Cymrectitude*

Opinion pieces by this author are really beginning to put me off this website entirely. We tried the left-wing version of the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn and it didn't work. The electorate didn't like him and he allowed the party to become mired in antisemitism. Regardless of how you feel about it, Starmer's incarnation of the Labour party is about the most progressive or left-wing version that we will see for many years. The Overton Window has shifted too far and it will take time to claw it back. Even if we had proportional representation for the next Westminster elections, I highly doubt that we would see a meaningful shift in politics within my lifetime. It will take generational changes for that kind of shift to be felt. "Pitched between Emile Zola and someone on a local Facebook group whose bins haven’t been collected, Reeves bristled at the irresponsibility of her predecessors."I've been bristling at their irresponsibility ever since the disastrous, ideologically-led, and entirely unnecessary 'austerity' programme was introduced 14 years ago. Look at the noise the last lot made when they took over - we still hear the "Labour caused the banking crisis" narrative even today, despite the fact that it is demonstrably untrue. Granted, the last Labour administration could have done a lot more to tighten financial regulations, but the simple fact is that, when Thatcher copied Reagan's homework, we were already set on a course for some kind of catastrophic financial crisis. Analysts had been warning of this for years in advance. What would you have preferred an incoming chancellor to say? "The data is, of course, available to anyone online and always has been, so the big reveal wasn’t quite the shock it was billed as, but well done to Rachel for carrying off the performance like the tipped-off recipient of a surprise party."I imagine there's quite a difference between what the government publishes for public consumption and the actual granular detail of the accounts. "The UK’s public finances aren’t, in fact, in their worst state since the war but that isn’t the point."I'd like to know how you came to this conclusion. The narrative we've been hearing for many months is that we now face the highest tax burden in 70 years, and it is also objectively true that the performance of public services are, by any metric you care to name, performing worse now than they have for a long time. "During one of the leaders’ debates, Starmer was asked whether he, a millionaire, would consider paying for private healthcare if a close family member was gravely ill.How very dare you?! The putative PM looked as if he’d been stung by a wasp at the very suggestion. Stuttering a little, he explained that ‘in his house’, where he is the sole moral arbiter, nobody had even heard of BUPA."His mother was a nurse who died of a rare auto-immune disorder and spent many years under the care of the NHS. Earlier this year my partner suffered a very rare and very serious spinal condition that, left untreated, could have left her paralysed below the waist. Despite the issues the NHS has, despite the delays to treatment, despite the short staffing, within 1 day of first going in to A&E she was receiving emergency spinal surgery from one of the most highly acclaimed neurosurgery departments in the country. If someone had asked me the same question, with its underlying implication that in order to get the best quality care we simply must turn to private providers, my reaction would be an awful lot stronger than Starmer's was. In response to such a question, I would likely deploy more colourful expletives than Starmer has ever heard in his lifetime, let alone used... My gratitude to the NHS is indescribable, as is my anger at the way it has been treated. Starmer is Mr Boring And Sensible, and I am not. But I'm not prime minister, and after the utter shower we've had for the last 14 years, I am immensely glad that Mr Boring And Sensible is currently occupying the top political seat.