{"id":79374,"date":"2025-01-03T07:38:08","date_gmt":"2025-01-03T07:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=79374"},"modified":"2025-01-03T09:27:17","modified_gmt":"2025-01-03T09:27:17","slug":"the-total-intellectual-vacuum-amongst-our-politicians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/01\/03\/the-total-intellectual-vacuum-amongst-our-politicians\/","title":{"rendered":"The total intellectual vacuum amongst our politicians"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/newsletter\/london-playbook\/at-last-a-social-care-plan-in-2028\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Politico notes<\/a> this morning:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Health Secretary Wes Streeting is kicking off the government\u2019s first round of morning TV and radio interviews for almost a fortnight as the festive lull ends with a jolt. He wants to talk about one of Britain\u2019s most un-festive subjects \u2014 the social care crisis. Streeting\u2019s promise to drum up a long-term plan splashes a couple of the papers, and will be a very big moment when it lands in *checks notes* 2028. Just hopefully not like the big moment before it, or the one before that, or the one before that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The cynicism is appropriate.<\/p>\n<p>Labour had fourteen years in opposition to work out what to do about social care. Now, it is going to take four years in government to do so. Nothing will happen before the next election, which, on current form, it will lose.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the NHS crisis will continue, aided and abetted by the simultaneous crisis <a href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/01\/03\/how-we-corrupted-food\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">created by ultra-processed food<\/a>, which is creating much of the demand for type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer, metabolic disease and dementia care, all of which feed into the demand for social care, which fact will, I am sure, be beyond the scope of the Commission being set up to address this issue.<\/p>\n<p>Labour really does not know how to govern.<\/p>\n<p>Nor is it clear it knows how to do politics.<\/p>\n<p>Come to that, decision-making above and beyond expelling anyone who is not archly neoliberal appears to be beyond it.<\/p>\n<p>How did we reach the point where this lot were able to win a landslide? And don't say it was because the Tories were worse, although that might have been true. It's the total intellectual vacuum amongst all these politicians to which I am referring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Politico notes this morning: Health Secretary Wes Streeting is kicking off the government\u2019s first round of morning TV and radio interviews for almost a<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/01\/03\/the-total-intellectual-vacuum-amongst-our-politicians\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,16,87,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-ethics","category-health","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79374"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79382,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79374\/revisions\/79382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}