Stunning Result for Starmer as Labour Come Third in By-Election

Is this the type of electoral success Starmer is trying to tell us all will sweep Labour into government and himself into No. 10? Labour came third behind the Tories in the Newark and Sherwood by-election. Labour got 16.7 per cent of the vote, the Tories 17 per cent, but the seat was taken by an independent, who got 66 per cent of the vote. Starmer may be surprised at the result, as he seems massively deluded to the point that the declares Labour just scraping in as a major victory and endorsement of his leadership, but you could have predicted the result. How? Because Starmer is a Blairite, and this is how a large part of the British electorate acted in defiance of Blair and the Tories.

Blairism is just Thatcherism taken up by the left. As Blair sought to purge the party of any awkward left-wing policies, these were instead taken up by single issue activist groups outside parliament. And one of the issues the British people feel most strongly about is the closure of their local hospitals. Unfortunately, the Private Finance Initiative means that any hospitals built through such public-private partnerships are more expensive than would be the case if they were funded directly through government. As a result, the hospitals built under the scheme are smaller. And for those built, existing hospitals had to be closed. Blair tried doing this to a much-loved local hospital up in the midlands. I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the exact constituency. What I do remember is that the local people weren’t pleased. And neither were the staff at said hospital. In fact, they were so annoyed that they formed a political party with the aim of saving the hospital. One of the hospital doctors stood as their candidate in the election.

And they won.

Which also had the positive effect of embarrassing and annoying Blair, who poured scorn on the whole idea only to find his own MP out on their ear.

This is what will happen again if Starmer and the Blairites retain control of the Labour party.

Mike’s article about this grotty defeat also quotes from an article in the Morning Star, warning left-wingers that any success Starmer has will be made through a rejection of socialism and a genuine progressive political agenda. Starmer wants left-wing Labour members to vote against their own political ideals. And if Starmer is successful in purging the party and political system of socialism, it will be the coming generations that will be most harmed.

Mike therefore asks why people would vote for a party that doesn’t do what they want?

It’s a good question. I’m hoping that there’s a way the left can make a comeback from the leadership’s grossly anti-democratic attempts to keep them out of power permanently. But I also think that if Starmer and the other Blairites carry on, people will start looking at alternative groups and parties promoting goals that once upon a time Labour would have stood for. Like defending the NHS. I don’t trust Starmer to do it, and expect that as soon as private healthcare companies start sponsoring Labour, like they did Blair, he’ll suddenly be all for privatising it. There is, however, or was, a specific party set up to defend it – the NHS Action Party. If Starmer’s Labour doesn’t defend the NHS, then I suspect that people will start embarrassing him by voting for it, or parties like it, instead.

Just as they did so against Blair, and just as they did against Starmer and Johnson in Newark and Sherwood.

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2021/10/23/if-a-party-wont-do-what-you-want-why-would-you-vote-for-it/

Labour’s Powerful Pro-NHS Ad

Okay, a few moments ago I caught part of the Labour party’s new party political ad powerfully defending the NHS and attacking Tweezer and the Tories for its privatization. It featured actors taking the part of patients, doctors and hospital visitors talking about the perilous and shameful state the heath service is in thanks to the Tories’ cuts and privatization campaign. Interspersed with these were truly terrifying statistics. Like 7 million cancelled operations last year, the closure of 450 GP’s surgeries, £9 billion worth of contracts given to private healthcare firms, £7 billion cut from NHS budgets since 2010, and teenage suicides up by 50 per cent. And although the parts were played by actors, the stories they told were real. One doctor talked about how upsetting it was that she had to send parents half way across the country so that their child’s eating disorder could be treated. The various patients featured in the broadcast spoke about hospital overcrowding and patients being left in corridors. They spoke of their disgust that this was happening in one of the richest countries in the world. One black lad, playing a hospital visitor, said how he was most disgusted by nurses running down the corridor, having to rush out and pay a parking meter so that people could visit their loved ones in hospital. The black woman doctor said how she had heard fair words about treating mental health, but the reality was that social care budgets were being slashed all the time. They also lamented how people were being sent to hospital casualty departments because they couldn’t see their doctor.

