Is Keir Starmer Planning to Further Privatise the NHS If He Gets Into Government?

This deeply concerns me. A few days ago the mellifluous Irish left-wing vlogger, Maximilien Robespierre, posted a video asking if Keir Starmer was planning to push the privatisation of the NHS even further if or when he gets into 10 Downing Street. I didn’t see more than a few seconds of the video, but it seemed to be based on Starmer’s cagey response to how he would solve the country’s current crises. While Starmer has promised to repeal the anti-strike legislation, which would definitely be a great step if he actually does it, he answered that question by stating that Labour would not be spending its way out of these problems. This looks like an attempt to assure Tory voters that Labour is now fiscally responsible and no longer the high-spending party of traditional Tory caricature. But the current problems in the Health Service and other sectors are partly caused by decades of cuts and underinvestment. In the case of the NHS, the funding has also been gobbled up by increased administration expenses created by privatisation. So where is this extra investment, and improved services, supposed to come from? Blair tried to solve this by pushing the NHS’ privatisation further than Tories had dared. Not only were further NHS services outsourced to private healthcare providers, but he also created the Community Care Groups of doctors, who were responsible for commissioning medical services. These CCGs were granted the powers to buy in private medical services, and to raise additional income privately. Starmer is a Blairite, as shown by his vehement persecution of the Labour left and embrace of neoliberalism. One of the great commenters on this blog has suggested that he’s an admirer of the Swiss healthcare system. This is a mixture of state and private medical insurance, the degree depending on wealth. In the case of the very rich, it’s all, or nearly all, funded by private health insurance. In the case of the poor, it’s state-funded according to whether they can afford a level of private insurance. I have a feeling Nick Clegg of the Lib-Dems believed in the same kind of continental system. This obviously violates the fundamental principles on which Nye Bevin founded the NHS: that it should be universal and free at the point of delivery.

No-one wanted Blair to push through his NHS privatisations and there was electorally no need for it. By the time Blair was elected in 1997 the country was so thoroughly fed up of Tory misrule and their policies that Blair could have pursued a traditional Labour policy of renationalising it as well as funding it properly. But Blair was a Thatcherite and intensely concerned to get the Tory press and Tory voters onside, to the point that Rupert Murdoch has been described as an invisible presence at cabinet meetings. Blair’s pursuit of Tory policies left traditional Labour voters and members feeling betrayed and disenfranchised and the party lost both. They only continued winning elections because the Tories were worse.

I joined the Labour party a few years ago, inspired by Corbyn’s commitment to genuine Labour party policies and the protection and renationalisation of the NHS. I really don’t want to see it privatised by Starmer as Blair did.

If Starmer does push through further measures to privatise it, not only will he betray this country’s working people, making them poorer and with less available healthcare, then it will also have disastrous consequences for the direction of politics in this country. The recent surge of identity politics following the Black Lives Matter protests back in 2020 has also resulted in a backlash and the appearance of anti-woke parties further to the right, like Reform, led by Richard Tice, and Laurence Fox’s Reclaim. If working people become alienated from politics because whichever party you choose, economically they’re all the same, it leaves the way open for the far right. That was shown very clearly in Margaret Hodge’s neck of London, where Hodge did so little to tackle the rise of the BNP that the stormtroopers at one point had seven members on Tower Hamlets council. Their fuehrer, Derek Beacon, even sent her a garland after their squalid electoral victories. What has been shown to work against the fascist parties and unite working people of different ethnicities and religions is effective, traditional Labour welfare policies. These are desperately needed in themselves, but without them there’s the possibility that Britain may go the same way as the continent in the rise of extreme right-wing nationalist parties.

Renationalising the NHS and restoring the welfare state will not only massive improve the health, wellbeing and prosperity of the British working people, but will do much to stop the racial division and alienation fuelling the drift towards the parties of racial division, friction and resentment.

