Listening to the news early this morning, one could be forgiven for thinking that there had been as overnight coup and that the 'Iron Lady' had returned for a final attempt to break up the society she so evidently disapproved of during her 11 years in power.
But no. This was the voice of junior health minister, Anne Milton. Very much associated with the right of the Tory party, she was verily rejoicing in the opportunities that George Osbourne's fabricated 'austerity Britain' has given ministers to slash and burn vital services across government.
But wait.... What is this on the horizon? A Knight, and lo, it is a white one atop a mighty steed(possibly Eric Pickles?)! Whilst another junior minister, David Willetts was live on air defending the Proposal. David Cameron announced that milk was staying on the menu!
Rather than playing fast and loose with the life chances of the least well of children. I would suggest the message would have been just as clear had Cammo gone for a jog around Hyde Parke wearing an 'I'm not Maggie' T-Shirt!
To use children's nutrition as part of one of the oldest PR tricks in the book is really contemptible.
A number of Lib Dems(Tory apologists these days seemingly)and actual Tories wrote it off as 'silly season' or 'just a policy idea'
I am not convinced of either. But if this were true, on top of the gaffes agogo we have seen from our Prime Minister and Deputy, it would be a telling insight into both the organisational chaos & instinctive policy preferences at the heart of this government.
For me, I think in a week following some pretty ropey headlines, it was an attempt at a positive one for the PM on the backs of poor children. Not an edifying sight!
Sunday, 8 August 2010
Sunday, 18 July 2010
Why I'll vote 'NO' to AV
It will be a very strange feeling indeed if I find myself campaigning alongside local Conservatives for a 'NO' outcome in the referendum on changing the electoral system next year if it takes its course through parliament.(currently by no means absolutely certain)
I do not believe that FPTP is a system that serves us well as a modern democracy. I accept that it is unfair that the Liberal Democrats secured 23% of the vote at the General Election but only 8.7% of the seats in the House of Commons because of the 'inefficient' distribution of their support.
AV was and still is Labour Party policy. I didn't agree with that before the election and I don't agree with it now.
If the question is 'how do we achieve a fairer voting system?' the answer is most definitely not AV.
The study carried out by the late Lord Jenkins of Hillhead was very clear. AV is not a proportional system.
No voting system is without its flaws but AV seems to address very few of the problems and adds rather too many more of its own.
AV by is preferential structure has the ability to magnify trends. Under AV it is predicted that Labour would have secured a majority of 200+ in 1997. I may like the idea of that, but it would not have been fair.
In reality it gives no additional choice to the vast majority of voters in any given seat who will be backing the parties in first and second place. It simply encourages voters for smaller parties to make a grudging decision about the least worst 'other' options than their own preferred candidate. That is not fair.
The truth is in politics the 2nd choice much less the 3rd is of almost incalculably smaller value and yet will be counted as of equal value to 1st preference. That is not fair.
Let's be honest. AV will not produce a fairer electoral system. But it might just be a little fairer to the Liberal Democrats. The two really are not the same thing. Whilst I sympathise with the unequal outcome to vote share the Lib Dems suffer with, AV is not the answer.
One of the argued strengths of AV is that it maintains the constituency link. I agree with that. I support AV+. It maintains that link and the plus element would iron out much of the iniquity outlined above.
Changing our electoral system is such a profound constitutional step that a 'make do and mend' approach to reform simply isn't good enough for me.
I have had many people, mostly Lib Dems, assure me that AV is just a first step to further reform. I am not convinced by that argument, but even if I were I believe it would be a first step in the wrong direction for the reasons I have given.
It seems to me that a 'NO' vote in next years referendum can easily be shown to be a no to the flawed AV system rather than electoral reform in principle, I hope an incoming Labour or Labour/other coalition government could propose a vote on a genuinely fair system within 10 years. Whereas a 'YES' vote will in my view close off the prospect of truly fair votes for another 20 or 30 years as the forces of 'conservatism' will find it easy to portray the matter as settled.
I completely understand the hesitation that many of my Labour friends feel towards electoral reform. The idea of never again having a majority Labour government is not an easy one to accept. But Living in Tory Wealden, my Labour vote means nothing. It is not fair and it is not right and whatever instinctive reservations I may have, reform is a must. AV+ is not perfect but it is in my mind the best solution and I will continue to work to achieve it.
That will mean voting 'NO' to AV in the referendum next year.
