As the days pass things are looking worse and worse for Rishi Sunak: the Tories are doing badly in the polls; he hasn’t succeeded on any of his pledges from last year; the Rwanda Bill he’s nailed his colours to will face more challenges in the Lords; he’s been warned by the IMF about the much trumpeted tax cuts and he comes over as increasingly out of touch in the Commons and in the media. He’s also being increasingly challenged by rebels in his party. Last weekend there was the attack by ‘Sir’ Simon Clarke, others including Kemi Badenoch plotting on the sidelines. As sketchwriter John Crace said: ‘What’s the purpose of Rishi Sunak’s government? It clearly isn’t to govern. The Tories have long since given up on that. Nothing really works any more and Sunak has little to offer but the promise of a few general election giveaways’. A tweeter identified 53 ‘cowardly’ Tory MPs planning to stand down at the next election – ‘too corrupt to stand down immediately.’ At PMQs Penny Mordaunt’s face showed a mix of embarrassment and boredom as Tories were forced to listen to their boss repeatedly dodge questions from Keir Starmer and lie his way out of challenges from Opposition MPs. In highly curated media interviews he tends to bounce around like an excited toddler, not least about this misguided policy of using of pharmacists to compensate (except they don’t) for GP appointments by offering advice on ‘common conditions’.
He told one interviewer 8 times that his father was a GP and his mother a pharmacist (who knew?), as if somehow this conveys some kind of personal authority. The availability of antibiotics over the counter is one of the bad ideas – as we know GPs have been trying to reduce consumption as they can lead to medication resistance and too many patients still mistakenly think they’re effective for viral infections. It’s worrying when the Chief Executive of NHS England, Amanda Pritchard, demonstrates how she’s been bought by the government, presenting this pharmacy policy as increasing choice for patients when it’s actually about papering over the severe cracks in our primary care service such as access to GPs.
It’s on life support. ‘The NHS is in such a dire state the next government should declare it a national emergency, experts are warning, as it emerged that record numbers of patients are being denied timely cancer treatment. It is facing an “existential threat” because of years of underinvestment, serious staff shortages and the demands of the ageing population, according to a group of leading doctors and NHS leaders’. Of course, this is what the Tories want, so they can rationalise that it’s ‘not working’, close it down and privatise the lot but we mustn’t let this happen. One leading oncologist said the UK was facing the ‘deepest cancer crisis ‘of her 30 years of treating cancer patients – ‘since 2020 more than 200,000 people in England have not received potentially life-saving surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy within the NHS’s supposed maximum 62-day wait’.
If anything the state of NHS mental health services is even worse, highlighted recently by the case of Valdo Calocane, a paranoid schizophrenia patient who stabbed and killed three people but who also refused to engage with the mental health team. In this case the police were also much at fault but what’s a nonsense is trusts discharging patients ‘back to the care of their GP’ when a patient doesn’t engage and they don’t meet the criteria to be detained under the Mental Health Act. This is such a cop out because GPs are already overloaded and aren’t equipped to deal with such cases, meaning that patients like Calocane fall between the cracks and there’s no oversight or responsibility for them. This is an extreme case but not uncommon: meanwhile more than 1.8m people are on the waiting list for mental health treatment, a figure which has grown markedly since the Conservatives came to power. No surprise there, because of austerity policies, marked health inequalities and public services in crisis. Pathetically and misleadingly, the Department of Health and Social Care said: “We’re providing record funding for the NHS, we’ve met our pledge to recruit 50,000 more nurses early, and we’ve put in place the first ever NHS Long Term Workforce Plan to make sure the NHS has the staff it needs in the years ahead’.
Related to this is the shocking state of British dentistry, with people resorting to DIY. We are truly returning to pre-NHS times, if not the 19th century. So many people are complaining of being unable to find an NHS dentist prepared to take them on and private dentistry is simply beyond the means of many. Lest this be considered a trivial or simply cosmetic issue, it’s worth noting that dental problems are the biggest cause of child hospital admissions and the marked rise in oral cancers (which dentists check for) over the last ten years is attributed to lack of access to dentists. The Guardian reported this sobering statistic: ‘More than 3,000 people in England died from mouth cancer in 2021, compared with 2,075 in 2011, according to figures by Oral Health Foundation (ORF) first reported by the BBC, representing an increase of 46%’. Typically misleadingly, the DHSC said: ‘The NHS is also treating more people for cancer at an earlier stage than ever before and we have opened 127 community diagnostic centres to speed up checks, including for cancer’. But you need a GP referral to these places and I don’t believe they routinely check for oral cancer. Of course the Tories aren’t that bothered because they will seek private treatment as a matter of course.
