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Finally, a Government has actually found enough money to put the NHS back on track, but this has hardly been mentioned in the media coverage of the Labour Government’s first budget, as all the focus is on who is paying for it and what the Government’s definition of ‘working people’ is.
Instead the press has concerned itself with the supposed vilification by the Government of hard working hedge funders, large farmers and public schools, rather than the real beneficiaries – the 90% of the population for whom this was a transformative budget.
Much of the blame for this failure can be laid at Starmer’s Government’s antiquated approach to communications. It still uses a traditional Government press office method of focusing on stopping and pre-empting negative coverage, rather than focusing on a more positive and pro-active narrative.
Of course it’s true that we have a pre-dominantly right-wing press in this country, that is far more worried about who paid for Taylor Swift tickets than the most significant improvement in employment rights this century, but this Government is still failing to get its message across properly to the public. It should be briefing ministers to be less concerned about financial black holes and more focused on tackling the shocking state that the last Government left public services in.
Twenty three billion pounds in extra spending on the NHS is something to be celebrated. It has the potential to transform the NHS in the same way that the first Blair Government did after the long waiting lists of the Major era. Of course, it will need to be spent wisely and there will need to be reform, but with Lord Darzi and Alan Milburn the Government has experienced advisers who will make sure that will happen. Of course, the burden of raising this money needed to fall on the broadest shoulders but that is just common sense.
Instead of just talking about financial black holes, as the Chancellor has been, Starmer’s team should have concentrated on telling us just how bad the NHS has become. That surgeons are performing operations in rooms where water is dripping through ceilings and stressed that under Conservative Governments the NHS has fallen to only number 10 out of 11 countries in the Commonwealth ranking of health systems on outcomes. Cancer rates in the UK have sunk below most other wealthy countries. Survival rates for lung, liver, brain, oesophageal, pancreatic pancreatic and stomach cancers are worse than in most other wealthy countries. This is the real black hole.
Kemi Badenoch and Shadow Net Zero Secretary Funded by Backers of Tufton Street Climate Science Denial Group
The Conservative party leader and several leading members of her new Shadow Cabinet have ties to the opaquely-funded group campaigning against plans to reach Net Zero
Since 2010 the UK has consistently under-invested in the NHS versus the spend on healthcare in the rest of Europe. In 2022 according to the NHS Confederation, Germany spent 55% more on healthcare than the UK and France 26% more. Even though Sunak’s Government trumpeted that they had increased healthcare spending in 2023, when adjusted for inflation there was a 1.4 % decline.
With such a large majority, the Government needs to shed its concern with always communicating financial probity, or even trust. It is no longer campaigning for our votes. Enough of us have put our trust in the Government, what it needs to do now is show us how it can make our lives better and share its vision with us.
We have been told the next six months is going to be tough and there is no doubt that this is going to be a tough winter for the NHS even with the new spending commitments as they are not going to have time to make a difference, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have a clear picture of how the £23 billion is going to make a real lasting difference. Instead, we are being told about consultations and reform.
Perhaps this Government doesn’t feel it needs to waste its time communicating with us and getting us on side. Perhaps Starmer is so thick-skinned he doesn’t worry about his fall in popularity because he has a huge majority and five years for growth to kick in and build the economy and for the investment in public services to become tangible.
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There are several problems with this. Firstly, popularity like trust is difficult to get back once you have lost it. You can’t plan an unpopular first year and then a growth in popularity for the next four. Secondly, you can easily fall into the Biden trap, where you do deliver a better economy and have important policies and investment such as the Biden’s Green New Deal, but the public don’t feel the difference in their everyday lives. People aren’t rational. They don’t vote on the basis of economic statistics. If they did, Trump would not be president elect.
Starmer needs to learn from Biden’s successful first campaign and bring all of us with him. Of course, he needs to make tough decisions, but he also needs to communicate to the public what the benefit are of those decisions, or his Government won’t be around long enough to actually implement them.