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Keir Starmer: ‘If you want change, you have to vote for it’
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024
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UK Politics
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But of a change in message from "we don't need you lefties, fuck off and vote Green or whatever"
Labour's two biggest policy promises are the most ambitious green policies in this country's history, and the biggest expansion of workers' rights in half a century, so I don't see how the suggestion they're not interested in appealling to the left can be true.
Don't get me wrong I like those policies, and hope Labour win, but the messaging for the past few years has been very alienating to anyone on the left. When Labour frontbenchers are going out and calling Margaret Thatcher a "visionary leader", or Wes Streeting blaming "middle-class lefties" for opposing NHS privatisation then it makes you think "maybe they're not the party I was hoping they were". These aren't gaffes, they're part of a coordinated strategy to target more naturally right-wing voters. Because they don't think the left have anywhere to go (and they're right, but they might stay home).
If you select only the messages designed to appeal to the right (to whom they have to appeal if they want to win!), sure. But they've also had plenty of leftwing messaging, comparing their plans to Attlee, most obviously. As to Streeting's comments in particular, it's the 'middle class' bit that's important: he's criticising privileged people prioritising grandstanding over getting things done.
More to the point, the policies are much more important than the odd bit of rhetoric.
Wanting the NHS to remain in public hands isn't a middle-class opinion, it's a left-wing one. The reason he uses the word "middle-class" is to characterise that argument as one that can only be made by someone in an ivory tower, insulated from the real problems of the world where we have to use private providers. And I disagree with that characterisation: I think that our use of private providers to fill gaps in the NHS has massively increased the cost and only served to enrich the private medical industry. But making that point makes me a middle-class luvvy who doesn't know the real world, unlike Wes Streeting who has worked in student politics, think tanks and political parties his entire life (apart from that time he was at PwC as a public sector consultant, helping these companies get more of those lucrative contracts).
Wanting the NHS to refuse to use private companies, even if that might mean better outcomes, which is the actual policy and the goal, is a privileged position.
Streeting is not proposing the NHS 'no longer be in public hands', so whether views on that are middle class, leftwing or whatever, are not relevant.
Nobody's asking for worse outcomes - it's a difference of opinion of what will actually work. Saying people want everyone to suffer so they can have their way is just being disingenuous.
That's also not a fair characterisation of Streeting's argument. It's not that they want people to suffer, just that they're not exposed to the consequences of the policies they're advocating.
My point is that it's not only middle-class people using private healthcare who think this. And Wes Streeting knows that. He just doesn't want to argue for his market-based approach (because it's really unpopular) so he just mischaracterises the opposition to it.
Private healthcare doesn't come into it. It's about people who don't regularly interact with the health service, which is most of us, having stronger opinions about how healthcare is delivered than whether it is.
Again, it's a difference of opinion about how it's delivered, not whether it's delivered. Can you find me a single example of someone saying they don't want the NHS at all unless it's 100% publicly delivered? Because that's the imaginary person you and Wes Streeting are arguing against.
People (in this very thread, so not strawmen!) mischaracterising using any private companies in delivery as taking the NHS out of public hands was exactly the argument that he was responding to.