I do not believe that FPTP is a system that serves us well as a modern democracy. I accept that it is unfair that the Liberal Democrats secured 23% of the vote at the General Election but only 8.7% of the seats in the House of Commons because of the 'inefficient' distribution of their support.
AV was and still is Labour Party policy. I didn't agree with that before the election and I don't agree with it now.
If the question is 'how do we achieve a fairer voting system?' the answer is most definitely not AV.
The study carried out by the late Lord Jenkins of Hillhead was very clear. AV is not a proportional system.
No voting system is without its flaws but AV seems to address very few of the problems and adds rather too many more of its own.
AV by is preferential structure has the ability to magnify trends. Under AV it is predicted that Labour would have secured a majority of 200+ in 1997. I may like the idea of that, but it would not have been fair.
In reality it gives no additional choice to the vast majority of voters in any given seat who will be backing the parties in first and second place. It simply encourages voters for smaller parties to make a grudging decision about the least worst 'other' options than their own preferred candidate. That is not fair.
The truth is in politics the 2nd choice much less the 3rd is of almost incalculably smaller value and yet will be counted as of equal value to 1st preference. That is not fair.
Let's be honest. AV will not produce a fairer electoral system. But it might just be a little fairer to the Liberal Democrats. The two really are not the same thing. Whilst I sympathise with the unequal outcome to vote share the Lib Dems suffer with, AV is not the answer.
One of the argued strengths of AV is that it maintains the constituency link. I agree with that. I support AV+. It maintains that link and the plus element would iron out much of the iniquity outlined above.
Changing our electoral system is such a profound constitutional step that a 'make do and mend' approach to reform simply isn't good enough for me.
I have had many people, mostly Lib Dems, assure me that AV is just a first step to further reform. I am not convinced by that argument, but even if I were I believe it would be a first step in the wrong direction for the reasons I have given.
It seems to me that a 'NO' vote in next years referendum can easily be shown to be a no to the flawed AV system rather than electoral reform in principle, I hope an incoming Labour or Labour/other coalition government could propose a vote on a genuinely fair system within 10 years. Whereas a 'YES' vote will in my view close off the prospect of truly fair votes for another 20 or 30 years as the forces of 'conservatism' will find it easy to portray the matter as settled.
I completely understand the hesitation that many of my Labour friends feel towards electoral reform. The idea of never again having a majority Labour government is not an easy one to accept. But Living in Tory Wealden, my Labour vote means nothing. It is not fair and it is not right and whatever instinctive reservations I may have, reform is a must. AV+ is not perfect but it is in my mind the best solution and I will continue to work to achieve it.
That will mean voting 'NO' to AV in the referendum next year.
A bleak future for Clegg's Liberal Democrats?
Nick Clegg has already ensured his place in history. Taking the 3rd party,now the Liberal Democrats into government for the first time in 70 years. If he deserves credit for little else, that is an achievement for which he will be long remembered.
With the evaporation of 'Cleggmania' on polling day, with Labour finishing decisively ahead of the Liberal Democrats in second place, It is easy to forget that many had predicted a virtual wipe out for the party in the South West and a real squeeze from the two main parties in all other parts of the country just weeks before.
It didn't happen. The Lib Dems in reality lost just a handful of seats and increased their vote share by 1%.
For those who were surprised by Nick Clegg's focus on making a success of negotiations with the Tories, they should not have been.
An economic and social liberal by instinct. He had previously worked for Tory EU commissioner Leon Brittan and his wife Miriam has worked for Chris Patten as well as coming from a Conservative political dynasty in Spain. There is much conjecture that like David Laws, only the Tory party's social conservatism prevented that being his natural home.
He is an instinctive state sceptic.
So the failure of talks between Labour and the Liberal Democrats was in reality less about numbers and more about philosophy.
However, in his enthusiasm to embrace the undoubtedly bold offer from David Cameron to enter into a full coalition, he has in reality secured a very poor deal for his Party. Very much leading from the front Clegg will ultimately be held responsible for the fate of his party in the years ahead.
No great offices of state,unheard of for the smaller party in coalitions across Europe, often in much weaker positions than the one Clegg found himself in and on issue after issue virtually every one of the Lib Dem's key manifesto commitments watered down,dropped or reversed. From VAT to Trident, Corporation tax to AV, the compromises have been very much one way.
There is no clear Lib Dem narrative emerging. Polls now consistently show the Tories reaching territory where an outright majority could just be theirs whilst 2 months after its worst defeat in a generation and leaderless Labour has bounced back to a promising 35%. The Liberals? Plunging down into the mid teens % and no excuse of lack of media exposure will hold now.