And the advert said openly what this was all really about, but what the Tories are desperate to hide from us. One of the patients declared that this was about the Tories’ selling off the health service to their friends.

The Tories deny it, of course, but this is the truth. It’s laid out very clearly in a number of books, like NHS SOS, edited by Jacky Davis and Raymond Tallis (London: One World 2013).

I’ve also written a short book describing how the Tories – and Blair’s New Labour – have been determined to sell off the NHS, Privatisation: Killing the NHS, available from Lulu, price £5.25. See here for details: http://www.lulu.com/shop/david-sivier/privatisation-killing-the-nhs/paperback/product-22828232.html

I’ve got a few copies here, so if anyone wants one, let me know and I’ll post them to you. The cost will be as stated plus that of postage.

Labour’s pro-NHS advert is one that desperately needed to be made. It could have come from the NHS Action party, which was formed when Blair started privatizing the NHS and closing hospitals, following the political and economic ideology of his heroine, Maggie Thatcher. It’s great that the party that founded the NHS, the party of Clement Attlee and Nye Bevan, should now have returned to its socialist roots and pledging to end its privatization and give it some real, proper funding.

But this was always the policy of Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters in the Labour party. I found this short video from RT’s Going Underground on YouTube, put up on January 19th, 2019. It shows a woman, who is then joined by a man, walking through a suburban residential district, while Corbyn’s voice intones about a country that believes in fairness, in shared ideals, while they walk past a street named after Clement Attlee.

Rattansi was also discussing the massive defeat that day of Tweezer’s motion on Brexit, the biggest defeat for a post-War prime minister. It shows one MP saying in the debate that the chamber was once the seat of Clement Attlee and Winston Churchill. Now it’s just a farce.

From that, Rattansi goes to talk about the late British WWII hero, Harry Leslie Smith, who made it very clear that he supported Jeremy Corbyn. This is followed by a clip from what looks like Channel 4 News when, speaking from Ontario, Canada, Smith said that Corbyn reminded him of Clement Attlee in 1945, and he thought that if Corbyn put his shoulder to the wheel he’d change England for the better, just like Attlee did. Which to my eyes doesn’t seem to go down terribly well with the presenter, who appears to purse her lips tightly and suppress a smirk when he says this.

I’ve no doubt that over the following days and weeks we’ll get the Tories claiming that they’re putting more money into the NHS than ever before, loudly deny that they’re privatizing it and declare that they’re going to increase funding.

It’s all lies.

Mike in his articles has taken apart these claims, showing that budgets are still being slashed, despite the Tories’ statement that they will increase funding and Tweezer’s vaunted vision of the NHS for the next decade.

Just like Thatcher’s claim that ‘the NHS is safe with us’ was a lie, when in 1987 she was very much thinking about privatizing it, and then under John Major the Private Finance Initiative was introduced with the connivance of American insurance fraudster, Unum, in order to open it up to private industry.

I’ve also no doubt that we’ll be hearing more screams about how Labour is viciously anti-Semitic, or that Jeremy Corbyn is losing young voters because of his stance on Brexit. More lies and slurs, as you’d expect from the Blairites in the Labour party, who are utterly complicit in the Thatcherite privatization programme, and the Tory establishment and media outside.

The reality is that the Tories are determined to privatise the NHS, and with a few rare exceptions, the lamestream media has been complicit in it. There’s an entire chapter in the Davis and Tallis book describing how the Beeb actively promoted the Health Service’s privatization.

Don’t be taken in by the Tories and Blairite’s lies and smears. Only Jeremy Corbyn can be relied on to save the NHS, and so it’s vitally important to support him in the Labour party and get him into No.10 and Tweezer out.

The People of Stoke on Trent Say What They Think of Kipper Nuttall

Bottom’s Eddie Hitler and Paul Nuttall. The likeness is frightening.