Despite the Rwanda Bill passing its second reading in the Lords (enabled by Labour’s incomprehensible abstention), commentators point out that this plan was not in the 2019 manifesto (how much of what’s going on was?), some predicting that Sunak will get it passed but that it will still get snarled up in legal challenges. As we know he’s been positioning the Lords as the hindrance in flouting ‘the will of the people’ when it’s the nature of the Act itself which is problematic, especially given that last week four Rwandans were granted asylum here on the grounds of safety. Rwanda has already received £240m from the UK – what this could have been spent on… The Daily Express kept up the momentum by headlining that 5,600 migrants had been ‘identified’ for deportation, though Home Secretary James Cleverly was quick to say he couldn’t ‘speculate’ about how many would actually be sent. Perhaps one of the most chilling aspects is the government having hired an aircraft hangar so that enforcement officers can practise getting migrants onto the planes. As they’re likely to obstruct this or even resort to violence, it’s been estimated that five officers will be needed for each deportee.
As the Post Office Horizon scandal rumbles on, increasingly alarming findings emerging at the public inquiry, Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch flexed her muscles via the vacuous performative gesture of sacking the Post Office chair, Henry Staunton. Of course this is meant to look like tough action but it does nothing whatsoever to address the deep-seated and intertwined issues which brought about the entire debacle. Calling for criminal investigations, victims’ lawyers have slammed PO and Fujitsu staff called to give evidence as a ‘chorus of cowards… a parade of liars, bullies, amnesiacs and arrogant individuals’ Those criticised ranged from the European boss of Fujitsu, Paul Patterson, with his vague promises of compensation, to the middle-ranking Post Office staff who privately discussed shredding damning evidence and the incompetent investigators who were said to have bullied their targets for financial gain… Evidence has been heard that it was known from the start that Horizon was riddled with bugs and defects but that this was kept from the post office operators being prosecuted and from the courts, with the brand’s reputation and financial considerations taking priority over justice’.
The two KCs defending the victims didn’t mince their words, one saying ‘Phase four has pulled back the curtain on the decades of the great Post Office cock-up and covering up because, and I quote from a Post Office investigator, they are ‘all crooks’ and another (based on the finding that investigators were financially incentivised to frame the victims): ‘the inquiry must ask whether those responsible at the Post Office and Fujitsu and in government did not, could not or would not hear any warning that Horizon lacked integrity because their ears were stuffed with cash’. Astonishingly, too, Post Office lawyers are still behaving in a persecutory manner towards the sub-postmasters around the issue of compensation: last week Channel 4 News interviewed several who’d received letters from these lawyers which used technical and intimidatory language they knew would not be readily understood. It’s as if they can’t bear to let go of the unjustifiable stance they adopted towards these victims.
In the Sunday Times Robert Colville made an interesting point, attributing blame partly to Tony Benn and suggesting that via ‘the perils of the government picking favourites…the state’s bad decisions can cascade through the generations’. He’s talking about the former ICL being favoured despite its computers being ‘second rate’, pushed to champion the UK’s export market, but it would have been too expensive to ditch ICL when it failed in 1981 and this is when the tie-up with Fujitsu took place, with the Japanese giant taking later it over entirely and gaining a very solid foothold in the UK market. ‘It’s also a reminder of just how terrible the state is at spending money…. poor public procurement is ripping all of us off. We need to give it a hell of a lot more attention’. And this should lead us to once again question what seems to be a similar path being smoothed for Infosys, the company owned by Sunak’s father-in-law.
Two other important developments seem to have gone under the radar: that Michael Keegan (husband of Cabinet member Gillian) who had been a Fujitsu CEO, stepped down from his Cabinet role (a fact gleaned by journalists only from the CO website so clearly intended for hushing up); and during the lead up to the powerful Panorama documentary in 2015, the Post Office threatened and lied to the BBC in a failed effort to suppress key evidence that helped clear postmasters in the Horizon scandal. ‘This was just the latest in a long line of lobbying, misinformation and outright lies that had faced a small number of BBC journalists trying to uncover the truth about the Post Office scandal’. It feels as if we will struggle to penetrate the numerous layers of this particular ‘onion’ especially given the determination of multiple vested interests to thwart the investigation and exposure of those responsible.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67884743
We hear that phases 5 and 6 of the public inquiry, which will hear evidence from top PO execs including Paula Vennells and from politicians like Ed Davey and Jo Swinson, will be run together and start in April. But why the two months break? It seems that there needs to be more time to go through the evidence and to prepare, but it’s a shame there has to be this long, not least because Fujitsu is saying it won’t be issuing compensation until the Inquiry is over (December!). Let’s hope the Inquiry and the media again pick up the cudgels and maintain the momentum from April onwards.
Besides the unwelcome news that our water bills will be going up 6%, much attention this week has been directed to another inflationary pressure – council tax hikes. As we know, over the years this government has markedly reduced Westminster funding for local government, and besides the eight English councils having declared themselves effectively bankrupt since 2018, including four in the past 12 months, many more are in deep trouble and planning severe cuts to avoid the same fate. Councils are in crisis because of reduced central funding combined with the pressures of fulfilling their legal obligations (primarily social care, services for special education needs and disabled children, child protection and being forced to use increasingly expensive private sector accommodation for the homeless).It makes the ongoing lack of social care policy seem even more appalling. It will get worse for strained household budgets as the unfortunately named Levelling Up department has directed councils to apply a 4.99% hike, which will apparently add about £100 to a band D bill, at the same time as the government plans more public service cuts to facilitate tax cuts. This is such an appalling decision, especially as it’s one of Sunak’s desperate ploys to win votes. Councils are cutting important services like libraries (undervalued resources which act as educational and community hubs) and are being advised to sell off assets.
