Labour needs a 10 year project to sort out the UK.
- Renationalise essential infrastructure
- Remove privatised health service in the NHS
- Revitalise public health
- Implement the Norway option for relations with the EU
Some of that is a minefield of contracts and vested interests. Some will require primary legislation. None of it has easy, quick answers.
But they also have to get through the next 6-12 months.
The challenge is to do the tactical stuff without ruining the strategic stuff.
And let's not forget that Norway is in the Single Market, and Schengen free movement area and has a customs union with the EU for most goods. Making all of those a red line means "A custom relationship with the EU, like Norway" is impossible.
@jbond@mastodon.socialTrying to reduce these thoughts to the bare minimum and most succinct.
The NHS spending £4b a year on contracted out services to private suppliers is absurd. If they could spend £4b once on bringing it in house. And ploughing the reduced costs and profit savings back into new infrastructure. But that can't be done overnight. And in the mean time they have to keep paying the premium just to survive.
You can't just " Let Thames Water go bust and re-nationalise it". Not within the current legal and contract framework.
Similarly you can't just " re-nationalise the railways" or "cap and control energy companies". There's too much history around the way they were privatised and current agreements.
That doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't be done. It just has to be done within the rule of law and parliamentary process.
But however it's done, Labour has to freeze the disaster capitalists and the "buy, strip, flip" private equity grifters out of the system. Especially in essential natural monopoly infrastructure like health, transport, energy, water, sewage, education, social housing, care.
And again. Reversing and unwinding 40-50 years of neo-con, neo-liberalism can't be done overnight. It's going to be a long hard slog.
Bonus video link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Fcy3CuTsYE
Bonus link: "Voters don't care about the #NationalDebt : that's a problem for politicians. They were elected to mend the #NHS and stop #sewage in the rivers, that's what the government is for."
https://eastangliabylines.co.uk/pecksniff/pecksniffs-diary-26-10-24/
@jbond they will also need trustworthy folk within the feds (NCA), MI5 and even HM Forces if they try anything like this - if you look at profiles of the angry men caught rioting, of those who aren't unemployed they are *all* in the skilled trades, eg one who stirred up the riot with a LinkedIn post is a trained electrical engineer approved to work on 36kV high voltage installations. These men could easily start sabotaging critical national infrastructure as a reprisal..
True enough, I can't do those things.
But a government that wasn't just a front for big business and billionaires COULD.
It could maybe take up to a week to write the laws necessary, and debate them, and vote on them. But it could be done.
Our big problem is that we are being ruled by low quality politicians who have no clear vision of what needs to be done on our behalf, to make things better for the people, and instead just take the donations*, and do what they're told.
* Bribes.
@jbond could you explain this a bit more? If you can't let Thames Water go bankrupt, doesn't that imply that you are somehow obliged to bail them out? Is that really the case with these contracts?
@mspcommentary I mean yes, you can stand back and let them go bankrupt. And there are probably clauses specifically designed to handle that situation. Probably involving Gov appointed administrators to protect the consumers. Those same clauses are probably written to protect the lenders & shareholders and prevent the Gov simply walking in and writing off all the debt. And buying the business back for £1. It's complicated.