Rosie Duffield MP has resigned the Labour whip in protest at “cruel and unnecessary” austerity and hypocrisy in accepting gifts.

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Keir Starmer explains that he feels no shame or guilt benefitting personally from gifts from the rich and powerful while insisting on policies of severe austerity causing suffering and death.
Keir Starmer explains that he feels no shame or guilt benefitting personally from gifts from the rich and powerful while insisting on policies of severe austerity causing suffering and death.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3vkdy997rko.amp

MP Rosie Duffield says she is quitting Labour over leader Keir Starmer’s “cruel” policies and “hypocrisy” over his acceptance of gifts.

In her resignation letter, published by the Sunday Times, the Canterbury MP lambasts the prime minister for accepting gifts worth tens of thousands of pounds while scrapping the winter fuel payment and keeping the two-child benefit cap.

In the letter she said the “revelations” since the change of government in July had been “staggering and increasingly outrageous”.

“I cannot put into words how angry I and my colleagues are at your total lack of understanding about how you have made us all appear.”

Dear Sir Keir,

Usually letters like this begin, “It is with a heavy heart…” Mine has been increasingly heavy and conflicted and has longed for a degree of relief.

I can no longer stay a Labour MP under your management of the party, and this letter is my notice that I wish to resign the Labour Party whip with immediate effect.

Although many “last straws” have led to my decision, my reason for leaving now is the programme of policies you seem determined to stick to, however unpopular they are with the electorate and your own MPs.

You repeat often that you will make the “tough decisions” and that the country is “all in this together”. But those decisions do not directly affect any one of us in Parliament. They are cruel and unnecessary, and affect hundreds of thousands of our poorest, most vulnerable constituents.

This is not what I was elected to do. It is not even wise politics, and it certainly is not “the politics of service”.

I did not vote for you to lead our party for reasons I won’t describe in detail here. But, as someone elevated immediately to a shadow cabinet position without following the usual path of honing your political skills on the backbenches, you had very little previous political footprint. It was therefore unclear what your political passions, drive or direction might be as the leader of the Labour Party, a large movement of people united by a desire for social justice and support for those most in need.

You also made the choice not to speak up once about the Labour Party’s problems with antisemitism during your time in the shadow cabinet, leaving that to backbenchers, including new MPs such as me.

Since you took office as Leader of the Opposition you have used various heavy-handed management tactics but have never shown what most experienced backbenchers would recognise as true or inspiring leadership.

You have never regularly engaged with your own backbench MPs, many of whom have been in Parliament far longer than you, and some of whom served in the previous Labour government.

You have chosen neither to seek our individual political opinions, nor learn about our constituency experiences, nor our specific or collective areas of political knowledge. We clearly have nothing you deem to be of value.

Your promotion of those with no proven political skills and no previous parliamentary experience but who happen to be related to those close to you, or even each other, is frankly embarrassing.

In particular, the recent treatment of Diane Abbott, now Mother of the House, was deeply shameful and led to comments from voters across the political spectrum. A woman of her political stature and place in history is deserving of respect and support, regardless of political differences.

As Prime Minister, your managerial and technocratic approach, and lack of basic politics and political instincts, have come crashing down on us as a party after we worked so hard, promised so much, and waited a long fourteen years to be mandated by the British public to return to power.

Since the change of government in July, the revelations of hypocrisy have been staggering and increasingly outrageous. I cannot put into words how angry I and my colleagues are at your total lack of understanding about how you have made us all appear.

How dare you take our longed-for victory, the electorate’s sacred and precious trust, and throw it back in their individual faces and the faces of dedicated and hardworking Labour MPs?! The sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice are off the scale. I am so ashamed of what you and your inner circle have done to tarnish and humiliate our once proud party.

Someone with far-above-average wealth choosing to keep the Conservatives’ two-child limit to benefit payments which entrenches children in poverty, while inexplicably accepting expensive personal gifts of designer suits and glasses costing more than most of those people can grasp — this is entirely undeserving of holding the title of Labour Prime Minister.

Forcing a vote to make many older people iller and colder while you and your favourite colleagues enjoy free family trips to events most people would have to save hard for — why are you not showing even the slightest bit of embarrassment or remorse?

I now have no confidence in your commitment to deliver the so-called “change” you promised during the General Election campaign and the changes we have been striving for as a political party for over a decade.