Our Nurses Are Striking against Real Starvation Wages

According to the news, the NHS nurses are going on strike on the 15th and 20th of December. I don’t want the nurses to strike, but I don’t blame and absolutely support them. Or rather, what I should say is that I don’t want the nurses to have to strike. Because I don’t believe they have a choice. I went to one of the fringe Labour meetings online a few weeks ago. I can’t remember whether it was organised by Arise or the Labour Assembly Against Austerity. Not that it really matters. One of the speakers was a medical professional or activist with the NHS. And what she said was really chilling. One quarter of the country’s NHS trusts – I don’t know whether this is Britain as a whole or just England – were running food banks for their nursing staff. For the nurses! And we have student nurses considering dropping out, because they can’t afford to feed themselves and study! And that obese abomination Therese Coffey wanted the NHS budget cut further. Like all the other right-wing Tories, including Farage, who boast about they’re going to cut waste. The Irish vlogger, Maximilien Robespierre, asked in one of his videos whether she was the most odious Tory politician. She had responded to an interviewer’s question by saying that if nurses didn’t like it, they should look for work elsewhere. It’s the standard Tory answer that you hear trotted out whenever there’s a strike. Presumably Coffey thinks we could get more poor immigrants to work for cheap wages to replace them, as one of these horrors suggested we could do to plug the labour shortage in other industries. I’m sick of Coffey, sick of Hunt, and sick of the Tories full stop.

Defend the NHS!

Pay nurses a living wage!

Tories out!

Mad Brexiteer Wants Sharks in the English Channel

Left-wing vlogger Maximilien Robespierre has a feature on his YouTube channel, ‘Fool of the Week’, in which he puts up clips of mad right-wingers saying or doing absolutely stupid and senseless things. His recent one was about a truly bonkers bloke from Croydon, who seems to have a unique solution to the migrant crisis: sharks. I’m afraid I didn’t watch the video, so I don’t know how truly mad he was, although in fairness he was a caller to LBC.

It may be that at some point in the near future we do have sharks in the English Channel. As the oceans have warmed, marine life adapted to warmer climates has moved north. There was a bit of alarm a few months ago when a Great White shark was spotted off Cornwall, and I think other shark species have also been seen, such as Basking sharks. But you really, really wouldn’t want predatory sharks just off coastal waters or in the Channel. Quite apart from the sheer inhumanity of wanting migrants and asylum seekers deterred from coming here because they’d be eaten on the journey.

Does the Handshake between King Charles and Sinn Fein Indicate Better Relations Between Irish Nationalists and the British State?

Maximilien Robespierre also put up a rather optimistic video a few days ago. During his brief appearance in Northern Ireland, King Charles met and shook hands with the head of Sinn Fein in province. Or at least, the head of Sinn Fein in the Stormont assembly. Robespierre played a clip of an interview with one of the Irish politicians talking about the importance of the handshake. It looks trivial, but it represents an enormous development in the party’s attitudes towards government and the British state. Robespierre said they used a variety of methods in their campaigns for Irish reunion, some of which he didn’t agree with. Well, yes. When I was growing up Sinn Fein were notorious for the very close relationship they had with the IRA and for their defence of the terrorists’ atrocities. Long before the Good Friday Agreement, the late Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein were campaigning in Ulster under the slogan ‘the ballot bomb’. The mere fact that they had shaken King Charles’ hand suggested that political relations had entered a new phase where Sinn Fein were no longer a threat to the British state, and the British state were no longer a threat to Sinn Fein.

If I interpret that correctly, it means that Sinn Fein will go about their aim of achieving Irish reunification through peaceful, democratic methods without fighting a war with the British state. And thus, in the eyes of Robespierre, if I remember correctly, there should be no obstacle for them taking up the leadership of Ulster, as provided by the Good Friday Agreement. I believe that Sinn Fein became the largest party in the assembly at the last election and so their leader should have become First Minister and formed a Sinn Fein majority government under the Agreement. They were prevented from doing so because the DUP refused their support. Democratic government once again fell into abeyance in the province.

I have to say that I don’t care whether Ulster joins Eire or not. That decision should be for the people of Northern Ireland alone. But I do care about democratic government and an end to bloodshed. And I really hope that handshake between the Sinn Fein politico and our new Lord and Sovereign does mean that democracy will return and there will be peace between us and Sinn Fein. My only fear is that the hardliners may see the handshake as Sinn Fein selling out and so split with them and return to violence. I hope this never happens.

In the meantime, I salute our king and Sinn Fein for this gesture of peace. Long may it last.

Liz Truss – Prepared to Be Unpopular Because She Knows the Tories Are Failing?

