#Keir Starmer | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hjohn3 · 10 days

Text

Quiet Radicals or Fiscal Fools? The Dilemma of Starmer’s Labour

‘Consistency is all we ask… give us this day our daily mask’ - Tom Stoppard

Splits by Blower. Source: X

By Honest John

IT HAS become a political truism to describe Keir Starmer’s Labour as opaque, vision-free, untrustworthy and craven. It is not particularly hard to see why. Ever since standing on a Corbyn-lite platform in order to win the Labour Party leadership in 2020, Starmer’s tenure has been characterised by “ditching”, “diluting”, “rowing back” and “moving beyond” pledge after pledge, commitment after commitment. Cleaving to Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rule, committing Labour to have brought down public debt relative to income by the end of its first term in office, Labour appears to have made fiscal rectitude a financial fetish - a “reassurance” to presumed Tory voters tempted to switch to Labour at the general election, that the party won’t trash the economy by embarking on an unfunded spending spree when in office. In the minds of many of the leadership’s critics however, this iron discipline has so constrained the party’s room for manoeuvre that it will, on paper at least, be instituting £20bn of public spending cuts in its first year in office, given its commitment to maintain Conservative spending plans. Ignoring opinion polls which indicate Labour is on track for a majority of 1997 proportions, the leadership seem determined to promise nothing whatsoever, while also claiming to be a transformational government when in office. For many on the left, this is simply not good enough: after 14 years of Tory social vandalism, with the very infrastructure of the country apparently on the point of collapse, implied promises to maintain Jeremy Hunt’s Austerity 2.0 is a betrayal of voters who look set to give Labour its first majority in nearly 20 years and are hoping for meaningful change from the dead end into which Toryism has driven the country. Many leftists now openly espouse the view that Labour and the Conservatives are essentially the same: both are neo-liberal entities committed to a deregulated, low-wage and low-tax economy, whose political platforms consist of tinkering at best with the marketised state established by Margaret Thatcher and her successors.

To test the veracity of this despairing conclusion, most eye-catchingly articulated by journalist Owen Jones who, having very publicly left the Labour Party, is now intending to campaign actively against Labour MPs and candidates at the general election, we need to focus not on Labour’s dropped commitments, but on what remains of its policy offer and set that against the requirements of the fiscal rule. Will Labour, like New Labour, who became rather more left wing in office, surprise its critics and reveal itself to be a government of quiet radicals, or will it indeed apply its self-imposed fiscal strait jacket literally, and so box itself in, that transformational change will be impossible? Will Starmer’s Labour ultimately be viewed by history as a fiscally foolish government, that maintained the miserablist legacy of Sunak and Hunt and achieved nothing of worth in a brief and embarrassingly short period in power?

If Labour do win the next general election, it will be in no small part to the sudden and visible collapse in public services: the chickens of 14 years of austerity coming home to roost, and bringing the whole hen house of the Thatcherite model tumbling down with them. For clear, existential, reasons, it is the state of the NHS that most concerns the public. The failure of the Boris Johnson government to deliver the funding dividend to the health service supposedly made possible by Brexit, is viewed as a grievous betrayal by many who voted Tory in 2019. The frustration of an exponential increase in mean waiting time for elective procedures combined with a horror at ambulances not turning up in time to save lives, has destroyed the public’s faith, carefully curated by David Cameron in his austerity messaging to “protect” the NHS, that the Tories can be trusted to do anything other than preside over serial neglect when it comes to health services. The King’s Fund estimates the NHS needs an annual increase in funding of 3.3% (approximately £5bn per annum) just to stay still. Labour’s fiscal rule would appear to rule out any such increase, and yet the party is committed to funding two million additional elective and diagnostic procedures in its first year in government; 700,000 additional dental appointments, 8,500 additional mental practitioners, to be recruited in the course of its first term and a doubling of CT and MR imaging capacity as well as, more controversially, expanding elective surgical capacity by utilising private hospitals. If enacted, this would represent the biggest expansion in healthcare provision since 2000, and given its targeting and lack of obsession with structures and internal markets that wasted so much of the additional funding associated with Blair’s NHS Plan, it could make a material difference to elective waiting lists in relative short order. There is dispiritingly little being said by Labour about the need to rectify the catastrophic defunding of social and community care in the austerity years, which is the root cause of crowded A&E Departments, blocked beds and delayed ambulances, but despite this glaring omission, the Labour health offer is not insubstantial.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment to Labour supporters hoping for radical change after the election was Labour’s dropping of its commitment to fund fully its Green Prosperity Plan. The Plan was the pivot on which so much transformational change hung and, dropped because the right wing press had turned the £29bn per annum required to fund it into an attack line, the heart seemed to have been ripped out of the Starmer project for little discernible political gain. Nonetheles, Labour remain committed to £24bn spend on green energy in the course of the Parliament, in stark contrast to Sunak’s witless defunding of Tory net zero commitments in his frantic search for a culture war he might actually win, and to the establishment of Great British Energy, a publicly owned research and provision company which would represent the UK’s first venture into public ownership since the 1970s. What has also survived is the Corbynite policy of establishing a National Wealth Fund, something that looks suspiciously like a Keynesian vehicle to attract and direct inward investment, and quite possibly the engine for genuine attempts to “level up” the deindustrialised towns and communities of England and Wales. Hardly the stuff of neoliberal orthodoxy.

