I blame the scapegoats (10 page)

Who knows what other similar slips have
occurred in other government departments? For all we know, British jets might
have been bombing Uzbekistan for the past few weeks . . . Intelligence assessments
of Taliban positions are being carried out by MFI. Right now all sorts of
frantic calls are being made from Downing Street. 'You did what?' says Tony in
disbelief. 'Nationalize Railtrack?! I said "rationalize", you idiot.
God, I hope Gordon heard me last night. We were trying to get a cab and I said
this country needed more taxis.'

Meanwhile
the work of the Institute of Animal Health was defended by Elliot Morley MP,
who apparently has the misfortune to be the 'Animal Health Minister' (although
this post was obviously invented last week to save any proper ministers the
embarrassment of defending it). He called their work 'world class'. Sounds like
someone's got their labels mixed up again. This was in fact a catastrophic
series of errors, which nearly caused the extermination of all British sheep
and has left us still ignorant as to whether BSE exists in our sheep. Heads
should roll, except they'd probably only fire the wrong person by mistake.
'Don't worry, minister - we've found the person responsible for this animal
mix-up and sacked him. It won't happen again, we promise: he's definitely not a
token scapecow.'

8
December 2001

The
decision was taken by a handful of ministers, late one night in Downing Street.
Thousands of NHS patients still waiting for operations . . . hundreds of private
hospital beds lying empty . . . there had to be a solution in there somewhere.

'So what do you think, Tony? Shall we
nationalize BUPA and seize all private health companies in the name of the
workers?'

'Hmm, no, it doesn't
feel right. . .'

'Raise more cash for the NHS by putting a
super-tax on all those toffs who always go private?'

'No . . . How about we work in partnership
with the private sector, and pay BUPA a load of money to treat NHS patients?'

And
there was an excited gasp of breath around the room and they spontaneously
leapt to their feet and sang 'The Red Flag'.

The
announcement that the government is signing a deal with BUPA to fill up one of
its hospitals with NHS patients was heavily criticized by union leaders this
week. No one on the left likes private health companies - what could be more
symbolic of uncaring capitalism than profiting from the sick and the dying?
'Why should our money go to line the pockets of BUPA shareholders?' we say
angrily, and then get even more irritated when we are informed that BUPA
doesn't actually have any shareholders - it is a provident association.

'Yeah, well, er,
exactly!'

Various
schemes were considered. One idea that went out of the window quite early was
for Alan Milburn personally to take out private health insurance and then see
if they could get 12,000 people who were on the waiting lists to go into a BUPA
hospital and pretend they were Alan Milburn. The long-term solution is, of
course, to increase the capacity of the NHS and, to the government's credit,
they are actually spending a fortune building new hospitals and doing up old
ones. But these refurbishments take ages; when the builders are trying to swing
the steel girder into position, they have to keep being extra careful not to
whack that bedridden pensioner on the head.

Meanwhile
the waiting lists remain and the government has been gazing across longingly at
the plush private hospitals that were sitting there half empty. BUPA hospitals
are basically just very expensive hotels where you can get a bit of medical
treatment as an optional extra. Sometimes they even host two-day conferences of
sales executives and after the discussions the delegates try the Jacuzzi, have
a massage and then decide to get themselves a plastic hip joint before they
head home. Now one of these BUPA hospitals will be used to treat only NHS
patients. The government are not saying 'The lists are so long you should pay
to go private', they are saying 'The lists are too long, so we'll pay for you
to go private.' Health care remains free to all at the point of delivery. That
is the Rubicon that must never be crossed.

There is a lot of confusion about how a
hospital can be part private and part NHS. Let's take mealtimes as an example
of how it will work. For their entree the patients will be served honeydew
melon balls with seedless grapes in an elegant cut-glass bowl. Then the main
course will be a big dollop of mince with a crumbling over-boiled potato on a
big metal plate, and then for the dessert it's back to the posh menu,
zabaglione with langue de chat biscuits. They used to serve 'Death by
Chocolate', but one of the elderly residents died half way through eating it
and they were worried about a law suit. Every private room will have its own
television, but in order to make you feel as if you're still in the TV room of
an NHS ward, the telly will be much too loud and will be tuned to
Shafted
with Robert Kilroy-Silk when there's something really
good on the other side.

There will, of course, also be a clash of
cultures. When a health service has been created with a profit motive, as in
America, expensive things like tests and exploratory operations can be
considered a waste of money.

'Woman
over fifty, you say? Right, give her a hysterectomy' 'But she only came in with
a verruca.'

What the NHS may lack in menus and decor it
more than makes up for in the minor matter of health care. The best doctors and
nurses are working in the state sector - paying to go private may save six
months' waiting, but it won't buy you better treatment.

So eventually the clash between the private
and public sector will be too much and the cabinet will be forced to hold another
emergency session.

'You were right, guys . . .' says the PM.
'This isn't working at all. There's only one way forward. We're going to
nationalize BUPA!'

