Not surprisingly, the last few weeks have seen no let up in the pace of events on the political stage, most of them worrying and/or downright nasty: the escalation of the Middle East conflict and constant platforming of our over-promoted Lord Dave; the passage of the Rwanda Bill (despite the best efforts of the Lords); the equally over-promoted Grant Shapps announcing the uncosted rise in defence spending at the same time as deleting 72,000 civil servant posts; the outing and Whip loss of yet another tainted Tory in the form of Mark Menzies; the ongoing Post Office Inquiry, which has heard even more appalling evidence of the organization’s misconduct; the continuing profiteering and environment wrecking antics of the water companies and Labour’s chutzpah in pinching the Tories’ name (Great British Railways) for the rail service it plans on assuming office. All of this against a backdrop of the question on everyone’s lips: when is Rishi Sunak going to call the election, since his government’s death throes are plain for all to see, epitomized not only by his own increasingly tetchy media performances (‘delivering for the British people’) but also the car crash interviews of his Cabinet, notably that of Home Office minister Chris Philp on last week’s Question Time. And most of this, if not all, is terrible for our mental health because besides the cost of living crisis and crumbling public services, we just cannot feel that our government is performing its proper role of constructively taking charge of the situation and caring for our wellbeing.
But what took centre stage on Saturday and since was the defection of Tory MP and NHS consultant psychiatrist Dan Poulter to Labour – apparently in the planning but kept under wraps for months. Despite the charge from some quarters that Poulter went along with the Conservatives’ NHS policies for years, implying a cynical opportunism on the doctor’s part, there’s no doubt that this has been a massive coup for Labour, timed to coincide with the lead up to the local elections on Thursday. It’s clear that the government’s response to this ambush has been writing more script for the inevitable questions during the Sunday political programmes and scrambling the troops for Operation Deflect, and it wasn’t long coming. On BBC’s Sunday Morning with Laura Kuenssberg, Robert Jenrick was quick to put the doctor down, describing his defection as ‘confused’, then both he and Chris Philp (who appeared to have needed no recovery time despite trending on Twitter for two days following his Question Time humiliation) tried to kid the audience that ‘under the Conservatives’ there had been ‘record investment’ in the NHS and in police numbers. Even the most gullible Tories must now be questioning these fibs and misrepresentations.
Regular readers of this blog will know that as a former therapist I bang on a lot about mental health and worsening NHS services: I think one of the key aspects of this defection is that Poulter isn’t just any old MP who’s never had a proper job. He’s an experienced NHS psychiatrist who has seen at first hand the decimation of services since the Conservatives came into office. ‘Working on the frontline of a health service under great strain left me at times, as an MP, struggling to look my NHS colleagues, my patients and my constituents in the eye. Throughout the small hours, my clinical colleagues and I cared for many patients suffering from serious psychosis who would routinely be waiting several days, rather than hours, in a windowless room in A&E for a mental health bed. The mental toll of a service stretched close to breaking point is not confined to patients and their families. It also weighs heavily on my NHS colleagues who are unable to deliver the right care in a system that simply no longer works for our patients. As a consultant psychiatrist, I am deeply concerned about the failure of the government to implement vital reforms to mental health law and to the 1983 Mental Health Act’….. a reminder that a review of the MHA was commissioned in 2017 but the Conservatives have taken no action on it.
And the killer blow: ‘Political ideology has been put before pragmatism and meeting the needs of patients – who are the real losers from the strikes. There has been a failure to address the longstanding pay concerns of NHS staff, and my nursing colleagues in particular, at a time of a cost of living crisis and increasing staff recruitment and retention challenges’. The Observer, which broke the story, says they gather that ‘discussions between Poulter and senior Labour figures have been going on for many months at the highest levels about the timing and organisation of his likely defection, as well as advisory roles he could play in future in developing the party’s health policies, with the benefit of his first-hand inside knowledge’. An X user tweeted: ‘Regardless of Dr Poulter’s record, the optics and timing of this defection has been spectacularly well managed by Labour and is a huge strategic defeat for Sunak and co’, another criticising the lack of challenge to Philp’s defence of record spending: ‘Philp gets away with his “We’ve increased NHS spending since 2010 by 40%” nonsense on the BBC because of weak journalism… Spending adjusted by population increase has stagnated. No more money is spent on any individual than it was in 2010’.
