I guess I had to talk about Wes Streeting at some time during the course of this damp squib of an election campaign, because it seems that he wants everyone to talk about him.
Streeting had article in the Sunday Times yesterday the purpose of which was very hard to discern, unless it was to:
- Abuse the public for believing in the merits of the NHS.
- Abuse the staff of the NHS.
- To undermine the management of the NHS.
- To suggest that those who have committed abuse and cover up in the NHS are typical of the organisation as a whole.
- Lay the groundwork for the private management to the NHS, because he clearly does not believe that its existing structure is appropriate.
The first four of those suggestions are very clear from the article, a copy of which can be found here (you will have to download it to read it, I expect).
The last of my suggestions is not stated. I read it between the lines of the bullying and abuse that Streeting has to offer to everyone. In doing so, I may be charitable in believing that he has got a big idea, even if he has not stated it. It may, of course, be that he has absolutely no idea what he is going to do at all, apart from bullying and abusing people, which is exactly what he is accusing others of doing.
I can, however, be clear about three things . The first is that he did not mention the continual under funding of the NHS by the Tories compared to the requirement for cash to meet the medical rate of inflation. He does, therefore, exonerate theories from all the apparent guilt for the state of the NHS, which is, apparently, entirely the fault of its staff.
Second, I think we can be sure he is not offering adequate new funding as a result.
Third, he does in the absence of an explicit big idea offer an extremely small idea instead, which is that he will bully and harass NHS staff into working longer hours at the weekend when they are already deeply fatigued by the demands made upon them to the extent that they are leading the service in droves, with the intention of providing an additional 2 million outpatient appointments in the NHS year, which is what his promised 40,000 extra appointments a week represent.
To put this number in context, in 2022/23, which is the last full year for which we have data present, there 124 million outpatient appointments in the NHS, although only 95.9 outpatients actually attended, with about 8 million of the difference being explained by those who did not arrive for their appointments. I have not had time to work out the remaining reconciling item, and nor does it greatly matter because what is obvious is that the offer that Streeting is making is fairly insignificant when there are, supposedly, 7 million people on waiting lists . The additional number he proposes is also within the normal rate of routine variation in appointments offered is, such as the poverty of his ambition, which does, nonetheless, become one of the so-called headline Labour pledges.
Why make this point when superficially it would seem that all it does is confirm that Streeting is, as NHS commentator Roy Lilley calls him, a silly man without any plausible plan but with a massive contempt for the organisation that he wishes to control? I can only conclude that privatisation of the NHS is his sole real agenda because, based upon what he says in the article he wrote, including his stated desire that we end our belief in the NHS as having virtue in its own right, nothing else but a plan for that makes any sense at all.
Unless that is, Streeting is considerably more incompetent than even I have imagined, which I think is possible. In fact, that is my best hope, because every other alternative is worse.
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Top piece – a palpable hit PS at Lords on Friday we were discussing the use of damp squib by AJP Taylor in 60s – felt archaic even then. Can we start a campaign to find a more useful, contemporary phrase to express an idea that fails to catch fire? A one person flash mob? An unshared hashtag?
An unshared hashtag? I think Rishi Sunak already owns the intellectual property rights. Use it to help him out.
Wes is Not incompetent. He knows Exactly what he is doing (as does Reeves). They will reintroduce hyper PFI loading the NHS with unaffordable debt as reward to their new business partner party donors. We gonna get screwed over again.
Streeting is funded by orgs that want to privatise the NHS. He no doubt is looking @ B.Liar and Mandelson and wants what they have (in terms of money and influence).
Privatisation could deliver that. He is not stupid, or incompetent, he has a mission and “look after Wes” sits at the core of that mission.
We do not need to over analyse this. Streeting is in politics for…..what he personally can get out of it.
Which leaves the open question, who is going to support Leanne Mohammed the indy candidate for Illford North – Streetings constituency.
Streeting needs to be attacked on the basis of the article in the Murdoch press & how he is funded.
Make it personal, make it vicious and make it hurt……….- and make people understand that a vote for Streeting is a vote for no NHS.
Reply to Mike Parr
at 8:33 am “He no doubt is looking @ B.Liar and Mandelson and wants what they have (in terms of money and influence)”.
It’s telling who Wes Streeting has had help from with his election campaigning in previous GE’s and something he seems quite proud of. When he first ran for Parliament in 2015 Streeting as a PPC managed to get none other than his Lordship Peter Mandelson out on the campaign trail. Not a bad achievement for a political unknown.
https://x.com/wesstreeting/status/596272372652634113
And it seems Mandelson and Streeting were close even before his Parliamentary political career started.
https://x.com/wesstreeting/status/596458526161117186
We’ll gloss over the 2017 general election, that never happened and in any case, same said lord was doing something every day to undermine Jeremy Corbyn (his words). Mandelson’s company Global Council, is a lobbying outfit, working inside the Labour party and although Mandelson has stepped down as the CEO, he is now Starmer’s senior advisor. For background, check out the wiki page for the managing partner, Benjamin Charles Wegg-Prosser, it’s very illuminating.
