertise in health for their ideas?
And why do we spend less per head than many comparable countries and have fewer doctors and nurses, fewer beds, fewer scanners and more preventable deaths. (Although we do better on some measures according to the King’s Fund).
“Labour’s cabinet has taken over half a million in donations from private healthcare lobbyists”
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2024/09/05/labour-private-healthcare-donations-nhs/
It is difficult to believe that this volume of funding will not “cloud the opinion” of Labour.
Based on the talk and actions of Labour, I would say it is too late: Labour have been bought, and the NHS is next.
Parallels to be drawn with the publishing of the Grenfell report.
Actions I would have expected from an incoming labour government:
1 – ask the Met which resources they require to get their report done in 3 months and provide those resources.
2 – withhold the operating licenses from all the companies found to have been fraudulent in their actions and allow them to appeal the decision to retain those licenses.
3 – criminal proceedings against all the individuals found to have neglected their duties.
Instead Toryboy Starmer shows he is the warrior inside the horse tgat has been allowed inside the gates.
Incompetence? I don’t want to knock the guy but, if you think Kier Starmer has it wrong with the NHS, there is worse. Yesterday he threatened to try to humiliate the President of a nuclear superpower by authorising long-range weapons for use in Russia by the Ukrainians.
Nobody should be asked to decide about a nuclear war but as it is, Kier Starmer is a danger to humanity.
60 years ago in a ‘peace’ speech, President John Kennedy said, “While defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to *a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war*. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy or of a collective death wish for the world.”
Annie Jacobsen, a New York Times best-selling author, has published “Nuclear War – A Scenario”. Recently she was asked ‘Do you think there will be a nuclear war?’ She replied ‘I have interviewed former secretaries of defence, a former nuclear-armed submarine commander, Secret Service people and what I learned was … *we are one misunderstanding away from nuclear apocalypse*… And yet we have presidents threatening nuclear war.’
After she started writing her book in 2020, Russian President Putin moved nuclear weapons into Belarus claiming it was a precautionary measure for anyone thinking about attempting to inflict strategic defeat on Russia.
‘No matter how nuclear war begins’, Annie Jacobsen says, ‘it ends in 72 minutes and 5 billion people would be dead.’ A ballistic missile launched from near Moscow, takes 26 minutes to get to Washington. The United Sates has 1700 nuclear weapons on ‘ready for launch’ status. Russia has about the same … [but] we have only 44 interceptor missiles. How are 44 interceptor missiles going to go up against more than 1000 Russian nuclear weapons coming at us? Never mind the fact that each interceptor has only a 50% shoot down rate, which is why when nuclear war begins, it only ends in nuclear Armageddon.’
In the United States the decision is in the hands of one person. Keir Starmer would have to consult Americans but – — is he the person we want to have that sort of power?
And since Ukraine has now attacked nuclear-armed Russia, it is clear that ‘nuclear deterrents’ don’t always deter. The money and the effort, could be better spent.
To those who insist that all the wrong is the fault of Putin
1 Yes, the invasion of Ukraine was, and is, quite wrong – but also were the wars against Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria – as is the much worse genocide in Gaza.
2 When the Soviet Union broke up and the Warsaw Pact was disbanded, President Gorbachev was repeatedly assured that NATO would not attempt to expand ‘one inch to the east’.
3 It is easy to understand why Russia does not want privatisation, American/British advertising and many other aspects of western domination and, as in another comment this morning, ‘the curse of ultra-processed and junk food’ etc.
4 Or, interference in other countries’ elections: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo [said] that ‘Washington would “push back” against UK Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn’ and ‘US President Donald Trump endorsed Boris Johnson for the leadership of the Conservative Party and prime minister.’
References https://ia903004.us.archive.org/27/items/1963jun06presidentjohnf.kennedyspeacespeechv01/1963%20JUN%2006%20President%20John%20F.%20Kennedy%27s%20-%20Peace%20Speech%20Transcript.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asmaLnhaFiY&list=PL22egh3ok4cP0T7UZRmP6TMLErZYWMN-l&index=34 Nuclear War Expert: 72 Minutes To Wipe Out 60% Of Humans, In The Hands Of 1 Person! – Annie Jacobsen
Thanks
The more I hear this sort of thing the more I think it was deliberate choice not to do the research and planning in opposition. If you can honestly stand up in opposition and say we’ll have a plan once we’re in power then there is no plan to be attacked by the Tories in power or the media, no tricky questions to answer etc (just as long as no one asks why the he’ll don’t you have a plan!)
A shocking way to do politics but here we are.
They are now starting to enact the plan which they kept quiet about before getting elected as they didn’t want to frighten the voters away.
Perhaps Starmer will wake up and sack “the most incompetent Chancellor ever”.
It seems the Telegraph proposes that… echoing your opinion?!
Hahahaha
(quote) To paraphrase PG Wodehouse on Scotsmen, “the difference between Rachel Reeves and a ray of sunshine is not hard to detect”. Why would any business want to step up investment or hire more people against a backdrop of such droning negativity?’ (end quote)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/11/rachel-reeves-is-the-most-incompetent-chancellor-in-decades/
Ah, but Torygraph’s aims are undoubtedly different. Hmmm.
“When politicians and private healthcare industry lobbyists claim that we cannot afford the NHS, this is the exact inversion of the truth. We cannot afford not to have the NHS”
– Stephen Hawking, keynote speech at the Royal Society of Medicine, 19 August 2017
It is not incompetence.
It is deliberate. Starmer and Streeting don’t want to fix the NHS.
They are managing it’s decline as they have been paid to do by their benefactors. Whom I am sure see them as rather competent.
As the i reports yesterday :-
Private healthcare boom triggers surge in costs
And
As record numbers of Britons choose to pay for their treatment to beat NHS waiting lists, insurance premiums are soaring.
So a repeated underfunded NHS brings this on where even the patients able to currently afford private treatment, will eventually find it too costly. Only the wealthiest will be able to fund their care.