Given the Tories and Lib Dems are in government together, what explains such iniquitous polling fortunes? Anecdotally it seems that the government's programme is very much what Tory and potential Tory voters expect from their party, whereas many Lib Dem voters feel the complete policy reversal in terms of when the cuts should happen has severely damaged the parties credibility and electoral appeal.
It was a remarkable coalescence of circumstances that allowed the FPTP system designed to virtually ensure majority government to produce a hung parliament. Without a successful 'Yes' vote in referendum next year, it is unlikely to be repeated at the next election.
AV a system which is in no way proportional,though it does not end the possibility of 1 party majority governments, but it makes them somewhat less likely than under the present system.
Many predict that it will favour one of the major parties over the other. It may in individual general elections, though I see no reason to think it would establish unbreakable dominion for either side in alliance with the 3rd party.
One thing is certain. AV will not break the political mould in the way AV+ or STV would. It will not bring in an age of multi party power sharing but may give the Lib Dems a small electoral boost at some point. It is in short a very poor deal for them.
John Denham wrote last week that should Labour become the largest party at the next election but short of an overall majority the price of working with the Liberal Democrats would be the resignation of Nick Clegg as Lib Dem leader. This is not political posturing, it is an accurate observation of the price the Lib Dems would need to pay for their part in a rightwing government that would have been rejected by the electorate.
Many Lib Dems take great pleasure in asserting that working with Labour was never a real possibility. Well it cuts bot ways and whatever else is uncertain in politics, one can be sure that as political fortunes rise so they fall.
Much is made of the hostility from the Labour benches towards the Lib Dems for the support they are giving to what daily becomes clear, a Conservative government. Yet their own lofty dismissal of the Labour party as an irrelevance, is wide of the mark and a comment they may have cause to repent on at leisure, perhaps sooner than they think.With support for AV disappearing almost as quickly as likely Lib Dem voters, there is a real chance that their cavalier, grab for power, will put voters off the idea of electoral reform for another generation.
Much was made in the House today of Nick Clegg being the first Liberal politician to respond to questions to the Prime Minister since David Lloyd George. He appears determined to ensure that any Liberal successor will have to wait equally as long.
With the evaporation of 'Cleggmania' on polling day, with Labour finishing decisively ahead of the Liberal Democrats in second place, It is easy to forget that many had predicted a virtual wipe out for the party in the South West and a real squeeze from the two main parties in all other parts of the country just weeks before.
It didn't happen. The Lib Dems in reality lost just a handful of seats and increased their vote share by 1%.
For those who were surprised by Nick Clegg's focus on making a success of negotiations with the Tories, they should not have been.
An economic and social liberal by instinct. He had previously worked for Tory EU commissioner Leon Brittan and his wife Miriam has worked for Chris Patten as well as coming from a Conservative political dynasty in Spain. There is much conjecture that like David Laws, only the Tory party's social conservatism prevented that being his natural home.
He is an instinctive state sceptic.
So the failure of talks between Labour and the Liberal Democrats was in reality less about numbers and more about philosophy.
However, in his enthusiasm to embrace the undoubtedly bold offer from David Cameron to enter into a full coalition, he has in reality secured a very poor deal for his Party. Very much leading from the front Clegg will ultimately be held responsible for the fate of his party in the years ahead.
No great offices of state,unheard of for the smaller party in coalitions across Europe, often in much weaker positions than the one Clegg found himself in and on issue after issue virtually every one of the Lib Dem's key manifesto commitments watered down,dropped or reversed. From VAT to Trident, Corporation tax to AV, the compromises have been very much one way.
There is no clear Lib Dem narrative emerging. Polls now consistently show the Tories reaching territory where an outright majority could just be theirs whilst 2 months after its worst defeat in a generation and leaderless Labour has bounced back to a promising 35%. The Liberals? Plunging down into the mid teens % and no excuse of lack of media exposure will hold now.
Given the Tories and Lib Dems are in government together, what explains such iniquitous polling fortunes? Anecdotally it seems that the government's programme is very much what Tory and potential Tory voters expect from their party, whereas many Lib Dem voters feel the complete policy reversal in terms of when the cuts should happen has severely damaged the parties credibility and electoral appeal.
It was a remarkable coalescence of circumstances that allowed the FPTP system designed to virtually ensure majority government to produce a hung parliament. Without a successful 'Yes' vote in referendum next year, it is unlikely to be repeated at the next election.
