I still can’t get over what Sir Keir Starmer said about private healthcare. This had to be the biggest story of the week; It was a much bigger mistake than the mistake Rishi Sunak made by missing a meeting of world leaders after attending a commemoration of British veterans in Normandy.
As a reminder, the moderator of the first head-to-head debate, ITV’s Julie Etchingham, asked leaders of both parties for a one-word response to the question: “If you had loved ones on a long waiting list for surgery, this is what you would do. “Would you use private healthcare if you think that’s the only way forward?”
“Yes,” said Sunak.
“No,” said Starmer.
Surprised by Sir Keir’s unusual clarity, or the answer itself, the presenter gave him a second chance:
“Absolutely not? What if your loved one was on the waiting list for surgery?”
“No,” Starmer repeated with a touch of impatience. “I do not use private healthcare. I use the NHS.
I’m not sure which is more worrying; the possibility that he was telling a sarcastic lie, or the terrifying possibility that he would really be this cold-hearted if, God forbid, it was a close relative who had the surgery he needed.
Dishonesty may at first seem like a more plausible explanation. Many politicians have a tendency to say what they think their audience wants to hear, and Starmer has more flexible ideas than most.
As recently as March 2020, he was describing Jeremy Corbyn’s 2017 manifesto as “our foundational document”. Six months later he kicked the old meme out of the party.
Which was the real Keir? Corbynite or anti-Corbynite? The former editor of the Trotskyist magazine Socialist Alternatives or his Dullsville centrist father?
The answer is that he was saying what he thought his target voter wanted to hear at the time. He was a man of the Left as he rose through the ranks of the Labor Party. It suited him to align himself with Momentum activists as he tried to win the party leadership. After winning he wanted to show that Labor had moved away from Corbynism and was therefore picking a fight with them.
Who was he trying to impress on Monday night? Not all voters would give the same answer as Sunak, 74 to 17 per cent, according to YouGov. In fact, many of those in the 74 per cent must have shuddered at Starmer’s reaction. Could he really be so inhumane as to refuse the care of a loved one, even one of his children, based on some obscure ideological principle?
Perhaps Starmer was directing his response at NHS unions, whose members have disproportionate power in the Labor Party. But I think the more likely and frankly more frightening explanation is that the Labor leader was telling the truth.
First of all, his answer was unusually emphatic. He didn’t seem like a man who weighed his words. The latter repeated this the next day, and in doing so tragically remembered her mother, who suffered from a chronic illness.
Starmer has previously spoken about his mother’s hatred of the private sector. “There is no way you can say one word against the NHS to my mother,” he told the BBC’s Nick Robinson in November 2021. [is] It was such a touching thing that I was in the ICU and he just held my hand and said, ‘You’re not going to let your father go to private, are you?’ said”
Now people can get into all kinds of weird positions because of their beliefs. Sometimes we can respect their beliefs even if we disagree with them.
For those who are not religious, all religions seem strange. And Starmer’s stance on healthcare is more religious than practical. There is no utilitarian justification for refusing to pay for surgery for a family member in need. It’s not like you’re helping someone else by doing this. On the contrary, you are taking up space on the NHS and lengthening the queues for others.
Should we respect the strength of principle as much as we respect the piety of someone who is ready to suffer for a faith we do not confess?
Of course, this depends on belief. For example, the Aztecs believed that the only way to keep the sun rising was to cut out people’s hearts and offer them to the god Huitzilopochtli. While they are undoubtedly sincere, it is difficult to feel much sympathy. A readiness to prolong someone’s suffering through a dogmatic commitment to equality of outcome strikes me as another belief with which we should have no sympathy.
Remember that Starmer is not an ordinary citizen imposing his own cult dogmas on his own family. It aims to manage our healthcare system. We will all climb those bloody pyramids to satisfy his egalitarian god.
You might think it’s counterintuitive to write about grisly Central American rituals in the same article as the NHS. But only a religious analogy can describe how our underperforming healthcare system is treated. When Starmer says he would allow a family member to suffer in the name of state healthcare, he is expressing, in its purest form, the impulse that leaves Britain facing lower survival rates than similar countries.
We can keep more people alive if we move towards mixed healthcare systems, which are accepted as in almost every European country. But doing so would be seen as blasphemy against the NHS. Sorry, RNHS.
If you think I’m exaggerating this a bit, turn your mind to the lockdown, which was defended in clearly altruistic terms: “Stay at home, protect the NHS”. We were servants of the RNHS, not the other way around.
We display a similar dedication when we refuse to ask for meaningful reform in exchange for record amounts spent on the system. We’re there to make payments, not ask awkward questions. Huitzilopochtli must be bargained with, must be fed.
Starmer’s beliefs, whether born of socialism or filial loyalty, dash the Labor Party’s hope that it might spend some of its political capital on reforming the health service. To the extent that he had a plan, he promised to use the private sector to reduce waiting lists. So how could Starmer preside over such a plan?
A similar argument could be made about Labour’s hostility to private schools. European countries do not tax education because they recognize it as a public good. Ironically, imposing VAT on private school fees will be the only way Labor can exercise our Brexit freedoms.
If we wanted to reduce inequality while raising standards, we would not drive private schools into bankruptcy, we would make all schools private, that is, we would give parents education vouchers that they could take to the school of their choice. But whether out of jealousy or respect for public sector unions, Labor will not entertain the idea. He would rather cram more kids into public schools than ease the pressure and let them go elsewhere.
In fact, here we have Labour’s Huitzilopochtli, the irrational principle to which the rest of us are expected to sacrifice. If pushed, he would rather misery equal prosperity for some. We would rather all of us live in houses of 400 square meters than some of us living in houses of 1,200 square meters and some of us living in houses of 6,000 square meters.
There were vague hopes before the campaign started that Starmer might be different. We know better now.