How to Vote this Coming December

I do get it, that some people will find it difficult to vote for Jeremy Corbyn.  The stories about support for terrorists and antisemitism that circulate are real barriers for many, and the scale of investment being proposed by the relatively soft-left, mainstream manifesto that has been produced by his team does scare some voters - who may perhaps not have realised the scale of the cuts of the last ten years.  Equally, some may feel that the late commitment to the WASPI women, and the use of the NHS to challenge the Tories, smack of opportunism.

Equally, many people find Boris Johnson appalling.  His misogyny, racism, islamophobia, anti-gay stance and inability to speak without lying make him unfit for government to many of us.  His casual relationship with the truth led to a British citizen being incarcerated overseas when Foreign Secretary, while he has been a representative of one of the most hard-right ideologically-driven governments we have seen, worse so than that of Margaret Thatcher.  The detailed evidence is that there have been many more than 130,000 early, unnecessary deaths since they have been in power, which appear to be directly attributable to their policies.

And the Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson is seen by a large number of people as no better.  A junior leader in the Coalition, she has expressed no regrets for their support of the hard right, nor for breaking their promises on tuition fees.  Many Lib Dems, let alone others, see her as too right wing to lead the party of Beveridge for much longer.

I’m sure similar challenges can be thrown at the other party leaders.  But that isn’t my point.  We really do need to look beyond personality, and the flaws of individuals, and look at the heart of the policies for which each party stands.

From this perspective, it seems clear that there are three large-scale policy areas which we can look at, to see how we might vote. 

(Note:  As the Brexit party haven’t published a manifesto, they are excluded from discussion below.  However, they are, mostly, right-wing Conservatives in disguise.  So most of the discussion of the Tories below will apply equally to them, or more so).

To begin with Brexit.  If we are to leave the EU, as a small majority of voters in the (I believe flawed) referendum of 2016 preferred, there are a number of choices:

-                      The Conservatives are proposing the hardest of hard departures, with a real risk of no-deal, and an internal border between NI and GB.  Most experts and commentators believe this will do real damage to the country and its institutions, with prolonged trade negotiations afterwards which will run the real risk of damaging our own businesses and public services further as a result.  Workers rights and food safety standards will be up for negotiation.  Equally, it entrenches division, as many Remain (and some Leave) voters feel a fraud is being perpetrated.

-                      However, the Lib Dem policy of ‘Revoke’ appears anti-democratic in the extreme, whatever the possible flaws of the 2016 vote.  It would also entrench division, and do little to prevent a later Government from beginning the whole process again.

-                      To minimise the harm to the country of a hard Brexit, and to attempt to heal divisions if possible, it is clear that a softer approach to Brexit is required, which minimises the need for unhelpful and unbalanced future deals and does far less damage to people and the land.  And by putting this to a second public vote, there is a chance, if a slim one,  of reconciling both Leavers and Remainers.  This Labour approach therefore feels correct, whatever the personal vote and vacillations of Corbyn.  Most of the regional parties also, correctly, support this strategy (albeit with caveats).

Setting aside the high emotions that Brexit generates, I personally believe a more pressing issue is the desperate need to address the huge damage that has been done in the last ten years to our public services, and the public realm in general. 

-                      In this area the proposals from the Conservatives, as set out in their election manifesto/leaflet, are laughable in the extreme.  They fail to reverse the cuts to police and the health service, they do not address social care, nor do they address the rising crisis of housing safety highlighted by Grenfell and other fires.  And, to be blunt, their current approach to Brexit will make all of this worse and entrench austerity - as the real costs of their ultra-hard Brexit have not been factored into their budget calculations.  Finally, rather than address the failures of the press and wider media (whatever happened to Levenson?) they are instead proposing measures to control the courts, so they can never again intervene to prevent them behaving illegally.

-                      The Lib Dem proposals are better, but again feel far too limited.  It may be that they are in denial about the huge harm the policies they supported in the Coalition have caused to individuals up and down the UK.  And because they aren’t yet ready to recognise the full impact of the austerity in which they were complicit, they can’t properly address it.  Again there is little on the behaviour of the press and media.

