The Future Of The Labour Party Part 2!

In my previous blog I expressed the desire that the Labour party should decide what it stands for and STAND for it. It should not just chase votes. Well there have been a number of high profile interventions by senior members of the last Labour Government. Namely Tony Blair and John Prescott. One a former Prime Minister and the other the former Deputy Prime Minister to Tony Blair. About as senior as you can get. The article I saw in the Independent showed the different sides to the current argument. Now I have to admit here that with the exception of the Iraq war, I generally thoroughly enjoyed the Blair administration. For a multitude of reasons but mostly because his government oversaw the most fundamental overhaul of the NHS but for a positive change. The National Service Frameworks for the various specialities have been the biggest single positive influence on the NHS in my 28 years of service. After 18 years of Conservative shilly shallying these publications took the NHS by the scruff of the neck and, much like a Punch and Judy show said "That's the way to do it!" It would be fair to say that I have been around and I found that different hospitals had varying responses to certain afflictions. It became known as the "Postcode Lottery".

 Depending on which hospital you lived near depended on the quality of care. The NSF's took that out of the system and said this is best practice you must do it this way. However what was novel for a government offensive it followed up by offering resources to the hospitals that realised they could not comply. This equated to staff and equipment. This was a novel idea. The last Big Idea by the Conservatives was to push for the attainment of certain health outcomes and if not achieved they would divert resources to increase education. That's right if the NHS couldn't successfully treat heart attacks the government was going to remove funding (thus making it even harder to carry out it's functions) and spend it on education instead. Great idea, NOT! So New Labour was really a breath of fresh air to the NHS.

However roll on 18 years and we have a Labour movement that lost it's second consecutive election. So which way should they jump. The Blairite view is that it is impossible to instigate social reform from the opposition benches, you can only instigate socialist policies if you are actually in power. But the other side of the coin is that at the moment the Labour movement appears to be a Party that got mixed with blue underwear in the wash. Watered down Tories! So my take is that the party should swing to the left. What this country really needs is a vociferous opposition to the Conservatives and a loud voice to air opposition to UKIP idiocy. So swing to the left and loudly. Provide some sort of alternative, a real alternative. The shallowness of UKIP policy and the down right xenophobia of the anti immigration lobby needs to be exposed by a loud voice. Let it be Labour. Maybe the country at large will respond if they can be reminded that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer in this country