Proportional democracy

“Boris Johnson would have been denied a majority in parliament if the UK had used the voting system adopted for European parliament polls at the general election, new research shows,” says The Independent (14/12/19]

They cite analysis by the Electoral Reform Society that suggests that under PR the Conservatives would have been unable to achieve a majority. Whilst Labour would have done marginally better the big winners would have been the Lib Dem’s, Greens and the Brexit Party. The main losers would have been the Conservatives and the SNP. Whilst it is tempting to see this outcome as desirable, it is worth considering whether it is fairer or more democratic.

The Electoral Reform Societies view is that “Westminster’s voting system is well and truly broken.” Given that our current system produces landslide victories for a party for which well over half of the population did not vote this seems a valid statement. 

Advocates of PR, who tend to be supporters of parties who would benefit from it, point to the fact that votes per seat show a huge disparity between the parties. This is undoubtedly the case. Each Conservative seat was won with just over 38,000 votes, whilst Labour had to amass over 50,000 votes to win a seat. And, if that seems prima facie unfair, then consider that the Greens had to get over 860,000 votes for each seat (which Caroline Lucas did in Brighton, of course). The poor Lib Dem’s needed over 300,000 votes for each seat.

All of which seems to support a view that we need PR to make the system fair. But, and this is I believe a major flaw in the PR argument, this supposes that we are voting for a party and not a representative. If, like me, you were outraged when MP’s from both Labour and Conservative decided they no longer liked their party and simply joined (or started) another one and thought this undemocratic you fell into a well worn constitutional trap. Many people signed the petition calling for an immediate by-election in such cases. If so, you will recall the Government response:

“Formally, electors cast their vote for individual candidates, and not the political party they represent. The Government does not plan to change this constitutional position.”

Formally, of course, that is the case, but in reality we all know that party loyalty is equally as important, perhaps more so, than which individual has secured their party’s nomination. In the Hansard Society’s Audit of Political Engagement only 22% could name their MP. Unfortunately, they stopped asking this question in 2013 so the degree to which MPs remain anonymous to those who vote for them is difficult to gauge. It seems unlikely, however, that much has changed.

In the latest Audit (2019) the Society found that 72% of their sample felt the political system needed improving. That figure tends to support some form of PR, but since they were not asked how it should be improved that should not be taken as read. To be fair, a poll carried out by ICM for Make Votes Matter in 2017 did find widespread support for PR with 61% agreeing with this statement:
“Proportional representation is the collective name given to electoral systems which ensure that the proportion of seats a party receives in Parliament closely reflects the proportion of votes they received from voters. Currently, the UK uses a system known as ‘First-Past-The-Post’ which does not ensure that a party’s share of the seats matches the share of the votes. In principle, would you support or oppose changing the electoral system from First Past The Post to a system of proportional representation?”

In other words, it appears that the public would like to abandon representative democracy in favour of proportional party representation. But, most people when asked to choose between a system that appears blatantly unfair and another which appears, and is presented as, fairer, are bound to pick the fairer one. That so many people opposed PR given those choices is rather surprising. That is not to say there is no case for reform.

I am a democrat. I am also a member of the Labour Party. I have a visceral dislike and distrust of the Tories. However, just because a different system would make it likely that they would not form a government in future does not seem to me to be a good enough reason to support it.

My opinion, for what it’s worth, is that the current system is broken. However, the problem is not representation per se, but the overlaying of a party system on a system of representation. That so few people know the name of their MP is hardly surprising. At election times we are encouraged to think in terms of which party we prefer, and even more narrowly which prime minister. 

When we go to vote we are told the names of the candidates and their party affiliation. No matter how strong a local candidate if they do not have the support of one of the major parties they do not stand any chance of being elected. One very simple reform could fix this and return our elections to the contest for particular constituencies: the only information on the ballot paper should be the name of the candidate.

Such a reform would, without any major cost, bring about a major change in our political culture. In future no candidate, even those in safe seats, would be able to assume that they would get in purely because of party affiliation. They would have to canvass on their own name and ensure that electors were prepared to vote for them. Electors would be encouraged to judge candidates on their character and politics. The media could no longer turn politics into a party game where high profile politicians steal all the oxygen and “low level” local politicians rarely get a mention.

This reform, on its own, would shift the emphasis away from parties but it would not abolish parties, neither would such a move be desirable. Candidates would still ally themselves to political parties and parties would still have a machinery that would grind into action at election times. The difference would be that parties would genuinely have to engage in all constituencies, rather than run a UK-wide operation.

I would favour a second reform that would make the competition in all these constituencies manageable. At the moment we have two types of elections for Westminster: General Elections and by-elections.

Why is it necessary to contest all 650 seats at the same time? During a General Election we have 5 weeks of frantic activity and intense trivialisation of the issues. Would it be preferable to have, say, 4 year terms and elect ¼ of the MP’s each year? 

I can see the objection to this in it meaning that we would be fighting elections constantly and people might get fed up with them. But, Brenda from Bristol would only get one Parliamentary Election every 4 years, barring a by-election. The media rather than fixating on Westminster might be able to cope with travelling to other parts of the country once a year and concentrating on the local candidates rather than obsessing over whatever fresh political gossip was emerging from their unnamed sources (shorthand, we now know, for the Tories Press Office).