Then there is Labour’s New Deal For Working People - a commitment to increase the Living Wage, legislate for fair pay, ban zero hour contracts and the oppressive tactic of “hire and rehire” utilised by unscrupulous employers, and even a hint that the most restrictive trade union laws in Europe might be revisited. This would represent the biggest rebalancing of the economy in favour of workers since New Labour’s introduction of the Minimum Wage. Taken with Labour’s plans to introduce an Industrial Strategy Council, and its stated intention to devolve decision making powers for the English regions to the Mayoralties, we may see the beginning of post-Brexit active management of the economy by the state. The commitment to a Wilsonian programme of affordable house building is at piece with this, an ambitious attempt to rebalance the housing market whose artificial pumping up of asset prices has been a boon to the better off. If we throw in some class war tit bits like ending charitable status for public schools, getting rid of the hereditary peers and clamping down on tax evasion, we have the contours of a very recognisably Labour administration, to the left of New Labour and streets away from the libertarian chaos of Tory Britain. An emerging government perhaps of quiet radicals.

And yet - there remains that wretched fiscal rule, which Reeves and Labour spokespeople mention every other sentence. Taken at face value, if maintained and implemented, little of Labour’s health or remaining green energy proposals would survive; furthermore the chances of the “iron chancellor” allowing the sort of regional fiscal independence that would make devolved powers worth having to the Mayors and local government, look remote at best while the rule remains in place. Whenever faced with the illogicality of this position, Reeves and her acolytes parrot the mantra that public services will be funded by “growth” while being unable to point to a single Labour policy that will stimulate that growth. The fact of the matter is that Labour’s current offer is dishonest. Labour in power, on the basis of its current policies, can indeed be a genuinely innovative government of renewed social democracy. On the other hand, it can equally be a faithful curator of a busted economic system whose “rules” remain defined by the money markets, neo-liberal economists and the right wing press, but it cannot be both. As Tom Stoppard memorably had his characters complain in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, sooner or later, the opportunistic masks have to stop being replaced and consistency of offer will have to be achieved.

Quiet radicals or fiscal fools? As scrutiny of Labour as a government-in-waiting in the last seven months before a General Ellection increases and these questions become more and more focused, the ever-opaque Keir Starmer may find himself forced to make up his mind.

14th April 2024

#british politics #keir starmer #labour party #next general election #next labour government

2 notes · View notes

eaglesnick · 10 days

Text

Private Sector Good, Public Sector Bad? (3)

This is the third part of a look at former public services and utilities in Britain that have been privatised or part-privatised in the name of neoliberal economics and the mistaken belief that private enterprise is ALWAYS more efficient than publicly run bodies.

The National Health Service

The Tory Party and successive Tory governments, including the Sunak administration, vehemently deny they are slowly privatising the NHS.

“Sunak pledges to cut waits with greater healthcare choice but denies NHS privatisation plan." (Health and Protection: 04/01/23)

Such denials are deliberately misleading. According to the World Health Organisation:

“Privatisation is where non-government bodies become increasingly involved in the financing or provision of health care services”.