I just caught a clip on the BBC news of bog-eyed escapee from the High Energy Cheese lab, Liz Truss, calmly telling the camera that’s she’s prepared to be an unpopular prime minister in order to push through policies that will revive Britain. Such as lifting the cap on banker’s bonuses. The redoubtable Irish gentleman of the Maximilien Robespierre vlog on YouTube had a rather different perspective. The Tories are running scared because the polls show that if there was an election tomorrow, Labour would win hands down. When he put up that video a few days ago, the polls, he claimed, showed that if an election was called, Labour would have a 100-seat majority. To put this into perspective, Boris won with an 80-seat majority. They Tories are afraid the game’s up, and so are doing everything they can for their horrible friends and donors while they can.

It sounds convincing to me.

And it’s the same attitude shown by a number of third world dictators, who grab all the money they’ve embezzled and looted from their people before running off into exile.

Bigots Now Blaming Trans People for Uvalde School Shooting

I feel I’ve got to put this up. I’ve said in my videos and blogs about trans issues that I don’t hate trans people, and utterly condemn persecution, discrimination, abuse and violence against anyone because of their sexuality and gender presentation. I criticise and attack the trans ideology because of the dangers it poses in falsely persuading vulnerable people, including children, especially autistic individuals and the mentally ill, that they are really members of the opposite sex, who need to be placed on the pathway towards medical transition involving drugs and surgery which can damage their health. I also attack the trans ideology because of the dangers it poses to women’s safety and dignity by allowing biological men into women’s spaces, such as changing room and prisons, simply because they claim to be female. I am also concerned about the attack on language and the attempt to separate ‘men’ and ‘women’ from biological reality. But I also recognise that there are people who really are alienated from their biological sex and for whom transition is an entirely appropriate and necessary treatment. And I also agree with the great commenters on this blog, who have pointed out that the transpeople they’ve known are otherwise normal, decent people who want to live their lives in peace.

Last week there was the shocking news that there’d been another school shooting in America, and immediately everyone put in their own take on it. It’s reignited the debate about gun control in US. Liberals, including Joe Biden, are recommending once again the outlawing of at least certain types of weapons. Meanwhile the gun lobby and the Republicans have circled the wagon to defend them. Well, I realise that in some areas of America gun crime actually went down when they legalised firearms and that there are areas where guns are very widely owned, but have a low rate of offending. I’ve also heard that the greatest drop in the incidence of such crimes was the passage of legislation back in the ’90s mandating a three-day cooling off period for people purchasing guns. That meant people had to wait three days between buying their gun and picking it up. It cut down on shootings because, by the time the purchaser could legally take possession of his gun, he’d calmed down enough not to want to blow away whoever it was who’d annoyed him. I’m aware that over here despite the ban on the public ownership of certain firearms and gun licensing, people are still being shot by criminals with guns. I’m also aware that culture may also play a part in these shootings. Michael Moore in his documentary Bowling For Columbine, which took its title from the Columbine school shooting, remarked on the colossal difference between the US and Canada on shootings. America’s a much larger country than Canada, with 350 or so million people compared to Canada’s c. 22 million. But Canada’s a much less violent society. At one point Moore looked across the Great Lakes from one American town to the Canadian city just across the water. The American town had been hit by several hundred shootings. Over in Canada, there were hardly any. This is despite Canada having much the same gun laws as the US and watching the same kind of violent action movies. People have been puzzling over this difference for a long time. Some have put it down to differences in the countries’ history. The expansion of Canada across the continent and its absorption of the Indian territories was largely peaceful in contrast to the violent displacement of the Indians in the US, although there were wars and Indian uprisings in Canada, such as that of the French-Indian metis Riel. And the treatment of the Amerindians in the boarding schools was every bit as horrific and genocidal as the comparative treatment of the First Nations in those in the US.

And the Republicans have also fallen back on the refrain that the root cause of such shootings is the mental health of the perp. The American leftist Robert Reich destroyed that argument. While the Republicans are now calling for more and better mental healthcare, nationally and locally they’ve cut mental health services when they’ve been in power.

As for the National Rifle Association, they first appeared as a pro-gun control group, co-operating with the US government to make certain types of weapons illegal. 85 per cent of the Association’s grassroots members also want certain types of firearms banned. But the leadership is dead against it, not least because they receive funding and subsidies from the gun manufacturers. This was graphically shown a year ago when NRA leader Wayne LaPierra and his several other leading figures in the Association were banged up for corruption and receiving kickbacks from the gun companies.