AV a system which is in no way proportional,though it does not end the possibility of 1 party majority governments, but it makes them somewhat less likely than under the present system.
Many predict that it will favour one of the major parties over the other. It may in individual general elections, though I see no reason to think it would establish unbreakable dominion for either side in alliance with the 3rd party.
One thing is certain. AV will not break the political mould in the way AV+ or STV would. It will not bring in an age of multi party power sharing but may give the Lib Dems a small electoral boost at some point. It is in short a very poor deal for them.
John Denham wrote last week that should Labour become the largest party at the next election but short of an overall majority the price of working with the Liberal Democrats would be the resignation of Nick Clegg as Lib Dem leader. This is not political posturing, it is an accurate observation of the price the Lib Dems would need to pay for their part in a rightwing government that would have been rejected by the electorate.
Many Lib Dems take great pleasure in asserting that working with Labour was never a real possibility. Well it cuts bot ways and whatever else is uncertain in politics, one can be sure that as political fortunes rise so they fall.
Much is made of the hostility from the Labour benches towards the Lib Dems for the support they are giving to what daily becomes clear, a Conservative government. Yet their own lofty dismissal of the Labour party as an irrelevance, is wide of the mark and a comment they may have cause to repent on at leisure, perhaps sooner than they think.With support for AV disappearing almost as quickly as likely Lib Dem voters, there is a real chance that their cavalier, grab for power, will put voters off the idea of electoral reform for another generation.
Much was made in the House today of Nick Clegg being the first Liberal politician to respond to questions to the Prime Minister since David Lloyd George. He appears determined to ensure that any Liberal successor will have to wait equally as long.
Saturday, 17 July 2010
A critique of the ‘The Big Society’ and where Cameron and Clegg want to take us.
‘The Big Society’, three seemingly warm and fluffy words. They conjure up images that we all recognise of a decent, civic society and interweave them with ideas about public policy. A neighbour noticing that you haven’t taken the milk in and popping round to make sure that you are ok. A driver stopping to allow the parent with a child in their arms and one at their side to cross the road safely. A place where we are doing more for each other, doing more for ourselves ourselves and expecting the state to do less.
If this were truly about a more cooperative model of service provision there could be something in it. After all the Labour and Cooperative movements have in many ways a shared history. Look at today’s PLP and see the growing number of members representing both parties. Our vision as socialists and social democrats has always championed personal responsibility and social responsibility. But Labour has shown throughout its history how the state can pool the resources of many to achieve truly remarkable things. The NHS is perhaps the best example of this and its future is now in very serious doubt.
This is emphatically not a vision shared by the new government. I am glad that David Miliband has recognised that the ‘Big Society’ concept is one we must take seriously and ignore at our peril. Too many on the left have dismissed it as meaningless verbiage. But it is so much more than that. I believe the vaguery is quite deliberate. The scope and intent of this ‘philosophy’ will be woven into the actions of this government retrospectively.
It might be hard to nail a jelly to the fence. It doesn’t mean the jelly isn’t there.
As the days of the coalition government have turned first into weeks and now into months, a picture is emerging of the direction of travel that public policy will be taking.
It is depressing, familiar and shows in the starkest terms that as painfully and slowly we start to emerge from a global recession caused by the chronic failures of the financial markets, in the private sector. This government plans to extend the scope of private sector involvement ever further into our public services.
We are not blameless in this. Our inability to act, or even to begin to articulate on the international stage the need for greater regulation and control of the banking sector, was a much more significant failure than we have yet acknowledged.
However, and this is important. It was a Labour government that intervened, using public money, through the state, to rescue the private banking sector in this country when it was on the verge of collapse. Only the state had the capacity and scope to act to ensure that the life savings of thousands upon thousands of British citizens were secured.
We have yet to find a compelling narrative that communicates this best example that the private sector is naturally more successful and better run that the public sector is a complete fallacy. We must.
Yet in the face of this, old ideologies with a new language returns. Laissez faire, which I have always thought of as Laissez unfair is very much back in business.
In these early days, both in the NHS and education, the government is showing that the ‘Big Society’ has nothing to do with local, social responsibility and all to do with the primacy of the market. Their slavish addiction to the markets could not be contained for a moment once the governance of this country was once more in their hands. It is an attempt to change the political weather to replace the idea of public services with public commodities. It is an argument that we cannot afford to lose.
