Something hopeful, and something truly dreadful.
Dr Julia Grace Patterson on finding hope in the ruins - and why the fight for the NHS is only just starting.
Today Bearly Politics is doing something a little different.
Iāve taken a short ābreatherā this week (read: lost a fight with a chest infection), but in the middle of it, something really lovely happened - got in touch to suggest we do a newsletter swap. If you donāt already follow her, sheās one of the clearest, fiercest and most credible voices we have on whatās being done - and undone - to the NHS.
The article below mirrors my feelings about what we got after last years election vs. what we were promised - and the disappointment that has gone with it. I couldnāt imagine a better piece to share on Bearly Politics.
Weāve just lived through an incredibly depressing chapter of UK politics. Congratulations - you got through it! Butā¦ wasnāt it awful?! It wasnāt just the Tories, with their VIP PPE lane, their parties in Downing Street, their āausterity cutsā, and their constant, mind-boggling cabinet reshuffles. No. It was the post-Tory era too; the depressing bridge of manufactured hope about the 2024 election, and then Starmer arriving with his stern looks and absolute absence of transformational policies.
If anything, the post-Tory era has been more frustrating, and certainly more perplexing, because we had already endured 14 dreadful years, and because It Was Meant To Be Different. We saw the placards during Labourās election campaign, and those placards said āChangeā. But change isnāt much use if itās just a word on a placard. We wanted change, and we were promised change, and we gotā¦ flags. And a visit from Trump.
And a lot of overly optimistic speeches about AI.
āWe wanted change, and we were promised change, and we gotā¦ flags.ā
There is so much we could say about the past 15 years of UK politics; and if we were in the pub, Iām sure we could chat about it all evening together. But I was actually hoping we could talk today about the new chapter weāre living through instead. Because this new chapter is different. Itās fascinating, and exciting, and (dare I say it) hopeful!
It became clear pretty early on that Keir Starmer wasnāt going to deliver the bold politics that so many of us were hoping for. He probably expected to arrive in Number 10 Downing Street in a blaze of glory, but instead his first weeks in power were marred by expenses scandals involving him and his team, and since then things have gone from bad to worse.
Iām a campaigner, and so people talk to me about politics wherever I go. This is not always a good thing (it can be deeply awkward in social situations!), but it does give me a good sense about how people are feeling. I havenāt heard from anyone who likes what Starmer is up to for a long time now.
At first, I actually found this really worrying. I didnāt like what he was up to, and I was deeply critical of the way he was advancing NHS privatisation. But when the Reform Party started gaining public support and gaining lots of new members, I started to get really worried about what might happen next in UK politics, and I donāt think I was on my own.
Lots of very sensible, very thoughtful people started to get cross with campaigners like me. They started to tell us that we had to set our sights lower, expect less, and to āmake doā with Starmer. After all, they said, if we didnāt then weād end up with Nigel Farage in Number 10 Downing Street.
I didnāt agree with this (I donāt think people should ever settle for the least bad option, and I think people should speak freely when things are rubbish), but it did make me pause. Maybe those people were right, maybe Starmer really *was* the best we could hope for. It made me feel very depressed about the way that politics operates in the UK.
If Iām being completely honest, I donāt think the mainstream media helped with this. Nigel Farage was given an inordinate amount of press attention, given that the Reform Party only has 5 MPs. There was near-constant coverage about the fact that they were gaining significant public support, and many media outlets failed to hold Keir Starmer to account about what he was up to. Left wing parties, meanwhile, were mostly ignored by the mainstream press.
But somethingās in the air this autumn, and weāre suddenly seeing a seismic shift.
Firstly, Zack Polanski seems to be *everywhere* - conducting interviews on behalf of the Green Party in his new role as party leader, where he speaks truthfully and plainly about the reality facing millions of people - a reality created by the terrible decisions made by politicians over the past 15 years. One of his videos on X has reached almost 12 million views (!), and if you click here, PoliticsJoe has compiled some of his most powerful moments:
The manās on fire!
Itās not just Zack Polanski though. I donāt know how you feel about the people leading the new political party called Your Party right now, but no one can argue that they arenāt making noise. Weāre seeing more powerful messaging than we have done for years about the need for publicly-owned services, about the need for the super-wealthy to pay more taxes, and about the need for a new, proper fresh start.
Andā¦ (and this is the really exciting bit, from my point of view), itās not just politicians speaking up. I spend my life online talking to hundreds of thousands of people, and people are being more opinionated than they have been in ages. Crucially, the conversation isnāt just about politicians any more - about whoās letting us down, whoās terrible, whoās locked in some sort of dreadful scandal thatās plastered all over the newspapers. People are talking with hope about the things they actually want.
Hearing other people talk in this way is empowering - it gives us hope and shows us weāre not alone. Itās extremely refreshing too. I donāt know what your personal politics are, but I believe that society should be fairer, kinder and more caring, and Iām absolutely fed up with being told that those views make me āradicalā. When I see that a lot of other people feel the same way and are speaking upā¦ well, it feels great. It feels like change might finally be possible.
And soā¦ I was hoping to draw your attention to something today, in the hope that you might tell someone else. It feels like a moment when people might share a piece of info, if theyāre unhappy about it. It feels like a moment when we could make a lot of noise, if we all did that togetherā¦
In short, it looks like Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting are about to announce something dreadful for the NHS. Iām not sure how much you know about Private Finance Initiative (PFI) deals, but Iāll do a quick recap, just in case you havenāt heard of them before.
