Starmer’s NHS offer: no more gaslighting, but no more money either | John Crace

AAttention all citizens. This is a public service announcement. Stop what you are doing and listen. For your own safety, you are advised not to get sick for the next 10 years. If you feel a heart attack coming on, just take a few deep breaths and ignore it.

If you are worried that you have cancer, take two aspirin and go to bed. If you are not dead within six months, you will know it was a false alarm. If you think you need mental health help, pull yourself together. Just stop. Thanks for your time. More updates will follow in due course.

Having spent his first weeks in Downing Street examining the state of the public finances – far worse than he thought – and the prison service – far worse than he thought – Keir Starmer has now turned his attention to the health service. It too is far worse than he thought.

We definitely see a pattern here. It’s a miracle that many of us are still alive. Or stuck in the permanent limbo of the ER. The only reason no one complained was because everyone was too busy waiting on hold, hoping to get an appointment with their family doctor.

Speaking at the King’s Fund after the publication of the Darzi Report, Keir was happy to cosplay The Grim Reaper. We the few. We the lucky ones who had overcome the odds and survived.

Think of those who have fallen along the way. The undiagnosed. The misdiagnosed. The diagnosed too late. But never relax. The Apocalypse is coming for all of us sooner or later. None of us will get out of here alive. None of us have ever beaten the system. All we can do is try to stay one step ahead of eternity for as long as we can.

Oddly enough, there was something uplifting about it all. And not just because Starmer is a natural undertaker. If being prime minister doesn’t work for him, he has a job waiting for him as chief carer for the dead with no known relatives. The eulogy for the unknown person. Sad face. Sincere face.

What was most welcome was the reassurance. The Grim Reaper was telling us what most of us already knew instinctively. Our experience tells us that the NHS is on its knees. That doctors and nurses are fighting a losing battle. That a thousand daily kindnesses – staff going the extra mile – can’t compensate for a system that is collapsing. That waiting lists are endless. That A&E can be a war zone. That hospitals are falling apart.

So it’s a relief to see a politician acknowledge reality. Finally, there’s someone who’s seriously in charge. Someone who’s not going to gaslight us. Someone who’s trying to convince us that any failures are minimal. Temporary. Who insists that 40 new hospitals have been built, when we all know that at most one waiting room has been refurbished. We can move on from a state of cognitive dissonance.

Starmer leaned on his scythe. Everything was bad. Worse than bad. It was terrible. People were dying needlessly everywhere. They were dropping like flies. Cardiovascular and cancer outcomes were far worse than in other comparable countries. Our children were fatter, our adults were sicker. Patients with mental problems in cells with only mice for company.

And the blame lay squarely with the previous government. Fourteen years of underinvestment and neglect. The pandemic as a smokescreen. During Covid our patients were dying at a much higher rate than elsewhere. One person was singled out as deserving of blame. Step forward, Andrew Lansley. David Cameron’s first health secretary whose top-down reforms had almost single-handedly destroyed the NHS.

Needless to say, Lansley’s reward for this act of destruction was a seat in the House of Lords. Established politicians like him are only allowed to fail. A more fitting punishment would have been to make him an unpaid parking attendant at St George’s. Instead, he remains untouched by his own incompetence and ideology. He now spends his time collecting his daily attendance allowance of £332 and advising companies on health policy as a sideline. Presumably people have been taught to do the opposite of what he suggests.

Unusually, The Grim Reaper decided not to leave it at that, the audience left in a state of terminal despair. Because his handlers had now instructed him to leave room for a glimmer of optimism. A tiny bit of hope. So there was a solution, he said. Labour could solve this. But not with more money. Because there wasn’t any. See above and previous sketches. Although he did get through this speech without mentioning the £22 billion black hole. Probably an oversight. But a collector’s item nonetheless.

He wouldn’t raise taxes either, because working people couldn’t afford it. Watch his lips. Instead, he would reform the NHS to make it healthy again. Digitalize everything. AI-powered cancer surgery. Treat people in the community. Stop people getting sick in the first place. Fix social care for good. Give doctors and nurses time to do their jobs instead of looking for beds.

It all sounded wonderful. Although it was rather vague how this would all happen without more money. Just trust the process. Will to believe and it will happen. Still, it was a change to hear a Prime Minister nodding his head to the reality of the NHS and wanting to improve it. The bad news was that it would all take 10 years. Not all of us would live that long. Although our sacrifice would not have been in vain.

Less than an hour later, the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, stood up in the House of Commons and said much the same thing in his ministerial statement. Although, Wes being Wes, it was said with more force. It was the Tories who destroyed the NHS. Lansley and the rest of them had blood on their hands. What they had done was unforgivable. The least they could do was say sorry.

An apology was the last thing on the mind of Shadow Health Secretary Victoria Atkins. She wanted people to know that the NHS was not really in such good shape. Its failings were exaggerated. People should enjoy their 40 new hospitals. Be grateful for Lansley. And if people died faster than they should have, that was their own fault. Lack of moral strength.

The thing about Vicky is that she’s not that bright. Not that that’s stopping her from being a high flyer in today’s Tory party. It would be a start if she learned to read the chamber. The Speaker cut her off mid-sentence. An act of kindness.