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Centrists and the NHS

So much for ‘middle of the road’ populist politics – Change UK is wedded to the deeply unpopular neoliberal extremism of privatising the NHS, writes SOLOMON HUGHES

THE ongoing link between centrist politics and NHS privatisation always resurfaces: journalist Joe Lo, working for the Left Foot Forward website, reports that the partners of Change UK have been appointed to top jobs at the new centrist party.

One detail caught my eye: Nicola Murphy, wife of ex-Labour MP Chris Leslie, has been made Change UK’s “nominating officer.”

She was previously a “special adviser” to Gordon Brown and she left government to become a lobbyist.

As Lo points out, Murphy worked from 2007-8 as head of government relations in Britain for US healthcare firm Humana.

At that time Humana was looking to break into the NHS through New Labour privatisation. So it hired New Labour people.

Baroness Sally Morgan, the former Blair aide and New Labour minister also advised Humana for a short while, among her many corporate jobs.

Humana hasn’t made the big breakthroughs into the NHS that some private companies have. Which is just as well, as the firm is frequently fined in its native US for misbehaviour.

In 2016 Human was fined $500,000 in Florida for charging too much for HIV drugs. It was fined $700,000 in Texas in 2018 for not having enough anaesthesiologists at the hospitals it funded.

In 2011 it was fined $3.4 million for not reporting fraud on the US limited public healthcare system, Medicaid.

“Centrists” often claim to be offering popular “middle-of-the-road” politics. Change UK is rather proving this is not so, by being unpopular.

One of the reason “centrist” politics has proved to be less popular than it claims is the strong commitment to market methods means corporations are always trying to persuade them to privatise the NHS, and they are happy to be persuaded.

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