-                      Turning to the Labour party, I have a real concern that their proposals, while highly laudable in this area and nearly of an appropriate scale, are unfocused.  I would rather, for at least the next five years, that they made the reversing of the cuts, redressing of unfairness, attention to social justice and the rebuilding of the welfare state their primary goals.  The various nationalisations of natural monopolies (energy, rail, water, Openreach, etc), while essential, could be moved into second place.  Perhaps even deferred to a second term.  This would create greater headroom to rebuild our broken state and begin to unify society.

However, again, and it pains me to say it, I must admit that the third and final major area of policy is more important than either of these. 

I fear that the linked existential risks of climate collapse and large-scale species extinction must, at  the moment, override everything else.  This must provide the main guide to which party to vote for in the coming election.

I fully admit that this is interwoven with the other two areas.  The USA trying to keep climate change concerns out of proposed future post-Brexit Trade Deal negotiations shows this clearly.  However, I think it is possible to use this area as the core for our decision-making as an electorate.

-                      The Green proposals are unsurprisingly the gold standard in this area.  They’ve set the right targets, and the measures they propose and level of necessary investment to transition at speed to a net zero carbon economy by 2030 seem essentially correct.  They’ve thought about it hard, and for a long time.

-                      The SNP and Plaid Cymru are nearly on the same page, but they each have problems driving the transition.  The former have yet to say how they will address their dependence on the oil and gas industry, while the latter will need to find clarity about how their farmers will be supported to make the needed changes, and how quickly.  The SNP also seem to seeing IndyRef2 as at least equally important.

-                      The Labour party also clearly understand the problem, and have proposals which nearly equal those of the Greens.  They appear to grasp the problems involved in transitioning the whole economy, and are proposing investment which should solve the majority of problems, and may also provide real export opportunities.  They have however been mealy-mouthed about the zero-carbon target, only suggesting delivery by ‘the 2030s’.  This needs to be a harder-edged goal.

-                      The Lib Dems are yet to realise how urgent this is.  Although they are proposing investment, and they seem to understand many of the challenges, to aim to fix the problem by 2045 is far too late.

-                      Sadly, in this area, and unlike the others, the Conservative proposals are woeful, and wholly inadequate to the challenge.  They have no real concrete plans for the transition of the economy.  Even their much-touted ban on fracking is only temporary.  Their leader could not even be bothered to attend the Channel 4 debate on the subject, instead sending the understrapper Gove, who was rightly turned away.  But more than this, they just have not grasped the critical importance of the issue, as their manifesto and public pronouncements show.

So there you have it.  On the biggest threat to our country and our lives, the Tories have nothing to offer.  This is truly frightening.  But at least it makes things clear. 

If you care about the lives of your children and grandchildren, if you care about our country, you cannot vote for the Conservatives.  They are so dangerous to the UK, to the planet, and to the natural world.   

Therefore, whoever leads whichever party, there is one, simple answer.

Each one of us must vote the best way we can to defeat the local Tory candidate.  Do the research, and lend your vote to the person who is best placed to beat them in your local constituency. 

For the sake of us all.

What the Last Ten Years have done to the NHS

Al, or to give him his Russian codename ‘Boris’ Johnson has gone on record as saying that the reason he is proposing ‘investing the record ever amount’ in the NHS is because it is ‘facing massive demand’ (interview with BBC Breakfast).

The interviewer, Naga Munchetty, did a good job of challenging this, on the grounds that the amount proposed is not even enough to make up the shortfall in funds to the NHS since 2010, and it is spread over five years, so the increase will be slow to have effect. And it is far from a record amount.

She also compared spending under the Coalition and Tory governments with a range of more generous regimes, including that of the late Margaret Thatcher. The video has been quite widely shared, and has even appeared on the Daily Mail website, although they didn’t discuss his skewering over the NHS.

But even so, I think this only really addresses part of the story. Why is the NHS ‘facing massive demand’?

I think there are a number of related answers to this question, which throw additional light on the impact of Tory policies. (Sorry people, this is going to be another long one).

