Mr. Colvile’s April 29, 2023 essay ‘Britain’s legal migration numbers matter more than small boats’ ignores the the fact that the ‘Refugee Problem’ that he attempts to ‘diagnose’, might find its actual beginning point, with the murderous political adventurism of the Bush/Cheney War On Terror, that is , if political candor were its starting point. This report from the New York Times, is a stark reminder of what Journalism might resemble:
Sept. 8, 2020Updated Sept. 10, 2021
Headline: At Least 37 Million People Have Been Displaced by America’s War on Terror
Sub-headline: A new report calculates the number of people who fled because of wars fought by the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.
Mr. Colvile’s attempt at Historical Reductivism is self-serving: the diminutive framing is the tool of a propagandist. I searched the essay for mention of that ‘War On Terror’ and its continuing toxic Global legacy, not found. The essay at 1,254 words is true to the Neo-Conservative obfuscation, wedded to a highly politicized logorrhea.
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The American interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have been abysmal failures, with long lasting catastrophic consequences. The focus of Colvile’s intervention avoids that toxic legacy, by careful rhetorical procedures of evasion and absence, of a possible broad raging historical faming. As head of a Think Tank, he draws on the power of other employees, to provide viable argumentative alternatives, to actual historical facts.
Mr. Colvile’s concluding paragraph trades in the cultivation of bourgeois political respectability.
Whenever people accuse the UK of being a backward, prejudiced country, I always point to our extraordinary record of welcoming and assimilating immigration. My children and I are among the millions of Britons who wouldn’t exist without it. But, for all the focus on the boats in the Channel, it is those coming in perfectly legally who are the bigger story — and will do far more to reshape Britain
In his latest essay Mr. Colvile comments on the NHS:
Headline: Robert Colvile Ending strikes is just the start — there are harder problems for the NHS
Robert Colvile Sunday May 07 2023,
One of the joys of the local elections is seeing people scramble on to their hobby horses. It’s clear, they will intone, that the real cause of the Tories’ problems was net zero. Or sacking Boris. Or letting in too many migrants. Or too few.
In fact, the things people are upset about tend to be the same things as they have consistently been telling pollsters. Primarily, as Tim Shipman reports today, that they’ve looked at their bank accounts and realised — to paraphrase the Tory chairman, Greg Hands — that there’s no money left.
But alongside the cost of living horror show another problem has been dominating the focus groups: the NHS. During the recent strikes public concern rose by 8 points in April alone.
On this front there is a chink of light. Steve Barclay, the health secretary, has reached a pay deal with enough of the unions to sign off a national settlement, although some are still aggrieved. There have even been what one insider describes as “constructive” discussions with the junior doctors, who are on a separate deal.
It will definitely help the NHS to have staff on the wards rather than the picket lines. But, as ministers know full well, that is hardly the end of it.
One of Mr. Covile’s may guises is his posing as the voice of reason, in a cacophony of voices. As a Thatcherite Political Romantic of a certain kind, iteration, embodiment… he strikes that perpetual pose , in a newspaper, dedicated to the dismembering of The Welfare State.
What might The Reader make of this?
Headline: 37 NHS GP practices have been sold to a private US health company – here’s what it means
Sub-headline: An American health insurance company has taken over 37 GP practices in London, sparking fears the NHS is being sold by stealth.
An American health insurance company has taken over 37 GP practices in London, sparking fears the NHS is being sold by stealth.
Private Eye magazine reported this week that Operose Health, the UK subsidiary of US health insurance giant Centene Corporation, took over the 37 GP practices this week, adding to the 22 primary care services the company already runs in the UK. The firm now has full control of the NHS-funded contracts to run the London surgeries.
During the 2019 election campaign, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn claimed in a debate that he had seen internal documents showing Boris Johnson had signalled willingness to allow US healthcare companies greater access to the NHS.
Johnson repeatedly denied that the NHS would be “on the table” in any deals between the UK and the US, however.
GP practices have traditionally been owned privately by GPs themselves.
The above article is about the reality of the dismantling of that Welfare State, in sum the NHS, is already a political fact, and that the above report is just confirmation of that reality. Note the cynicism of the opening sentence, posing as a variety of political wisdom? ‘One of the joys of the local elections is seeing people scramble on to their hobby horses.’
A selection of sentences demonstrates Colvile’s argumentative thrust:
…
The good news for Rishi Sunak is that waiting lists have stopped rising, sticking at 7.2 million over the past half-year.
For the NHS workforce, it is clear that the problems go far beyond salary. True, the latest staff survey found that only a quarter of staff were satisfied with their pay.
…
Barely half felt their organisation would act on concerns they raised, or would recommend it as a workplace.
…
The key danger, they say, is a steady erosion of the goodwill on which the health service has always relied. For example, it is thought there has been a significant rise in the amount of “exception reporting” — junior doctors claiming for overtime worked, rather than just doing it unpaid.
…
The head of health policy at No 10, Bill Morgan, published a report days before getting the job about the long-term failure to train enough NHS staff.
…
But in 2021 more than half of advertised consultant physician posts in England and Wales went unfilled, and three quarters of those had no applicants at all. The more short-handed you are, the more you have to rely on locums and overseas labour.
…
The government hopes to address this with its big workforce plan, due later this year, but building capacity takes at least a decade.
…
Unless we can keep people healthier for longer, or galvanise GDP growth, we’ll soon be a health system with a vestigial economy attached.
…
A Thatcherite like Colvile cares neither for patient care, nor patient outcomes, ideological conformity is his ruling singularity, while sounding the notes of a cultivated bourgeois morality.
Fixing this, in other words, will be a long-term, multi-government project. It will also require flexibility and imagination within the sector. The medical unions are calling for a huge expansion of medical training. But it was the BMA that voted against new medical schools in 2008 to avoid an “overproduction of doctors with limited career opportunities”.
Does it really make sense for doctors to train for years across a number of areas when they will largely end up in one specialty? Should the same person be diagnosing your condition and cutting you open? What if we trained more nurse associates and sub-consultant doctors to free up doctors and nurses? Shouldn’t we be able to offer doctors better salaries to work in places or specialties that are struggling to recruit? The reaction to such suggestions tends to be frosty, to say the least.
The priority for the government and the health sector is just to get a grip on waiting lists and make the NHS run like a normal service again. But if we can’t fix its long-term problems, it won’t just be the Tories who suffer.
Rootless cosmopolitan,down at heels intellectual;would be writer.
'Polemic is a discourse of conflict, whose effect depends on a delicate balance between the requirements of truth and the enticements of anger, the duty to argue and the zest to inflame. Its rhetoric allows, even enforces, a certain figurative licence. Like epitaphs in Johnson’s adage, it is not under oath.'
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v15/n20/perry-anderson/diary
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