When Margaret Thatcher, was once asked what her greatest
legacy to the country was, she replied without hesitation, "Blair and New
Labour." It was Blair who lied us into a war with Iraq to please U.S.
military and economic interests, and it is Blair, who is the real architect of
Brexit.
After leaving British politics, Blair spent most of his time
filling his pockets with cash and acquiring multiple properties. According to
the Office for National Statistics (ONS), in 13 years of New Labour, 80% of new
jobs in the UK, went to migrants from Eastern Europe. Many of these migrant
workers came from the former Communist Eastern bloc countries like Poland,
Hungry, and Slovenia, which became members of the E.U. in 2004. Although most
E.U. member states placed limits on the number of migrants entering their
countries, Britain under Tony Blair, opened the door to all of them.
Blair, a derided carpet beggar, is now campaigning for
greater private sector involvement in the NHS. This is already Labour Policy
and all successive British governments, have been privatising the NHS by
stealth for years. In 1983, the Tories under Margaret Thatcher, introduced
"competitive tendering" to
outsource ancillary services such porters, kitchens, and cleaning, to private
companies. This led to a rise in hospital-acquired infectious diseases and
dirtier hospitals.
In 1991, the Tory Prime Minister, John Major, introduced the 'internal market' and the "Purchaser-Provider" split. This led
to more NHS bureaucrats and increased NHS costs by 10%. John Major's government
then introduced the "Private Finance
Initiative" (PFI) an expensive way of borrowing money for new
hospitals which locked the British taxpayer into long-term debt.
In 1997, Tony Blair and New Labour, funded 100 New Hospitals
using PFI's at a cost of £12.7bn, with repayments reaching over £80 billion.
When the debt is fully repaid, the public still won't own the hospitals. As the
debt rose, NHS Trusts have been forced to sell assets and to shrink capacity
leading to fewer hospital beds and lower nurse/patient ratios.
In 2000, New Labour, introduced private provision of medical
services into the NHS for the first time. Many medical practices were
contracted out to the private sector, at greater cost for the NHS. In 2003, New
Labour introduced "Foundation Trusts",
arms-length business entities independent of government control.
In 2012, the Conservative/LibDem coalition government,
introduced the Health & Social Care Act (HSCA), which abolished the legal
foundation of the NHS and removed the Secretary of State for Health's legal
duty to provide healthcare for all. This responsibility has now been handed
over to quangos, such as NHS England.
The doctor's union, the British Medical Association (BMA),
argue that successive British governments have been presiding over a "managed decline" of the NHS for
many years. There seems to be some truth in this. The so-called crisis in the
NHS, which has led to staff shortages, longer waiting times for medical
treatment and bed shortages, seems to have been largely engineered and
manufactured during the last 13 years of the Tory government. They want to
privatise the NHS, which was always the dream of Margaret Thatcher, who never
used it.
More people are now paying for private medical treatment or
fund raising to pay for it to obtain urgent medical treatment. As this
increases, it's likely that we will lose the NHS by default and private medical
care will become a reality for most of us.