We’re in the most tumultuous times I can remember.
A war, poverty, disrupted supply-lines...
... the poorest political leadership I can recall. Industrial unrest. Public services fragile. Privatised services a rip-off.
In the midst of it all, Keir Starmer, putative next-prime-minister, yesterday, went to Leeds, to announce he is going to kill-off the house of Lords.
It’s nice to know he is in touch with the zeitgeist. It might bring down the price of ermine.
I thought he might talk about a grown-up relationship with the EU? Taking public utilities back into public ownership?
Maybe, some thoughts on a new-deal for working people. A minimum wage should not be a subsistence wage.
As a new report from The Royal Society for Public Health tells us, today;
47% of all households are concerned they are running out of ways to minimise costs further without cutting back on essentials
Or... how about about security of employment? Leasehold reform?
Or… the NHS?
Starmer has repeatedly refused to support the RCN’s strike action. Why? It’s the Labour Party for goodness sake.
First he knows have can’t pay the 17% the nurses want, nor conjure more staff inside, probably, three years.
Second. Labour’s private polling tells them, in middle England, where Starmer’s votes must come from, if he is to win the next election, they are ambivalent at best and anti, at worst, about an NHS strike that will add risk, to the already risky NHS and the length of the waiting lists.
Recent Ipsos polling indicates; almost half of British public think pay demands are too high and support for the strike is very dependent on age.
Starmer is managing the odds, not leading the country. He told BBC Radio Oxford;
“I’m not ideological; I’m a practical person.”
Keir, if I may; any leader without ideology is practically, useless.
Wes Streeting, shadow health secretary has also refused to endorse the strike.
Non-Dom’s, are nomadic and you can bet half of the 75,700, with ND status, who, collectively, pay the Treasury about £8bn, are very busy ceasing residence, to comply with the four-year-rule...
... and setting up pre-deemed-domiciled-trusts in the Isle of Man, Ireland or Cyprus or Malta.
The number of ND’s is falling and 97% were born abroad, live abroad and are globally connected.
A huge policy promise, dependent on a single tax change, is very likely to come unstuck.
If Labour could get its head around health policy, what could it be?
It has to start with the pay review bodies. Their remit is too narrow and too easily manipulated. They’ve lost the trust of the unions.
The PRBs are obliged to strike a balance between the competing evidence of the employers and unions.
It’s really little more than mediator-ship.
The alternative is pendulum arbitration.
Each side brings their case; annually, the review body decides between one, or the other. The decision is legally binding. This has the effect of moderating the demands from the either side.
The pitiful state of NHS IT is wholly unacceptable.
One Brexit advantage is, we no longer have to comply with complex procurement requirements.
We can buy a system for the NHS and be done with it. Each Trust choosing its own, individual system is bonkers. Install it, connect it up and let every part of the NHS speak to the other part.
Pass ownership of health records to the individual.
Store the record in the Cloud, give patients a pin number and let them decide who has access, from wherever they are.
Force the pace of digital first and avoid the cost of place-based care. Anywhere, becomes the best place for care.
Run social care, for older people as an extension of the NHS.
Nationalise domiciliary care services… yes, nationalise. It is fragmented, almost broke and needs consolidation.
Bring them into the family of the NHS, train people and sort their structures and wages out.
Primary care is crumbling.
Give GPs a route out of partnerships. Subsume them into secondary care. It’s what Bevan would like to have done. Digital first services, any-place, any time.
It’s time for a Bevan moment…
... if Streeting and Starmer can remember they are in the Labour Party.
>> I'm hearing - Labour will present a Humble Address motion to MPs on today, forcing a binding Commons vote to secure the release of documents relating to the award of government PPE contracts worth more than £200m to a company linked to Conservative peer Michelle Mone.
>> I'm hearing - GPs have been urged to have a 'low threshold' for prescribing antibiotics and hospital referral in children presenting with symptoms of group A streptococcal infections, amid concern about rising levels of infection.