The Tory Health Care Act of 2012 removed the "duty of government” to provide NHS services directly, opening up NHS care provision to the private sector. This trend has been further accelerated by the 2022 Heath and Care Act. The Guardian had this to say about the change in the law:

“The new bill will continue the dismantling of the NHS, this time by adopting more features from the US health system. For anyone who cares about the NHS, this should set off alarm bells.” (Guardian: 07/12/21)

What we need to remember when reviewing the provision of public services by private companies is that the first duty of a private company is to make profits for it’s shareholders. The profit driven motive of private enterprise may lead to more cost savings but often at the expense of quality of service

“There is only a small number of studies addressing the effect of privatisation on the quality of care offered by health-care providers, and yet within this small group of longitudinal studies, we find a fairly consistent picture. At the very least, health-care privatisation has almost never had a positive effect on the quality of care." (Lancet: "The effect of health-care privatisation on the quality of care”, March 2024

In 2019, (November 29th) the Guardian reported that private firms had received £15bn over a five-year period for NHS provision. By 2019/20 Health Care Commissioners were spending £10bn a year on services delivered by the private sector. (The Kings Fund: Is the NHS being privatised, 01/03/21)

Despite this massive increase in NHS private provision, we all know the health service is on its knees. Before 2010 multi-year funding of the largely publicly run NHS saw the NHS improve its service provision. 14 years of Tory government, two health care acts later, and we see a total reversal in those trends. By 2014 signs of stress were becoming apparent. David Cameron and George Osborne deliberately starved the NHS of money, NHS budgets rising on average only 1.4% between 2009-19 compared to the 3.7% yearly rises since the NHS was first established.

The NHS is slowly bleeding to death: emergency departments are overcrowded, extended waiting times in A&E are leading to over 200 unnecessary deaths per week, there are not enough hospital beds, staff are demoralised, and doctors strikes continue because the government refuses to pay public sector workers a fair wage. Waiting lists continue to grow, it is impossible to find a NHS dentist and sick people have to wait weeks for a simple GP appointment.

This systematic rundown of the NHS by successive Tory governments is not all bad news as privatisation has benefited the lucky few.

Staff agencies are doing very nicely thank you, the BBC reporting that:

“Companies providing freelance staff to the NHS to cover for big shortages of doctors and nurses have seen their income rise by tens of millions of pounds since 2019.” (24/03/23)

Total spending on agency staff in England was £3bn in 2021, one hospital reportedly paying £5200 to a free-lance doctor for a single shift. It would be nice to say that doctors are not complicit in the gradual privatisation of the NHS but that would be untrue.

“Hundred’s of England's NHS consultants have shares in private clinics.” (Guardian: 21/01/22)

Over a billion pounds has been generated by these set ups since 2015

But it is not only doctors who profit personally from privatisation. During the pandemic, top Tories were very quick to pass on lucrative contracts to their friends in business. These largely unscrutinised public contracts have drawn accusations of “cronyism” and "chumocracy". Others have been more blunt, the Financial Times (06/08/21) asking the question: “When does cronyism become corruption?"

The shortage of PPE during the pandemic led to contracts being awarded to companies without competition. Literally billions of pounds were given to private companies to supply gowns, gloves, and face masks.

“But the way these deals have been given to firms has led to concerns over a lack of detail about why particular suppliers were chosen. The government has also been accused of favouring firms with political connections to the Conservative Party with a "high-priority lane". (BBC News: 20/04/21)

This accusation turned out to be true.

"UK government’s ‘VIP lane' for PPE suppliers was unlawful. High Court rules.” (Financial Times 12/01/22)

Although Michael Gove claimed that “every single procurement decision" went through an eight-stage-process” the courts found that nearly fifty PPE deals were fast tracked by Conservative ministers, who awarded contracts worth £5bn to companies with political or Whitehall connections. Four Tory MP’s and three Tory peers were named as “referrers” Michael Gove, Penny Mordant and Esther McVey are said to have personally recommended firms.

Some MP’s have done a lot more than fast-tracking private health care provision. Many of them have actually invested in private health care companies while others are happy to accept financial donations from them.

