Cowper’s Cut 427: Predictions about the future
It’s delightful to discover that the widely-attributed quote “I’ve never made predictions about the future, and I never will” doesn’t seem to have a verifiable original source.
So while it’s theoretically conceivable that Corbynista Labour MP Catherine West’s pledge to challenge Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer for the Labour leadership may indeed happen, after Labour’s appalling performance in the local elections, it’s a reasonable prediction about the future to say that no meaningful challenge to Starmer will start this week.
West needs 81 fellow Labour MPs to back her: she has only ten. The ‘West Ten’ are the entirely predictable bunch of disgruntled dog-on-a-string Corbynistas. In the great quote that Robert Caro attributed to US President Lyndon Baines Johnson, “the iron law of politics is that you have you be able to count”.
Darling of the Parliamentary Labour Party’s dominant soft left Angela Rayner has … issued a statement that Labour must do better.
No shit!
Here in The Real World, nothing substantial has changed. The bulk of Labour MPs have looked this clear opportunity to depose Sir Keir Starmer in the eyes, and have blinked. Both they and he now know that.
I used last week’s ‘Cut’ to outline the implausibility of Young Master Wesley Streeting becoming the next leader of the Labour Party, and since the awfulness of the local election results became clear, we heard little directly from The Young Master or his stans until this majestic briefing to the Boris Johnson Fanzine that The Young Master is ‘ready to be the next Prime Minister’, but will not directly challenge Sir Keir unless a leadership contest is forced. (As longstanding ‘Cut’ readers have noticed, Young Master Wesley is a consistent briefer of and author of comment pieces for the Boris Johnson Fanzine, so this weighing-in on his behalf is hardly surprising.)
This is as good a yard-arm as any to remind me to disinter this Times piece which briefed that Young Master Wesley had the confirmed support of 200 Labour MPs to become their next leader.
One must have a heart of stone not to laugh. It is almost as if lobby journalists on the national media brands ought to occasionally pay attention.
One shouldn’t believe everything that one is briefed by Team Milburn-Streeting.
For those involved in health policy and politics, the meaningful question that now arises is whether the inevitable ‘reset’ of PM Starmer’s government this week is to be accompanied by anything as lively as a Cabinet reshuffle.
As best one can tell (and as best I’ve been told), the current 10 Downing Street operation is, to put it mildly, unfocused and unstrategic. This means that NHS issues are simply not among their top priorities, and boy does it show.
Without change at the top of the Department For Health But Social Care, the likelihood of meaningfully improved delivery in the English NHS recedes yet further over the event horizon.
Equally, it would be ballsy behaviour for Sir Keir to put Young Master Wesley into another brief, or indeed demote him to the backbenches. But this briefing to the Boris Johnson Fanzine may irritate.
Time is running out for Labour to meaningfully deliver better public services in any way that will be noticeable to the voters by the next general election. Team Milburn-Streeting have no meaningful theory of change for the English NHS, nor any credible plan.
The key question is whether anybody in 10 Downing Street has noticed this, and has the courage to do the necessary thing about it.
Recommended and required reading
The Times reports on the BMA’s ending its opposition to the Cass Review.
The Financial Times reports on private equity’s gain from the 20% increase in spending on children’s care.
A new target for improving patients’ experience of making GP appointments is among three top NHS priorities identified by the Prime Minister for this year, HSJ reports. The new target is for at least 80 per cent of patients to report being satisfied with their experience of contacting their GP practice by March 2027.
A reasonably balanced comment piece in HSJ on the Federated Data Platform.
In the Sunday Times, Shaun reports on legislative plans to enforce patient data sharing between primary and secondary care, and on NHS staff being allowed to return to work after cases of sexual misconduct.
Guardian long read on whether low testosterone in men is A Thing.