There's no point treating Streeting like a good faith actor. You can show him all the data in the world about how private health care undermines the NHS, drains resources, ponces off the skills paid for by the public purse, and is no better in quality or outcome beyond jumping the queue. You can also tell him until you're blue in the face that there is no spare capacity in private health, or that the idea waiting lists can be run down in double quick time is completely mistaken. He does not care. Streeting's job is to create more marketised opportunities for capital underwritten, as always, by state money. No argument is going to force him from this goal. He is not mistaken, he is determined.
What interests here is Streeting's use of 'ideology'. We regularly see it used in politics to refer to the more "exotic" elements of the Conservative Party. I.e. The Tories persist in cutting social security or peddling racist drivel because of their ideology. For reasons that are never explored, they are blind to the realities that intrude upon their dogmas. It therefore shows them to be irrational and therefore unfit for office. Or, if you like, fundamentally honest but completely clueless. It is, of course, nonsense. Persisting in the view that the Tories are driven by the wrong ideas gets them off the hook. It suggests that politics is a marketplace of ideas, and not what it really is: a battleground for interests.
Streeting's deployment of ideology has a different target, but is contrived to have the same effect. I.e. The opponents of his eminently sensible desire to let private health gorge itself at the NHS trough are zealots driven by inflexible principles and dogma. It denies the actual grounds of the left's criticisms of Streeting, one rooted in anticipation of the real world consequences of the policy he wants to ram through. He's taking the "what works" moral high ground, masking the interests he's very keen to serve at the expense of our class interests in a free, comprehensive, and non-commodified health service unbeholden to profit making and profit taking. Here, pretending his critics are opposed to him because of funny ideas denies the material stakes we have in the health service, as well as the rewards he and his backers can look forward to should they get their way. It's the game of depoliticising politics so the imperatives of capital are unquestioned and, presumably, the coming government shielded from political blowback. Because such efforts did John Major, Gordon Brown, and now Rishi Sunak so many favours.
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Well, yes. Standard stuff, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteBut on a more interesting not, My God, Look At His Face! When I was little, I used to walk backwards rather than be frightened by faces like that on billboards.
It is "standard", but you have to keep reiterating the basics. Particularly when the "ideology" argument is common currency in public discourse!
ReplyDeleteHe does look like a shop mannekin - entirely made of plastic. In fact, if you were to create a robot neoliberal politician' it would be he. Just enough AI to allow him to sound vaguely plausible, and to respond as we expect a politician to - i.e. never answer the question, always use slogans and pre-prepared phrases. His look is clearly modelled on Starmer - down to the hair that never moves, and the weirdly squared head shape. He's a Starmer mini-me.
ReplyDeletePutting aside the odd appearance and the fact that he could be a cyborg, both he and Starmer are part of the neoliberal zombie period. Neoliberalism has created a world which has impoverished many and failed to meet the expectations of even more, and that as a consequence of its repeated failures over 40 years it has undermined democracy so that as Chantal Mouffeputs it, we are in a "post-Democracy". She says "as a consequence of the hegemony of neoliberalism all the democratic aspects of liberal democracy — namely equality and popular sovereignty — have been emptied". The inevitable counter-movement to this is populism. So the attempts by Starmer and Streeting and Reeves to re-establish neoliberal government by better 'management' will lead to an increased backlash when it fails - as it undoubtedly will.
They are setting the scene for a resurgence of the right in populist form. They have extinguished the brief flickering of life by left populism through a concerted and deliberate campaign, but this leaves the terrain open to the right. Like the Tories, they now seek to attract and absorb elements of populism to control them and bring them in to their sphere. But this will fail too, as the fundamental logic of neoliberalism conflicts with populism.
To put it simply, our financialised economy designed to extract wealth upwards is incompatible with delivering an acceptable standard of living and well being to a mass of the population. Ultimately, it is a kind of anti-mass-prosperity engine. Trying to disguise this with slogans and by stoking up antagonism towards other struggling groups can't hide this reality. Increased authoritarian responses to popular anger up the pressure. Add to that the rising literal tide of environmental degradation and chaos, and the centre will not hold. Eventually it will explode without some other means of redirecting it - such as a war. But a modern major war could also open the gates to radical change, if it doesn't destroy us all.
