Lately there’s been a lot of talk about the ‘P’ word: privatisation. Ed Miliband’s team hasn’t done the hard policy work to revitalise Labour as a party of government, and it is beginning to show. His platform for next May has a lot of sticky plaster policies, but very little that addresses structural problems like the housing market and transport costs, to name two issues close to my heart. Instead, catnip like ‘no privatisation of our NHS’ and ‘reversing the privatisation of the railways’ is being wheeled out to fill the Left’s policy void.
This conveniently ignores the Blair and Brown government’s enthusiasm for market – rather than state – solutions. Some people know about Hinchingbrooke, the NHS hospital so ineptly run by the state that Andy Burnham ‘privatised’ it when he was Secretary of State. Fewer know that Circle – the private sector company that took control of Hinchingbrooke along with a 50 per cent staff mutual – has done a decent job of turning around something that was – if you’ll excuse the pun – a real hospital pass.
Just why is privatisation seen as so politically toxic, when much of what we love in Britain has been shaped by private enterprise? Take tertiary education, where students attend the privately run institution of their choice.
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