Don't Be Trussed Up Again

Liz Truss was only Prime Minister for as long as she was because the old Queen died. Had it not been for that, then the mini-Budget would have been delivered earlier, the reaction would have been the same, and Rishi Sunak would have become Prime Minister well within a month of his having lost the Conservative Leadership Election.

For as long as I could remember, the policies that were eventually set out by Kwasi Kwarteng had been presented by a certain network of think tanks and media interests as the only intellectually respectable ones, with any dissent dismissed as economic illiteracy borne out of apparently not understanding "the markets".

Truss and Kwarteng had failed in the City, but they had at least been there, although it is fair to say that there will be no directorships or consultancies for those two people who were still only 47. Their gurus, on the other hand, had never been anywhere near the place, and it delivered no tardy or uncertain verdict on the mere suggestion of their deranged prescriptions.

Having opportunistically pretended to have opposed the abolition of the 45p rate of income tax, Labour is stuck with its support for all of the other mini-Budget measures. If you still think that Trussonomics was a good idea, then vote Labour. Since 1995, the Labour Party has been constitutionally committed to all of this. Being purely and simply a vehicle for securing power, the Conservative Party carries no such baggage, although it does carry more than enough baggage of its own.

Labour also shares the Conservatives' bewilderment at the popularity at the strikes, in both cases to the point of denying it, and of outright lying that strikes in the National Health Service posed a threat to life, as if Aneurin Bevan, of all people, had never thought to put the necessary safeguards in place. I'll give you a clue. He did, so they are.

Accordingly, and to the great benefit of the others, the nurses' strike is the most popular of the lot, because of course it is. In Britain, we love nurses so much that we love whatever nurses do. The NHS Carry On films remain a cultural point of reference, Casualty is still on, Holby City may yet be brought back, there is no reason why Call the Midwife need ever end, and the nurses' strike enjoys so much public support that it carries over into the other disputes.

Against that, Labour is firmly committed to the Blair Government's signature domestic policy of the privatisation of the NHS in England. That idea existed only on the fringes of the think tank circuit until Tony Blair, Alan Milburn and Paul Corrigan took office in 1997. Since then, it has been the policy of all three parties except under Jeremy Corbyn, and of most Labour MPs and all Labour Party staffers continuously.

Other than Blair, Milburn and Corrigan, no one has done more than Jeremy Hunt to privatise the English NHS, but to the glee of the liberal-capitalist commentariat, Wes Streeting has openly sold the pass. NHS privatisation would now face no Official Opposition of even the most notional kind. Keir Starmer has endorsed Streeting's views, effectively naming Streeting as his successor in the course of the next Parliament, at the end of which Starmer will be 67 to Streeting's 46.

But Starmer's dishonesty is becoming a story. He lied to his party members to get their votes, so he would lie to anyone else to get their votes. We are heading for a hung Parliament. To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.