Wes Streeting, Shadow Health Secretary and the poster boy for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, is said to have accepted “£22,5000 in private donations from private health firms last year.” (VOX Political: 30/04/23) Other Labour notaries are also said to have financial connections to private health care companies. Keir Starmer has received £157,500, Yvette Cooper has received £295,205, and Dan Jarvis has received £137,500. (Labour Heartlands: Selling Out the NHS: The Shocking Links Between Labour MP’s and Private Healthcare Donations: 17/06/23)

On the Conservative side, The Mirror (21/01/23) reports that Penny Mordant accepted £10,000 from care home firm Renaissance Care, while ex-health minister Steve Brine made £200 an hour giving “strategic advice” to drug firm Signa, before resigning in 2021. Publicly available information tells that that at least 28 Tory MP’s and Peers have had ties to private health and medical groups. Even the former Health Secretary Sajid Javid had share options in a Californian tech company dealing in health sector software.

So, while the NHS slowly disintegrates for want of proper investment and strategic planning, individual MP's and private health care providers reap the rewards of privatisation. Should this in any way be doubt then listen to what former Conservative Prime Minister John Major had to say as long ago as June 2016:

“The NHS is about as safe from them (Tory Brexiteers) as a pet hamster would be with a hungry python.”

Unfortunately, and to its eternal shame, the same can now be said of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.

#uk politics #MHS #privatisation #private health #keir starmer #wea streeting #penny mordant #Michael gove #unlawful #donations #cronyism #corruption #morality. deaths #sickmess. underprovision

6 notes · View notes

ayeforscotland · 12 days

Text

Hang on, I thought there was no magic money tree!

#ayeforscotland #british politics #uk politics #Labour Party #Keir starmer

165 notes · View notes

getpoliticaluk · 12 days

Text

10 days later

Fuck the Labour Party, fuck Wes streeting, fuck keir stalmer, it’s an election year remember this do not give them your vote, your support because they don’t support you

#U.K. politics #uk politics #wes streeting #keir starmer #cass report #labour party #election watch 2024

73 notes · View notes

bagellu · 1 month

Text

if anyone had any previous illusions over how flaccid a man keir starmer is, please just look at this and tell me this man isn’t two seconds from melting into a wet paper towel

#keir starmer #uk politics #football

4 notes · View notes

twiststreet · 2 months

Text

The UK's Labour Party has come out against Ice-T and the "corrosive" effect Ice-T is having on pasty British children.

All British children are now basically the little kid from the video for the New Jack Hustler theme song-- it starts with Ice-T and it ends with them using a swear word while their mum's trying to watch John Lewis's Christmas advert. This is why Brexit was the right idea!

Ice-T has issued a statement and it is "Oh Shit!! We're FAMOUS!" (X)

#at least the UK is worse #keir starmer #i hear marilyn manson's no joke too #they should look into that

2 notes · View notes

fleetshotter-minstrel · 2 months

Text

youtube

A “lighter” moment in British politics at Westminster today (Budget Debate)…….🌞

A short clip < 1 minute.

#uk politics #parliamentary quips #uk budget ‘24 #keir starmer #you tube #Youtube

0 notes

pressnewsagencyllc · 6 days

Text

Politics latest news: Red Wall support for Reform UK hits record high

Support for Reform UK in key Red Wall seats has hit a record high, according to a new survey conducted by Redfield & Wilton Strategies. The poll, carried out between April 13-14, put Reform on 18 per cent just six points behind the Tories on 24 per cent. Reform was up by two points when compared to the company’s previous Red Wall poll from March 16, while the Tories were unchanged. Labour…

View On WordPress

#conservative party #Downing Street #General Election 2024 #Keir Starmer #Labour Party #News #politics #Rishi Sunak #uk news

0 notes

eaglesnick · 24 days

Text

Broken Britain: Labour’s Policy

Homelessness

According to Shelter 109,000 households are homeless in temporary accommodation - up 10% in a year - including 142,490 children – up 14% in a year.

Labour does NOT include ending homelessness in Keir Starmer’s “Five Missions" that are at the centre of his party's promise to voters.

Child Poverty

4.3 million children were living in poverty in the UK during the period 2022/23 – 30% of ALL the nations children.