And now the racist and other bigots have started spouting nonsense. Today a Black woman has claimed that the police didn’t act, because the ten year old kids targeted by the gunman were illegal immigrants. I doubt this is true, not least because a number of the kids and the teacher gunned down were White. The Black YouTuber, RuinedLeon, put up a video attacking other bigots. One set had decided that there needs to be more vigilance on the Mexican border, because the shooter was an illegal immigrant. In fact the shooter, although Hispanic, was born in the US and from what I’ve seen of his victims, most of them were also Latino. RL also attacked other prejudiced voices, who claimed that the shooter was transgender. This was based on nothing more than their seeing a similarity between the shooter and a photograph of a transwoman or a crossdressing bloke in a dress. A casual glance showed that they were certainly not identical. For one thing, it looked like the transwoman was White. Several of my commenters are afraid that the current attacks on the trans ideology and trans activism from right-wing politicians, YouTubers and broadcasters like Matt Walsh and GB News are being done to stir up hatred against a sexual minority. I don’t think this is entirely the case, as I believe that some of the Conservatives like Walsh oppose it out of conviction. That said, GB News is struggling with the viewing figures, and so I don’t think that it does them any harm to put up anti-trans stories to appeal to their intended audience of right-wingers. And unfortunately this shows that some people have got so caught up in the trans controversy, that they are falsely blaming transpeople for atrocities that have nothing to do with them.

RL recommended instead that people shouldn’t jump to conclusions, although he freely admitted he’d done so about certain issues. As for his own attitude to guns, he wasn’t in favour of gun control. Instead, teachers should have firearms to protect their classes. I’m not sure that’s a good idea, as people like Maximilien Robespierre said in his video attack Donald Trump when he weighed in on this subject, that there would be nothing stopping an aggrieved teacher from blowing away their class. I’ve heard that this has supposedly happened. The Boomtown Rats’ song, ‘Tell Me Why I Don’t Like Mondays’ was supposedly based on a real incident when a teacher did open fire on her class. When asked why she did, she replied ‘I don’t like Mondays’. Schools should be for learning. No-one should have guns in them. As for Trump’s other suggestion, that they should have armoured doors, Robespierre wonder what would happen in the case of a fire when people had to leave quickly. And besides, schools are too much like prisons already, at least in Britain. The gates are our local schools are locked and remote controlled, so that you have to buzz in to request to be admitted. It no doubt keeps children safe, but it’s a sad reflection of the way our society has degenerated.

And the chilling part of these massacres it that there have been so many of them. Reich produced a list of the various school and other mass shootings since 1970. It’s as long as your arm. It’s all too often, almost like a regular event, that some maniac walks into a school, mosque, church, synagogue, nightclub or wherever and starts shooting. Only a few weeks ago a Black man went off and shot the people on a New York subway. I’ve also heard that this year there’s been 200 mass shootings according to the FBI. They definite a mass shooting as one in which there were three or more deceased.

Changing the culture so that it becomes more peaceful takes time and intelligence. It may not even be possible, and would no doubt be controversial. And expanding mental health services would probably be opposed in practice by the type of people who hate big government and anything that looks like a welfare state, no matter how much it’s needed. Really, it seems the only sensible solution is a ban on at least certain types of guns.

So that murderously angry 18 year old kids can’t get their mitts on military grade weapons, at least.

Here’s RuinedLeon’s video:

And this is Maximilien Robespierre:

Question Time Platforms Extreme Right-Wing Anti-NHS Group without Telling Viewers about Them

A day or so ago I put up a piece discussing how the right-wing Lotus Eaters on YouTube have decided that healthcare isn’t a right, thus showing their opposition to the basic principle underlying the NHS. But they’re not the only right-wingers, who despise the NHS in the name of absolute free trade and private enterprise. Another of these is the Institute of Economic Affairs, which has been promoting these policies since the 1970s. Northern Irish YouTuber Maximilien Robespierre posted this little video on his channel exposing how Emily Carver, a representative of the IEA, was a guest on Question Time. However, the Beeb did not deign to tell its viewers who the IEA was or what they stood for. And in fact, as the video shows, the IEA are very secretive about both their members and the organisation itself. They’re on a list of political organisations and think tanks ranked according to their transparency. And the IEA are in the red marked ‘highly opaque’.

