On this anniversary of the foundation of the National Health Service, be grateful, if you can be, that you are not living in Venezuelazimbabwe. That is the benighted land where Tony Blair, Alan Milburn and Paul Corrigan never began the privatisation of the NHS.
In the United Kingdom, but beyond England, there is nothing but the wasteland that is Venezuelazimbabwe. Its forlorn inhabitants must make do without prescription charges, eye and dental charges, hospital car-parking charges, and so many other boons besides.
In Scotland, which is the largest part of Venezuelazimbabwe, they also toil under the burden of rent controls. Just as Keir Starmer has no intention of punishing the lucky old English with free prescriptions, free eye and dental tests, or free hospital car-parking, so he has no intention of burdening us with rent controls, either.
Starmer's failure to stand up for renters means that the urban young are the latest people to be abandoning the Labour Party in droves. They join enough of the left-leaning three fifths of the traditional working class to have made the difference between the 2017 and 2019 General Election results, because of the changed policy on Brexit that Starmer had forced on a far from blameless Jeremy Corbyn.
The economic Left, the anti-war movement, and the core of Corbyn's core, the anti-racist movement, have also pretty much had enough, and in the last case very forcefully indeed. Corbyn never made it compromise in the least, so it is no longer willing to bother. Who needs the Labour Party? What is so special about it? If it wants Jeremy Clarkson instead, then it is welcome to him, and he is welcome to it.
The BBC had to sack Clarkson because he had assaulted a producer over the state of his din-dins. Now he says that under Starmer, he may or may not vote Labour for the first time in his life. So he never voted Labour under Blair. But Starmer might just about be right-wing enough for him. Yes, Labour is welcome to him. And yes, he is welcome to it. Meanwhile, the Budget of March 2020 has ended the era that began with the Budget of 1976. The Centre is the think tank for this new era. It already has plenty going on.
The BBC had to sack Clarkson because he had assaulted a producer over the state of his din-dins. Now he says that under Starmer, he may or may not vote Labour for the first time in his life. So he never voted Labour under Blair. But Starmer might just about be right-wing enough for him. Yes, Labour is welcome to him. And yes, he is welcome to it. Meanwhile, the Budget of March 2020 has ended the era that began with the Budget of 1976. The Centre is the think tank for this new era. It already has plenty going on.
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