In this analysis there is very little need to draw different conclusions as to the motives of the two coalition partners. Because with the exception of a small number of Lib Dem MPs on the social democratic wing of the party, the coalition appears to be of one mind on this.
I myself have always been wary of the choice agenda. As a service user I have never felt that the choice between a good service and a mediocre one is a real choice. I just want good treatment at my local hospital and a good education at my local school.
I cannot help but think that to have real choice in public services, and for everyone to benefit from that choice, you would need to have a degree of spare capacity. This is where market principles in public services falls down. Ultimately, spare capacity in public services is waste. It simply doesn’t work.
So again, with the best of motives our own attempts at reform have given some licence and cover to this government’s new approach. It is no coincidence that Michael Gove refers to Blair in virtually every education speech he makes.
Yet there is a clear difference between the public sector buying and making use of private sector services, which of course happens all the time and the private sector taking over the vast majority of the provision of public services, which I believe is the coalition’s true ambition.
It does not take a vast leap of faith to see that the pupil premium of all things is a forerunner to the introduction of a competitive market system in our schools. Schools which if Michael Gove has his way will soon be owned by anyone who can put up the cash and afford to hire to appropriate ‘education consultants’ to successfully bid for one.
The principle of a specific monetary value being placed and ring fenced on an individual child and which follows that child from school to school is clearly but a first step. Running this scheme parallel to the ‘free schools’ deregulation of our education system, how long before education spending is fully deconstructed and each child receives a voucher for the value of their schooling? Now let’s be clear, with the addition of individuals being able to ‘top up’ that funding this would be a middleclass passport out of state education as we know it and a working class trap in an ever deteriorating system. Such kites were flown under the last Tory government. Well they are back.
Thus far Michael Gove has not responded to Ed Balls on the question of whether there is anything to stop existing private schools becoming ‘free schools’ if one accepts the argument above, it is not hard to see why.
In health the threat is more explicit. It is clear the proposed reforms are not about abolishing the administrative functions of the NHS but breaking them up and putting them out to private tender. An example of where this has occurred already is with hospital cleaning services. The privatisation of which under the Tories and not properly addressed by us, has seen infection rates soar and the growth of MRSA illustrates this perfectly.
18 years out of power left us frightened of making the case for the state often being the better provider of good quality public services and 13 years out of power have done nothing to encourage the Tories to reassess their view that private is always best.
The cost of reorganising the NHS, some £1.7bn, is not even mentioned in their manifesto. The NHS will lose economies of scale and see the creation of a thousand small, badly trained privatised bureaucracies. However this is considered a price worth paying by this administration in pursuit of an ideological goal.
There has been much talk about empowering the service provider here and little mention of and no obvious consultation with the service users, us, the patients.
In short we need to take the ‘Big Society’ seriously, not because it is a compelling ideology, but because it exploits the good things that are happening already, on housing estates and in villages across the country already. Whether it’s volunteers cleaning up their local parks or beaches or people giving up their time to be school governors and magistrates. It takes a worthy concept and uses it as cover for their long held ambition. First the fragmentation and marketisation of our public services, establishing the notion of commodity, followed no doubt by its eventual privatisation.
In a tweet the other day I posed the rhetorical question. ‘Who really wants to see the NHS replaced by the Federation of Privatised State Subsidised Health Care Providers?’ the FPSSHCP if you like. Day by day it becomes clear that is exactly what this government wants.
If this were truly about a more cooperative model of service provision there could be something in it. After all the Labour and Cooperative movements have in many ways a shared history. Look at today’s PLP and see the growing number of members representing both parties. Our vision as socialists and social democrats has always championed personal responsibility and social responsibility. But Labour has shown throughout its history how the state can pool the resources of many to achieve truly remarkable things. The NHS is perhaps the best example of this and its future is now in very serious doubt.
This is emphatically not a vision shared by the new government. I am glad that David Miliband has recognised that the ‘Big Society’ concept is one we must take seriously and ignore at our peril. Too many on the left have dismissed it as meaningless verbiage. But it is so much more than that. I believe the vaguery is quite deliberate. The scope and intent of this ‘philosophy’ will be woven into the actions of this government retrospectively.
It might be hard to nail a jelly to the fence. It doesn’t mean the jelly isn’t there.
As the days of the coalition government have turned first into weeks and now into months, a picture is emerging of the direction of travel that public policy will be taking.
It is depressing, familiar and shows in the starkest terms that as painfully and slowly we start to emerge from a global recession caused by the chronic failures of the financial markets, in the private sector. This government plans to extend the scope of private sector involvement ever further into our public services.