In 2019, the same Lord was once again out in Ilford North helping to get the vote out. For those who may not know, the Get the Vote Out part of campaign is very important, it’s where all the canvassed electors are reminded that they had promised to vote Labour. It’s a process that continues throught GE day, sometimes a household can be reminded several times (if there are enough volunteers). https://x.com/wesstreeting/status/1205124426590756864
A few years back, Streeting mass deleted about 5,000 of his previous tweets, some of which show the more unsavoury side to him. Although they have been deleted, twitter keeps the receipts and a quick search can find them.
As an ex member who fell foul of the campaign to remove all traces of the left in the Labour party and knowing how internal Labour “democracy” works the signs are that he was chosen by the Labour establishment as a future leader. In politics, it’s not what you know, it’s who.
He described me as hysterical in a tweet once
He has not responded ever since
Fully agree. I live in his constituency and would love to see him being fully attacked for being the worst possible candidate to lead the NHS. Then again, if he lost his seat they’d only replace him with some other awful Tory and pretend it had nothing to do with the NHS.
I have already contributed to Leanne Mohammed’s campaign. I rate Wes Streeting as the most dangerous person on the Labour front bench, surpassing even Rachel Reeves. To see Streeting fail to get re-elected would be the highlight of election night… if only!
Ah, incompetence. Listening to Ed Davey on radio in Scotland this morning, talking complete tripe (in a complete mess here on Brexit and Europe for instance, because he has no answer); I realised that modern Parties can’t help telling lies because they are hollow shells, representing nothing more than a cabal of hustlers, on the make. In the past they were rooted in a vested interest; land, capital labour. They had roots. They represent nothing now. They hustle to survive; and lie to anyone they think they can con. Persuade, hustle, move on to the next trick
I just can’t fathom the mindset of people that voted for him in the first place! How did we end up with politicians who are totally unqualified for their positions? We desperately need to reform our election system.
Very very simple. People, citizens, failed to get involved in politics. & I can understand why – they have lives to live and sufficient self respect not to want to be soiled by the political process. By not getting involved, the terrain is left open for chancers like Streeting, not even has-beens, more like never-weres – ciphers – no-marks.
Want change, want politicians that look like people – then get involved.
So why the hell dont inteviewers ask him why he is taking money from private healthcare companies?
Surely this goes to the heart of political corruption in this election. Its not a ‘personal’ attack – its a pertinent quesiton – as to ‘whose interests are you representing’?
It reads like a series of talking points from private healthcare lobbyists. I think that there’s a simple explanation as to why that is.
Most hospitals are open seven days a week because they have patients in them, but not all services in hospitals operate seven days a week. Obviously we can’t ask the heroic staff to work all seven days but perhaps we could increase staffing levels by about 30% so we can use all of that expensive infrastructure all seven days of the week? I have no idea where we find the qualified people to do that, but there are certainly people who could do this if the funding is made available to train and employ them. Public funding obviously.
It would be interesting to hear from Streeting how he thinks private capital would make the NHS work better. How would adding a profit motive and return to capital both reduce costs and improve outcomes for patients?
If we paid enough we’d get people who have quit the NHS back
It is easily the cheapest way to find the required staff
Having spent 3 months in Australia last year and 3 this year,I was told by a friend working in a doctors practice with multiple premises that last year the doctors practice had six uk doctors coming this year they recruited another ten.I doubt many of them will rush back.
Streeting’s and Labour’s approach to the NHS is becoming a major factor in Scotland in the run-up to the election. Here the NHS is run differently from England and (I suspect) Wales. The reversal in Scotland of the 1990’s madness of the Tory concept of an internal market for health has enabled NHSS to function more rationally than in England, with the massive caveat that, as a result of the Devolution Settlement, ultimately all funding of NHSS (and all other Scot Gov spending) is proportionately tied to public expenditure in England. If the Scottish Gov wishes to invest proportionately more in NHSS than that, it generally means reducing funding elsewhere in its overall budget.
