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Drop ‘dangerous and damaging’ private finance plans for NHS, Chancellor warned

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/drop-dangerous-and-damaging-private-finance-plans-nhs-chancellor-warned

Chancellor Rachel Reeves delivers a speech in the media briefing room of 9 Downing Street in central London, ahead of the Budget later this month, November 4, 2025

ACADEMICS and campaigners have called on Chancellor Rachel Reeves to drop “dangerous and damaging” NHS private finance plans ahead of the autumn Budget next week.

The government is considering new PFI-style deals to build “neighbourhood health centres” under plans to move care from hospitals into community settings.

In their 10-year NHS plan, ministers set out the possibility of relying on public-private partnerships (PPP) to fund the centres, fuelling concerns that taxpayers could be left footing the bill for high borrowing costs.

Campaigners gathered outside the Department of Health and Social Care yesterday in a protest organised by We Own It to demand a halt to the plans.

The anti-privatisation group has also co-ordinated a letter, signed by 50 academics, which calls on Ms Reeves to “abandon this dangerous and damaging proposal and fund public services through direct taxation or borrowing.”

Signed by figures such as Lord Sikka, the letter calls the arguments for private finance “bogus” and warns Ms Reeves that “using private capital in the NHS is no different from a family buying their home using a payday loan.”

Campaigners have warned about the dangers of risking a repeat of disastrous PFI (private finance initiative) schemes, in which private firms funded the building of hospitals, while high-interest repayments were made over the long term.

Research by the Institute for Public Policy Research found that for just £13 billion of investment, the NHS was landed with an £80bn bill.

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Continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/drop-dangerous-and-damaging-private-finance-plans-nhs-chancellor-warned

Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the "hard times".
Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the “hard times”.
Continue ReadingDrop ‘dangerous and damaging’ private finance plans for NHS, Chancellor warned

Corridor care ‘new normal’ in England for one in five NHS inpatients

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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/sep/09/one-in-five-inpatients-hospital-corridors-england-cqc-survey

The proportion of patients who said there were always enough nurses on duty improved from 55.7% in 2023 to 57.9% in 2024. Photograph: Jeff Moore/PA

Findings of CQC survey from November 2024 lead experts to say waiting in such settings has become normalised

Corridor care has become the new normal in England, experts have said, as a national survey found that one in five patients admitted to hospital had to wait in such settings.

The report by the Care Quality Commission also found that nearly 10% of patients waited more than 24 hours to be admitted to hospital and 17.5% waited 12 to 24 hours.More than half of all patients waited more than six hours.

Nearly half waited in a treatment bay, but 18% had to wait in a corridor, 31% in a waiting room and 1%, or 361 patients, said they had to wait in a storage room or cupboard in November last year.

The CQC’s chief inspector of hospitals, Dr Toli Onon, said trolley waits were regrettable and must not become the norm. She said it was great to see improvements since but that reports of lengthy waits and patients whose health had deteriorated was a real concern.

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Article continues at https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/sep/09/one-in-five-inpatients-hospital-corridors-england-cqc-survey

Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership is intensely relaxed about assaulting those least able to defend themselves - the very poorest and most vulnerable.
Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership is intensely relaxed about assaulting those least able to defend themselves – the very poorest and most vulnerable.
Continue ReadingCorridor care ‘new normal’ in England for one in five NHS inpatients

Wes Streeting accused of ‘chaotic and incoherent approach’ to NHS reform

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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/15/wes-streeting-accused-of-chaotic-and-incoherent-approach-to-nhs-reform

The Institute for Government report says positive steps by Wes Streeting had been undermined by his attempts to reform the health service. Photograph: Phil Noble/Reuters

Exclusive: thinktank report finds health secretary has failed to improve productivity and the health service is unlikely to meet its targets

Wes Streeting has been accused of taking a “chaotic and incoherent approach” to reforming the NHS, which makes it unlikely the government will hit its own targets, according to a damning report by the Institute for Government (IfG).

The report praises elements of how the health secretary has managed the health service in his first year in office, including improving performance and staff retention in hospitals. The pay settlement he reached with resident doctors last year avoided a winter plagued by NHS strikes

But it also criticises significant aspects of his performance, including the way he handled the abolition of NHS England and his lack of action to stem the exodus of senior GPs.

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Stuart Hoddinott, the IfG’s associate director and the author of the report, said: “There have been some positive steps: performance is trending slowly upwards in hospitals, there’s been a genuinely large increase in GPs and the rate at which hospital staff are leaving their jobs is the lowest on record outside the pandemic.

“But that has been undermined by a chaotic and incoherent approach to reforming the service. The announcement of NHS England’s abolition was abysmally handled and management cuts in integrated care boards have been a needless distraction.”