And of course another little thing Chris Philp avoided talking about is the increasing number of desperate patients effectively being forced to go private, often on the advice of an NHS doctor or consultant. It comes to something when these clinicians recommend it. It seems terrible that this government is deliberately changing the culture by hugely lowering our expectations of prompt treatment. ‘Long waiting lists are creating a boom in the medical insurance market, leading to fears of a long-term change in attitudes to the health service’. Apparently the key insurers are having to recruit many more call centre staff to deal with the additional enquiries. The private hospitals and some major companies have non-UK owners, so the tax revenue isn’t even accruing here.
‘UK private healthcare is mainly provided by a handful of companies that run hospitals and GP and dental practices: Abu Dhabi-owned Circle Health Group and the FTSE 250 firm Spire Healthcare are the two biggest, followed by the US company HCA Healthcare and the UK charity Nuffield Health, and Australia’s Ramsay Healthcare. Spire’s revenues climbed 13% to £1.4bn last year and it made pre-tax profits of £34.6m, up from £3.9m in 2022 when the business was still recovering from the pandemic’. But adding to the cost of private medical insurance, we’re told that the rise in claims, coupled with higher medical costs due to higher wage and energy bills, is driving up insurance premiums so those able to fork out can expect rises between 10 and 40% this year, with further increases likely in the future.
This article quotes the experience of one patient and there will be many more examples like hers. ‘I waited a month to see my GP, then another four months to see a consultant. His opening words were ‘unless you go private, there’s an 18-month waiting list’, which was a bit of a shock…Much against my principles, I agreed to go private’. She says how it made ‘a big hole’ in her finances: what about those who simply cannot afford private treatment? They just have to wait while their diagnosis and/or pain get steadily worse. And the government still refuses to acknowledge that many of these people account for the much-demonised ‘economically inactive’.
Chris Philp is either unaware of the extreme dissatisfaction many feel with this government, which has terrible poll ratings now, or is cynically playing it down, during his Kuenssberg interview saying that ‘people were grumpy with the government’. The understatement of the year. An irate X user said: ‘I’m not ‘grumpy’ – I’m bloody apoplectic with rage at their prolific corruption and waste of public money’. Amusingly, Philp tweeted on Sunday: ‘Glad to make clear to Laura (Kuenssberg) this morning that my point to the gentleman on QT last week was obviously a rhetorical question, not a substantive one, as I think any fair minded person would agree’ – pull the other one.
Responding to this blow PDQ is one thing you can bet the government will work ‘24/7’ on (or ‘straining every sinew’) and what do we see on Sunday? The cynical bringing forward of part of the Rwanda Scheme, in the form of theHome Office launching a surprise operation to detain asylum seekers across the UK on Monday in preparation for deportation to Rwanda, weeks earlier than expected. ‘Officials plan to hold refugees who turn up for routine meetings at immigration service offices and will also pick people up nationwide in a two-week exercise’. It sounds like we can expect to see the Home Office’s Immigration Enforcement vans on the streets very soon.
This desperate stunt is clearly designed to appeal to gammons prior to the 2nd May elections but surely, when the likely candidates get wind of this could it not result in said candidates not turning up to these meetings and disappearing? It will be galling for many trapped for ages in a non-moving justice system that suddenly Rishi Sunak has managed to conjure up courts, judges and 200 ‘dedicated caseworkers’ in order to process claims. Let’s hope media interviewers thoroughly grill ministers as to how this immigration enforcement exercise goes. For the moment Sunak is still insisting that his ‘plan’ is working, telling Sky News that people were ‘worried’ now about coming to the UK. Worried they may be, but as we know from other interviews, not deterred, which was his overriding reason for the entire Rwanda Plan.