The other obvious objection, I’m sure there are others, is that we would have no settled government. Each year the party in government could lose its parliamentary majority. This is true, but surely this would encourage government, of all hues, to be cognisant of public opinion when proposing legislation. A successful government would just as easily increase its majority as lose it.

Incidentally, if we really want to stop the spread of fake news that would be easily achieved by cutting it off at source. Unless a case can be made for national security or for somebody’s life being at risk, there should be no stories in the press or broadcast media that come from unnamed sources. Additionally, if we want to see a rise in political engagement both press and broadcast media should be under a legal liability to be impartial and fair. Though quite how that is to be adjudicated might take a bit of working out.

I can hear the rumblings from the back: what about proportional representation? Any reforms to our present system (and, to be honest, any reforms under the Johnson administration are likely to involve less democratic accountability rather than more) must be seen in light of some of the other findings from the Hansard Society.

In their most recent report they found that 42% think many of the country’s problems could be dealt with more effectively if the government didn’t have to worry so much about votes in Parliament. In other words, the failures of the Brexit debacle are being seen by a large number of British people as evidence that parliamentary democracy itself is the problem.

The most worrying conclusion is that a drift towards authoritarian rule can be seen in the fact that 27% strongly agreed that “Britain needs a strong leader prepared to break the rules”, a further 27% somewhat agreed. Now, to be clear, the research never asked what exactly they thought “breaking the rules” might entail or, perhaps more pertinently whether they thought breaking rules which protect their own interests would be desirable. 

In an article in The Guardian (20/06/17) academics Maria J Stephan and Timothy Snyder argued that democracy was being pushed back across the globe by authoritarian regimes that relied on popular support. They were thinking of Trump, Oban, Erdogan and Maduro. But, we should probably now add Johnson to the list. Their advice was to build strong, non-violent, civil resistance. As they put it:

“Authoritarians thrive on popular fear, apathy, resignation, and a feeling of disorientation. Movement leaders need to assure people that their engagement and sacrifices will pay off, something Solidarity leader Adam Michnik understood well: ‘Above all, we must create a strategy of hope for the people, and show them that their efforts and risks have a future.’”

A right to rule for life?

So, where is PR in all this? We have a political system that has lost the trust of those it is supposed to serve. Nowhere is this more the case than the Old MPs House Club, or what you might call the House of Lords. MPs such as Nick Clegg who are roundly rejected by the electorate are given lifetime access to decision-making. Zac Goldsmith, the humble son of a billionaire beaten at the ballot box on every occasion he has put himself forward is invited into the Cabinet via a peerage. Nicky Morgan who did not even stand in the latest General Election, the same. Jo Swinson, who led her party to oblivion and lost her seat will shortly be ensconced in the Lords. This is a democratic outrage and one more than overdue for reform.

It is the election of the second chamber that I believe should be elected on a party basis and by proportional representation. It’s function, much as now, would be to oversee the Commons and hold the government to account. Party’s would receive seats proportionate to their vote share in an election which, in my opinion, should not be run in tandem with any other election.

This would allow the electorate to choose a second chamber either to push through the policies of a popular government or to act as a balance against a government which was pursuing unpopular policies. As now, there would need to be checks and balances to ensure that the business of governing could get done but the argument for more accountability and the undermining of privilege and elitism is long overdue.

I am under no illusion as to the possibility of democratic reform in the short term, but clearly it must be in the interests of those who consider themselves democrats to want to bring our democratic institutions into line with the century in which they are asked to perform. That so few people trust either our institutions or our politicians is a major failing of our democratic processes, and points to a need for reform. The current crisis of democracy is not just to be seen in the corruption, deceit and cronyism at the heart of the political system, but in the ever receding faith that ordinary people have in both politics and politicians. Fixing that requires not strong leaders who break rules but rather a system that is responsive to, and accountable to, the voters whose lives are affected by the decisions made in Westminster.

The numbers game

We all know what happened in the General Election and readers of this blog will no doubt have their own theories as to what went wrong for Labour. These are likely to differ somewhat from the “analysis” of the PLP and their right-wing cheerleaders. But, in trying to make sense of what happened it is worth looking at the numbers.

Labour polled 10,231,237 votes. Not an inconsiderable number and certainly comparable to 1987 (when Neil Kinnock lost) and 2001 (when Tony Blair won). But taking solace in these numbers fails to acknowledge a painful truth. Between 2017 and 2019 Labour lost  over 2.6 million votes. The only comparable loss in recent history is the almost 2.8 million votes lost between 1997 and 2001 by Tony Blair. As Blairite revisionists try to convince you that we should return to the example of Blair it is worth reminding ourselves that his unpopularity had begun to set in prior to the “illegal” war in Iraq. That disaster cost Labour a further million votes in 2005.

