Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

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Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.S        

Malcolm Blair-Robinson UK

This blog is beginning to look at some of the verities which have driven the political consensus, followed by New Labour and the Tories, which has produced difficulties for which they blame each other but for which both are responsible.

In the news today is a further warning that the margin of relief in power generation this winter will be at a record low because of the failure of any government to build sufficient new power stations over the course of the last twenty years. In the narrow sense this is because the industry was privatised and became a profit centre rather than a critical public service. In the broad sense no government has grappled realistically with the issue of where our electricity is going to come from as older coal stations are shut down and older nuclear stations are decommissioned. This is a failure of the political class to cope with the challenge of office.

A second area is the NHS now gripped by a financial crisis. Long ago the NHS was run by the Ministry of Health through regional and local offices and by managers, known as Hospital Administrators. The chain of command was clear and simple and the bureaucracy modest. The Tories started the rot with an internal market, New Labour came up with Foundation Hospitals, both expanded management and administration to ludicrous numbers and then wrapped the whole thing up in a packet of quangos so complicated that even they are not sure who does what.

So now both the NHS and Power generation are in the throes of crisis. Small wonder. The failures and faults are many in both organisations. But above all we are witnessing the failures of an economic model which does not work and a political class which cannot govern.