Carver and her organisation’s secrecy was called out by the panellist representing the SNP. He pointed out that he and the other politicians on the show, from the Lib Dems and Labour, had no need to explain what their parties represented as everyone knew already. But Carver and the IEA were just introduced as ‘a think tank’. Carver blustered some rubbish in her defence about being willing to reveal their members’ identities if necessary, but were really just taking care to protect them. Robespierre also goes on to reveal just what the IEA stands for by showing their entry on Wikipedia. He also shows Carver’s own extreme private enterprise stance with a couple of articles she authored, including one asking if people were finally waking up to how dreadful the NHS was.

In fact the Beeb has form when it comes to platforming right-wing organisations on their news programmes without telling people about their connections. A few years ago a friend of mine pointed out how the right-wing Taxpayers Alliance were frequently invited onto the news to give their opinions on government spending and presented as an independent organisation. This is technically true, but the leadership were all members of the Conservative party, making them effectively a Tory front organisation.

Jacky Davis and Raymond Tallis have an entire chapter in their book, NHS SOS discussing the way the Beeb’s coverage of the health service is biased and supportive of its privatisation. Academics from Glasgow and Edinburgh universities showed a few years ago that the BBC was biased towards the political right, though the Tories and their supporters continue to brand it as left-wing and liberal. The inclusion of the IEA without informing the public of what they stand for is just more proof of the Beeb’s right-wing bias and the supporting someone in the Corporation is giving to the NHS’ privatisation.

Labour Peer Baroness Kennedy Calls Rees-Mogg, Farage and Johnson ‘Spoilt Brats’

Maximilien Robespierre is a left-wing YouTuber, who makes savage criticisms of the Tories in his gentle Irish brogue. And in the video below he skewers Jacob Rees-Mogg, the so-called ‘Minister for the 18th century’, who deserves every bit of criticism and more. Robespierre had previously put up a video showing Mogg’s reply to a Labour MP’s inquiry on how Brexit has turned out. In fact Brexit has been absolutely terrible for Britain. It’s been terrible for our manufacturing industry, for our farmers and our fishermen, all of whom were lied to about the prospective benefits by Mogg, Farage and Johnson himself. But Mogg refuses to admit it. He replied by saying that the House should begin with prayers for Brexit’s success, and they should sing ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’ in celebration of it and the benefits it’s brought. And then he lied about how the money from Brexit had been spent on the NHS, as the infamously mendacious advert on buses said it would. The extra money for the NHS hasn’t come from Brexit. It’s come from raising an additional levy on ordinary people’s pay.

The video is about a brief incident during a debate on one of the news shows. The subject is whether there should be more celebration of Brexit. The Labour peer, Baroness Kennedy, says it shouldn’t. And while she doesn’t hate all Tories – and here she says she likes and gets on with Ed Vasey – Rees-Mogg, Farage and Johnson belong to a class of rich, spoilt brats. Absolutely. Robespierre goes on to describe just how duplicitous Mogg has been over Brexit. At the same time he, Farage and Johnson were telling the British people that everything would be well, that it wouldn’t require extra paperwork, wouldn’t harm our industry and agriculture, and that the expats in Spain wouldn’t be touched by the Spanish government, Mogg himself was moving his business out of the country to Dublin. Robespierre laments the fact that, despite the lies to the manufacturers, farmers and fishing people, Rees-Mogg will not himself suffer personally. He should lose his seat, but he won’t, because it’s a safe Tory constituency. And despite the lies and failure of Brexit and the Tories, some people will continue voting for them.

Mogg is indeed a grotesque liar and hypocrite, but he won’t suffer under Brexit. He makes his money from finance and investment, and left-wing bloggers a few years ago noted that he had moved his investments overseas and so wouldn’t be affected by Brexit’s failure. I think the same can be said for Farage as a former City banker. They represent that part of the elite, which is able to dodge the consequences through globalisation and the ability to move money around from one country or continent to another. Mogg and Johnson deserve to lose their seats and, with Farage, their fortunes for the lies they’ve told about Brexit, and what it’s cost the British public. But they won’t because, even if they didn’t have safe seats – and I realise Farage isn’t an MP, so hasn’t one to lose – there are still people who would vote for them despite the lies.