These numbers, however, are still relatively small compared to the Tories loss of  almost 4.5 million votes between 1992 and 1997. The point to take from these numbers is that losing votes does not have to be a catastrophe. Blair lost votes, but was still able to win elections. The Tories lost votes consistently between 1997 and 2005 but started to pick them up again from 2010. It is worth noting, in this context, that despite their recent landslide the Tories only recorded 190,711 more votes than they had achieved in 2017.

The conclusion has to be that there was no massive swing in support for the Tories despite the obvious swing against Labour. So, where did Labour’s votes go? The Lib Dem’s were the biggest winners gaining Close to 1.3 million votes. It is likely that some of this was Labour remainers voting tactically. But again, context is needed. The overall Lib Dem vote was 3,643,494 which whilst an improvement on 2015 and 2017 was still more than 3 million less than they achieved in 2010 before their disastrous  decision to prop up David Cameron’s Tories.

At a constituency level 51 of Labour’s 60 lost seats were in areas where leave had won in 2016. A further 5 were in Scotland where slightly different issues were in play. Many of those votes drifted away from Labour but not to the remain supporting Lib Dem’s. The combined Brexit Party-UKIP vote rose only 107,750 compared to 2017, so it would not seem that they were the beneficiaries.

In 2017 one of the best left performances had been in Durham North West where Laura Pidcock won with a near 9,000 majority in a seat that had been ours since 1914. On election night she not only lost her majority but her seat. The Tory received 19,990 votes up from 16,516 in 2017. Laura received 18,864 votes (considerably less than in 2017), but lost the seat partly because the Brexit Party took 3,193 votes, presumably many of them previous Labour voters. 

This is not definitive evidence that Brexit was the main cause of Labour’s woes. There were clearly other issues at play. Chief amongst them was the feeling amongst many Labour voters that they had been neglected by New Labour. A similar feeling that lost Labour the support of people in Scotland where the SNP are now firmly in control. We cannot ignore either that Jeremy Corbyn, a massive asset from a left perspective, was a real reason why many people did not vote Labour.

Laura Pidcock in her open letter makes the point that “We have to fight for our area. We must be there for our fellow working people and their families, who will be attacked under this new government.” But, she does not say who she means by “we”. And, whilst I do not wish to criticise Laura who has certainly been one of the bright sparks in Labour she does not really address how we bring back people and keep them.

In a way Laura makes the same error as many people in the party. That is to think the only hope is through finding out why people did not vote Labour and encouraging them to do so in 4 or 5 years time. Unfortunately, the problem with that strategy is that it prioritises one form of organisation over all other.

It also assumes that there is a magic solution out there and all we need to do is find it. Change the leader, say the right. People’s vote, say the right. Water down the manifesto, say some sections of the left. The assumption being that with this one change voters will somehow flock to the polls red rosette firmly planted in their lapels. 

Imagine for a second that Andy Burnham or Yvette Cooper had become party leader in 2015. The chances are that we would have become a remain party much more quickly. Moreover, there would have been no influx of new members and the manifesto would have looked much like the one that lost in 2015. If the Tories had decided to call an election in 2017, though that is debatable, the result would not have been a loss of their majority but more than likely a result similar to 2015. 

Whilst dreaming of a Labour government (eventually) is tempting, perhaps we need to start thinking more holistically. At present the Labour Party is run as a bureaucratic organisation with a dazzling array of rules and procedures. This means that most party meetings are mind-numbingly boring and devoid of any political discussion or education. No wonder people don’t want to attend.

I remember a Twitter conversation I had with Seema Chandwani a short while ago when I said that the problem was that the right seemed to have a better understanding of the rule book than we did, and used this knowledge to stifle debate. Her advice was to read and use the rule book to our advantage. Frankly, if that is politics I’d rather not bother.

So, perhaps thinking of ways to engage our own members and to make meetings more politically focussed would be a start. But, if you are going to a meeting you will already have committed to joining the party. What of those who are some way from ever doing so?

Many of the issues that Labour had on the doorstep came from ordinary voters repeating what they had read or seen in the media. Whilst it is true that the press is losing ground it is still highly influential. As of January 2019 circulation of the Daily Mail had a year on year decline of 7%, The Sun 9%, the Labour supporting Daily Mirror down 13%, Daily Express 12% and the Daily Star 16%. It isn’t just the tabloids that are losing readers The Times was down 5%, The Telegraph 6% and The Guardian down 7%.

If less people are reading the national press then how does it exert such a powerful influence? Firstly, people do see the day’s headlines even if they don’t read what’s written beneath them. But, more importantly the broadcast media relies on the press to provide its daily narrative on the political stories. So, you don’t have to read a tabloid for it to influence your thinking, as the BBC, Sky News and ITV rely on tabloid journalists to dictate the news agenda.

With the exception of the Mirror and Guardian, the bulk of the press are Tory supporting. Many of the political stories hostile to Labour and repeated by the broadcast media are direct from the Tory press. What this means is that people who are not particularly engaged politically are immersed in a culture that is inherently hostile to the left.

The National, a Scottish pro-independence newspaper found that there was a serious Tory bias on the main BBC political output.

