I am trying very hard to remain calm this morning after reading the following article on the front page of the Sunday Telegraph:
It is very apparent that the Labor Party intends to pursue their anti-medical, anti-NHS agenda.
It is also very apparent that Labor intends to put itself in David Cameron’s post-2010 place, as the austerity party trying to appeal to the Torygraph-reading, middle-class voters who hate the state and all that can do for him. we as leading labor politicians obviously now do too. Why else promote ideas behind the paywall of that far-right newspaper?
And what’s also clear is that Starmer is just as utterly incompetent as Wes Streeting when it comes to this topic. I already discussed this article with a doctor this morning (it helps to be married to one), but I’ll quote other doctors who share his views, including Rachel Clarke:
So why would Starmer do this? Because the private medical sector hates GPs, of course, because they are so bad for their business model. That is precisely because one of the most basic tasks of a GP is to protect people from unnecessary medical interventions in the best of cases (that is, if they are really well), and to direct them to the ones that are really needed, eliminating thus unnecessary duplication if things are at their worst (ie when there may be something wrong).
But, along with Rachel Clarke, I agree that the NHS needs reform. Above all, people need to avoid it. Right now, GP appointments are running at double what they were just a couple of decades ago. So let’s start with the reform that is really needed, which is the one that is needed to keep people away from doctors in the first place. As Dr. Philip Hammond said about this:
It could also have added air quality. That’s the most pressing need when so many people are now in hospital with respiratory illnesses that can be prevented by masks and measures to improve air quality that could have a massive impact on health, just as improving the water quality in the 19th century. But Labor won’t talk about it: he’s too right-libertarian to discuss issues like public health. He is only concerned with satisfying consumer demand. And of course he refuses to open his checkbook.
Nor will he talk about the red tape that really needs to be removed from the NHS. That would mean eliminating all hospital and ambulance trusts and commissioning groups, each with their own systems, standards, rules, and enormously expensive and duplicate accounting and reporting requirements, as well as unnecessarily costly administration. Simply replace the batch with responsible regional integrated health authorities covering all health and social care in significant geographic areas. That is where NHS reform is required. But of course, that would make it harder for the private sector to get their hands on the service, so Starmer and Streeting won’t be going there.
I have spent thirteen years opposing neoliberal conservatives who have moved ever further to the right and are now neo-fascists, as Suella Braverman makes clear in her comments, time and time again.
But now I have to face the prospect of a Labor government that is both utterly incompetent, as Starmer’s comments noted above prove, but also willfully negligent in its responsibility to its members and the people of this country by abandoning whatever is zoom in to a left. center principle.
How much lower can politics go in this country?