The knock on effects (which the shortsighted government never thinks about) will be considerable as so many depend on neighbourhood charities like Citizens Advice (two closed, more under threat) and on community bus services, for example. A cross party group of MPs have said £4bn is needed to head off this crisis but the government is only grudgingly giving £600m and this only after lobbying from backbenchers. But we also have to ask what role councils themselves have played by way of corruption: 36 local authorities are accused of financial crime during the last decade and ‘many other councils are being scrutinised for potential financial mismanagement leading to huge losses in councils’ funds. One of those is Thurrock council, found to have recklessly put hundreds of millions of pounds into commercial investments, where an accountant is being investigated by the Financial Reporting Council.
It’s been good news to see Stormont up and running again but it does seem quite fragile, not least because of the longstanding intransigence and obstreperousness of the DUP. I wonder how long they will tolerate this groundbreaking situation of a nationalist becoming First Minister. We’re given to understand that the deal which brought the unionists back to power sharing has resolved major difficulties arising from Brexit, the Windsor Framework and so on, but problems still remain and sometimes Westminster politicians and the media fail to convey the complexities, instead resorting to a ‘job done’ stance. Martin Kettle spells out the positives of the deal: ‘The new Northern Ireland plan unpicks some of the economic and political damage inflicted by Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal. It makes the return of devolved power-sharing government possible. It ends the DUP’s two-year democracy boycott. It compels the rival parties to work together again, in line with the 1998 Belfast Good Friday agreement. It also releases a £3.3bn sweetener from the UK Treasury that Northern Ireland’s battered public realm badly needs’.
He also makes the key point that the DUP’s Geoffrey Donaldson made several key demands two years ago (no restrictions on trade between Britain and Northern Ireland across the Irish Sea, and an end to any suggestion that post-Brexit Northern Ireland was not a full part of the UK) but the new deal doesn’t satisfy these as firmly as Westminster is implying. ‘According to some reports, the party officers also divided only by 7-5 in Donaldson’s favour. The deal, therefore, remains vulnerable to a unionist backlash’.
It was interesting that last night on Radio 5’s Stephen Nolan programme (1.15 minutes in) he was challenging an obdurate unionist activist, Jamie Bryson, over his continuing opposition to this deal, and it sounded to my mind that Stephen was regularly picking him up on aspects of his narrative which were simply untrue. What this news has also brought out again is the ignorance and lack of understanding about Ireland in general and Northern Ireland in particular amongst mainland dwellers. This is not wholly their fault as the teaching of Irish history in schools has been appalling in many cases, causing quite a few to opine about the Troubles and Brexit that this troublesome and expensive province should just be floated off from the UK. One tweeter recently said: ‘What’s the point of Northern Ireland? Why don’t we just give it back to the Irish?’ Time will tell, but I was impressed by First Minister Michelle O’Neill’s gracious opening speech and hope it will set the tone for the months to come.
Recently we’ve been inundated (by royal correspondents and other hangers on, the mainstream media colluding) with non news about the state of Royal Family members’ health, following the hospitalisations of King Charles, Princess Kate and ‘concern’ expressed about Prince Edward needing to take a break from royal duties. Today’s Telegraph piece must take the biscuit – ‘King waves to crowds in first public appearance since leaving hospital’. The fact is that whatever the royals do makes not one iota of difference to this country’s ability to get on with its business (or not) and this press coverage is yet more gaslighting, trying to brainwash us into believing these people are important. Let’s hope we hear less about them now that Charles has emerged from Sandringham to wave to crowds.
As the Oscars approach, film and cinema come increasingly under the spotlight and an interesting piece of news was something I could really identify with. I’ve missed parts of films, notably Oscar contender Oppenheimer, not because of the volume but because of actors’ poor diction, which hearing aids can do nothing about. In Australia deaf and hard-of-hearing filmgoers say technology issues and lack of film screenings with subtitles make cinema sessions inaccessible so they’re campaigning for cinemas to provide closed captioning. Some cinemas here aren’t bad at screening subtitled versions but this doesn’t seem widespread and those screenings are often at unsociable times. I’d have thought this was a clear equalities issue. Whereas some research suggests that cinemagoers find subtitles off-putting because they interfere with their ‘immersive experience’, Netflix figures showed that a high proportion of viewers use subtitles at various times. Something to keep an eye on!
Finally, the Week summarises an article about restaurant trends for 2024, telling us, for example, that tasting menus are on the way down, and also about ‘confrontational dining’. Sounds terrible – it’s about food ‘staring right back at you’ for example at Fowl in central London, described as a ‘beak to feet chicken shop’, where the signature dish of hearts, livers and cockscombs has a chicken’s head complete with beak emerging from the pastry. Another venue serves a pheasant leg with the foot still attached. I suspect some of us will be passing on these innovations!
Politics and mental health - the missing link? 