Regardless of what Penny Mordaunt and other Tories assert, there is no question that NHSS is the best performing in the UK across a wide range of topics, but shit sticks, especially when the UK MSM is so heavily biased. If Labour wins the General Election, it could very conceivably result in the end of NHSS as we know it. The outcome for Scots would be a harsh economic penalty – end of free prescriptions and clinical treatments – as well as an inevitable further reduction in governmental democracy. I just hope Scotland wakens up in time, calls out the Westminster parties for their colonial attitudes, and realises that choosing independence is the only way Scottish culture, law, economy, NHSS, identity etc can be kept safe within our people’s control. The sovereignty of the Scottish People is legally and constitutionally established, if frequently ignored by UK Gov, and it’s well past time that we exercise it.
Much to agree wih, Ken
Here is my positive dream of hope for regeneration with regard to our precious beleaguered NHS. If a future incoming government were to decide to pay NHS staff what they genuinely deserve to be paid, for their amazing commitment to a challenging job, then we could lure those who have left back into our NHS. Nurses who have abandoned the NHS will have continued to work just enough shifts to maintain their hard won Nursing license, no matter what they are doing right now. The Medical profession is a calling and no one invests in undergoing Nursing training just to toss their credentials aside. There is a virtual army of Nurses who, having remained current with their professional skills, will be ready to return to the NHS under the right conditions.
Even if former NHS staff are now working in the private sector in private medical facilities, a renewed commitment to eliminating privatization within our national medical system will drive them back into the welcoming arms of the NHS. This expanded workforce will provide the ‘boots on the ground’ we so desperately need to get those waiting lists down. We do not have a Nursing shortage or a Nursing ‘Crisis’ in this country, just as this is not true in the US, we have a Nursing exodus! It is possible to verify the potential number of Nurses available to potentially return to the NHS by checking how many have proactively retained their Nursing licenses.
A 35% pay rise for the junior Doctors might sound like an outrageous ask, especially during a cost of living crisis, but if you look at their current pay it is eminently reasonable. Could you hire a plumber or an electrician for £15 an hour? So why is it just fine to pay our junior Doctors £15 an hour after years of intensive training? In a recent meeting at the RSM (Royal Society of Medicine) in London, the reality of the junior Doctors demand was presented to the audience who wholeheartedly supported it. Sadly the public are never exposed to the appalling current level of pay that our junior Doctors have been forced to accept for far too long. Realistically addressing NHS pay issues could also stem the hemorrhage of Doctors and Nurses leaving for Australia or the US: we must offer acceptable pay and conditions if we want to rescue our NHS.
On a ten country tour of sub-Saharan Africa I saw first hand the serious damage we are inflicting on healthcare systems overseas by scavenging Medical staff from countries who could not afford to train them. Before I left I was told by an NHS Anesthetist that I should, “Prepare to be humbled”. I was seriously impressed with the clinical skills and ingenuity of overwhelmed African Doctors. In Blantyre, with the input of a Nurse Anesthetist who had trained locally, worked in the NHS, and then returned to Malawi, we started working on a solution. Since training in many African countries was obviously acceptable to our NHS, we proposed using Foreign Aid funding to augment local medical facilities where we could train UK Med Students alongside African practitioners. This cost effective solution was the first component of Collaborative Circular Migration proposals.
The UK cannot continue the highly destructive policy of scavenging the ‘Best and the brightest’, including critical medical staff, from overseas. This morally bankrupt cheap fix, where the UK can legally pay 20% less to fully trained professionals we have not had to invest in at all, must end ASAP. There are regulations in place to try and prevent this destabilizing brain-drain, but the UK have found devious ways around this protection. The UK cannot pretend to support important millennial goals while continuing to rely on this deplorable policy of exploitation. I am fully aware that training up new Doctors and Nurses will take time, but those already trained, and proactively remaining current professionally, are waiting in the wings ready to return to our NHS.
Thanks
As I often say, much to agree with
How can spending money with a profit-making private company ever be more be more “fiscally responsible” than spending it on the not-for-profit NHS? Unless course that’s what those who have “donated” to you are telling you to do.
They say you should never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. But perhaps we should add: never attribute to incompetence what can be explained by avarice.
Also, sometimes malice is evident. There is certainly an element of that in the Zionists’ genocide. Closer to the topic, there is some real malice towards people with disabilities, working class people, people who can’t work, racialized minorities, LGBT, and so on. I’m not saying don’t look for the power-seeking and profit-making motives behind all these things, which undoubtedly exist. But that often, that is not the whole explanation.
Streeting has received over £190K in donations from private healthcare companies, Starmer £150K+, and Cooper nearly £300K.
https://tinyurl.com/yjc5y4t8
He’s been bought, as has the rest of Labour.
Not one privatisation has led to service improvements ( railways? water? power? education academies? children’s homes?….) so there can be no ethical reason for Streeting to push the notion of further privatising the NHS. Only a quid pro quo for his paymasters. . Starmer and his stooges have a Tory mindset wrapped in a very faded red flag.