Wes Streeting told Sophy Ridge this morning that he had "Had it with the BMA" (British Medical Association) and that "An outbreak of juvenile delinquency" is taking place, when referring to their strike.
Sophy Ridge then referred to how bad things were in the NHS, and suggested that people might die as a result of the chaos that was occurring, which is precisely why resident doctors are striking, because right now they know many of them are being made redundant precisely because the NHS will not give them jobs so that safe care might be provided, let alone at fair pay.
Streeting was given little option but to agree on the issue of likely deaths: a report on corridor care had already made the point.
So, what is happening here? The BMA is making these points:
- The government is neglecting the NHS, and people are dying as a result.
- There are doctors available to work in the NHS to alleviate this issue right now, but the government will not provide the funding to employ them. In fact, some are being made redundant at this moment when patients are desperate for the services they could supply.
- As a matter of fact, doctors can get better terms of employment outside England and are doing so because they can no longer afford to live here or endure the impossible conditions of employment being offered to them. We face a permanent loss of skills unless this issue is resolved soon.
I could add:
- This week, the government has agreed to pay big pharma several billion pounds more a year for drugs, all to fuel the profits of big drug companies. There was no indication of where the funds would come from in budgeting terms. We can assume it will come from reduced care. NHS carers are paying for these drugs, as are we when we need care.
- The government is doing precisely nothing of consequence to curb the abuse of the big food industry that is creating the crisis of ill health that is overwhelming the NHS.
- The money to fund the NHS could be available. It just has to be spent into existence. And if there is an inflation risk as a result, I have shown how to address that, too. I set it out in my alternative budget. I keep showing how. The government is simply too frightened to act.
And the last point is key.
Streeting is like a rabbit in the headlights.
So is the whole of the government, not one of whom prepared themselves in any way for the likelihood of office or the decisions that might be asked of them, even though they had 14 years to do so in Opposition.
Like most on the so-called Left, whether from Labour (which, in reality, cannot recall what being left is) to the far left (and there is, regretably little in between right now - which may be the precise problem) they know what they want, but they are not willing to do the work to fund out how to deliver it. They are, instead, delivering three things:
- Empty rhetoric
- Mindless tropes
- Contentless proposals which glaringly obviously make no sense, as the details of delivery have never been worked out.
This is what the government has been reduced to as a result of supposed left-of-centre politics being reduced to either neoliberal mimicry (in the case of Labour, but without those undertaking the mimicry learning how even that system is meant to work) or sloganised politics where actually working out the nitty-gritty of how delivery might occur is considered so frightening, because it might then need to be justified, that the process has been deliberately ignored.
This is what failure looks like.
This is why I raise this issue when discussing the so-called left.
It might make me unpopular, but let me use a perfect example. Gary Stevenson provides it. He is a man remarkably like Wes Streeting. He can deliver lines. He has his slogans - "tax wealth, not work' - but when it comes down to it, he has admitted he had no idea how taxes on wealth would really work. At least he had the sense to appeal for help. I offered it. I have done the hard work. It's called the Taxing Wealth Report. I heard nothing. Why? Because the detail does not fit the slogans, and those slogans matter more. So, how delivery might happen is ignored. And as a consequence, his campaign will likely fail, which I deeply regret, because we do need to tax wealth more.
I say all this for good reason. Precisely because details are ignored, we get to Wes Streeting, managing chaos, doctor redundancy and failed delivery in the hospital because he never worked out what was required, how to deliver it, and to have the detailed economic understanding to know that it could be supplied. As a result, people will die in this case. It is as blunt as that. So, please don't tell me this does not matter.
Politics is not just about winning power.
Nor is it about getting the red box.
And it is most certainly not about winning the petty infighting that bedevils it.
It is only about delivery for people. All the rest is irrelevant compared to that.
This is the only thing that matters.