My values are those of a democratic socialist Labour Party and I have been elected three times to act on those values on behalf of my constituents. Canterbury made history when its voters elected their first woman, and only non-Conservative, MP since the seat was created in the thirteenth century.

My constituents elected an independent-minded MP who vowed to put constituency before party, and to keep tackling the issues that most affect us here — Brexit fallout, funding for our universities, our desperately struggling East Kent NHS, dire housing situation, repeated sewage pollution and protecting our vital green spaces.

I am confident that I can continue to do so as an independent MP guided by my core Labour values.

Sadly, the Labour Party has never shown any interest in my wonderful constituency in the seven years that I have been in Parliament. But I am proud of my community and will continue to serve them to the best of my ability.

My constituents care deeply about social issues such as child poverty and helping those who cannot help themselves. I will continue to uphold those values as I pledged to do when I first stood before them for election in 2017.

As someone who joined a trade union in my first job, at seventeen, Labour has always been my natural political home. I was elected as a single mum, a former teaching assistant in receipt of tax credits. The Labour Party was formed to speak for those of us without a voice, and I stood for election partly because I saw decisions about the lives of those like me being made in Westminster by only the most privileged few. Right now, I cannot look my constituents in the eye and tell them that anything has changed. I hope to be able to return to the party in the future, when it again resembles the party I love, putting the needs of the many before the greed of the few.

Yours sincerely,

Rosie Duffield MP

Keir Starmer explains that he feels no shame or guilt benefitting personally from gifts from the rich and powerful while insisting on policies of severe austerity causing suffering and death.
Keir Starmer explains that he feels no shame or guilt benefitting personally from gifts from the rich and powerful while insisting on policies of severe austerity causing suffering and death.
Continue ReadingRosie Duffield MP has resigned the Labour whip in protest at “cruel and unnecessary” austerity and hypocrisy in accepting gifts.

George Osborne: Rachel Reeves is a ‘mini-me’

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https://www.thenational.scot/news/24495275.george-osborne-rachel-reeves-mini-me

George Osborne has said the cuts announced by Rachel Reeves were almost identical to the ones he announced as chancellor (Image: NQ)

GEORGE Osborne has called Rachel Reeves a “mini-me” over her recent statement to the Commons, where she announced a swathe of cuts to plug a £22 billion black hole in public finances.

Osborne– who was chancellor under David Cameron’s government and was instrumental in bringing about austerity – said that the cuts announced by Reeves on Monday were “almost identical in structure and form” to those he made in 2010, when he announced £6.2bn worth of cuts.

“I don’t think there was anything she announced that I would have violently disagreed with or not done myself.

“In fact, it was almost identical in structure and form to what I did in the first couple of months that I was Chancellor of the Exchequer.

“So, you know, ‘Continuity Osborne.”

Sharing a clip from the podcast on social media, SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn said: “No comment.”

https://www.thenational.scot/news/24495275.george-osborne-rachel-reeves-mini-me

Continue ReadingGeorge Osborne: Rachel Reeves is a ‘mini-me’

Who is Jim Ratcliffe, the pro-Brexit billionaire promised €700m from UK government to build ‘carbon bomb’ in Europe?

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https://leftfootforward.org/2024/03/who-is-jim-ratcliffe-the-pro-brexit-billionaire-promised-e700m-from-uk-government-to-build-carbon-bomb-in-europe/

Environmental campaigners warn that Ratcliffe’s controversial ‘Project One’ will bring ‘US-scale plastic production to Europe.’

Jim Ratcliffe, Britain’s pro-Brexit billionaire, hit the headlines this week with news that the government is providing a €700m guarantee for him to build the biggest petrochemical plant in Europe in 30 years. The plant will turbocharge the production of plastic.

Left Foot Forward takes a look at who Ratcliffe is, and how his controversial ‘Project One’ that will bring ‘US-scale plastic production to Europe’ is recieving significant financial guarantees from the Tory government.

Ratcliffe’s story is one of capitalist meritocracy, of someone who grew up on a council estate in Failsworth, Manchester, and went on to become the wealthiest man in Britain. He studied chemical engineering at Birmingham University and gained an MBA from London Business School in 1980. Having worked as a chemical engineer, in May 1998 he founded Ineos. The multinational is one of the largest chemical producers in the world and plays a significant role in the oil and gas market.  According to the 2023 Sunday Times Rich List, the company’s owner, Ratlcliffe, is worth £27.9bn.