Often, NHS pressures are seen in the context of rising attendances and the ongoing failure to meet A&E performance targets, and the similar failure to meet cancer treatment targets, to name but two. Or, more nuanced, to this is added the much-reported difficulty to get a GP appointment in many parts of the country, and the exceptionally long waiting times being faced by people in need of support from mental health services.

All of these are, of course, related. If you can’t see your GP, it is quite possible that the condition may exacerbate, or you may become desperate, and so you will head for A&E. People with untreated mental health problems may well also end up in an emergency setting. Because it is always there to help when the other systems fail.

And if A&E is overwhelmed, as it has been in the last few winters, it affects the whole hospital – elective appointments, and scheduled surgery are cancelled, because the staff, beds and other resources are being used to deal with the urgent cases.

So, each of these measures, and many other figures that show a system being severely challenged, are closely related, and demonstrate that the NHS is a system, which has to work as a whole. It also illustrates why a plan which merely focuses on capital refurbishment of hospitals – which was the Johnson government’s original idea – so woefully misses the mark.

But is demand increasing as the man claimed? Well, yes it does appear to be, but this too should be unpicked a little.

Often there is talk of an ‘increasing number of older people requiring care’ – yet actually life expectancy in the UK has stagnated in the UK in the last ten years. And, traditionally, those who are very frail or elderly would be cared for in care homes or nursing homes, which would normally mean they needed less treatment from the NHS, apart from thoughtful medicine review (the figures are robust about this).

There is also sound evidence that – particularly in more deprived areas – there have been more unnecessary deaths in the last 10 years than previously. In those areas, particularly, people have been living less long. Attempts have been made to test whether this is linked to austerity by researchers, and there does appear to be some connection in the data.

One attempted rebuttal of this came from a professor who should have known better, who said it was probably due to ‘increasing multimorbidity’. But, as is well-known, areas with higher deprivation usually also have a population which acquires chronic conditions earlier than is normal, and on average become multimorbid at a much earlier age. This was a finding of the Marmot Report, and I’ve personally seen this effect when working in population health analysis and management over the last few years. So, identifying increasing multimorbidity may well actually be a measure of increasing deprivation.

Or, rather, deprivation which remains unaddressed. If other services work well, this trend can be ameliorated (I've seen this too).

And this is the crux, I think. Just as the NHS is itself a system which should be seen as a whole, so it in turn must be seen as embedded in a network of social and community services which provide a network of support, aimed at helping the most disadvantaged in our country through early intervention. These services also provide safety when patients leave hospital, making discharge safer and helping prevent readmission.

The exceptional and massive reduction in local authority funding over the last ten years has drastically undermined this environment. Whether considering the deep cuts to social care, sure start, housing support, benefits, or the myriad of other necessary services and support structures, it is clear that the net effect is create more life stressors, remove help, and put more pressure on individuals and thus the already-overstretched and stressed NHS. Difficult life events now often leave those in most need of help with nowhere else to go.

So has demand increased? I would say yes, but mostly because of the policies pursued by successive governments over the last ten years.

This really ought to be emphasised. In a period which has seen the lowest level of funding increase to the NHS in 70 years (which actually results in real-term cuts), at the same time as the government has presided over massive staff reductions in the service, the funding for all the other allied services which keep the pressure away from the NHS have been slashed more heavily than ever before. So that despite an increase in early deaths, and there being no substantial increase in overall life expectancy, the pressure on the service of last resort has become, and continues to be, exceptional.

And to be honest, something similar has occurred with the police.

The obvious corollary is that you can’t resolve the challenges the NHS is facing without also addressing the Coalition/Tory cuts to social care, public health, wellbeing, housing, benefits, and so forth.

We haven’t seen the manifestos yet, but the Labour Party and the Greens do seem to get this. I just wish we all did.

Challenge to the Lib Dems (and Others)

I think Farage standing down the Brexit candidates in seats with incumbent Tories sets more of a challenge to the Lib Dems than anyone else.

