By Calum Paton
Well, the election campaign has started as its means to go on – in ridiculousness. First came Rishi’s rain-sodden announcement of the election for July 4, Independence Day (the U.S.’s; now ours too?!), with some tabloid wags changing Labour’s 1997 campaign song (D:Ream’s ‘Things Can Only Get Better’) to Things Can Only Get Wetter.
Then came the first BBC Question Time of the campaign, which was beyond dismal in the standard of political debate by the panellists, and included an audience member, desperate to be persuaded to support Labour, rightly skewering Labour’s Bridget Phillipson (Shadow Education Secretary) for failing to answer any questions.
I’m a (disillusioned) political junkie, but I’m not sure I can take six weeks of this.
I don’t want to pick on Phillipson, whom I neither know nor have really noticed much before. But her approach told us all that is wrong with Labour. They want to sound good on everything and please everybody on everything. But, coupled with the lack of money (in some cases their fiscal conservatism is so stifling that they seem to be guaranteeing even less than the Tories e.g. on funding the NHS Long Term Plan), that leads to an almost complete failure to make intelligent policy.
And, regarding the NHS, where there are at least statements of direction of travel, they are often mistaken, and indicative of sloganising rather than thinking. Wes Streeting thinks moving care to primary care will somehow square a whole collection of circles (see my previous blogs on how he is riding for a fall). And we hear that former ‘New Labour’ Health Secretary Alan Milburn is being lined up. This is the man whose expensive re-disorganization rivalled La-La Lansley’s later upheaval for waste and irrelevance – and at the same time ****ed away a sizeable chunk of Labour’s extra money for the NHS. If Milburn is the answer, then Labour is undoubtedly asking the wrong question. And don’t forget that Milburn opposed the 2022 Health and Care Act on the grounds that it was abolishing competition and reducing the need for tendering to involve the private sector.
Labour needs to decide where radical, new policies are necessary and affordable and where they are not. (I should rather say ‘needed’ to decide; it’s too late for this election.)
On health, the need is for stability and adequate funding. Radical ‘new’ policies would simply retard the NHS’s recovery. If Milburn is back, will he be seeking to reinvent his Noughties agenda? Watch out, Wes. Or maybe you agree with him? God help us all.
But let me take education as a prime example of where radical thinking is necessary but not forthcoming. The main reason I got so frustrated with Bridget Phillipson was her (non-) response to a question on the funding gap facing universities. She signally failed to answer how it could be closed.
The stark truth is that, alongside some of the best university courses in the world, we also have some real duffers. Simply ensuring access for working-class kids to ‘university’ without thinking carefully about both the nature of the university experience is to condemn poorer kids to debt (Phillipson failed even to rule out increasing fees, although of course saying she hates the idea of having to do so) without improving their life chances or economic prospects, in the case of more than a few courses.
Before you reach for your smelling salts at yours truly (an Emeritus Professor, for God’s sake) committing sacrilege, consider this. The real way to increase equality of opportunity for working-class kids is to tackle the school system. Not just breakfast clubs for primary school kids, Bridget, but properly taxing private education – one of the many policies watered down by Labour. Ideally, I would abolish mainstream (not specialist) private education. If Labour daren’t do anything which offends anyone right now, when the Tories are at 23% in the polls, then it never can. And alongside this, it has to sort out admissions policies for state schools so that the advantages of private schools are not simply reinvented in the state sector through property-price barriers to living near to good schools.
But in return, Labour has to say, we are not simply going to extend access to any-and-every university course. Our aim is to create the conditions for working-class kids to get better access to the best courses. If university places fall in number, courses close and institutions merge, then that is ok as long as access to good university places is equitable. And we will know if it has worked if there is downward mobility amongst the Boris classes!
Student loans have not led universities to compete effectively. Tuition fees are not used to discriminate in a good way i.e. to separate the wheat from the chaff among courses: they are simply ‘the national funding system’ (which has, inter alia, helped to fuel a cadre of overpaid Vice-Chancellors who live in a la-la land where they are gold-standard Chief Executives.)
Rethink education properly, Labour? Not much chance, it seems.
And in a six-week campaign, having a policy cupboard of promises watered-down with more water than Severn Trent’s reservoirs contain – and an even duller pledge-card than Blair’s in 1997 – will reduce the Labour lead, although they will still of course win. Having Shadow Ministers simply saying, for six weeks, ‘trust us’, will bore us to death.
Even on Gaza, Phillipson was out-thought on the Question Time panel by Tim Montgomerie, that rare beast, a reasonable Tory. On the issue of the International Criminal Court, Phillipson waffled excruciatingly. Montgomerie however asked, how come it is the Jewish state which is singled out by the ICC, when a host of abysmal states are not, and when UN flags fly at half-mast (on May 21st) for a deceased Iranian President who was part of a regime which has presided over the harassment, imprisonment, torture and deaths of innocent girls who simply wanted to dance, be happy and not wear the hijab? The same regime which supports Hamas and sends drones and missiles against Israel.
Things are not going to get better anytime soon. In fact, I might follow the example of the late George Carlin when it comes to ‘staying home’ on election day.
I never thought I’d feel like this, when the Tories’ performance during the pandemic was so execrable. Sure, if the result in my home constituency of the Staffordshire Moorlands was to be settled by my vote, and the election overall decided by one constituency, I would certainly turn out and vote Labour. But that ain’t going to be the case. (And don’t tell me that if everyone thought like that, nobody would vote – they don’t, and they will.)
About the author
Calum Paton is Emeritus Professor of Public Policy at Keele University, UK. He was Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Health Planning and Management between 1998 and 2019. He has advised UK politicians and various international agencies. He has authored ten books and numerous articles on health policy and politics. He chaired a major NHS hospital board in the UK from 2000 to 2006.
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