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Labour Leader: Keir Starmer VII

cooky1257 said:
Why not just nationalise private healthcare and use the profits to fund the use of excess capacity....?
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It was always the stinking compromise with the consultants that undermined the nhs. Unfortunately many would walk but perhaps that is the price...
 
cooky1257 said:
Why not just nationalise private healthcare and use the profits to fund the use of excess capacity....?
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No. We obviously cant do that. Investing in public services only leads to economic ruin. Privatisation is the only way to rescue public services.

Vote more privatisatisation. You know it makes sense.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
I want to give Streeting a little bit of benefit of the doubt here: You can't instantly increase the capacity of the NHS, it'll take months, and probably years, to build up capacity in terms of the numbers of staff to provide the extra hours' services (weekends, nights can't realistically be filled on existing staff rotas) so there's a capability shortfall in the short-to-medium term. Using the capacity in the private sector to plug that gap makes sense, provided it isn't just another Tory-style excuse to siphon off funds from public to private sector. So there is at least the germ of a reasonable idea in what is being said. The actualisation of it is key. We do not want to get to a situation where a proportion of NHS work is siphoned off to the private sector as BAU.
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There's some sense in this. I think the current version of Labour have figured out that the NHS is, above all else, a service and that ideological considerations be (gently) damned. Patient outcomes should be a priority at the NHS and if the private sector is needed to do some of the heavy lifting at the moment then so be it.
 
Kirk said:
There's some sense in this. I think the current version of Labour have figured out that the NHS is, above all else, a service and that ideological considerations be (gently) damned. Patient outcomes should be a priority at the NHS and if the private sector is needed to do some of the heavy lifting at the moment then so be it.
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The Tories reorganised the NHS so that it's essentially "private" in functionality but funded by the government. Transferring care to the private sector is already happening.

What needs to happen but won't is a means tested approach where the rich pay and the poor don't. Not going to happen because politicians are rich and protect their own in the first place. Always been like that.
 
les24preludes said:
The Tories reorganised the NHS so that it's essentially "private" in functionality but funded by the government. Transferring care to the private sector is already happening.

What needs to happen but won't is a means tested approach where the rich pay and the poor don't. Not going to happen because politicians are rich and protect their own in the first place. Always been like that.
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The level of private involvement in the NHS has remained steady for some time; however, the speed of travel may be increasing. Means testing is a fine idea. There are other options: better use of funds, charging a la Australia, for example, and increasing taxes (on the many).
 
les24preludes said:
What needs to happen but won't is a means tested approach where the rich pay and the poor don't.
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I guess that's what already happens in practice to some degree. The well heeled can afford to go private should they choose while the plebs stay stuck on the waiting list.

I don't really have any objection to people who can afford it paying for private healthcare but I do think there's a danger that we end up with a ghettoisation of public healthcare, in the same way that some social housing is left to rot but considered good enough by the powers that be for the sort of people that are housed there.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
I want to give Streeting a little bit of benefit of the doubt here: You can't instantly increase the capacity of the NHS, it'll take months, and probably years, to build up capacity in terms of the numbers of staff to provide the extra hours' services (weekends, nights can't realistically be filled on existing staff rotas) so there's a capability shortfall in the short-to-medium term. Using the capacity in the private sector to plug that gap makes sense, provided it isn't just another Tory-style excuse to siphon off funds from public to private sector. So there is at least the germ of a reasonable idea in what is being said. The actualisation of it is key. We do not want to get to a situation where a proportion of NHS work is siphoned off to the private sector as BAU.
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As Paul says, very generous, considering Wes himself presents his plan as a deliberate troll of Labour supporters (AKA "middle class lefties") and the whole plan is based on a lie. Wes knows there's no "spare capacity" to speak of because most medical staff working in private healthcare also work for the NHS. It's not a meaningful policy proposal, it's just the usual mix of performative adulting, Tory-tickling and touting for business. Guy's the most blatantly venal **** going.
 
Seanm said:
Wes himself presents his plan as a deliberate troll of Labour supporters (AKA "middle class lefties")
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The use of 'middle class lefties' as a political insult is profoundly stupid for any democratic party right now. Democracy is under threat in the US and elsewhere, yet Labour seems unable to look beyond the current electoral cycle. Assuming they form the next government, in 2029 Labour will likely be facing a populist opposition for whom 'the metropolitan elite', 'the mainstream media', 'lefty lawyers', 'experts', and 'middle class lefties' are enemies because they bring a degree of dispassionate analysis rather than emotion to debates.