Several decades ago, politicians didnāt want to put up the money to build new public infrastructure including NHS hospitals in England, and so they partnered with private companies instead. This was sold to the public as a fantastic idea; a way to keep spending off the public books, and to pay the private companies off over a very long period of time. Butā¦ it hasnāt worked out that way. In fact, itās been a total disaster.
The initial investment from private companies to create new hospitals in England was around Ā£13 billion - by the time weāve finally paid everything off around 2050, it will have cost us Ā£80 billion. Politicians finally came to their senses and stopped these deals in 2018, and lots of people breathed a sigh of relief. Thanks to Starmer and Streeting, it now looks like theyāre coming back.
The NHS 10 year plan was published in July, and one of the central components of the plan is around 200 new āneighbourhood healthcare centresā. There was lots of positive reporting about these centres (some of this for good reason - it would definitely be good if community healthcare received more attention, and patients could access resources closer to home). But it wasnāt clear from the plan exactly who would be funding the creation of these healthcare centres. It now looks like Starmer and his team will be launching new private partnerships to do so; i.e. theyāll be partnering with private companies in order to create the centres.
It was recently reported in The Guardian that ministers have given Ā£3 million to a management consultancy firm to draw up some plans, and Ā£3 million to a legal firm too. Itās thought that we will hear more at the autumn budget at the end of November (or certainly some time soon). If I could type 100 siren emojis here, I would.
If this was happening a year ago, or even 6 months ago, I think Iād be feeling pretty hopeless about this. After all, if people have been silenced by the sheer hopelessness of our political landscape, then how could we expect them to push back against something like this? But it feels different now. It feels like people are starting to speak freely, speak loudly, and demand what they want.
If youāre like me and you donāt want any more NHS privatisation, then please speak up.
You donāt have to do so loudly; you could just tell a friend or a family member, or pop a comment under an article, or share something someone else has written. But weāll all get bolder if we see each other speaking up. And if youād like to know what happens next, Iāll keep you informed! You can sign up for my newsletter by clicking here. Youād be so welcome to join my lovely newsletter gang - any friend of
is a friend of mine!
If you enjoyed this piece, I canāt recommend Juliaās work enough - her newsletter, Call to Action, is one of the most important and clear-eyed reads out there for anyone who cares about the NHS and the state of our politics. You can subscribe to her work here, and keep an eye out - this wonāt be the last time our two corners of Substack cross paths.
 | A guest post by
|
Excellent article. I am already a follower of Bear and Every Doctor. I have always been a left leaning person and a Labour voter. I am 67 years old and always vote. Twice I have voted Liberal for tactical reasons. I started having health problems over 25 years ago following two non fault car accidents in a relatively short space if time. Cervical spine surgery followed in 2005 and lumbar spine surgeon 2016. I was made redundant from my skilled manual job in 2005 and told I wouldn't work again. I restrained and went through higher education in an attempt to gain employment. I did find employment, but only in a low paid role in a government department. I am now retired, but still work part time because I enjoy my job and can help people. My health condition has got a lot worse recently with other conditions and the prospect of further serious cervical spine surgery which my Neurosurgeon has deferred for further thought and consultation because of the significant risks. As you can imagine I am a great believer in the NHS and I am also reliant on it. Visits to both my main consultants mean significant travel. When Labour won the election last year I was overjoyed, but cautious. When the chancellor announced that funding for infrastructure would be separate from general day to day funding I was full of hope that the NHS could finally get the infrastructure it deserved, so this news worries me greatly. My local community hospital has recently closed because of a lack of maintenance funding over the last 14 years, putting more strain on the main hospital in the area. Last year I waited in the urgent care department in great pain for over 11 hours with diverticulitis. A significant number of people in urgent care could have been seen in the closed hospital minor injuries unit. I saw health care staff that looked like they had just done a 12 hour shift on the battlefield and I saw corridors full of people, mainly elderly on trolleys. The new government has turned out to be as bad as the previous one and I have been alarmed by the number of people, some of them well educated, who have been drawn in by the pied piper rhetoric of the far right. I spent the earlier part of the year rallying on social media against the planned disability welfare cuts and writing to my MP about them. I have been disgusted by some of rhetoric used by the government about people with disabilities and long term health conditions. I saw hope in Your Party but decided to wait to see how it played out. Jeremy is a very principled politician, but not a great leader. Then I noticed Zac and found hope, I am now Green Party member šand have renewed hope. I don't know if the party can grow big enough to have an effect in my red wall constituency which swung to the Tories in 2019 on the back of the Brexit fiasco and then back to Labour on the back of the multiple Tory party scandals. Si CE then the rise of Reform in the local area has been frightening, there are flags everywhere and the county council fell to Reform. So there is a fear about what the next general election might bring but also a hope that the Greens might be able to counter the far right threat and that there are principled people like the Bear and Julia out there who are determined to do what is right and can reach people far more eloquently than this old coger can. Thank you both
Thanks for this Ju, it's truly concerning. As with so much that's going wrong currently, as well as the general state of stagnation, it all comes down to junk economics. I know you're familiar with Richard Murphy's relentless output on this, trying to take on the orthodox idea "govt can't afford it, taxes will have to rise to pay for it" etc. The reality of course is that govt can just finance the investment with new money, it doesn't have to "find" the money, and such investment is not inflationary.
To win the battle means taking on not just the government, but the Treasury's entrenched thinking as well. But somehow it needs to be done, and not just wrt the NHS, otherwise I fear we're all going to be stuck in a doom loop.