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| Little Matty Hancock - he does like a selfie |
Justin Webb asked him, "Do you have a sense that, included in this announcement is an acceptance that there has not been a proper spend up to now?" and Hancock went into a long explanation that the problem of dementia was actually "partly as a consequence of success in dealing with cancer and cardio-vascular diseases". He has a point, since the incidence of dementia rises with age, but he was rather too proud that "we've seen the fastest acceleration in survival of cancer of all the major European countries", because we started from a lower point than comparable countries and have been trying to catch up.
Webb tried to return to the question, and this is where things got silly. "Here's the problem though, with all of that, and talk of moonshots, and you heard it with the audience last night [the Question Time leaders' debate], the scepticism that there was towards Boris Johnson, this business of making promises. They know, and everyone in that audience knows, that the NHS has been underfunded in historic terms over the last decade. They know as well that our spending on research and development is less than the OECD average, has been for many years. They know that these things could have been done in the past and weren't, and they just don't believe you."
Little Matty protested, "Oh I don't think that's reasonable at all", but Webb persisted, "Most of those things are true, aren't they [all of them, surely]?". Hancock then started to paint a new history: "No. Boris Johnson has been prime minister for a hundred and twenty days. I've been health secretary for 15 months...". And now it was Webb's turn to protest (I simplify slightly, there was a lot of talking over each other): "Is that really credible? 'It wasn't us. It was other Conservatives...'?".
"It's called renewal," Hancock replied. "You renew in office, and if you're saying that anybody who has been in a party that's been in government can't come up with new ideas, that's for the birds." Nobody said that, of course, but let's leave them to it for a while.
JW: Did you support the levels of NHS spending that there were for the last decade?
LMH: Yes, it's gone up every single year, in fact...
JW: By well under the long term average, isn't it?
LMH: Hold on, the only year that NHS funding has been significantly cut in real terms [he said "times" but let's be kind] was in 1976, the last time a Labour government...
JW: You're avoiding the point that I'm making...
LMH: I'm not...
.
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JW: You know perfectly well that it's been less than the long term average for the last decade, and people know that ...
LMH: And in the future Justin... elections are about what we're going to do next and what we're going to do is we're now clearly the only party that can move past the Brexit status [I think he meant stasis] that has got politics stuck for the last few years, and then we're going to put the longest and largest cash injection into the NHS, and including doubling the research budget, so on this point on dementia..." and he went on to a story about his grandmother, which I don't want to belittle, but it is a standard way to hold the stage uninterrupted.
There you have it. We should ignore what has gone before, forget the mistakes and bad decisions of previous Conservatives (which included these Conservatives of course, but under a different flag) and look to the future. I fully expected him to demand that we believe a bit more.
Friday night's Question Time leaders special drew the same kind of argument from Hancock's boss. The audience began with a question about telling the truth, greeted with laughter (which somehow disappeared in the clip prepared for the BBC news bulletins). "I think the issue of trust in politics is central to this election", said the improbable prime minister, and the problem of course, was the "failure of politicians to deliver Brexit". "Why do you think you're being asked that question?" asked Fiona Bruce, but we didn't hear an answer.
What he did say was, "I didn't want to have an election... We had to do it because Parliament is blocking Brexit". To her credit, Bruce pulled him up - they voted for second reading, but were unwilling to let him force it through with no proper consideration, but he was in full flow. "They were given every opportunity to pass it...". To which I can only say "bollocks".
When asked about poverty by a teacher... "I want you to know that I've been in office for 120 days or so, as prime minister, and I do understand. I've been to many hospitals, many schools in the time that I've been prime minister, and I've talked to nurses and doctors, and teachers about what's going on in their schools, and that's why we're now levelling up funding for education across...." And of course he has no knowledge of, and no responsibility for, what his own government did before.
Other Tory automata have come out with the same line, including Nicky Morgan, who's not even standing this time, on Wednesday morning. The manifesto tells us "With a new Parliament and a sensible majority Government, we can get that deal through in days. It is oven-ready - and every single Conservative candidate at this election, all 635 of them, have pledged to vote for this deal as soon as Parliament returns". A pledge signed in blood, no doubt.
Richard Burgon, who could be Secretary of State for the Justice Department in 16 days, but is told off by lawyers for casual use of the word "robbery", was explicit on Wednesday's Today. Nick Robinson reminded him that Labour had been in power for many of the years during which the WASPI women were not warned about their impending change of pension terms, and he told us straight: "Labour is under new management now". Not quite Year Zero - I haven't received my booking card for a session at a holiday camp in Xinjiang yet - but plain enough.