This week, it was announced that the government is providing a €700m guarantee for Ratcliffe to build a huge petrochemical plant in Europe. The site will import fracked shale gas from the US to provide the ethane which will produce 1450 kilotons of ethylene – the building block of plastic – a year.

The plant is being constructed by Ineos in the Belgian city of Antwerp. Environmental campaigners have described the petrochemical plant as a ‘carbon bomb,’ warning that it will turbocharge plastic production on a scale not seen before in Europe, at a time when countries are hoping to negotiate a binding global treaty to tackle plastic pollution. The ‘Project One’ plant has faced a long-running legal battle by environmental groups. In the summer of 2023, the building of Ratcliffe’s €3bn plant was halted after a landmark court victory by the NGOs. A new legal challenge argues that the true impact of the development on people, nature and the climate has not been considered.

“There is a huge problem of plastic pollution from nurdles already in Antwerp and the Netherlands. This plant will bring US-scale plastic production to Europe,” said Jeroen Dagevos, of the Plastic Soup Foundation, one of the NGOs challenging Project One.

https://leftfootforward.org/2024/03/who-is-jim-ratcliffe-the-pro-brexit-billionaire-promised-e700m-from-uk-government-to-build-carbon-bomb-in-europe/

Continue ReadingWho is Jim Ratcliffe, the pro-Brexit billionaire promised €700m from UK government to build ‘carbon bomb’ in Europe?

How austerity caused the NHS crisis

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The A&E delays can be traced back to Cameron – and have been worsened by successive health secretaries

Original article republished from Open Democracy under  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

NHS sign

Danny Dorling

4 January 2023, 1.19pm

When the coalition government first introduced its landmark Health and Social Care Act in 2010, health secretary Andrew Lansley claimed the NHS would never again need to undergo such huge organisational change.

But even at the time, one widely respected commentator warned that – far from being the final fix that Lansley had advertised – the act “could become this government’s ‘poll tax’”.

In the event, it has been a slow-burn poll tax. Only now, ten years after it came into law, are we seeing its full effects, with publications from The Times to the Morning Star reporting that “A&E delays are ‘killing up to 500 people a week’”.

This figure – 5% above the normal number of people who die each week, though that baseline is also rising – can surely be traced back to the act, which ushered in a greater wave of privatisation than ever before. It compelled NHS management to behave as if they were in the private sector, competing to win business, and led to an increase in the proportion of contracts won and the use of contracts overall.

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At the time, the damage caused was little noticed because government cuts in the first round of austerity targeted local authorities and adult social care. The first group of people to see their life expectancy fall were elderly women who most often lived on their own. It was in 2014 that this connection became apparent.

Back then, the government was still confident, with the Department for Health and Social Care rebutting any suggestion that austerity and privatisation might be linked to mortality. The privatisation figures were also opaque. In 2015, halfway through Jeremy Hunt’s tenure as health secretary, it was reported that ministers were misleading the public. By that point, private firms were winning 40% of new contracts – far higher than the 6% spend share claimed by the government and almost identical to the 41% won by NHS bodies.

The first great increase in mortality was recorded in that same year, a 5% rise that the government tried to attribute to influenza. The problem with that explanation was that the stalling and falls in life expectancy were not seen to the same extent anywhere else in Europe.

Last year it was claimed that austerity since 2010 had led to a third of a million excess deaths

By 2019, life expectancy for women had fallen in almost a fifth of all neighbourhoods and in over a tenth for men. Poorer people, both old and young, in poorer areas suffered most, with infant mortality among babies born to the poorest parents rising. Later there was a rise in deaths of women who were pregnant.

As NHS waiting lists spiralled, a tenth of all adults, most of those who could, were resorting to accessing private health care in 2021. But, in doing so, they lengthened the lists further by jumping the queues and thus diverting resources.

By April 2022, the number of vacant beds in hospitals was at an all-time low. Estimates of the damage done kept rising. Less than six months later, it was claimed that austerity since 2010 had led to a third of a million excess deaths, twice as many as from the pandemic.

Now, A&E departments are stretched to capacity, unable to clear patients to other beds in our hospitals as they could in the past. Those other beds cannot be cleared as they were before because adult social care has been repeatedly decimated, with what is left being tendered out to private companies.

All of this was foretold. In the four years after 2015, the value of one group of private sector contracts in the NHS rose by 89%. These figures were released just before the 2019 general election, partly in response to Matt Hancock, then the health secretary, claiming that “there is no privatisation of the NHS on my watch.”

