THE NHS – SAFE IN OUR HANDS

Margaret Thatcher:
"The NHS is safe in our hands. The elderly are safe in our hands. The sick are safe in our hands. The surgeons are safe in our hands. The nurses are safe in our hands. The doctors are safe in our hands. The dentists are safe in our hands.

David Cameron:
"it's not just a question of saying the NHS is safe in my hands. My family is so often in the hands of the NHS - so I want them to be safe there."

New Labour. UNISON, labour link news - june 2007
"THE NHS – SAFE IN OUR HANDS"

Thanks to John Nicholson, for bringing this to my attention

Tories versus New Labour: the ideological differences

John Hutton was putting forward his proposals for welfare reform yesterday at the CBI Public Forum. CBI boss Richard Lambert who only recently was arguing that private equity is jolly fine idea:

"Private equity offers a new and compelling business model for the 21st century, free from some of the burdensome restraints of publicly-owned companies. It generates real benefits for the UK in terms of jobs, leaner and more efficient businesses, and wealth creation.”

Well, he should tell that to workers at AA, for instance......

But back to Hutton's proposals which are wedded in this idea of “rights and responsibilities”. This should be known as “guff speak” because it is meaningless spin. By creating incentives for companies getting claimants back into work, this will expose the increasing emphasis on how marketable we are for employment.

Even though Hutton warns companies from cherry picking the easier claimants it will be inevitable that they will indulge in “park and cream”, which means they will “park” people they consider hard to get into work while “creaming” off the profits of those will they consider easy to get into a job. Hardly treating people equally or responding to the needs of the claimants, is it? It will be also a complicated process as well.

But now we have Gordon Brown as LP leader who will push through reforms of the public services with further marketisation and privatisation, is he any better or worse than David Cameron? I would argue there is a distinct ideological difference between New Labour and the Tories. New Labour thinks that the working class can be integrated into corporate capitalist projects by using the state. The buzz phrase is the "enabling state". i.e. proposals about citizenship, for example.

Tories see the state retreating to a role of safeguarding property rights especially against the working class and those oppressed and marginalised by corporate capitalism (a kind of night- watchman state). Otherwise they view state activity and public spending as a fetter on capital accumulation. Low taxes and provision of the cheap and exploited labour and defending the rights of the bourgeoisie as a class.

The two ideologies can merge into one and distinction can be blurred but there is a significant difference. The Tories will accelerate and turbo charge their attacks for one thing. They don't have the contradictions and the pressure New Labour do and again the Tories have the interests of their own class to think about and supporting the poor isn't one of its goals.

I am not saying that New Labour are any better but they are an enemy with a fundamentally different approach than the Tories.

Tories cutting law centre's funding....

Hammersmith and Fulham Community Law Centre are facing a massive cut of £160,000 (reduction of more than 60%) as part of an overhaul of the council’s voluntary and community sector grants programme. Obviously many voluntary organisations rely on council grants for its life blood. People in the borough will rely on the support and advice in areas such as housing, employment, immigration and asylum. This will be a massive blow to the services this law centre will be able to provide. Another organisation in the borough that is also facing closure is Horn of Africa community centre.

The law centre also claims that the Tory council are reducing their grant on ideological grounds. According to them a couple of council reps who sit on the management committee have queried why they sue the council when they are being funded by it. If this is the case then it is indeed worrying because it could lead to a dangerous precedent. The idea of constitutional checks and balances seems to have been dumped completely by most establishment thinkers.
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The council disagrees instead they claim they would redistribute grants to groups that would help build “safer and healthier communities support the elderly, children and young people”…. “High quality and value for money services” (I suspect they think good advice is too expensive…). The buzz word throughout is “value for money" along with a cut in the council tax. The law centre maintains that they fit the council’s priorities and believe that there is a political agenda at work.

Interesting this has happened since the Tories became the majority on Hammersmith and Fulham council after May 2006 local elections. And here they are merrily chopping away funding for the voluntary sector. Along with New Labour, both are very authoritarian especially towards the powerless in this society. I am sure there is a general dislike of poor people having the audacity and cheek to challenge authority with council cash. And with the cutting to the bone of legal aid many voluntary organisations will be scrabbling around for funding this will inevitably mean the continued shrinking of free legal good advice.

The workers at the law centre have set up a blogsite to fight the proposals and advertise the ongoing protests. Good luck comrades with the fight!

"Pooftahs" Not Included

Desmond Swayne, David Cameron's trusted bag-carrier, was trusted to do the Cameroonian thing in the case of Patrick Mercer, the frontbench Tory sacked for comments thought to be racist and unbecoming of a new newness New Tory. With real vim did Dizzy Des back up Cameron's decision to sack Mercer.

Well, fair enough, Des, if you feel that this sort of language deserves punishment. How long, then, before you, Dizzy Des, do the decent thing and resign for referring to gays as "pooftahs"? Perhaps David Cameron will do the decent thing and get rid of Swayne? I doubt it. A good and trusted bag-carrier is a rare find.

David - so cute about the bomb

David Cameron’s decision to impose a three line whip on Wednesday’s Trident vote is a piece of political cunning worthy of Niccolò Machiavelli himself.

This will cause almost no damage to the Tories electoral interests, as everyone expects them to be right wing on defence issues. And it doesn't detract much from the generally succesful repositioning of the Tories, which we shouldn't forget is to the left of Labour on many issues.

But given the expected size of the Labour rebellion, it means that Tony Blair will only win with Tory votes. And Gordon Brown is as compromised as Blair on this issue. Cameron's help on is a political disaster for Labour, much worse than a common's defeat would be.

I just finished a phone call with my mum, who has voted Labour in every election since 1945, and she told me that for the first time she has decided never to vote Labour again – the final straw being Trident. Like so many of Labour’s increasingly elderly vote she had been voting for the historical tradition not the current reality. In her mind she was voting for Attlee and Wilson, not Blair, and each vote represented the triumph of hope over experience.

By saving Blair’s bacon on Wednesday, Cameron is sending a very clever signal to many Labour voters that Brown and Blair represent a decisive break with the historical progressive traditions of the Labour Party.

Of course Labour governments have supported the bomb before, but the argument has moved on. Not only has the context made nuclear weapons less defensible, but the loyalty of the socialist proportion of Labour’s vote has never been stretched so thin. Yet another reason to not turn out for Labour this May.

We need to get used to the idea of a Tory government. Of course the political context for building working class politics is better under a labour government than under the Tories, but in policy terms, could the Tories be much worse than Gordon Brown?