Exciting times ahead!

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With the election of Jeremy Corbyn MP as leader of the loyal Opposition, and with John McDonnell MP as shadow chancellor, Labour has a powerful team at the very top.

There can be no more talk of psychodramas, so beloved of the right wing press, between the leader and the shadow chancellor. In fact McDonnell was on LBC yesterday explaining how his top economic team will be touring the country to give talks and to discuss the economic direction of this country.

Labour can only set out its vision with complete unity in direction between the leader and the Chancellor. This had been a problem for Labour where great ideas about health and social care would often get blocked by Ed Balls. Ed Balls is no longer a MP, as we know.

We have now seen the full fruits of the Health and Social Care Act (2012). Top analysts such as Lucy Reynolds argued that it was simply a mechanism to impose a private market on the NHS. She was right.

Social care is on its knees. Osborne’s latest gimmick of passing the buck to local authorities has been laughed out of town by all serious policy experts.

Labour had intended to move forward with ‘whole person care’, seeing people in health as well as illness, seeing the person not the conditions. This has gone full steam ahead in countries other than the UK.

Instead the UK is crippled by the quasi-leadership of Jeremy Hunt. A&E performance is a mess. Junior doctors are about to go on strike again. Junior nurses, lacking leadership in their profession, are distressed about the bursary proposals. PFI loans are still a mess, contributing to the poor economic performance of the NHS as a whole. The Mazars report has seen nobody senior taking responsibility for the demonstrably bad performance in Southern Health. The Government is secretly behind the scenes negotiating TTIP and ISPS clauses oiling the cogs for a full throttle multinational take-over of the NHS.

But Heidi Alexander MP is an excellent shadow Secretary of State for health.

These are tough times ahead, but the Socialist Health and Wellbeing Society is proud to support the work of the shadow cabinet, and that of Jeremy Corbyn MP in particular.

One thought on “Exciting times ahead!”

  1. Thanks. We in Australia are watching the UK political saga & shaking our heads at similarities as the Oz welfare rights agenda gets dismantled by huge cuts to Health, Education & Social Services. Ministerial shuffles, website portals in chaos, attacks on Medicare & privatisation of government services as multinationals gobble up more turf.

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