Again, the damage was not so much through the extent of covert privatisation, but through the wider ethos that had been promoted. Take the USA: most of the enormous amount of money spent on healthcare there has little impact on improving health, because the ethos is wrong.

Related content: No one voted for Rishi Sunak to return the UK to crippling austerity

24 October 2022 | Adam Ramsay

OPINION: Sunak wants yet another round of cuts to public spending. And just like in 2010, we didn’t vote for it

It is sometimes said – wrongly, that is – that the NHS has not been further privatised because the share of its spending that went to the private sector remained roughly the same between 2012 and 2020. By 2020 that share was about 7%, or just under £10bn a year. It rose to over £12bn during the pandemic when the government paid private hospitals to treat patients, but because overall health spending rose, the proportion remained roughly the same, still around 7%.

But the number of private companies involved did increase greatly, particularly in areas where there was already more private healthcare. By last year, private firms were delivering a quarter of all planned NHS hospital treatment in the least deprived areas of England, and 11% in the most deprived areas. Those shares – which have risen since 2020 – are higher than the overall 7% because it is in planned hospital treatment where the private sector has most infiltrated the NHS.

Last year, the Health and Care Act of 2022 put paid to Lansley’s claim that he had fixed the NHS ‘once and for all’. The act reduces the compulsion of the NHS from having to tender so many services to private sector bidding in future, but it was not designed to stop the rot. It will not solve the service’s problems, though there is hope that it could be the beginning of an actual change in ethos.

The pandemic made the effects of privatisation clear: Britons now have the worst access to healthcare in Europe and some of the worst post-pandemic outcomes. But the successive health secretaries who inflicted this tragedy are unrepentant.

The pandemic made the effects of privatisation clear: Britons now have the worst access to healthcare in Europe and some of the worst post-pandemic outcomes. But the successive health secretaries who inflicted this tragedy are unrepentant.

In 2018, Lansley criticised Hunt’s cuts in screening services, blaming them for delaying the detection of his bowel cancer. Hunt, meanwhile, went on to become foreign secretary and then chancellor of the exchequer. His legacy, as openDemocracy’s Caroline Molloy wrote last year, is “one of missed targets, lengthening waits, crumbling hospitals, missed opportunities, false solutions, funding boosts that vanished under scrutiny, and blaming everyone but himself.” Hancock is now most remembered for eating a camel penis and cow anus on live TV for money.

Belligerence, bravado and buffoonery. We got here because too many of us believed the words of fools.

Original article republished from Open Democracy under  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Continue ReadingHow austerity caused the NHS crisis

WORSE THAN USELESS BORIS AND HIS NASTY TORY PARTY SCUM :: UK :: It’s Murdochracy not Democracy

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I am likely to revise this article but I want to get it out. It’s about the historical and continuing malign and corrosive influence of the Australian-American press baron Rupert Murdoch on UK politics. The article starts by looking at Murdoch’s influence over Tony Blair’s government before looking at how he still wields influence over Boris Johnson’s current government (and needs expanding there). I’m only searching the web so you can do this for yourselves.

https://pressgazette.co.uk/rupert-murdoch-documentary-rise-of-dynasty-bbc-tony-blair/

Former Sun deputy editor Neil Wallis was in charge during the 1997 election campaign when then-Sun editor Stuart Higgins was on holiday.

The paper made shockwaves when it published a “Sun backs Blair” front page after declaring “it was the Sun wot won it” for the Conservatives in the previous election.

He said he asked for a first-person piece from Blair on his party’s “cut and dried position” on Europe but it was “a piece of PR flim-flam that actually said nothing”.

“I said ‘I’m not running this Alistair [Campbell, Blair’s spin doctor] because it’s just saying nothing’. But I said ‘for this to be coherent, for this to have an impact, this needs to say you will not go into the Euro without a referendum’.

“And I duly got the piece under Tony Blair’s name committing them to a referendum on the Euro if it was ever considered that they would go into it.”

Former UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage directly linked this Sun column with the eventual vote to leave the European Union 19 years later.

He told the documentary: “The price of Rupert Murdoch’s support for Tony Blair was that Blair promised he would not take us into the European currency without first having a referendum, and if Rupert Murdoch had not done that we would have joined the Euro in 1999 and I doubt Brexit would have happened.

