UK Politics
General Discussion for politics in the UK.
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Wanting the NHS to remain in public hands isn't a middle-class opinion, it's a left-wing one. The reason he uses the word "middle-class" is to characterise that argument as one that can only be made by someone in an ivory tower, insulated from the real problems of the world where we have to use private providers. And I disagree with that characterisation: I think that our use of private providers to fill gaps in the NHS has massively increased the cost and only served to enrich the private medical industry. But making that point makes me a middle-class luvvy who doesn't know the real world, unlike Wes Streeting who has worked in student politics, think tanks and political parties his entire life (apart from that time he was at PwC as a public sector consultant, helping these companies get more of those lucrative contracts).
Wanting the NHS to refuse to use private companies, even if that might mean better outcomes, which is the actual policy and the goal, is a privileged position.
Streeting is not proposing the NHS 'no longer be in public hands', so whether views on that are middle class, leftwing or whatever, are not relevant.
Nobody's asking for worse outcomes - it's a difference of opinion of what will actually work. Saying people want everyone to suffer so they can have their way is just being disingenuous.
That's also not a fair characterisation of Streeting's argument. It's not that they want people to suffer, just that they're not exposed to the consequences of the policies they're advocating.
My point is that it's not only middle-class people using private healthcare who think this. And Wes Streeting knows that. He just doesn't want to argue for his market-based approach (because it's really unpopular) so he just mischaracterises the opposition to it.
Private healthcare doesn't come into it. It's about people who don't regularly interact with the health service, which is most of us, having stronger opinions about how healthcare is delivered than whether it is.
Again, it's a difference of opinion about how it's delivered, not whether it's delivered. Can you find me a single example of someone saying they don't want the NHS at all unless it's 100% publicly delivered? Because that's the imaginary person you and Wes Streeting are arguing against.
People (in this very thread, so not strawmen!) mischaracterising using any private companies in delivery as taking the NHS out of public hands was exactly the argument that he was responding to.