Over the past week, Mike’s run some brilliant articles about the people of Stoke on Trent expressing their displeasure at Paul Nuttall’s attempt to be elected their MP. I’ve said before that Nuttall looks like Ade Edmondson’s character from the BBC comedy series, Bottom, the stupid, coarse and violent Eddie Hitler. Bottom, however, was intended to be deliberately funny, while there is nothing remotely comic about the racism, misogyny, homophobia and bigotry Nuttall and his party represent. Nuttall’s own attitude to the town and its people is derisory. He has never lived there, and cynically took up residence only a couple of days after he filed his candidacy. The contempt with which he treats them is reciprocated, and the good burghers are fighting back.

Yesterday Mike put up two photos showing just what local people think of Nuttall and the Kippers. One is of a notice in a house window, which states

‘Dear UKIP, Go away. I am neither racist, nor homophobic and you offend me.’

And the ladies of Women Against UKIP put up a mock Blue Plaque in Nuttall’s honour. This reads, ‘Paul Nuttall, leader of UKIP 2016- Did not live here’.

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/02/05/spotted-in-stoke-the-quiet-anti-ukip-campaign-is-growing/

Today Mike’s put up another piece showing a video from Chunky Mark, the artist taxi driver, in which he talks to three people from Stoke on Trent, who give their views on Nuttall and his office in the town. It’s a man and two women. The man makes the acute observation that Nuttall’s office used to be a pie shop, ‘Now it’s a lie shop.’ He states that Nuttall’s party is about causing division, not about helping the people of Stoke on Trent. Nuttall and his party wish to privatise the NHS and schools, abolish maternity and other welfare benefits, on which plenty of people in Stoke rely. And now after making it clear that he wants to privatise the NHS, he now claims to want to save the NHS.

The two women share the man’s views on Nuttall. They also makes the point that he doesn’t really want to work for the people of Stoke on Trent, and is just spreading hatred and racism. One of the women reminds the viewers that Nuttall did say he wanted to privatise the NHS, because we have an aging population. She emphasises this, to show Nuttalls contempt for this most precious of British institutions and Britain’s seniors. She also objects to Nuttall claiming that immigrants are coming to take our benefits. She finds this hurtful to the people of her town, and to the immigrants, who come here and work hard and do not take benefits. And now Nuttall’s pasted his lies up. She states that she is ashamed of the shop, and afraid that his lies will infect the local people. As for Nuttall demanding a ‘quick Brexit’, she states that Britain has voted for Brexit, and it’s going to happen. But we need the best deal, and a quick Brexit is not the answer.

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/02/06/ukip-in-stoke-on-trent-that-used-to-be-a-pie-shop-now-its-a-lie-shop/

All of this is exactly true. I think the NHS Action Party has a video up showing Nuttall saying quite clearly that he wants to privatise the NHS. And his statement that immigrants are coming here to steal our benefits is another lie. Mike and the other bloggers have posted up the stats plenty of times showing that immigrants to Britain are net contributors to the welfare state. But it’s convenient propaganda to work people up against foreigners, along with the lie that they’re stealing our jobs.

What comes across from this video and the other pics Mike’s put up is that the people of Stoke are ordinary and decent, and extremely and rightly worried that Nuttall and his stormtroopers will whip up racial tension and hatred. Their anti-welfare policies will cause more poverty. The Kippers are doing this purely for their own national political ambitions, without any regard for the local people their divisive policies will hurt. And I’ve no doubt that this could be applied to other towns up and down the country where the Kippers are standing.

Vox Political: Hospitals Overstretched, but Chief Nursing Officer Wants Beds Cut

Yesterday Mike also put up a story commenting on a tweet by Clive Peedell, of the NHS Action Party. Peedell was justifiably outraged by the attitude of the Chief Nursing Officer, Janet M. Cummings. At a time when the NHS is seriously overstretched because of a shortage of beds, Cummings decided that the number of Acute beds should be cut. Peedell stated that she should resign. Mike concurs, but asks if anyone knows the procedure for how to make the public’s feelings known about this.