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| Believe a little more, and TinkerBrexit will live! |
Friday night's Question Time leaders special drew the same kind of argument from Hancock's boss. The audience began with a question about telling the truth, greeted with laughter (which somehow disappeared in the clip prepared for the BBC news bulletins). "I think the issue of trust in politics is central to this election", said the improbable prime minister, and the problem of course, was the "failure of politicians to deliver Brexit". "Why do you think you're being asked that question?" asked Fiona Bruce, but we didn't hear an answer.
What he did say was, "I didn't want to have an election... We had to do it because Parliament is blocking Brexit". To her credit, Bruce pulled him up - they voted for second reading, but were unwilling to let him force it through with no proper consideration, but he was in full flow. "They were given every opportunity to pass it...". To which I can only say "bollocks".
When asked about poverty by a teacher... "I want you to know that I've been in office for 120 days or so, as prime minister, and I do understand. I've been to many hospitals, many schools in the time that I've been prime minister, and I've talked to nurses and doctors, and teachers about what's going on in their schools, and that's why we're now levelling up funding for education across...." And of course he has no knowledge of, and no responsibility for, what his own government did before.
Other Tory automata have come out with the same line, including Nicky Morgan, who's not even standing this time, on Wednesday morning. The manifesto tells us "With a new Parliament and a sensible majority Government, we can get that deal through in days. It is oven-ready - and every single Conservative candidate at this election, all 635 of them, have pledged to vote for this deal as soon as Parliament returns". A pledge signed in blood, no doubt.
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I've been told off for suggesting this, but Labour are doing something rather similar. When was the last time you heard a Labour spokesperson even mention the achievements of the last Labour government, which ended - I know it's hard to admit it - less than ten years ago? I'm very ready to be corrected, but the only things of that sort I can remember Corbyn applauding are the Good Friday Agreement, the Human Rights Act and the Equality and Human Rights Commission "which we set up".Richard Burgon, who could be Secretary of State for the Justice Department in 16 days, but is told off by lawyers for casual use of the word "robbery", was explicit on Wednesday's Today. Nick Robinson reminded him that Labour had been in power for many of the years during which the WASPI women were not warned about their impending change of pension terms, and he told us straight: "Labour is under new management now". Not quite Year Zero - I haven't received my booking card for a session at a holiday camp in Xinjiang yet - but plain enough.
There is no time
One of the gems associated with the UK House of Commons is @PARLYapp, a "journalism project that focuses on the UK Parliament and the Westminster village" as they say, and which reports the business of the day in plain English on Twitter. Up it popped on Monday with the news that "If the government is returned a Queen’s Speech with reduced ceremonial will be held on Thursday 19th December," and "In any other scenario such as a hung parliament or a Labour victory, the Queen’s Speech will be in January". As the duty PARLYapper explained, "'reduced ceremonial' likely means the 2017 version of the [Queen's speech] - Queen in a
day dress, arrives in a car rather than in a carriage.
(EU hat TBC)".
Other timings: 19 December is also the beginning of the Christmas recess, whoever is elected, unless the new prime minister really wants to get people's backs up. When Her Maj goes off to Sandringham to hang up her EU hat for another year we can't quite be sure yet. Since Parliament only meets after the election on 17 December, and nothing much can happen until all the MPs are sworn in, nothing will happen before Christmas, despite Johnson's manifesto pledge: "If we elect a majority of Conservative MPs to Parliament, we will start putting our deal through Parliament before Christmas and we will leave the European Union in January".
Again, unless the new prime minister wants to annoy everybody, nothing else will happen until 6 January, by which time Johnson will have been prime minister for 166 days, and parliament will have been sitting for 34 of them. Somehow our hard-working, accessible prime minister has managed to fit three PMQs into that, but Donald Tusk's words "Do not waste this time" do come to mind.
Again, unless the new prime minister wants to annoy everybody, nothing else will happen until 6 January, by which time Johnson will have been prime minister for 166 days, and parliament will have been sitting for 34 of them. Somehow our hard-working, accessible prime minister has managed to fit three PMQs into that, but Donald Tusk's words "Do not waste this time" do come to mind.
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Thanks for the title and theme of this post to my Twitter sparring partner RicoS90.
