Say what you like about the ‘shared society’, it’s catching on a lot better than David Cameron’s ‘big society’. Theresa May has spent much of the last week sharing the blame for the crisis in the NHS between the NHS itself and patients who will insist on getting ill at inconvenient times. Anyone but her, in other words. And Jeremy Corbyn was busy sharing – call that annexing – a Times cartoon about patients being forced to share hospital trollies and beds at prime minister’s questions.
After Tuesday’s shambolic series of relaunches, there were many on the Labour benches who feared their leader might fail to take advantage of the most open of goals and allow himself to wander off topic. So there was some relief that Corbyn used all six of his questions to press the prime minister on the NHS; such a feat of concentration hasn’t always been the Labour leader’s strongest asset. It certainly seemed to catch the Maybot on the hop as she appeared to have been programmed to expect something else entirely.
Corbyn began by bringing up the Red Cross’s assertion that the NHS was in the middle of a humanitarian crisis. The Maybot didn’t bother to disguise her disgust for the Red Cross. No charity had ever done so much global damage and their statement had been irresponsible and overblown. Britain was nothing like Syria, so the Red Cross should just shut up. As long as Britain was not officially designated a war zone with many of its cities bombed to rubble, then everything was absolutely hunky dory.
“OK,” said Corbyn. “If the prime minister isn’t prepared to listen to the Red Cross, perhaps she will listen to the British Medical Association who are saying that conditions in hospitals are reaching a dangerous level, the Royal College of Nursing who has said that conditions in the NHS are the worst ever and the Royal College of Physicians who have described the NHS as under-funded, under-doctored and overstretched.”
The Maybot clanked her way through her data files. Nothing there. Switch to default. La, la, la. The NHS was working absolutely brilliantly. No one had ever done more for it than her. Why was everyone getting so worked up about thousands of people being piled up on trollies for more than four hours? Four hours was only an arbitrary time span anyway and so what if it was sometimes moved to 24 hours and patients died? No one could expect to live for ever.
The longer the Maybot’s answer went on, the tetchier she sounded. She can dish it out but she can’t take it. As their leader struggled, her own backbenchers became quieter and quieter: they know they are on dodgy ground over the NHS and would rather keep their heads down. In the sand, preferably.
“You seem to be in some degree of denial about this,” Corbyn observed.
The Maybot softened a little at this apparent offer of therapy. “OK,” she said. “I accept there have been a small number of incidents in which unacceptable practices have taken place.”
Corbyn paused. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. The Maybot was one of his more self-destructive patients and it would take many more sessions to break down her defences. After pointing out that her government was planning to cut one third of hospital beds in the near future, he moved on to mental health services. Why was it that there had been an 89% increase in young people with mental health issues going to A&E over the past five years?
“I said there was more to do,” the Maybot replied sullenly.
“Er, yes,” said Corbyn. But couldn’t she see she hadn’t done herself any favours by cutting the numbers of nurses working in mental health by 6,000 and doctors by 400?
“You’ve asked me this question before,” she said.
And Corbyn would keep on asking it until she came up with some sort of answer that she felt able to share with the group. But that would do for now. There was no need to show up the Maybot’s inadequacies by taking the piss. That was the one bit of the Donald Trump playbook he was keen to avoid.