It stops the Leave vote from splitting in those seats, and makes it harder to unseat Tory candidates. It also helps the Brexit party to focus their limited resources on seats in the Leave-voting seats in the North and in Wales. Usually with a Labour incumbent. The aim being to split the Labour vote.

It's clear that the Lib Dems won't have a majority of seats in parliament after the election, but by stepping aside in favour of Labour where Labour have a chance of winning, particularly in constituencies where the Brexit party are standing, they could keep alive their hopes for Remain.

The barrier appears to be their leader's current anti-Jeremy Corbyn rhetoric. But if they can just get past this personal focus, and act responsibly, that could be a game changer.

Labour would also need to reciprocate, which could be hard given current party rules. But there are ways around that, with goodwill.

Let's see some common sense, please?

NHS. Not Safe with the Tories

When we speak or write about the NHS "not being safe in the hands of the Tories", I think we need to be a little more precise.

I suspect it won't be that the NHS will be 'on the table' in future trade deals. The Tories, if they win, will talk about the Service continuing to be free at the point of use, and 'regulated' by the Government as a state service, paid for by general taxation. (In fact some Tory candidates have already started to use this language).

The challenge is that, by allowing some or most of the services used by the NHS to be supplied as part of international trade deals, by private companies, the cost of the Service will sky rocket.

This is why Labour are focusing on pharmaceutical costs at the moment. The UK currently bargains hard to keep medicine costs down for us all, and the EU are also part of that. The US want to be able to charge an awful lot more for the drugs their companies provide, which is why they want them on the table in future trade discussions.

Other services supporting the NHS have already been contracted to the private sector, in some areas, with very mixed results. And a number have been brought back into the service as a result. But in the context of Brexit, and a right-wing Tory Government dead-set on achieving 'deals no matter what,' the number of these are likely to increase dramatically.

These increased costs could be exceptionally damaging for the NHS. They would dwarf the rather pitiful budget increases that the Tories are currently proposing. The ability of the service to respond to the needs of the population would drop dramatically.

The result would be more money being required for the NHS, which would mostly go to fund private sector profits. Or, with no further increase in budgets, a hollowed-out shell of a service not fit for purpose is likely to result, I think. And this in turn would enable a subsequent increase of private provision to be promoted to 'help' the NHS.

Through all this, the Government would claim it was still a National, state-funded service, free at the point of need. But it would be crippled by their policies, and far less able to deliver the care that we all want and need.

Not a Drill

A book I very much enjoyed reading this September was "This Is Not A Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook".

It's still out there. Bright Pink. Buy a copy.

As well as campaigning advice, and explanations (partial, to be honest) about the degree of climate risk, there are number of essays, including one by Caroline Lucas and a very good one (I thought) by Labour MP Clive Lewis. ('A Green New Deal' - it's chapter 26).

But no contributions at all by any Tory, Brexit, DUP, or even SNP or Lib Dem politician.

Which is disappointing, to say the least.

Zero-Carbon Trade: Saving the Planet

If we aim to save the planet, surely the last thing we want is more overseas trade.  Instead we should be investing in low- and zero-carbon food and goods, produced and consumed locally, and preferably owned locally too.

Following this logic, if/when we Leave the EU, rather than focus on new trade deals, we should apply tariffs based on the total carbon footprint of the inbound products.  No offsetting, and including all components.  This will, I suspect, require regulation going beyond current EU rules, and we should welcome that.

This is a challenge for Remainers also.  The free movement of goods is one of the EU's bedrock 'four freedoms,' and I have never seen an analysis of the carbon cost of that 'freedom'.  It will admittedly be difficult to move the bloc to zero carbon trade.  But if that can be achieved it would be far better for the earth than the UK going it alone.  And, remaining, we could veto new deals with distant  parts of the world.

Eventually, we may have ultra-low carbon mass transport (airships? yachts?), but we don't have them now, and we need to act urgently.

Here we go....

As the UK heads towards a crunch general election, which will set the direction of the country for a generation, we at the Trees will be moving to more political messages.

Please stay with us.

And make sure you have a Vote, and use it.