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/01/06/hospitals-warn-over-patient-numbers-while-nursing-officer-wants-bed-numbers-cut-contradiction/

Unfortunately, Cummings isn’t the only senior official within the NHS, who seems determined to destroy public healthcare. Back when Blair was P.M., the head of NHS strategy was Dr Penny Dash, who was as keen as Blair was to privatise the health service. In 2002 she wrote an article in the Graun about how the government should encourage consultants, surgeons

and indeed other groups of doctors, to form their own companies (or join existing private health providers) to sell their services back to the NHS.

She continued

Freed from the stifling grip of the NHS, these would be able to perform procedures in either the NHS or private hospitals, and would be able to form businesses of their own, raise capital, invest in new technology, or join up with the suppliers of such, and then would be able to offer a ‘full service solution’ to failing NHS hospitals. This, she claimed, could be the development that Blair and Milburn really wanted. (See Stewart Player, ‘Ready for Market’, in Jacky Davis and Raymond Tallis, NHS-SOS, pp. 46-7). You won’t be surprised to learn that after leaving the Department of Health, Dash went off to work for McKinsey, the American private insurance giant. She played a leading role in producing the two ‘Darzi’ reports recommending limiting NHS provision in London, and the system of privately run polyclinics. (p. 60).

And then in 2006, there was the establishment of the National Leadership Network of 150 health policy makers, management consultants, NHS Trust and private healthcare executives, as well as medical professionals, leaders and regulators, to ‘provide collective leadership for the next phase of transformation, advise ministers on developing policies and promote shared values and behaviours.’ And one of the first documents they produced, recommending the introduction of privatised services shared between the NHS and private sector, was Strengthening Local Services: The Future of the Acute Hospital. It seems to me that Cummings is a product, one way or another, of that network.

Mike wrote an article earlier this week stating very clearly that there was a toxic culture at the top of the NHS. It started with Blair, and its grown and expanded with Cameron, May and the Conservatives, aided by the Lib Dems. The only person, who has shown they genuinely want to roll back the privatisation of the NHS to Jeremy Corbyn.

He needs our support.

And the others need to be kicked out.

NHS Doctors Now Required to Ask Patients to Use Private Health Insurance

I’ve been putting off looking at some of the NHS stories Mike’s posted up over at Vox Political, on the grounds that the Tory and New Labour privatisation of the Health Service makes me both extremely depressed and absolutely boiling mad. But the issue’s far too important to leave alone.

Today Mike posted up a little snippet from The Canary, which reported that NHS chiefs are now asking doctors to politely ask their patients if they have private health insurance. If they answer ‘yes’, the doctor is supposed to gently remind them to use it. The Canary states that this signals the end of the NHS, and universal free healthcare.

See: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/09/06/theres-a-question-doctors-are-now-being-urged-to-ask-patients-and-it-signals-the-end-of-the-nhs-the-canary/

Absolutely, and it’s what over three decades of right-wing administrations have wanted going all the way back to Maggie Thatcher. Despite her protestations in her autobiography, she really was considering privatising the NHS. She discussed it with the cabinet and Douglas Hurd, nearly provoking a rebellion. This wasn’t because her cabinet believed in the NHS. They just saw the writing on the wall and knew that if she went ahead, that would be the end of the Tory party at the next election. She also decided against it after she sent her private secretary, Patrick Jenkin, to the States. He came back and told her precisely how dreadful the American system was.

Nevertheless, she still stated that she wanted a greater role for private medicine, and enacted policies designed to encourage people to take out private health insurance. She wanted 25 per cent of the population to have it, and was disappointed when very few in actual fact did so. Amongst the newspapers pushing this policy was the Express, which published a long piece raving about how those with such insurance should have tax cuts in its Sunday edition.

