An exclusive poll for LFF shows huge public support for nationalisation of key industries and utilities, with the public having little confidence in the private sector, showing just how badly privatisation has failed.
Our poll shows that a majority of the public support public ownership of key industries and utilities like energy, water, railways, buses and the postal service – including among Conservative voters.
Buses: 67% want public ownership
67% of voters want to see buses in public ownership, with just 23% wanting private sector involvement. Support for public ownership of buses is highest among 18-24 year olds at 77%, with 64% of those aged 65 and over also supporting public ownership.
When it comes to party affiliation, a majority of Conservative Party voters want to see buses in public ownership (61%) as do Labour voters (72%) and Lib Dem voters (66%).
Water: 73% want public ownership
When it comes to water companies, 73% of voters want public ownership of water companies, compared to 18% who want them to be run by the private sector. Once again, a majority of Tory voters also want to see public ownership (70%) as do Labour voters (81%) and Lib Dem voters (77%). 88% of Green Party voters also want to see water companies taken into public ownership.
The average time for an ambulance to arrive for someone suffering stroke, severe burns or chest pain is now 93 minutes. This is five times longer than the target of 18 minutes
Each day 120 people on average die before an ambulance can reach them.
Many of these lives could have been saved if we had an NHS that was fit for purpose.
But under the Tory Government, emergency response times have hit a record high.
The average time for an ambulance to arrive for someone suffering stroke, severe burns or chest pain is now 93 minutes. This is five times longer than the target of 18 minutes.
The blame cannot be laid at the door of paramedics, who provide the best possible service under increasingly stressful conditions.
The responsibility lies with a Government that has failed to invest in the NHS.
Green Party of England and Wales co-leader Carla Denyer has made her debut appearance on BBC Question Time. Against a backdrop of continued strikes in the NHS, the panel was asked about the junior doctor’s pay dispute.
In her response, Denyer took aim at the Labour Party’s continued refusal to commit to meeting the British Medical Association’s (BMA) calls for a restoration in pay. According to the BMA, junior doctors have seen a real terms pay cut of 26% in the last 15 years. The BMA is seeking a pay increase of 35% in order to restore the losses since 2008.
Labour’s former leader spoke to the Morning Star’s CEREN SAGIR this weekend on the party’s current trajectory on the NHS, during a huge demonstration against further privatisation of the health service
WHEN Peace and Justice Project founder and Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn warned the public by revealing evidence of the Tory government’s secret dealings with US companies selling off the NHS, the media labelled it “a Russian conspiracy.”
…
But it seems that Labour’s current leadership is determined to follow in the Tories’ footsteps, with Keir Starmer declaring that nothing is “off limits” when it comes to the NHS.
When asked if the NHS would be safe in the hands of the opposition if it were to win the next general election, Corbyn said: “I’d like to think so, but I’m very worried — because our NHS is a very precious institution: healthcare, universal and free at the point of need.
“If we go into an election pledged to continue the private operation within the NHS and farming services out to the private sector, then that is a form of privatisation.
At a time when the Tories are accelerating their assault on democracy, the Labour leadership should be fortifying its defense. However, it will not be able to defend democracy if it isn’t prepared to respect it within its own movement. Across the country, left-wing members are being barred from applying to be a candidate, denying local parties the chance to vote for popular, working-class, talented people in a fair and democratic selection process. As Keir Starmer himself promised in 2020, “Local Party members should select their candidates for every election.” Reneging on this pledge sends an alarming signal to those whose trust you now seek to garner.
It also displays a lack of respect for those to whom we owe our very place in Parliament. Labour members are the ones who give up their time to knock on doors in the pouring rain. Labour members are the ones who campaign for local change in their communities. Labour members are the ones who keep the party afloat. The Labour membership is the soul of the Labour Party — you cannot crush one without the other.
Only a democratic party can provide the space that is needed to empower those with the creative ideas and transformative solutions this country desperately needs. Today, the division between rich and poor and the threat of ecological collapse are greater than ever before. Our aim should be to unite disenfranchised communities around a more hopeful alternative.
Email to CLPs warns them that any existing affiliations with groups campaigning for abortion rights, minority human rights, disarmament and a fully public NHS are cancelled
The Labour party has banned local parties (CLPs) from affiliating with an array of groups supporting the human rights of ethnic minorities or campaigning for a public NHS, in yet another Stalinist move to limit members’ freedom of expression.
And local parties are being notified by email that any affiliations they already have in place are unilaterally cancelled – and that if a right-wing group is affiliated with the party nationally, they haveno say over whether that group affiliates with them locally.
One such email reads:
Organisations that are nationally affiliated to the party are eligible to affiliate to any CLP provided they pay the appropriate fee and the CLP cannot debate or decide on their affiliations.