Labour does NOT include ending child poverty in Keir Starmer's “Five Missions"

Food Banks

Nearly 3 million emergency food parcels were distributed by food banks between April 2022 and April 2023, 760,00 people using food banks for the first time. The number of children in "material deprivation" wherein families cannot afford to feed themselves was 1.9 million.

Labour does NOT include ending poverty in Keir Starmer's “Five Missions"

Water Pollution

According to the Environment Agency there were 3.6 million hours of spills of raw sewage into Britain’s waterways and beaches compared to 1.75 million hours in 2022. Not a single river in England is now rated as healthy.

Labour does NOT include environmental cleanup and protection in Keir Starmer's “Five Missions"

Social Care of the Elderly

Chronic under-funding, severe staff shortages and a growing elderly population has brought the social care sector to crisis point and on the verge of collapse. According to Age UK 2.6 million people over 50 years of age have unmet social care needs, while many thousands languish in hospital for lack of a social care plan for living in their own homes.

Labour does NOT include social care reform in Keir Starmer's “Five Missions"

The Labour Party’s number one priority isn’t to help the poor, the homeless, the elderly or to protect the environment. It is to secure:

…“the "highest sustained growth" in the G7 group of rich nations, made up of the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan, by the end of Labour's first term.”

Strangely enough within Sunak’s “five promises” he emphasizes growing the economy above all else. Its all very well “growing the economy", but WHO are we growing the economy for, and who will benefit from any future growth?

After 14 years of Tory government the poor have become steadily worse off while the rich have prospered. The continued redistribution of the nation's wealth from poor to rich is a national scandal, leading to the UK “having some of the highest levels of inequality in Europe.” Unfortunately, even if Labour should win the next election, this inequality is likely to continue.

#uk politics #keir starmer #rishi sunak #five promises #five missions #inequality #poverty #homelessness #child poverty #pollution #corporate greed #wealth #poor #social care

4 notes · View notes

ayeforscotland · 1 month

Text

Good ol’ British democracy🙃🙃🙃

#ayeforscotland #british politics #uk politics #Keir starmer

186 notes · View notes

cosmicwhoresimpingismyliving · 2 months

Text

I’ll never be able to go back to a comfortable way of living anymore. Nor do I ever want to. I never want to pull the wool over my eyes again. The things I’ve seen & shared just via my mobile phone have shaken me & broken me down to levels I never knew was possible. I have always seen the world through a broken lens, I never thought in my life time that It could get any worse. However, the world has proven me wrong. Our governments are sick, vile beings that deserve no praise. Joe Biden only now providing aid to Palestinians. Is beyond cruel. Why did it take him so long to do this? He doesn't care & has never cared. This is just to save what little image he has left. Tarnished by his own wrongdoings in funding Israel’s barbaric genocide on not only Gaza but on Lebanon, Syria & Sudan. We watch as even the uk government doesn't care about the genocide in Palestine. It's sickening to watch this all unfold. I am deeply ashamed to be part of the UK. Rishi Sunak & Kiers Starmer are disgusting & vile. Kiers Steamer only cares about one thing and one thing only and that is to be the next prime minister. He is not for the people but for the wealthy & the rich. Rishi. Sunak’s speech last night was appalling. He is an unelected official, he was never voted in by the people. He is another disgrace of a prime minister that the UK has to suffer. The amount of awful Prime Ministers the UK has had to watch & deal with is far too many. Rishi Sunak & Keirs Starmer are the very people who are not uniting the UK they are breaking the UK. Our governments have never cared about the genocide in Palestine. All the governments care about is saving their reputation or pleasing the masses of the rich & wealthy or what they could gain from this genocide. It's disgusting. Shame on the UK for still manufacturing weapons and shipping them off to Israel to be used in this 6th month genocide against Palestinians. Shame on the USA for aiding & abetting Israel sending taxes that could be used to help Americans live better. As well as also providing weapons too. Our governments need to be held accountable for their actions and complicity in the genocides that are happening and we need to continue to play our part by educating ourselves, spreading awareness boycotting any companies that are actively participating in any of the genocodes happening. We have the power, we need to show these companies & our governments that the side they picked will be their wrongdoing. From the river to the sea Palestine will be free and no, no matter what lies are being spread about this saying. It is not antisemitic.

5 notes · View notes