“A sample of five mainly political BBC television programmes – Victoria Derbyshire, Politics Live, Question Time, Newsnight, the Andrew Marr Show – showed that Tory politicians appeared 102 times in total, with Labour notching 53 appearances, the Liberal Democrats 13 and the SNP just seven – the same number as Change UK/The Independent Group and two behind the Brexit Party”, they report.

This means that in order to reach those missing voters, Labour needs to cut through the prevailing pro-Tory culture. To be fair to the BBC and other broadcasters, it should probably be pointed out that not every show in which a Tory MP appears is slavishly pro-Tory, on occasions Tories are held to account, but the dominating narrative is Tory-centric. This is partly because the Tory pro-establishment narrative chimes very well with the type of people who manage the newsrooms. 

Cutting through is going to mean encouraging people to think critically about what they are being asked to believe. But doing this based purely on self-interest alone is likely to drive them back into the hands of the Tories. There is also a danger that in undermining trust in journalists to tell the truth, people will seek other sources of news that are equally as prone to misinformation.

Many people claim that they ‘don’t believe anything I read in the press and make my own mind up’. There is some evidence to support this lack of faith in the press. According to the Ipsos-Mori veracity index for 2019 only 26% of people trust journalists to tell the truth. But, and here’s the rub, that is considerably more than the 14% who trust politicians. A general cynicism about trust, not helped by the Government of the day spending a fortune on Facebook ads that were overwhelmingly misleading, does not encourage people to get involved in politics.

But if the press are losing readers and people don’t trust journalists more generally, how is it that their influence seems more pervasive than ever?

A general culture in which Jeremy Corbyn, a life time anti-racist, can be attacked as a racist in order to facilitate the election of a man with a long history of racist comments shows the depths to which political debate in this country has fallen. Laura Pidcock makes the valid point that during the general election journalists were primed to ignore the issues in favour of the days political gossip. By keeping negative stories about Labour on the front pages and on the main news bulletins it ensures that a negative narrative drowns out all attempts to widen the debate.

Some people think that the way round this is to control the media. However this is both unlikely to happen and even if we could do so would be counter to the free press we need to hold government to account. I have no objection to the press criticising Labour when they make mistakes or are being evasive. What I object to is when it is only Labour who are demonised whilst the Tories are constantly let off the hook or in cases covered for.

How then is it possible to counter the dominant narrative? One thing is clear it will not be easy. But what is also clear is that we cannot wait until the next election to do so. Labour is still a mass movement, albeit a slightly disillusioned one. We have activists on the ground. They came out in their thousands to promote the manifesto. Now, we need to think creatively about how we use that resource, the envy of every other party and the right in our own party, to plant the seeds of future victories.

In a previous life I ran seminars and lectured on the way the media works. Very often after attending people would tell me that they could no longer read the newspapers or watch TV news because they would find themselves annoying partners by saying “but where’s their evidence” or “that’s just repeating what one side said”.

We can shout that the media are biased, and we can use social media in an attempt to counter the dominant narrative, but until enough people have the tools to challenge what they read, and hear we are spitting into the wind. This is something that I think the organised left can do. Rather than repeat what may be perfectly justifiable conspiracy theories we need to make it our business to teach ordinary voters not to distrust all journalists but to question their taken for granted assumptions.

The war of the wings

I

The war has begun. The first shots have been fired. From the rantings of Labour right-wingers preparing to install Jess Phillips as their leader and purge Momentum members from the party; to “Lord” John Mann announcing that he will be “investigating” The Canary for anti-Semitism, the war against the left has begun in earnest. 

Very few people predicted the Tory majority. I certainly didn’t and as late as Thursday still expected a hung parliament. Despite Labour receiving over 10 million votes, more than delivered a Labour majority in 2005 we lost substantial ground.

Whilst I am pleased I correctly predicted Jo Swinson losing her seat, it is devastating to lose Laura Pidcock and Dennis Skinner. But, we have no time to grieve, because as I wrote in October we now face the battle of our lives.

 “A General Election, particularly one in which we lose, is going to leave many activists burned out and disillusioned. Moreover, we will be subjected to a gloating Labour right, supported by the massed ranks of the media, telling us that Labour lost a ‘winnable’ Election because it was too left-wing. Some MP’s we currently consider to be on our side will join in with the demand that we must pursue “sensible” policies for there is no point in having great policies if you cannot implement them.”

What I had perhaps under-estimated was the venom with which the PLP would renew its attacks not just on the leadership but the members. But this is not surprising. The PLP has been hostile to Jeremy Corbyn since day one. Unlike many on the left I had not been an enthusiast for an early election. It was not that I wanted the Tories to remain in power, but that I wanted us to have the chance to remove sitting MPs who were hostile to the socialist project. In the event that never happened and, in reality, I doubt it would have made much difference.

The right showed in the trigger ballots how adept they are at using the party machinery to their advantage. If we had managed to replace one or two MPs it would simply have been used to reinforce the perception of the left as ideological bullies. The right are not acting in a vacuum as Dan Evans-Kanu points out in his blog:

“…make no mistake, the corporate media in this election acted as an arm of the Conservative party and are largely responsible for their victory.”