And when the left ignores this, as most do, they fail people, and people do not forget, and right now that is the biggest problem the left has. Because almost no one on the left wants to talk about coherent policy on economics, money, tax and relationships with the City and business and their reform, because so few have bothered to work out what any resulting policies might be, then, firstly, the right walks all over it, secondly we get what looks like Tory government, because it is, because in the absence if their own thinking Labour delivers what the Tories might have done, and, third, it's so ill-equipped for office that it is profoundly embarrassing.
The malaise is profound, and real, and not limited to Labour, as I well know from what I see and hear.
So, I raise the point because the crisis is for the people of this country. They need people who care, for sure. They hate being treated with indifference, as is the case right now. But they also want competence, and until the left gets to grips not with political theory but with pragmatically possible real-world delivery, it will fail people. And that matters. And I do not care if I upset people by saying so. Someone has to. This has to be addressed. And it won't be until someone points out the problem.
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Spot on Richard
I offer the transcript of the Reith lecture with thoughts on the failure of leadership.
https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2025/Reith_1_R4_2025_Transcript.pdf
Thank you. I am travelling on Thursday and Friday – an ideal time to catch up with this.
—–
TL;DR — The Survival of the Shameless
Rutger Bregman begins by insisting that honest analysis requires starting with the misery. Ours is an age of moral collapse amongst elites — one where power is accumulated not through competence, courage, or service, but through shamelessness.
First, he argues that modern elites increasingly resemble those of past declining empires. Like Rome, we see politicians who perform instead of govern. Like late-stage Venice, Europe risks complacent stagnation — rich, beautiful, but irrelevant. Wealth is inherited. Innovation stalls. Regulation replaces ambition. Young talent is wasted on consultancies and finance.
Second, he says this decay is cultural. Where previous generations wanted meaning, purpose, and social contribution, today’s most privileged young people are guided toward money, status, and self-preservation. The corporate world pretends virtue while extracting rents and destroying value. Universities funnel their best students into what Bregman calls the Bermuda Triangle of BS jobs: consultancy, finance, and corporate law.
Third, he warns that this vacuum of meaningful leadership creates dangerous political possibilities. A generation disillusioned by elite cowardice is now vulnerable to a new authoritarianism: a tech-fuelled, post-democratic fascism that openly despises democracy and bets on public apathy. History suggests that declines can turn very dark, very fast.
Finally, the problem is not simply personal greed. It is the abandonment of any idea that the purpose of power is to serve society. Bregman argues that we have taught ambition without ethics, privilege without responsibility, intelligence without integrity — and that collective misery is the consequence.
His conclusion is stark but hopeful: moral renewal is possible. History has seen it before. The task is to rediscover a form of ambition rooted in courage, virtue, and public purpose.
Because if the shameless continue to rule, decline is not where we end — it is where we begin to fall.
Might this government also be using legalistic connivances to reduce/bock opposition to their repressive and corrosive governance and abuse of democratic freedom based opposition?
tps://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2025/12/the-terrifying-case-of-natalie-strecker/
P. S. Anti-democratic severe reduction of juries?
Your link is a bit short Steve.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2025/12/the-terrifying-case-of-natalie-strecker/
But sound bites and slogans also feeds the BBC obsession with ‘impartiality’ – they don’t have to forensically investigate anything – but just platform the opposing slogans.
Evan Davis or whoever it was on R4 Today programme just feeding Streeting his favourite titbits , so he can call the BMA a ‘cartel’ instead of asking whether he had a conflict of interest accepting big donations from private healthcare interests, never mind putting your point about paying billions to big pharma while not providing funds to employ unemployed doctors .
I wouldn’t bang on about ‘the left’ particularly – it seems to be code for ‘whacky’ or ‘unacceptable’ or ‘anti- semitic’ in the media. Polanski seems to be trying to grapple with reality – even though he does seem to talk about a ‘wealth tax ‘ sometimes
I believe I have come across 1000s of political channels on YouTube. Of these I would say only 2 are seriously left wing. I am not going to criticise them because they only have 1000 subscribers. They are not making any money. They aim at those who sit at the top of the algorithm and do nothing with their platform. People who have a million subscribers tend to not criticise those in power. Doing so gets you demonetised, as does mentioning fascism, Hitler, holocaust etc.