The resort to emotion is the calling card of the demagogue, who wants his/her listeners to distrust others so that they heed only his/her words. Anyone who is not 'one of us' is to be distrusted, ignored or shouted down. With a careless disregard for how it might play out, by isolating 'middle class lefties', Labour is reinforcing the framing that will endanger our democracy.

To borrow from F Scott Fitzgerald: 'They were careless people, Keir and Wesley – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.'
 
laughingboy said:
The use of 'middle class lefties' as a political insult is profoundly stupid for any democratic party right now. Democracy is under threat in the US and elsewhere, yet Labour seems unable to look beyond the current electoral cycle. Assuming they form the next government, in 2029 Labour will likely be facing a populist opposition for whom 'the metropolitan elite', 'the mainstream media', 'lefty lawyers', 'experts', and 'middle class lefties' are enemies because they bring a degree of dispassionate analysis rather than emotion to debates.

The resort to emotion is the calling card of the demagogue, who wants his/her listeners to distrust others so that they heed only his/her words. Anyone who is not 'one of us' is to be distrusted, ignored or shouted down. With a careless disregard for how it might play out, by isolating 'middle class lefties', Labour is reinforcing the framing that will endanger our democracy.

To borrow from F Scott Fitzgerald: 'They were careless people, Keir and Wesley – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.'
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To be fair to Wes, he's not just electioneering: he does genuinely hate ordinary Labour voters and delights in insulting them. Extraordinary, really - imagine Grant Chapps doing a high profile interview in the Guardian promising to go to war on grasping, resentful, middle class Tories - but probably the treatment we deserve, if we continue to vote for people who openly despise us and oppose our values and interests.
 
laughingboy said:
The use of 'middle class lefties' as a political insult is profoundly stupid for any democratic party right now. Democracy is under threat in the US and elsewhere, yet Labour seems unable to look beyond the current electoral cycle. Assuming they form the next government, in 2029 Labour will likely be facing a populist opposition for whom 'the metropolitan elite', 'the mainstream media', 'lefty lawyers', 'experts', and 'middle class lefties' are enemies because they bring a degree of dispassionate analysis rather than emotion to debates.

The resort to emotion is the calling card of the demagogue, who wants his/her listeners to distrust others so that they heed only his/her words. Anyone who is not 'one of us' is to be distrusted, ignored or shouted down. With a careless disregard for how it might play out, by isolating 'middle class lefties', Labour is reinforcing the framing that will endanger our democracy.

To borrow from F Scott Fitzgerald: 'They were careless people, Keir and Wesley – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.'
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I think you give them too much credit. It’s not even as sophisticated as that. It’s simply a phrase they condescendingly imagine to be on the lips of red wall voters. Blair at least had a degree of cunning and an ability to strategise. This mob are the epitome of banality: not an original thought between them. They copy the bad language they hear the bigger boys at school using, because they think it makes them sound tough.
 
Seanm said:
...probably the treatment we deserve, if we continue to vote for people who openly despise us and oppose our values and interests.
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My instinct is to vote tactically in a previously safe Tory seat, but the more Labour take this line (a variant of Mandelson's “The people of south Wales will always vote Labour because they have nowhere else to go.”) the less Labour appear to want my vote.

For me it boils down to this: why vote for anyone who takes democracy for granted?
 
Finnegan said:
I think you give them too much credit. It’s not even as sophisticated as that. It’s simply a phrase they condescendingly imagine to be on the lips of red wall voters. Blair at least had a degree of cunning and an ability to strategise. This mob are the epitome of banality: not an original thought between them. They copy the bad language they hear the bigger boys at school using, because they think it makes them sound tough.
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PPE at Oxford has a lot to answer for, IMHO.
 
laughingboy said:
My instinct is to vote tactically in a previously safe Tory seat, but the more Labour take this line (a variant of Mandelson's “The people of south Wales will always vote Labour because they have nowhere else to go.”) the less Labour appear to want my vote.

For me it boils down to this: why vote for anyone who takes democracy for granted?
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My own experience at a local level of the Labour Party is that democracy doesn’t matter
 
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