When Tony Blair’s government took office in 1997, every one of the newly-appointed health ministers who had worked with campaigners for the previous decade and more, abruptly cut off all contact with them, and found themselves new, more conservative allies and advisors.
Keir Starmer’s government is different: the front bench team has never worked with campaigners or union activists defending the NHS: there were no links to break.
Instead, taking over what he now insists is a “broken” NHS, but with a Chancellor insisting that no more money can be found to repair it, Labour’s new Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting has begun by rounding up the ‘usual suspects’ who designed or implemented the costly market-style “reforms” under Tony Blair, and have strong links with the private sector or right wing junk tanks.
Two of them have already been publicly wheeled out and found posts. The first was Lord Ara Darzi, a leading specialist surgeon and academic, who does lots of private work, and who was given a peerage and made a health minister under Gordon Brown’s government. Streeting has given him (no doubt backed up by management consultants) the task of drawing up yet another review of the state of the NHS – this time by September.
Full story in The Lowdown, 21 July 2024