In an ironic twist, it seems that no sooner has Sunak devised what he imagines is some clever plan to get rid of asylum seekers, some barrier is put in his way. The latest is the Irish government deciding to tackle the UK about the number of asylum seekers trying enter Ireland via the Northern Ireland border. It plans to return them and justice minister, Helen McEntee, will be bringing proposals to their Cabinet next week and also discussing this with Home Secretary James Cleverly and other British officials during a visit to London. We can safely assume that this is a meeting Dimly will not be looking forward to. What’s the betting, though, that it will be presented in the media as Cleverly doing some tough talking with this visitor when actually he is very much on the back foot.
We also see Tory rebels flailing amid the government’s death throes by proposing ‘a 100-day “policy blitz” to secure quick wins if the local election results prove disastrous for the party’. Good luck with that – it’s far too late in the day and such a transparent attempt to save their skins. But hey, Sunak means business: ‘The prime minister said on Sunday that he was not “distracted” by his personal ratings lingering at record lows’. For ‘distracted’ read not listening, either to his party or the public. ‘Their five-point plan to end the reign of “tinkering, dithering and managerialism” includes:
- An attempt to end the junior doctors pay dispute with a 10-12% offer.
- Further cuts to legal migration numbers, with a curb on the number of foreign students staying in the UK.
- Vow to increase defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2027.
- Introduce measures to jail prolific offenders and build rapid detention cells to increase prison capacity.
- Cut the benefits bill, with a target to reduce payments for depression and anxiety’.
But most of these will take much longer than 100 days and some are clearly into future. ‘A Tory source said: “These are policies that can be introduced in a few months and then go to the country for people to make a decision’. I don’t think so.
The Independent tells us that another part of the plan is to replace Sunak with Penny Mordaunt – they’d better not try it. The third unelected PM within three years. ‘The rebels are said to believe that if Commons leader Ms Mordaunt took power and launched a series of right-wing initiatives on tax, immigration and other issues, it could avert a Labour landslide in the election later this year’. How stupid do the rebels think we are?
It’s interesting that the above list doesn’t mention the category they call ‘illegal migrants’ – possibly hoping that the PM’s untenable Rwanda Scheme flops without their intervention. As we note the sad passing of former Labour MP and poverty campaigner Frank Field, and good to think there were once and still are some decent politicians in some quarters, more journalists are giving us amusing (if they weren’t so depressing) eviscerations of key politicians. Besides Sunak, Home Office minister Michael Tomlinson, ‘Lord’ Cameron, Oliver Dowden and Grant Shapps have had the witty take down treatment. In what must be a good candidate for Radio Interview of the Year (run by Feedback on Radio 4) Mishal Husain gave Home Office minister Tomlinson a gruelling grilling on the Today programme following the passing of the Rwanda Bill. You could hear him struggling, becoming increasingly irritated to the point of rudeness and resorting to bluster and repetition in trying to justify the absence of logic, common sense and substance underpinning the whole exercise.
‘Michael Tomlinson’s efforts to defend Rwanda bill show how well suited he is to be part of the new moronocracy. Where to start with Mikey? Rude, patronising and out of his depth: he’s got all bases covered. The long-suffering Mishal Husain began her Today programme interview with what she thought was a straightforward question. A gimme to settle Tomlinson’s nerves. When were the first asylum seekers and refugees going to be notified they were due for deportation? Mikey was pleased to report that there were 200 caseworkers working round the clock. Only they appeared to have done nothing. Nor could he say whether an airline had been found for the deportation flights…Husain moved on. Perhaps Tomlinson could say who would be eligible for deportation. Victims of torture? Victims of trafficking? “Absolutely,” insisted Mikey. Rwanda was a safe country. He knew that because Rish! had passed a law saying it was safe. People got far too exercised about human rights abuses and death squads’.
I thought it was unfortunate that it was felt necessary for the Post Office Inquiry to have such a long break, as there’s a danger of losing momentum, but once again many are glued to the proceedings, from which have emerged a never ending pile of scandalous evidence. After years of denial it was finally admitted that from the start senior managers had known about the Horizon system faults and the Inquiry is hearing the details of how some sub postmasters and mistresses were harassed to the point of taking their own lives in some cases. In the ‘dock’ last week was one of the key senior managers, Angela van den Bogerd, and what a cold fish she came across as, looking as if she had rehearsed her denials and deadpan responses to the expert grilling she was getting. Amongst many other things she was forced to admit that despite the finding in the High Court that she had lied, she still got her bonus.