…The following affiliations are therefore no longer valid and the CLP may not renew its affiliation without approval from the NEC. To do so would breach party rules. These are:
Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Labour Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Stop the War Coalition, Republic, London Irish Abortion Rights Campaign, Jewish Voice for Labour, Somalis for Labour, Sikhs for Labour, All African Women’s Group, Health Campaigns Together, The Campaign against Climate Change Trades Union, Peace & Justice Project.
Yes, you read that right: a group campaigning for peace, human rights, women’s rights, disarmament and to protect the environment are not welcome in Keir Starmer’s Labour party and party member groups risk disciplinary action if they try to associate with them.
And of course, given recent appalling comments by the leadership and its agents, Jews who believe in the human rights of Palestinians are particularly unwelcome – and indeed are being disproportionately targeted by the regime in a campaign of blatant (but ignored by the media) antisemitism and discrimination.
JUNIOR doctors in England have voted overwhelmingly to take strike action over pay, their union the British Medical Association (BMA) announced today.
Almost 37,000 members of the union took part in the ballots with 98 per cent saying they were in favour of striking, which the BMA said will be a three-day action.
The vote is the largest turnout for a ballot of doctors by the BMA, and a record number of junior doctors voted for strike action.
BMA junior doctors committee co-chairs Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi said: “The government has only itself to blame, standing by in silent indifference as our members are forced to take this difficult decision.”
MORE than 50 human rights and civil liberties groups slammed the Tory government’s new anti-strike legislation today as an attack on the fundamental right to take industrial action.
An open letter, penned by groups including Liberty, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam, said the proposals would allow “a further significant and unjustified intrusion by the state into the freedom of association and assembly.”
Ministers prepared to rush the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill through its final stages in the Commons last night, claiming public services need safeguarding amid the biggest strike wave in decades.
Rishi Sunak hosted a meeting with seven bosses from the UK’s biggest private health companies to discuss how to tackle the NHS backlog, openDemocracy can reveal.
Campaigners have raised concerns that the close involvement of private healthcare corporations in the government’s response to the NHS crisis will benefit shareholders at the expense of public investment.
The government announced the creation of the Elective Recovery Taskforce in December to provide advice on how to “turbocharge NHS recovery from the pandemic, reduce waiting times for patients and eliminate waits for routine care of over a year by 2025”.
At the time, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) refused to give openDemocracy details of the group’s members, or say who had attended its launch at Number 10 led by the PM and health secretary Steve Barclay in December.
A guestlist for the event, obtained by openDemocracy through a Freedom of Information request, reveals that half a dozen CEOs from private health firms were in attendance.
Guests included the chief execs of the UK’s two largest private hospital operators: Paolo Pieri, the chief exec of Circle Health Group, and Justin Ash, who heads up Spire Healthcare. Also present was Jim Easton, the chief executive of Practice Plus Group, the NHS’s top private healthcare provider.
They were joined by David Hare, the chief executive of Independent Healthcare Provider Network, a lobby group that represents for-profit and not-for-profit private health organisations including Bupa and HCA, one of the biggest healthcare facility companies in the US.
Private health tycoons have wined and dined senior ministers while cashing in on NHS contracts
The private healthcare executives, which also included CEOs from Horder Healthcare, Newmedica, InHealth and Medefer, outnumbered the five NHS England directors invited to the event.
DHSC said it could not provide openDemocracy with minutes from the meeting because none were taken, and refused to share any papers handed out to attendees.
Separately, the government quietly published a list of members of the Elective Recovery Taskforce on Monday. The 16-person group includes DHSC ministers, six NHS bosses, and Hare.
Other members include Bill Morgan, a private healthcare lobbyist whose past clients included Virgin Care, who was appointed a Number 10 adviser in November, and Paul Manning, an NHS consultant surgeon who is also chief medical officer for Circle Healthcare.
The government said the role of the task force would be to “shape proposals for how the healthcare system can make use of all resources at its disposal, further tackling the backlog caused by the Covid-19 pandemic”. It will conclude its work in March.
Last week, the prime minister said he had signed up to an NHS GP after the Guardian reported that he had registered with a private clinic in west London that charges £250 for a consultation.
Tony O’Sullivan, a retired consultant paediatrician and co-chair of Keep Our NHS Public, told openDemocracy: “The head parasites are at the table to maximise future extraction of NHS funds.”
He added: “This is an important disclosure extracted from the government proving the direction of travel – to continue disinvesting in the NHS and increase its enforced dependence on private health care.
“The private sector was bailed out during Covid, has a lucrative four-year £10bn deal ongoing and is also in a position to earn massive profits from patients forced to go privately to avoid NHS queues of 7.2 million.”
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THOUSANDS of ambulance workers staged more strike action today as the bitter dispute over pay for overstretched NHS staff showed no sign of abating.
Nearly 2,000 paramedics, emergency care assistants, call handlers and other staff across north-west England downed tools for 12 hours from midday, their union GMB said.
The walkout, which followed industrial action by thousands of GMB, Unite and Unison ambulance employees on Monday, came ahead of what could be biggest-ever NHS strike on February 6, when all three unions are due to strike alongside nurses.