Ever since Labour won the election 6 months ago, various media commentators have been pointing to Starmer's "shaky start" - and even predicting the imminent end of his government. Already!

    Last weekend the Daily Mail suggested the new PM wouldn't last the year. Reading the right-wing headlines, one might imagine that Starmer was implementing a radically different policy to the previous government! When in almost all respects, he offers just another version of Tory austerity. So you'd think the editor of the right-wing Daily Wail would be clapping his hands instead of moaning and groaning so much.

    In fact seasoned Labour activists are leaving the party because they say they can no longer stomach Starmer's adoption of "Tory" policies and his insistence on adapting to the political right.

    At the beginning of this month, twenty Labour members of Broxtowe Borough Council in Nottinghamshire quit, so fed up were they with government policies. They quoted the cut in pensioners' fuel allowance, the retention of the 2-child benefit cap and the refusal to compensate the WASPI women. For criticising Starmer's government, several of them have been barred from standing as Labour candidates in the coming local election, so they have formed their own new "independent" grouping. Labour has now lost control of the council.

Do-it-yourself "treatment"?

And what about the biggest policy issue of all - addressing the NHS crisis? At the beginning of this week, Starmer rolled up his sleeves, Boris Johnson- style and, surrounded by doctors and nurses, announced an "Elective Reform Plan".

    But just as the Tories did before him, he insists that money being in short supply, NHS workers will have to increase their productivity in order for improvements to kick in! Yes, at a time when 7.5 million people are on waiting lists and 40% are waiting longer than 4-and-a-half months to see a consultant, NHS staff are meant to work overtime to tackle the (ever-growing) queues!

    Under this "Elective Reform Plan" health care becomes DIY: patients with chronic conditions will be expected to monitor themselves at home! And GPs will get £20 every time they manage not to send patients to hospitals!

    Follow-up appointments will have to be requested, rather than being automatic. And in case the big private health providers feel left out, part of this "new" plan, is to "expand the relationship between the NHS and the private healthcare sector", so that the NHS will end up renting even more bed space, facilities and equipment from private providers - and shareholders will take an even bigger slice of the NHS budget than they already do!

    Not one word was said about the 120,000 healthcare job vacancies, unfilled for years. When this is obviously the main problem, as the doctors' union the BMA said: "without the workforce to meet constantly rising demand, we will not see the progress we all hope for". But the government is not prepared to recruit, since "the NHS can't become the national money pit"... And anyway, according to Starmer, the real problem is that NHS 'productivity can't bump along 11% lower than it was before the pandemic" That is, the workers need to work harder and longer - as if healthcare provision was comparable to factory production!

The collective solution

In fact Starmer is offering the same old sticking plaster that successive governments have been trying to apply to the NHS - indeed, since its inception in 1948, since right from the start there were cost-cutting compromises!

    And today there are even greater health needs than ever, due to rising poverty and an ageing population... Which brings us to the elephant in the NHS room: the lack of social provision for the elderly. This elephant has been looming larger and larger ever since the care of the infirm elderly was separated from the NHS and passed over to the ("for profit") private sector!

    As everyone knows, if this "elephant" isn't addressed, the NHS crisis cannot be resolved. Starmer's cross-party review into elderly social care is meant to provide a "consensus" for change, some time in the future. And it rules out, in advance, the only change which would provide a real solution: taking elderly care back under the NHS and making it free at the point of use.

    The money is there to do this. It's in the pockets of FTSE 100 shareholders, who last year alone made made £130bn in dividends! And just one big pharma company, AstraZeneca (parasitic, like its fellows, on the NHS), made £6.4bn in profits for 2023-4!

    The working class can have no illusions, however, that the government will ever dare to touch this huge repository of wealth in order to rebuild the NHS (or anything else!). No, expropriating the rich will be down to all of us. And we can certainly do it, if we decide to use all of our battalions, across all sectors, together!