We are not blameless in this. Our inability to act, or even to begin to articulate on the international stage the need for greater regulation and control of the banking sector, was a much more significant failure than we have yet acknowledged.
However, and this is important. It was a Labour government that intervened, using public money, through the state, to rescue the private banking sector in this country when it was on the verge of collapse. Only the state had the capacity and scope to act to ensure that the life savings of thousands upon thousands of British citizens were secured.
We have yet to find a compelling narrative that communicates this best example that the private sector is naturally more successful and better run that the public sector is a complete fallacy. We must.
Yet in the face of this, old ideologies with a new language returns. Laissez faire, which I have always thought of as Laissez unfair is very much back in business.
In these early days, both in the NHS and education, the government is showing that the ‘Big Society’ has nothing to do with local, social responsibility and all to do with the primacy of the market. Their slavish addiction to the markets could not be contained for a moment once the governance of this country was once more in their hands. It is an attempt to change the political weather to replace the idea of public services with public commodities. It is an argument that we cannot afford to lose.
In this analysis there is very little need to draw different conclusions as to the motives of the two coalition partners. Because with the exception of a small number of Lib Dem MPs on the social democratic wing of the party, the coalition appears to be of one mind on this.
I myself have always been wary of the choice agenda. As a service user I have never felt that the choice between a good service and a mediocre one is a real choice. I just want good treatment at my local hospital and a good education at my local school.
I cannot help but think that to have real choice in public services, and for everyone to benefit from that choice, you would need to have a degree of spare capacity. This is where market principles in public services falls down. Ultimately, spare capacity in public services is waste. It simply doesn’t work.
So again, with the best of motives our own attempts at reform have given some licence and cover to this government’s new approach. It is no coincidence that Michael Gove refers to Blair in virtually every education speech he makes.
Yet there is a clear difference between the public sector buying and making use of private sector services, which of course happens all the time and the private sector taking over the vast majority of the provision of public services, which I believe is the coalition’s true ambition.
It does not take a vast leap of faith to see that the pupil premium of all things is a forerunner to the introduction of a competitive market system in our schools. Schools which if Michael Gove has his way will soon be owned by anyone who can put up the cash and afford to hire to appropriate ‘education consultants’ to successfully bid for one.
The principle of a specific monetary value being placed and ring fenced on an individual child and which follows that child from school to school is clearly but a first step. Running this scheme parallel to the ‘free schools’ deregulation of our education system, how long before education spending is fully deconstructed and each child receives a voucher for the value of their schooling? Now let’s be clear, with the addition of individuals being able to ‘top up’ that funding this would be a middleclass passport out of state education as we know it and a working class trap in an ever deteriorating system. Such kites were flown under the last Tory government. Well they are back.
Thus far Michael Gove has not responded to Ed Balls on the question of whether there is anything to stop existing private schools becoming ‘free schools’ if one accepts the argument above, it is not hard to see why.
In health the threat is more explicit. It is clear the proposed reforms are not about abolishing the administrative functions of the NHS but breaking them up and putting them out to private tender. An example of where this has occurred already is with hospital cleaning services. The privatisation of which under the Tories and not properly addressed by us, has seen infection rates soar and the growth of MRSA illustrates this perfectly.
18 years out of power left us frightened of making the case for the state often being the better provider of good quality public services and 13 years out of power have done nothing to encourage the Tories to reassess their view that private is always best.
The cost of reorganising the NHS, some £1.7bn, is not even mentioned in their manifesto. The NHS will lose economies of scale and see the creation of a thousand small, badly trained privatised bureaucracies. However this is considered a price worth paying by this administration in pursuit of an ideological goal.
There has been much talk about empowering the service provider here and little mention of and no obvious consultation with the service users, us, the patients.
In short we need to take the ‘Big Society’ seriously, not because it is a compelling ideology, but because it exploits the good things that are happening already, on housing estates and in villages across the country already. Whether it’s volunteers cleaning up their local parks or beaches or people giving up their time to be school governors and magistrates. It takes a worthy concept and uses it as cover for their long held ambition. First the fragmentation and marketisation of our public services, establishing the notion of commodity, followed no doubt by its eventual privatisation.
In a tweet the other day I posed the rhetorical question. ‘Who really wants to see the NHS replaced by the Federation of Privatised State Subsidised Health Care Providers?’ the FPSSHCP if you like. Day by day it becomes clear that is exactly what this government wants.
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