To put it even more simply. Starmer, Reeves and Streeting propose to do more of the same, but do it 'better'. That's it. They think the problem is not in the content of the policies, but the implementation. As if the 40 years of accumulated practical experience of how embedding the vampire squid of financialisation into public services hollows them out and degrades them is a blip, a little misunderstanding. We can do it properly, they urge. From the point of view of those who benefit from this system it doesn't matter that they can't, so long as enough fools think they can, and any alternatives are crushed. This is TINA, we know she never delivers, but...TINA.
ReplyDelete'More private health care involvement' is the reason I will not be voting Labour for the very first time. (I don't consider myself to be particularly 'left'). My Grandad told me the facts of what it was like for his parents prior to the NHS. That 'market' health care 'ideology' causes real hardship and pain to working people. That is the history of our country that we must not forget.
ReplyDeleteIt’s interesting that no commentators, including yourself, have poked at his notion of “middle class” Labour members.
ReplyDeleteThe use of the term “middle class” hasn’t been useful for decades now. I will simply assert this.
Who’d have thought that 50 years after Parkin suggested that the increasingly “middle class” membership of the LP would move the LP to the right, that he thinks that it is more to the “left” than the voters. Presumably Streeting’s use of this argument bears the same relationship to reality as the accusations of “anti-semitism” against Corbyn supporters.
I do think we need to revive the term 'ideology' in the older socialist sense, as a set of ideas not consciously adopted (as Streeting uses it) but taken-for-granted, presenting themselves as just 'reality' or 'common sense', 'the way of the world.' It's such assumptions that Streeting is employing.
ReplyDeleteOh the tough people making the tough decisions about other people's lives. Such as access to high quality health care for the young, the old, rich and poor, now and in the future. The vanity of these 'tough' people.
ReplyDeleteI think the word you need is 'Doxa'. Popular opinion or accepted (but unsupported) understanding, as opposed to 'episteme', or factual, evidence based knowledge.
ReplyDeleteStreeting's view of what is accepted belief will be very different from mine, as it depends on the circles you mix in, and the people you listen to.
You said it. Not a tough choice now for me. Voting Green.
ReplyDeleteIn most circles in the UK full time working adults do not have the earnings that Streeting does and will never have that opportunity either.
ReplyDeleteI wont be voting for a privatised NHS either. I expect I will have to vote Green. Yes of course Labour will win. Lets us hope there will be a policy/ direction change with respect to the NHS.
ReplyDeleteI can just afford to pay for private health care for my cat. Don't know if the vet will give me a discount? Or do it yourself days prior to the NHS.
ReplyDeleteVote for defence spending. A publicly funded NHS. The best defence for you and your children.
ReplyDeleteMPs have the income to pay for private health insurance for their families most other people don't.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. Average income in the UK £32,500.
ReplyDeleteThere are pros and cons to greater private provision in public healthcare in the UK, and the way in which the arguments are deliberately misrepresented by different sides is indicative of both ideological positions and sectional interests. Will more private healthcare make us more like the USA or more like France or Australia? Is putting an ever growing share of GDP into the NHS really a sustainable solution and what happens at the inevitable conclusion of such a policy? Is monopsony really beneficial to healthcare workers, should they be indentured? Who pays and who provides are entirely different arguments, just as profit making and efficient patient outcomes are not mutually exclusive.
ReplyDeleteJust like the failure of privatised Adult Social Care.
ReplyDelete'Both the quality of care as well as the terms of conditions of the workforce over the past two decades is a direct result of this privatisation'.
(Centre for Health and the Public Interest Report: 'The Failure of Privatised Adult Social Care in England...')
First the Tories and then Labour. There will be nothing left soon.
ReplyDeleteIs this the best we can do or hope for?
ReplyDelete