‘The Post Office sought to “hush up” the case of Martin Griffiths, a post office operator who took his own life, by “drip feeding” compensation payments to his widow and lining up a media lawyer to protect its reputation….Angela van den Bogerd, a former business improvement director at the state-owned body, was being questioned at the Horizon IT public inquiry on Friday about the case of Griffiths, who died in 2013 after financial shortfalls were found at his Post Office branch in Cheshire… Edward Henry KC, representing a number of victims of the scandal, told Van den Bogerd that she must be “dishonest or grossly incompetent” to have not realised the significance of internal emails sent to her from 2010 to 2014 that said the IT system could be remotely accessed by Fujitsu, the Japanese IT company that developed it’.
It’s shocking and disgusting (and how common is this now becoming in public and commercial life?) that the Post Office lined up ‘specialist media lawyers’ to help them deal with enquiries resulting from the scandalous revelations. Another KC suggested that rather than care for the victim and their family, ‘It was all about brand reputation, brand image’. In a nutshell. Perhaps Bogerd herself is getting specialist coaching for this Inquiry as I suspect some giving evidence to the Covid Inquiry are. It’s also shocking (to me and must be to others) that so many seem prepared to lie under oath. How does a court or statutory inquiry deal with this? This is something for the Inquiry to keep a close eye on when Paula Vennells gives evidence from 22-24 May. Alan Bates, the former post operator and campaigner who inspired the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office, has suggested that as the Post Office made full use of private prosecutions, he and campaigners could do the same thing if the police continue to drag their feet. An X user asked on Twitter whether we would be prepared to help crowdfund this and I suspect many of us would.
Another topic that never stops trending on Twitter (have people got nothing better to do than follow the royals so slavishly?) is the state of the Royal Family in the context of the illnesses of the King and of the Princess of Wales. The brainwashing coverage seeks to convince us that the royals are important and work hard, when neither is the case. Now they’ve been lambasted for an issue raised many times before but not in such an eviscerating way: that of the absurd honours system and the Royal Family’s ability to confer pointless and archaic honours amongst themselves. Former Lib Dem MP Norman Baker launches off: ‘King Charles looked for heroes to honour – and picked William, Kate and Camilla. Laugh? Cry? You choose…. Can we really say Britain has a modernised monarchy when archaic titles are being handed out as if it were 1348, not 2024?’ He goes on to cite the meaningless titles of these honours, eg Grand Master of the Order of the British Empire (Camilla…. and empire??) and Companion of Honour (Kate, though this is supposed to be awarded for excelling in the arts, medicine or science).
And I’ve often wondered about this key point (not dissimilar to how hardworking and genuine peers might feel now in the company of so many charlatans): how do those who’ve properly earned an honour feel when the royals attend functions with zillions of medals pinned to their chests which they’ve done nothing to merit and award themselves these daft titles? ‘This latest set of nepotistic awards makes the royal family look ridiculous, arrogant and breezily self-serving. It also illustrates graphically how our monarchy is still an imperial one, wedded to a distant past and totally out of touch with modern Britain’. Oof!
You’ll have read about Venice introducing a much-needed tourist tax in order to deter the hordes who descend there daily and many other towns and cities are similarly suffering and considering something similar. But at least one commentator has wondered whether the 5 Euro fee will raise much, given that it doesn’t apply to residents, relatives of residents and people actually staying there – just day trippers like those emerging from cruise ships. A related formula has applied for years to many Italian towns and cities, usually 1.5 euros per tourist per night. I can’t think why this isn’t done here – surely a no brainer. Numerous officials and residents elsewhere will be keeping an eye on how this Venice scheme works out.
Finally, we’ve long heard comments and complaints about diners constantly using their phones in restaurants and now an Italian place has come up with a novel solution. Again, something to try here? The owner of Al Condominio in Verona is offering a free bottle of wine to customers prepared to dine minus their phone, in order to encourage customers to talk to each other. This sounds an interesting plan and could appeal especially given the pressure on people’s budgets!
Politics and mental health - the missing link? 