As true as that undoubtedly is, the anti-Corbyn stories were not media inventions. They were being fuelled by the constant attacks orchestrated by right-wing MPs for whom this election result is manna from heaven. The idea was to ensure that whatever else this election was about, and to be clear it was the Brexit election, they could use the result not only to remove Corbyn but his followers.

Ian Murray MP tweeted that at all 11,000 doors he knocked on they all hated Jeremy Corbyn. Putting aside the fact that he would have had to knock a door every 5 minutes continuously for 5 weeks to reach that number, the chances that the only reason for not voting Labour was Corbyn, who coincidentally Murray loathes, is implausible.

Other right-wing MPs were quick to pile in blaming Corbyn personally for the loss. Margaret Hodge claimed, incredulously given her seemingly unassailable position in the party, to have been a victim of anti-Semitism. Anna McMorrin, who has promised to keep Britain in the EU, also attacked Corbyn personally, and her partner Alun Davies, the little known AM called for a purge on Momentum.

 Yet, the BBC Wales website which spoke to voters on Friday found that most were concerned with Brexit. Their replies were almost uniformly of the “now we can get Brexit done variety”. The people who have spent 3 years refusing to get Brexit done and advocating for a second referendum, and three years smearing Jeremy Corbyn seem absolutely shocked that a) the smear campaign worked and b) that people we’re frustrated by being told that only the liberal elite was right and that those who voted for Brexit were “thick racists”. Disingenuous does not even come close.

As Dan Evans-Kanu points out:

“A huge amount of people regurgitated, verbatim, media attack lines about Labour and Corbyn. Many would preface this by saying ‘I seen on the news that…’ or ‘they say that Corbyn is….’ For the first time in my life I encountered people I was convinced didn’t exist- lifelong Labour voters who were voting for the Tories. This was because they were absolutely convinced that Corbyn was a terrorist, that he would bankrupt the country, that he was an anti-semite.” 

Ordinary voters are not, on the whole, politically engaged. The British Social Attitudes survey (one of the largest and robust social surveys in the UK) finds only around one-third of the population profess a great interest in politics , but whilst around 40% have some interest, somewhere between 32-37% say they have no interest at all in politics. Whist there is a correlation between professed interest in politics and voting the truth is that many ordinary voters are simply absorbing whatever they pick up from whatever media they are getting. Many of these same people are on social media where the Tories spent billions on targeted ads, 88% of which were categorised as misleading by First Draft – a non-profit organisation which works on debunking fake news.

Many of these ads were aimed at undermining trust in Jeremy Corbyn and one of the key attacks was around anti-Semitism. As Robert A H Cohen points out in a recent blog on pathos.com:

“The number of Jewish voters in the UK is tiny. Including adults and children, we make up only 0.5% of the population. There are only a handful of constituencies, mostly in North London, where Jewish votes (assuming they are cast uniformly) could make a decisive difference to the outcome. In any case, the majority of Jews stopped voting Labour long before Corbyn became leader. That’s to do with the economic and social advancement that most Jews in Britain have achieved. Until recently, it’s had nothing to do with Corbyn or antisemitism.”

He goes on to examine the “evidence” and comes to a surprising conclusion:

“If Jeremy Corbyn is truly antisemitic he must be the most unusual and eccentric example of antisemitism ever displayed by a British political leader and perhaps any political leader.

When you are told that a politician is a diehard antisemite you don’t expect to then discover that over the decades he’s signed dozens of Early Day Parliamentary motions condemning antisemitism; helped organised protests against anti-Jewish marches; visited the Terezin concentration camp to commemorate Holocaust victims; attended numerous Jewish events in his constituency; and read the war poetry of Isaac Rosenberg at his local Remembrance Day service.”

But, regardless of the truth of the claims it cut through. I don’t want to rehearse all the arguments here, but one question I would ask is this: where have these allegations of anti-Semitism actually come from? It is fairly easy to find the answer: Margaret Hodge, Luciana Berger, Joan Ryan, Ian Austin and then amplified by other right-wing anti-Corbyn MPs sharing and liking social media posts “exposing” the institutionalised anti-Semitism within a party of which they are a part. 

Those now calling on Corbyn to resign immediately and for a return to the failed politics of New Labour are the very people who started and amplified the 2 main issues which were used against the left in this election.

For if unproven allegations of anti-Semitism were used to delegitimise the Labour leader, it was in the context of Labour voters voting Conservative to “get Brexit done”. Our policy in 2017 had been to accept the referendum but negotiate a better deal than the Tories. Unfortunately, and as it turned out disastrously, that policy became negotiate a better deal, then put it to a second referendum with most of the Shadow Cabinet saying from the start they would campaign for remain. This was a policy foisted upon Jeremy Corbyn by the right wing who, correctly as it turned out, saw it as undermining his credentials as leader. And, personally, I blame Keir Starmer for this for it was he who announced the policy at conference, admittedly to cheers from those who dogmatically refused to accept the referendum result.

Those now demanding a ‘return to centrist politics’ are essentially accepting that the only way to beat the Tories is to be more like them. However, why vote for a synthetic Tory when you can have the real thing? Labour got away with this under Blair mainly because Tory voters were so disillusioned after Thatcher was removed by her own party that they did not vote. Blair may not have been their choice but they were prepared to let him win because he offered no threat. 

