Monday 13 June 2011

Responsibility and Irresponsibility

By far the biggest political story of the day is the wholesale abandonment of the Blairite war against the NHS. The Secretary of State's statutory responsibility for the delivery of health services simply is the NHS, in the way the the Treaty of Union simply is the Union. Today, the Coalition has been forced to accept it. But then, it was in all three manifestos in 1945. Yet another key plank of Blairism has collapsed.

But you would never know it. On, and on, and on goes the droning about Ed Balls and the alleged crisis surrounding Ed Miliband. The Labour Party couldn't care less what the Telegraph said. With a comfortable poll lead even before the cuts are really felt, and a rapidly rising membership, plus the daily abandonment of another Coalition policy, why would it?

And honestly, who does David Miliband, who alone could have leaked that undelivered speech, think he is? He was a truly dreadful Schools Minister, a pretty hopeless Foreign Secretary for a mercifully brief period, and the loser of the only Leadership Election in Britain in which a third of the votes go to millions of ordinary working people rather than to full-time paid politicians (the MPs' section) or political hobbyists (the CLPs' section, and the whole of a Conservative or Lib Dem Leadership Election). Apparently, he is doing well at Sunderland Football Club. Let him devote as much time as he likes to that. At least until they, too, get sick of him.

1 comment:

  1. Well, you are right about the media's love for David Miliband, which I find perplexing.

    But then I find the desire for any kind of Blairite solution rather perplexing.

    However, I think you imply a slightly inaccurate model of the Blairite plan for the NHS (I agree that the Lansley plan is more-or-less Blairite.) Surely a Blairite plan maintains the responsibility of the Secretary of State for the delivery of health services, while allowing the benefit of providing them to go to private companies. Thus the contractors take the profit and make the decisions, while the Health Secretary retains the responsibility (and has to put in extra money, inevitably, when it all goes wrong.)

    It seems to me, sadly, like rail privatisation all over again. Something is sold off to private interests, certainly, but since the state will not let the system fail this simply guarantees the income of the corporatists.

    Between us there is, I suppose, a great gulf fixed. You exult in the state's presence in every area of life; outside certain very limited spheres I loathe it. Curious, then, that I guess we will agree to hate and fear the parasites of privatised profits and public liabilities. I wonder how many people really support such a bastard system?

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