Sometimes in politics the most concerning issues are hiding in plain sight. Politicians do something that’s not in the interests of the public, but there’s barely any noise about it. We don’t see politicians obfuscating on the news, or hear anyone defending a policy. There’s no careful, clever political ads flying about on social media either, trying to convince us that this change is for the best, for the many, for a brighter future for us all. In fact, barely anyone is saying anything at all.
In these situations, things just move quietly along unimpeded, as yet another political policy embeds itself immovably within our society. Yet another way in which this government, which has already extracted so much for its friends, for big business and for the wealthiest in our society, extracts something else on top.
It’s been easy for the Conservative government to do this recently, because we are now overwhelmed with all of the dreadful things they have done. Millions of people are living in poverty, millions cannot access timely healthcare. There have been cuts in a whole array of public services - hospital bed cuts, schools cuts, benefit cuts. Our libraries have been closed, our roads are filled with potholes, we have councils going broke, avoidable deaths, unaffordable food and unattainable further education. Everyone’s bandwidth is full, and when your bandwidth is full, you’re more vulnerable than ever to the next attack.
The next attack on the NHS is here. For a while now, I had the sense I was missing an important piece of the puzzle. There were signs that something else was going on with NHS privatisation, but I hadn’t identified what it was. The penny has just dropped, and I am horrified.