That was a strategy that worked in the short-term but was defunct by 2010 when the austerity promoting coalition got into power. Indeed, between 1997 and 2010 the Labour Party lost 4.9 million voters. Yet, this is held as the high water mark by those on the right who cannot see beyond the three consecutive victories. Whilst those victories were impressive they were the result of the specific circumstances of the time, and by 2010 most voters were fed up with the vacuous New Labour Tory-lite policies.

The battle for the Labour Party is now afoot. This will be a vicious struggle as those right wing MPs use their own perfidy as an excuse to attack one of the few politicians of his generation with a genuine commitment to compassion and equality. Many on the left will feel like throwing in the towel and leaving. We must not do so. At least, not yet. These careerist enablers of Toryism do not have a window into the minds of working class voters, nor do they really care about the impoverished or destitute. They are self-seeking narcissists. We cannot let them drive us out of the party. This battle is every much as important as those we have been engaged in over the past three years. Unity is strength. We must fight on. There really is no alternative.

Friday the 13th

With the election only days away no doubt all readers of this blog are, in between canvassing, biting finger nails. We don’t know what we will wake up to on Friday 13^th (and if that’s not ominous I don’t know what is). If the polls are to be believed (see my previous post polls apart for why they might not be) then Boris Johnson will get the mandate he desires to complete his favoured version of Brexit.

I don’t generally do predictions. My crystal ball has hardly proved to be accurate in the past. But, here’s a couple of things I would not be surprised to see happen before the end of the week.

The opinion polls will be proved to have overstated the Tory lead by at least 5 percentage points. I think the current 41-43% of vote share is where they will end up. Their vote is solid and we have to accept that around 2/5ths of our fellow citizens really have no interest in social justice.

Labour will poll better than their current figure of 33% due to a late surge in voting amongst the undecideds and the return of leave voting Labour supporters who, when push comes to shove, will favour defending the NHS over Brexit. I think they will also end up between 40-43%.

Jo Swinson will lose her seat as the SNP consolidate their position as the main party in Scotland, thus almost certainly heralding a new independence referendum within the next 2 years.

None of those Lib Dem or Change UK MP’s who left either Labour or the Conservatives will win their seats. Their egoistic belief that their names were more important than their parties will prove to be their undoing.

The BBC will come under increased scrutiny for its scandalous inability to remain impartial during this election. If the Tories gain a majority (which I don’t think they will) they will get away with it, but if Labour (possibly with SNP support) becomes the government the Tory supporting executives days will surely be numbered.

Whoever wins Brexit will not get done. Or, at least not as quickly as the Tories have tried to con people into believing. The parliamentary arithmetic will not add up and this toxic debate will rumble on. Even with a majority Brexit will still not get done quickly. It is a process that realistically will not be completed until 2021. 

As to who will win. I’ve felt for a long time that the over-representation of Tory voters (which adds around 6 percentage points to their figures) and the under-representation of younger and working class voters amongst Labour voters (which means they are probably polling about 4 percentage points higher than reported) means that we have been tying for some time. Both parties continue to gain support from other parties, but the Conservative well is pretty much dry. Labour will need to take votes from the Lib Dem’s and convince non-voters (particularly younger voters) to turn up if they are to actually win. Based on all this I am expecting a hung parliament and about 3 days of negotiations before an actual government emerges. Jeremy Corbyn could still end up in Number 10, but so could Johnson. Much depends on how many people are convinced by Jo Swinson.

If Johnson in any way wins the battle for the heart of the Labour Party will ramp up almost immediately. The right will renew their attacks on the left with renewed vigour. I have already outlined what I think could happen in a previous post which is here.

If Jeremy wins then depending on how that happens, I suspect we will end up doing a deal of some kind with the SNP, then attacks on Labour by the media will be ferocious and consistent from day one. There is likely to be a run on the pound, and there will be concerted attempts by both our opponents and sections of our own party to prevent the implementation of the most radical sections of the manifesto.

All of this, of course, can change and on the day anything could happen. But whatever the result the task facing us will be huge. Either defending our Labour government or defending our NHS and our communities. This battle is far from over. 

NHS For Sale

When I decided to write a blog on healthcare I had no idea that I would spend last Thursday evening travelling half way across the country to visit my father in hospital. He was 93 years old and despite trying desperately to fight off pneumonia sadly passed away on Sunday night. My impression of Milton Keynes Hospital where he is ended his life was that every single member of staff I met was kind, considerate and professional. Everybody I spoke to was determined to make his stay as comfortable as possible and answered my myriad of questions professionally and compassionately. I would like to thank each of them and every doctor, nurse, cleaner, Porter, etc across the UK and dedicate this blog to them.

Interestingly because we live in the UK nobody is pursuing my parents for payment for his treatment, but if it was dependent on insurance cover it would not normally be considered a critical illness. According to website Insure.com: “Critical illness insurance provides payment if you experience a serious illness, such as a heart attack, cancer or stroke. The policies vary in what they cover, but generally pneumonia would not be considered a critical illness.” This despite the fact that the chances of surviving are less than 30%. It does rather beg the question: what is a critical illness?