The privatisation of the NHS continued with the Tories’ introduction of the PFI and the expansion of the scheme and break up the NHS by Tony Blair’s New Labour. Hospitals have been taken out of the bureaucratic structure of the NHS and encouraged to become self-financing. They’ve also been handed over to private management, and the clinics and walk-in centres set up by New Labour were also intended to be privately managed. Well over half of all operations are now carried out by private healthcare firms. The Care Commissioning Groups, which were introduced with loud noises about giving doctors the power to run their own practices are able to commission private healthcare firms to contract for services, and can themselves raise money through private finance. This was taken over by the Tories, and has been expanded even further. At the last parliament, I reposted a meme that showed just how many Tory and Lib Dem MPs had connections to private healthcare firms hoping to profit from the demise of the NHS. It was a lot – about or over 100, if I recall correctly. The Angry Yorkshireman and Mike have also reported comments by Jeremy Hunt, the current health minister, and other Tories attacking the NHS. Hunt, or one of them, has described it as ‘an abomination’. My guess is that this anger probably comes from the Tory hatred of having to pay for public services, which they almost personally resent as the state forcing them to pay for someone’s else’s benefit. I also believe they despise it because it’s a state-run service, and so excludes them for profiting. It’s why Peter Lilley introduced the Private Finance Initiative all those decades ago when John Major was in power: he wanted to find a way to open up the NHS to private investment.

And now New Labour and the Tories are moving another step closer to the final privatisation of the health service. This is being done through a manufactured financial crisis. Blair and Brown did much damage to the NHS, but when they left office it was in budget and did not need further reform. That has changed, due not least to Jeremy Hunt. Even now, Jacky Davis and Raymond Tallis in their book, NHS-SOS state that the problem isn’t that the NHS is underfunded – it’s that NHS funds are being squandered and misdirected due to the introduction of private enterprise into the service. The bureaucracy in these firms and their shareholders profit, while soaking up money that would otherwise go to providing services.

The privatisation of the NHS is a national scandal. There are activist groups pledged to defending it, like the NHS Action Party and doctors’ groups and organisations. These and their on-line addresses can be found in Davis’ and Tallis’ book.

At one time the assaults on the NHS would have resulted in a wave of strikes, public protests and demonstrations. But the Tories have all but destroyed the unions, and cowed the public with a mixture of massive debt and job insecurity. And it’s going to get worse when Brexit takes effect.

Don’t let the mass media deceive you with the pro-Tory, pro-New Labour bias. When you read the papers attacking Jeremy Corbyn and praising Theresa May, just like the Beeb does on TV with Laura Kuenssberg, remember that these are the policies Smith in the Labour party, and his backers Benn et al, and the Tories stand for. Corbyn has said that he wants to renationalise the NHS, and that’s too much for the Tories and Blairite corporatists. These people should be thrown out of power as quickly as possible, before more people die or are harmed by their greed and mendacity.

NHS Doctor Wants to Debate Farage over ‘Bollocks’ Cancer Story

According to this story in the Indie, Nigel Farage told: Blaming the NHS for losing your testicle is bollocks, Dr John Lamport, who is standing for the NHS Action Party in Nottingham East, has rebutted Nigel Farage’s comments about having lost a testicle to cancer due to NHS incompetence in an article on the Open Democracy site.

The doctor states that he also lost a testicle to cancer, but there the similarity between him and the Fuhrage ends. The article quotes the doctors as saying

“Nigel Farage likes a good debate I’m told, so here’s my offer. Head-to-head, one-ball to one-ball, let’s really hammer out what Nigel is selling the British public and why it’s bollocks.

“Nigel has twice told the story of his cancer in print, four years apart and significantly different in detail. I can’t pronounce on his case but I do know his amateur self-diagnosis – “All they had had to do that first night in A&E was to have me referred for a scan” – is bollocks.”

The article’s at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/generalelection/nigel-farage-told-blaming-the-nhs-for-losing-your-testicle-is-bollocks-10128365.html

Dr Lamport was so moved by Farage’s comments about the NHS that he wrote a letter to the Telegraph taking the Purple Duce to task. As for the NHS Action party, that was formed over a decade ago to fight the closure of local NHS hospitals in the midlands under Blair.

Dr Lamport in his letter stated that the NHS needed to be well-funded, nationalised, and free at the point of delivery.

Everything, in fact, that Farage’s party would like to get rid of, and which the Tories and their Lib Dem enablers are doing their best to destroy through creeping privatisation.