I haven’t been yet.
Are you saying I am not criticisng power?
I am in total agreement. The public knows that our politicians do not have a clue (or care) about anything other than advancing their own careers on the political gravy train. Streeting is just one egregious example of today’s politicians – good with a sound bite but useless in the real world. How anyone can consider this little twerp a potential candidate to replace the hugely unimpressive Starmer beats me but, at the moment, he is the media’s darling. No wonder some have turned to Reform but, as a resident of Kent, I can say that they will be no better, if not a whole lot worse.
The situation is now beyond a joke. With Putin making ever increasing belligerent threats of war, just how will this current crop of political non- entities cope?
I read the latest Covid inquiry report. It is damning, but unsurprising. However, what was truly sickening was the reaction of Johnson and Cummings. It showed the extent of the contempt for which these politicians have for the voting public. We are in a dire situation at the moment and I am frightened for the future.
Me too
A good summary of a grave situation. I’ve followed the Every Doctor campaign group for a while, and had my eyes opened to quite now dire things are, also the history of this, with plans for dismantling the NHS made during the time M Thatcher was prime minister. Making our system more like the US one, pushing people with the means to take out private medical insurance, creating a two-tier system that fails people on a huge scale, is insane. As you say, the funds simply need spending into existence.
Proposing more extortionate PFI hospitals while making doctors redundant? Death rates will continue to rise. A report on maternity care, due to be complete in December, is delayed. Maternal mortality has increased substantially in the last few years. Just one example.
Thanks
That PFI proposal is dire
On the increase in price of drugs one independent economist has been straining to point out that the real story is that NICE will increase the cost-effectiveness thresholds from £20,000-£30,000 to (a still low) £25,000-£35,000 (this is where the ‘25%’ increase seems to come from). This simply means that a handful of more expensive new medicines (from the US or anywhere else) are more likely to be approved for use in the NHS. He regards that as a good thing.
It is of you believe drugs cure all ills.
Many also kill.
At least one in eight admissions to hosital is because of conditions caused by prescription drugs.
That figure seems to come from insider knowledge as no link was offered. What’s the ratio in countries which do not have the NHS system of prescribing drugs?
You might find this hard to understand, but I am not here to do your Google searches for you.
Funnily enough, I could not give a toss about juries. I have always favoured the French system myself. Cue posts to the contrary……………..
But the NHS under Labour(ed) is still in a bit of mess – I’ve just had to wait since September to get an appointment for something I just used to turn up for, and as a result have caught an infection because they insist on creating centres of excellence(?), then wonder why they have so many people turning up to one place that used to go to a mixture of places. I have to travel further too. Great. I turn 60 today. What are the next 10 years going to be like I wonder? And after that? Probably shouldn’t bother. Maybe they’ll end up offering me the ‘Soylent Green’ option after all?
What a nonsense. I totally agree with your post. We are in the grip of something that is surely designed incompetence, but whose back seat drivers can only be described as purely evil and extreme – and very wealthy.
Happy birthday.
Time to get seriously grumpy
Go on, try 🙂
The “legend”as someone called him, doesn’t need encouraging to be grumpy!
Happy birthday, Pilgrim.
🙂
I am part of a film club and we did a yearly get together the other night.
It was put what is the scariest thing we have seen this year? it was remarked ‘the news, daily’ current affairs has now become more frightening and dystopian than anything imagined.
As for streeting… I seem to recall he ‘crossed the floor’ utter theatrical non-sense from one bunch of crooks to another.
He sits atop of the pile with no day to day experience of the NHS, makes awful cost cutting measures then says ‘its not working. ‘