It is also worth noting that the growth in private health insurance in the UK has been parasitical upon the NHS paid for by your taxes. A 2014 Kings Fund report estimated that private healthcare in the UK was worth some £6.42 billion in 2011. Meanwhile The Guardian reported in 2017: “After falling steeply between 2008 and 2011 and then staying flat, demand for private medical insurance cover in Britain rose by 2.1% in 2015 with just over 4 million people insured.” The majority of professional staff in private practice were trained by the NHS and many continue to straddle both public and private practice.

In this General Election the very future of the NHS may well be up for grabs. We know that partial privatisation has been going on for a while now and many people fear that our healthcare system will end like Americas. Consider, for example, if you are unfortunate enough to need a hip replacement. In the UK the average waiting time is now about 8 months. The cost to you is zero. In the USA waiting times are likely to be less but unless you have health insurance the cost to you is approximately $39,000 (just over £30,000). This is just one example.

According to the most recent data available from the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), “the average American spent $9,596 on healthcare” in 2012, which was “up significantly from $7,700 in 2007.” It has risen well above inflation in the intervening years. 

In the UK employees pay 12% of their salary toward National Insurance. The bulk of NI income is pensions and benefits, but a proportion goes toward the NHS with the rest found from general taxation.

The NHS has as its principle that healthcare should be free at the point of use. If you were to contract cancer the NHS will care for you without giving you a large bill. Compare that to the IUSA, where the American Cancer Society offers the following advice:

“It is very important for adults and children with cancer to have a health insurance plan that covers needed cancer treatments.”

You can well imagine who does not have insurance. According to KFF around 28 million people in the US remain uninsured. In 2017, 45% of uninsured adults said that they remained uninsured because the cost of coverage was too high. Although things have certainly improved with Obamacare it is not a comprehensive health service such as that enjoyed by citizens of the UK. Most uninsured people in the USA are in low-income families and have at least one worker in the family.

You may recall that one of Trump’s campaign pledges was to totally dismantle the healthcare revolution which was the major achievement of his predecessor, but so far has not been able to secure enough senate votes to do so. He has tried to chip away at the provision through the law courts and if successful it could leave 20 million Americans with no cover at all.

You might wonder why anybody would oppose universal healthcare based on a principle of need? The answer is that where you and I see need, the rich and their hedge fund managers see opportunities for investors.

The largest 125 U.S. health insurers collected approximately $713 billion (approximately £550 billion) in premiums, with the top 25 accounting for nearly two-thirds of the total. It is big business. The largest is UnitedHealth Group with a revenue in 2018 of $226 billion (over £175 billion). In 2017 the New York Times reported that UnitedHealth was overbilling Medicare by hundreds of millions of dollars a year and was being investigated by the Justice Department. Of course, this could have been an admin error, but it is more likely that the company saw a state budget as easy pickings. No wonder they are looking at the NHS with avaricious eyes.

As my father was reaching the end of his life he was given a combination of painkillers and sedatives so that he was not visibly suffering. Drugs are an important part of healthcare but they are also a major source of profit for large pharmaceutical companies.  Whilst they will claim that they plough their profits back into research and development, the truth is that they see R&D as mainly a means to acquire patents which keep the cost of drugs high. This serves their shareholders well, but it does not necessarily serve the interests of people who are sick.

One of the largest American pharmaceutical companies is Pfizer, worth over $225 billion. In the 1980’s the American Food and Drug Administration investigated reports of dozens of fatalities linked to heart valves made by Pfizer’s Shiley division. In 1986, as the death toll reached 125, Pfizer ended production of all models of the valves. Yet by that point they were implanted in tens of thousands of people, who worried that the devices could fracture and fail at any moment. 

Large for-profit organisations have a history of placing profit before people. Also on Pfizer’s list of scandals are a 2012 bribery settlement; massive tax avoidance; and lawsuits alleging that during a meningitis epidemic in Nigeria in the 1990s the company tested a risky new drug on children without consent from their parents (Philip Matters, 2017).

Whilst Trump has thus far failed to prise open Obamacare, he has made it entirely clear that any post-Brexit trade deal with the UK will see everything, including the NHS, on the table. In June the BBC reported that Trump certainly saw the NHS as a pawn in any future trade deal. "When you're dealing in trade, everything is on the table," he said when questioned.

When Jeremy Corbyn produced the redacted document at the first leaders debate Johnson simply repeated the mantra that the NHS was safe in the Tories hands. He followed this with the entirely dubious claim that they were planning to build 40 new hospitals. Though it turns out that might be 20, 10 or even 6. In reality it will probably be as real as the 100,000 new social homes promised in 2014 of which, to date, not a single one has been completed.

According to the Health Confederation whilst spending on the NHS has increased since 2010 on a range of metrics we can see a service in crisis:

·      In 2016 health expenditure in the UK was 9.75 per cent of GDP, compared to 17.21 per cent in the USA, 11.27 per cent in Germany, 10.98 per cent in France, 10.50 per cent in the Netherlands, 10.37 per cent in Denmark, 10.34 per cent in Canada, 8.98 per cent in Spain and 8.94 per cent in Italy.