“So I think when we look at the long history of Britain’s relationship with the European project that led ultimately to the Brexit vote, I think that was a decisive intervention from Rupert Murdoch.”

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/murdochs-blair-chats-492134 July 2007

TONY Blair spoke to media mogul Rupert Murdoch three times in the 10 days before the Iraq war – once on the eve of the invasion – it was disclosed yesterday.

Details were released by the Cabinet Office the day after Mr Blair stepped down as Prime Minister.

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/sep/05/tony-blair-godfather-murdoch-daughter

Henry Porter writes in Sept 2011

So much falls into place with the revelation that Tony Blair became godfather to one of Rupert Murdoch’s two young daughters and attended their baptism on the banks of the river Jordan last year. True, it isn’t yet clear whether Blair had agreed to become a godparent while he was prime minister [see footnote], and the ceremony did take place after he had left office, but the important point is that the relationship underlines Murdoch’s deep entrenchment in British political life.

Murdoch’s third wife, Wendi Deng, who let slip the information in an interview with Vogue, described Blair as one of Rupert’s closest friends. Blair’s account of the relationship in his memoirs is somewhat different, portraying Murdoch as the big bad beast, who won his grudging respect. That is clearly disingenuous. As other memoirs and diaries from the Blair period are published, we see how close Murdoch was to the prime minister and the centre of power when really important decisions, such as the Iraq invasion, were being made.

Blair and Murdoch didn’t have to be bosom buddies for the relationship to be counter to the interests of a healthy national life and politics. As Lance Price, the former Blair spin doctor, has said, Murdoch was one of four people in Britain whose reaction was considered when any important decision was made during the Blair years.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/murdoch-pressured-blair-rush-iraq-war-says-campbell-diaries-7855271.html June 2012

Rupert Murdoch launched an “over-crude” campaign to force Tony Blair to speed up Britain’s entry into the Iraq war, according to the final volume of [total cnut] Alastair Campbell’s diaries.

Mr Blair’s former communications director accuses the media mogul of being part of a drive by American Republicans to drag Britain into the controversial war a week before the House of Commons even voted to approve the intervention in 2003.

The claim is explosive because it appears to contradict Mr Murdoch’s evidence to the Leveson Inquiry. The News Corp chief told Lord Justice Leveson in April: “I’ve never asked a prime minister for anything.”

It is the second time that claim has been contested. Sir John Major, the former Prime Minister, told the inquiry this week that Mr Murdoch threatened to withdraw the support of his newspapers for his Government unless it took a tougher stance on Europe.

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/tony-blair-not-order-hillsborough-9658130 July 2015

Liverpool MP Andy Burnham has suggested that Tony Blair did not order a full enquiry into the Hillsborough disaster because he did not want to offend Rupert Murdoch.

Mr Burnham, a Labour leader hopeful said he was told not to pursue his demand for an official investigation when serving under Mr Blair.

As a result a “major injustice” was allowed to remain in place for more than a decade, he said.

Mr Burnham was the driving force behind Gordon Brown’s decision to set up the Hillsborough Independent Panel into the deaths of 96 Liverpool fans.

The Sun caused lasting outrage after publishing a report following the 1989 tragedy accusing “drunken” Liverpool fans of attacking rescue workers.

July 2020

Former Prime Minister Tony has always adamantly denied allegations he had an affair with Wendi, who was married to the News UK magnate from 1999 to 2013. However, the new BBC show spoke about Wendi’s affection towards him, including an unearthed diary entry in which she spoke about his ‘good body and legs’ before adding: ‘And what else and what else and what else…’.

But it was a series of emails, allegedly from Wendi about Blair, that effectively caused their divorce. ‘She made a bad mistake,’ journalist Ken Auletta explained. ‘She was sending emails on Newscorp email, so it’s easy for one of Murdoch’s minions, or lawyers, to extract those emails and see what they said – and they did.

dizzy: At Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall’s wedding in March 2016 Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Priti Patel were invited – three prominent members of the current UK government. David Cameron and George Osborne – anti-Brexiteers – were not invited. Tony Blair was not invited – he’s been dropped by Murdoch after not having an affair with Wendi Deng.

Boris Johnson's thumbs up from Rupert Murdoch
Boris Johnson’s thumbs up from Rupert Murdoch
Continue ReadingWORSE THAN USELESS BORIS AND HIS NASTY TORY PARTY SCUM :: UK :: It’s Murdochracy not Democracy