THE fury of the Blairite Milburn over the changes to the Health Bill that have been forced on the Tory-led coalition by the massive opposition to NHS privatisation is a joy to behold.
Milburn, who was forced out of the job of Health Minister in 2003, is railing that he intended GP Commissioning to be the instrument for directly privatising the NHS.
He insists that the constraints on commissioning agreed by Cameron and Lansley (the establishment of various overseeing committees) will make the privatisation job more difficult, as will the retreat that retains government responsibility for the NHS, instead of allowing the capitalist market, ie the law of the jungle, to decide its future and demolish and privatise it in record time.
The failure of Cameron to press on regardless has so enraged this leading Blairite, who is Cameron’s ‘social mobility adviser,’ that he considers his new master to be worse than Gordon Brown.
There is no more serious crime in the Blairite judicial handbook.
Blair only recently declared his support for the Cameron-led coalition, which Milburn has been openly serving.
The ‘adviser’ role of Milburn, and his rage at the setback that Cameron has suffered over the Health Bill, is an indication of the Ramsay MacDonald, backstabbing role that the Blairite wing of the Labour party will deliver to the working class as the economic and political crisis develops.
However, the fact is the campaign against the privatisation of the NHS is not concluded. The setbacks that Milburn-Cameron have suffered are not decisive. Whither the NHS – whether forward to privatisation and dissolution into a money-making business that cares for the well-off with the NHS as a brand name, or the further development of the NHS so as to be able to continue to provide the best quality heath care, free of charge to all who need it – is still to be decided.
The private health profiteers are about to be brought into the centre of the NHS, where the competition necessary to create a health market will still be let loose, with the law of the jungle deciding that only the most financially fittest will survive and that all of the rest – that is, many hospitals and NHS facilities – will be closed as business failures, with tens of thousands of NHS workers losing their jobs, leaving huge gaps in patient care, with those who cannot afford special treatment suffering.
The issue is that the coalition has had to trim its sails but the privatisation plan and the privatisation bill and drive remains.
The trade unions, both TUC and non-TUC, must now insist that the Health Bill be scrapped, and must organise to see that it is scrapped.
A whole new world of struggle is opening up.
On pensions, GPs and many other NHS workers are going to have to pay thousands a year more in contributions, and may well join the massive pensions strikes that are being prepared for the Autumn.
The BMA ARM, later this month, will most probably decide to organise an industrial action ballot over the ‘pensions robbery’. It must also decide to organise a common front with the TUC trade unions that oppose the NHS Bill and are demanding it be scrapped. Both Unite and Unison, with millions of members, support this policy.
A common front must be established between the BMA and the TUC trade unions to take industrial action to scrap the Health Bill and, in the event that it becomes law, must declare they will refuse to collaborate with it, and on that basis force its abandonment.
This is the only way forward, otherwise the privatisation drive will continue and intensify.