·      The UK had 2.8 physicians per 1,000 people in 2016, compared to 4.1 in Germany (2015), 3.9 in Spain (2015), 3.8 in Italy (2015), 3.5 in Australia (2015, est), 3.4 in France, 3.0 in New Zealand (2015) and 2.7 in Canada (2015).

·      The UK had 2.6 hospital beds per 1,000 people in 2015, compared to 8.1 in Germany, 6.1 in France, 3.2 in Italy (2015), 3.0 in Spain, 2.8 in the USA (2014), 2.7 in New Zealand (2016) and 2.6 in Denmark (2016).

·      The UK had 0.4 psychiatric care beds per 1,000 people in 2015. This compares to 1.3 in Germany, 0.9 in France, 0.4 in Canada, 0.4 in Denmark (2016), 0.4 in Spain, 0.2 in the USA (2014) and 0.1 in Italy.

Ironically, when the unredacted document was presented last week it was Labour who were accused of lying. The document which was the notes of meetings between the UK and the US where at least one government minister was present should have been a political bombshell, and an election changer.

However, Laura Kuenssberg’s analysis began:

“Jeremy Corbyn doesn't provide evidence ministers have agreed the health service should be part of a trade deal with US.

But details of discussions about the demands of US pharmaceutical companies will still be motivating for Labour voters worried about the NHS.”

Read that carefully. Jeremy Corbyn provides no evidence. Apart from a 450 page document. But for Kuenssberg, who almost certainly has private health insurance as part of her remuneration package, it is only “Labour voters” who need to be worried. Forget for a moment the inherent bias in her statements, but should it not be a concern for every citizen of the UK that the NHS is available free at the point of use and not seen as a gateway for more profits from some of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the World?

In the event faced with the news that high level talks had taken place which would allow the NHS to be brought by American big pharma, journalists (I use this description guardedly) instead questioned Jeremy Corbyn about allegations of anti-Semitism for which there remains little, if any, actual evidence.

The Guardian’s summary of Labour’s revelations is in marked contrast to every mainstream title, with the exception of The Mirror. Their report which certainly reads as considered and impartial makes the point:

“The documents show that between July 2017 and July this year, trade talks between the UK and US have covered the NHS, drug pricing and patents, the pharmaceutical industry and medical devices, in the context of the future trade landscape between the two countries.”

Of the daily newspapers only The Guardian and The Mirror led with this incredible story on their front pages, every other mainstream British newspaper either buried this bombshell in the inside or used this evidence to attack the Labour Party. The Sun, for example, claimed that: “Mr Corbyn’s wild claims were rubbished” an assertion proved beyond reasonable doubt by citing Liz Truss, Matt Hancock and James Cleverly. There’s investigative journalism for you..

Now, let’s be clear, right wing newspaper attacking the Labour Party is hardly earth shattering news, but when experienced and supposedly respected journalists such as Laura Kuenssberg spend an entire afternoon tweeting how it could not possibly be true because it might be unpopular, then we can see clearly the morass into which the one-time writers of the first draft of history have fallen.

That the entire mainstream print and broadcast media took it upon themselves to undermine this story, without even reading the documents is important, but even more important is what the effect of this will be on ordinary people.

Since the inception of the NHS in 1948 people in the UK have been used to being able to access free healthcare when they need it. Of course, there have always been private patients, those wealthy enough to afford it can jump waiting lists and doctors made it a condition of supporting the NHS that they should be able to retain a private income. But, for most of us, a broken limb, a bout of flu, or a major illness are not affected unduly by finance, that care has been there when we need it.

It is difficult to imagine the huge cultural shift that losing the NHS would bring to Britain. Already, according to the United Nations, 14.6 million people are in poverty. That figure will double or treble as ordinary people are crippled by medical bills. Make no mistake if the American health insurance business gets its claws into the NHS their profit will be guaranteed on the backs of the payments of ordinary people. The better off will afford private insurance but even they may struggle if they have a major illness as their premiums rise, that is supposing that any insurer will cover them in the first place.

This is not just being alarmist we have seen what has happened to the insurance status of people whose homes are ruined by floods. If anybody has been in a car crash, even one where it was not your fault, you’ll know how your premiums rise. If the American experience is anything to go by health insurance, once they have a monopoly, will rise year on year and way faster than wages.

Some people continue to doubt whether the leaked document is real, though nobody has actually denied it, and think this is just politicking by Labour. Maybe it is. Though personally dodgy dossiers is not something normally associated with Jeremy Corbyn, and surely people couldn’t be confusing him with Tony Blair, so I am apt to believe that not only have the talks taken place but that the Americans are eying the NHS.

What those who are casting doubt on their veracity have to ask is whether they are really prepared to gamble with not only their own future, but the future well-being of their children and children’s children. It has been said before that this election is a once in a generation opportunity for real change, it would be a disaster for Britain if that real change turned out to be the end of the NHS.