Blogger’s Note: The Guardian today is a parody of what it once was. When young, I used to sit on three-four hour train journeys and read each edition from cover to cover. Believe it or not, the Guardian used to fairly report the USSR, China, Cuba, and the DPRK in a non-racialised manner (to a point, of course) – not always agreeing – but never sinking to racist lying. Today, the Guardian follows the US dictates of printing fake news, anti-intellectualism, and race-hatred disguised as “objective news”. Do not purchase this rag until it reverts back to its left-wing roots. Meanwhile, what the Guardian has to say today is apt, correct, and reflective of the “New Labour” project of privatising the NHS and abolishing the Welfare State. NHS staff are treated terribly by the UK government – and hated by the public – due to the cuts in healthcare they are forced to apply onto those who pay their wages through taxation.
My friend who worked in the Audit Commission and attended a Gordon Brown (Labour) governmental meeting around 2009 – was told that New Labour (following US and EU dictates) was set on dismantling the NHS over a 15-year period (during this time, all UK citizens would have to pay £15 per month for 15 years – prior to the private companies taking-over – and charging what they want) – handing UK healthcare over to US profiteers. She was told that it did not matter who won the upcoming election – ALL political parties were committed to this objective. UK citizens were to move away from a (free at the point of use) Socialist System – to a brutal “pay at use” system. For instance, a US friend of mine showed me their medical bill after giving birth to a baby. In-part it read “Nurse Handing Baby to Mother = Cost $500” – with the entire cost being $10,000! You can appreciate “why” Jeremy Corbyn had to be stopped!
Health for profit is perhaps one of the most disgusting ways of making money out of an impoverished population. Only the rich will receive treatment – whilst the enriched health professionals who allow this – should be arrested and tried for Crimes Against Humanity. Make no mistake about it, whilst NHS staff are imprisoned due to the effect of the cuts – the Labour government is deliberately and systematically destroying what is left of the NHS – at a time when Australia has refused to follow the UK path of subordination to US dictates! Whatever the case, the Western bourgeoisie at the moment, is in total disarray – as the fascist Trump stampedes around the political landscape – sharing metaphorical cigarettes with Kim Jong Un – as they both lean against a wall nervously awaiting the outcome of an important UN vote! China opposed the UN condemning of Russia for its self-defence fight against Neo-Nazi Ukraine – whilst Starmer’s New Labour voted “for”! The UN has never once condemned Israel for its “aggression” in Gaza – regardless of the body-count! ACW (26.2.2025)
Denis Campbell Health policy editor
Tue 25 Feb 2025
Wes Streeting will axe thousands of jobs at NHS England after his ousting of its chair and chief executive in what health service staff fear is a power grab.
The health secretary’s plan follows Amanda Pritchard’s shock announcement on Monday that she was stepping down as the organisation’s chief executive next month.
She will be replaced, for the foreseeable future, by Sir Jim Mackey, the widely admired chief executive of the NHS trust that runs the acute hospitals in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Streeting plans to gain and assert much more control over NHS England as part of his mission to usher in “a new era for the NHS” and revive the public service that voters care most about.
This will include shrinking the size of the body in operational charge of the health service through deep cuts to its 13,000-strong workforce, and it doing much less in the future.
He plans to end the situation whereby separate teams of officials at NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) cover the same area of health policy, such as primary care, which he regards as an unnecessary “duplication” of roles. While those teams often agree on changes needed, disagreements between them have also held up key policy initiatives.
However, NHSE personnel will bear the brunt of job losses, which will be “significant” in scale, it is understood. Some teams will be merged, including the two organisations’ respective communications teams, amid much closer joint working.
A Whitehall source said: “In future, NHS England will still play a crucial role but it will have a smaller and leaner role. It will be a smaller role than what it’s currently doing, which is a lot, but which involves a lot of duplication.
“Historically there have been too many disagreements [between the overlapping teams of officials] and duplication of tasks and roles and responsibilities.”
In an example of the tension that can occur, Streeting’s desire to publish a new plan to tackle the long waits patients can face for urgent and emergency care, such as A&E treatment and getting an ambulance, has been delayed after NHS England raised doubts about whether such a plan was needed and what genuinely new initiatives could be included, one senior official said.
Streeting has already removed Richard Meddings, NHS England’s Conservative-appointed chair. He has chosen Dr Penny Dash – a doctor who shares his zeal to radically reform the NHS – to replace Meddings, in a move NHS insiders and health policy experts say will strengthen Streeting’s grip.
Meddings was “disappointed” and “dismayed” when the minister told him he wanted him to quit a year before the end of his four-year tenure, he told the Sunday Times recently.
Dash is the chair of the north-west London integrated care board – a regional grouping of NHS trusts and local councils. She is a “no-nonsense character who is happy to provide robust challenge to senior people in the NHS about the progress they are, or aren’t, making”, according to someone who has worked closely with her.
One former DHSC special adviser said Pritchard’s resignation will give Streeting more power and “is another sign of power moving back to DHSC and ministers. With Meddings and Pritchard now gone, ministers are fully in control.” The layoffs will further weaken NHS England, they added.
But Sarah Woolnough, the chief executive of the King’s Fund thinktank, issued a veiled warning to Streeting not to impinge too much on the freedom that NHS England was given as a result of then health secretary Andrew Lansley’s controversial shake-up of the service in 2012.
“It is crucial that the two organisations continue to work well together but equally important that NHS leaders retain operational and clinical independence for the day-to-day running of the service,” she said.
Pritchard explained her “hugely difficult decision for me to stand down” saying it was her belief that the NHS needed new leadership to implement the government’s forthcoming 10-year health plan.
Streeting has denied he had asked Pritchard to step down. Speaking at an event at Apple’s headquarters in London, he said: “No, I have so much respect and time for Amanda Pritchard. I’ve loved working with Amanda Pritchard for nearly eight months now, since I became health and social care secretary. She’s given me wise counsel, she’s led the NHS from the front … over the last more than half a decade now.”
However, NHS sources said that in recent meetings Streeting had encouraged her to consider her future, given the major reforms he was planning, and that as a result she concluded that she should go. In an unusual move, two Commons select committees last month criticised her alleged lack of drive and dynamism.
A well-placed source said that the office of Christopher Wormald, the cabinet secretary – who until recently was the DHSC’s permanent secretary – had advised Streeting to “do it nicely” when announcing Pritchard’s exit, and “make it look like she was leaving on her own terms”.
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 