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Original article at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/15/wes-streeting-accused-of-chaotic-and-incoherent-approach-to-nhs-reform

Continue ReadingWes Streeting accused of ‘chaotic and incoherent approach’ to NHS reform

Who supports Reform and why? The charts that show who favours Farage’s party

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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/13/who-votes-for-reform-and-why-charts-that-show-who-supports-farage-party

 Composite: Reuters/The Guardian

Based on the largest poll of supporters yet, these charts and maps show five distinct groups that could hand Reform a majority

 The real Reform voters have been revealed – it’s a slapdash coalition Farage will struggle to hold together

Research based on a poll of 11,000 Reform UK supporters, the biggest survey of its kind, tells us more about who is intending to vote for the party than has been previously known.

The in-depth polling analysis from Hope Not Hate reveals a voter coalition that stretches from struggling workers and frustrated graduates to wealthy retirees, in places from Hitchin to Runcorn.

While immigration is often viewed as the defining issue for Reform supporters, the data shows a far more complex picture. This diverse coalition is deeply divided on big issues such as the economy, the climate crisis and the role of government.

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Who are the Reform supporters?

The research divides them into five groups, based on their attitudes towards different issues. These groups are the “working right”, “hardline conservatives”, “squeezed stewards”, “contrarian youth” and “reluctant reformers”. They differ in some key ways.

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Anki Deo, who leads the policy and insights team at Hope Not Hate, says that in “an era of hyper-marginal politics where election results are decided by just a few percentage points”, identifying these groups and where they live is crucial.

She adds: “For those of us desperate to prevent a Farage-led government in 2029, this research shows us that not all is lost. Reform UK voters do not fit a single profile or ideology. Far from a homogenous group, it is a broad coalition, with many voters having quite different and contradictory views from each other.

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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/13/who-votes-for-reform-and-why-charts-that-show-who-supports-farage-party is recommended

Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.
Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage reminds you that he's the man that brought you Brexit and asks what could possibly go wrong.
Nigel Farage reminds you that he’s the man that brought you Brexit and asks what could possibly go wrong.
Continue ReadingWho supports Reform and why? The charts that show who favours Farage’s party

Morning Star Editorial: Starmer may fall, but the right’s grip on Labour won’t be broken from within

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/starmer-may-fall-rights-grip-labour-wont-be-broken-within

 Prime Minister Keir Starmer departs 10 Downing Street, London, to attend Prime Minister’s Questions at the Houses of Parliament, November 12, 2025

IF KEIR STARMER intended to stave off a leadership challenge by advertising his readiness to fight one, he has miscalculated.

All his intervention has done is placed the question of his leadership at the top of MPs’ minds.

Perhaps identifying Wes Streeting as a possible challenger was intended to frighten the left away from triggering a contest — since Streeting is even further right than Starmer.

In practice it simply showcases the Prime Minister’s insecurity and the toxic culture Streeting accurately describes in Downing Street — where the government briefs against its own, and a leadership that has always relied on bans and expulsions to maintain authority descends into a “circular firing squad,” to use the ever eloquent Barry Gardiner’s phrase. Unlike Starmer, MPs might reflect, Streeting has never pretended to be on the left and as a Blairite true believer might at least try to govern through persuasion rather than fear.

Nobody should fear challenging Starmer: his government is as inept as it is cruel and is paving the way for a far-right Reform UK regime.

But Streeting is no solution. The Health Secretary would be a cosmetic change, no more: he’s wedded to the same policies of privatisation and cuts that have wrecked our public services and national infrastructure. Starmer loyalists point to the long death agony of the last Tory government as evidence that switching leader doesn’t help — and it won’t, without dramatic changes in Labour policy.

And that’s a problem. Starmer’s leadership exists to prevent change, not deliver it: its whole mission has been the destruction of Corbynism and the threat of a socialist-led Labour Party. That project was endorsed by the overwhelming majority of Labour MPs even before last year’s election brought in cohorts of carefully vetted conformists.

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Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/starmer-may-fall-rights-grip-labour-wont-be-broken-within

Keir Starmer refuses to be outcnuted by Nigel Farage's chasing the racist bigot vote.
Keir Starmer refuses to be outcnuted by Nigel Farage’s chasing the racist bigot vote.
Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the "hard times".
Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the “hard times”.
Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership is intensely relaxed about assaulting those least able to defend themselves - the very poorest and most vulnerable.
Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership is intensely relaxed about assaulting those least able to defend themselves – the very poorest and most vulnerable.
Continue ReadingMorning Star Editorial: Starmer may fall, but the right’s grip on Labour won’t be broken from within