HEALTH OF THE NATION?
The Daily Express newspaper attacked globe-trotting prime minister Tony Blair's weakest flank, his apparent repulsion from the Britain's public life and people. 'WANTED Tony Blair, virtually missing from public life since September 11', read the banner headlines on 7 November. The weakness in the Express campaign, though, was that to make the case stick, they needed a domestic issue that all would agree had been neglected. The issue decided upon was the National Health Service.
On face value the case against Blair's treatment of the National Health Service - the Crown jewel of the welfare state - is compelling. Not only has Britain's spending on health fallen behind that of European countries, but increases in health spending under Labour are less than they were under the Tories.
But face value hides a lot: life expectancy in the UK has risen by more than two years each decade, now standing at 74 for men and 79 for women. The rate of increase in spending on the NHS might have slowed, but since 1963 it has increased not just absolutely, but as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product, doubling from four per cent to eight per cent, or 50 billion pounds sterling (John Appelby and Sean Boyle, 'NHS Spending', Health Care UK, 2001).
The demand for health provision, however, is open-ended: on top of the government spending, private households doubled their spending on health care (pharmaceuticals and private treatment) from £2.9 billion in 1988 to £7.2 billion in 2000 (OECD Accounts). With people living longer, their health needs are greater, not less. On top of that, a greater degree of anxiety about health risks increases the demand on the NHS. As a rule, governments can never satisfy the demand for health provision, nor easily evade the perception that they are cutting corners with our lives.
The Daily Express, though, failed to understand that governments do not always suffer from popular fears, but are learning to manipulate them to their advantage. Chancellor Gordon Brown neatly turned around the health issue to prepare the public - and more importantly, the business class - for a reversal of Labour's pledge 'not to raise taxes' (one that is already honoured as much in the breach as the observance).
In all of this shadowboxing the issue is not really health, nor even public spending. Rather, the conflict is about the government's popular legitimacy. New Labour understands that its 'War Against Terrorism' strategy is about projecting Britain's military and diplomatic authority abroad, but with the intention of consolidating a sense of moral purpose at home. Raising the issue of the NHS was the Daily Express's way of playing upon popular fears of being abandoned by the authorities. Precisely because everyone agrees in principle that we need a better health service, it is not a political debate at all. Labour, though, turned it into a question of state legitimacy by asking the people whether they would be willing to pay more taxes.
RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM: DEFEATED IN AFGHANISTAN, VICTORIOUS IN BRITAIN
'Servants under threat of being fired, poor women dragged from their homes, prostitutes, were brought to the public square and symbolically unveiled to the cries of "Vive l'Algerie francaise!"' (Frantz Fanon, 'Algeria Unveiled', Studies in a Dying Colonialism, p62)
Just two weeks after Cherie Blair spoofed Muslim women for their dress sense, making batman eyes in a skit on the veil, the Prime Minister's wife was seen in Westminster Abbey covering her head from the sight of God with what appeared to be a coal scuttle. Along with her husband, George Bush Snr from America, Her Majesty the Queen, the Home Secretary and Foreign Minister, Mrs Blair submitted before God, and his representatives in the Catholic, Anglican, Jewish and Muslim faiths, during a televised service commemorating September 11.
There are just six million Christian church members in the United Kingdom, a tenth of the population, due to the centuries-long struggle for scientific reason and agnosticism, which is the true British faith. The country's government, though, has been seized by a clique of religious fanatics, led by Mr Blair, who, when asked by Newsweek's Stryker McGuire, 'do you draw a personal connection between your foreign policy and your religious beliefs?', answered coyly, 'I'm incredibly wary about talking about that' (3 December 2001).
WE TOLD YOU SO:
'Members of the Communication Workers Union walked out on an unofficial strike in support of sacked colleague Tom Doherty', a 'victim of a panic over football hooliganism stoked up by the Home Secretary Jack Straw' (The WEEK, 16 July 2000). This month Doherty won an industrial tribunal ruling that he had not been guilty of hooliganism, and that his sacking was wrong. Post Office owners Consignia, though, barred Doherty on his return from work. Despite the support of his colleagues, the cowardly Communication Workers Union says it will not be forced into a 'knee-jerk response'.
'The impact of the rail paralysis might not be so disastrous if this government had not at the same time set out to cripple the road network' under 'the 1997 Road Traffic Reduction Act' (The WEEK, October 29, 2000). 'Britain has the worst transport record in Europe, with the most congested roads, highest prices and neglected networks "starved of investment"', according to a report by the government's Commission for Integrated Transport, as reported in the Observer, 25 November 2001, European Best Practice in the Delivery of Integrated Transport, www.cfit.gov.uk).
-- James Heartfield