Now
I realize why Tony Blair never made this announcement in the first place.
Imagine the strain it would have put on the health service, everyone in
Whitehall having a heart attack all at the same time.

15
December 2001

Poor,
poor Paul Marsden. Before he was forced to join the Liberals it sounds as if he
had a terrible time. Who could help but shed a tear as we read about how those
tyrannical Labour whips talked to him in a cross voice? Who knows what brutal
intimidation lay ahead: no Christmas cards and someone sneaking into his office
to open all the windows on his advent calendar? Parliamentary whips have always
been vicious bully boys. In the last Tory government, Gyles Brandreth was a
whip. 'Support the government,' he would snarl, 'or I'll give you a teddy bear
and make you wear one of my jumpers.'

Or
could it be that Paul Marsden is just an unprincipled attention-seeker,
desperate for his fifteen minutes of fame? Any politician can grab the cheap
temporary celebrity that comes from crossing the floor. But real eminence in
politics comes from years of hard work and skilful manoeuvring; that's what has
earned the deserved celebrity status of the party leaders, Tony Blair, Charles
Kennedy and the other one, er - what's-his-face.

Imagine if other professionals did what
Marsden did as soon as someone raised their voice.

'So, David Beckham, could you explain why you
came out for the second half wearing a blue shirt and then got a hat trick for
Chelsea?' 'Simple, really - Sir Alex Ferguson was a bit mean to me at half time
so I thought I'd start playing for the other side.'

Football
players do of course switch teams, but only in between games and usually for
large amounts of money. Perhaps the transfer system could be the way forward
for unhappy politicians. 'Tony Blair held a press conference today to show off
his new signing, Alan Howarth, who joins New Labour from the Tories for a fee
of twenty million pounds. Blues manager Willy Hague said he was sad to have to
let the promising right-winger go, while Howarth said it was a dream come true,
as he'd supported Labour since he was a lad, especially when he was a Tory
minister.'

We vote for a party and their programme, not
for personalities and their individual whims. Of course MPs have the right to a
conscience, especially on an issue such as the bombing of another country.
Opposition to the war in Afghanistan is a perfectly respectable position held
by many MPs (mostly in the party Paul Marsden just left). So why has Marsden
defected to a party whose leader also supports the war? It would be far more honest
if he defected to a genuine anti-war party - and much more fun when the
Socialist Workers Party got their first MP.

Every
morning the policeman could wave him through security with a friendly 'Good
morning, sir' and he could scream in anger at being the victim of such vicious
police brutality. As MPs filed into the chamber he could sell papers outside
the Members' Lobby wearing a donkey jacket and fingerless gloves, shouting
'Socialist Worker! Kick out the MPs - oh, that's me, isn't it?' He could try to
persuade Tony Blair to join with other workers in a general strike to get rid
of Tony Blair. He could be party leader and chief whip, and have furious rows
with himself when he broke the party line.

If whips weren't bending the ears of our
elected representatives, then other lobbyists would be doing so instead. In
America politicians are not whipped in the same way, and big business steps
into the vacuum. 'During the election my party said it was against Exxon
drilling for oil in our national parks. However, following a meeting with
several local voters (a man from the oil company and my accountant), I have
resolved to make a principled stand for the independence of senators from the
party machine.'

Back in the summer,
the voters of Shrewsbury elected a Labour MP. The Labour agent would have
worked day and night to see him safely returned. Dozens of activists delivered
leaflets and canvassed and gave up their evenings and weekends to explain to
voters why they should have Paul Marsden as their Labour MP. And just six
months later he has stabbed all those loyal party workers in the back and
appointed himself MP for the party that came third in his constituency with
just 12 per cent of the vote. The opinion of those 22,253 constituents who
wanted a Labour MP counts for nothing. Politicians who swap sides always claim
they are forced to do so out of principle. This is the biggest lie since the
non-drop Christmas tree. If Paul Marsden has any integrity he should resign and
stand for election under the banner of his new party, just as Shaun Woodward
should have done when he joined Labour. If there's one thing I can't stand it's
a turncoat; some of us have higher principles than to switch sides whenever it
suits us. A point I think I made when I had a column in the
Independent.

21
December 2001

The
press have always been too intrusive about the private affairs of important
babies. Two thousand years ago the tabloid journos from the
Bethlehem
Mail
went to extreme lengths to get the inside
story on the new baby Jesus . . .

'Look,' said Joseph, 'I know he's the son of
God and the saviour of all mankind, but we would rather you respected his
privacy if that's all right. So take off that stupid donkey costume and get out
of the stable.'

'Tell us about the conception, Mary,' shouted
another hack, who was taking notes for a no-holds-barred biography he was
calling 'The New Testament'.

'Now listen . . .' said Joseph. 'The
conception of this baby is a private matter between myself, God and the Virgin
Mary.'

'The
"Virgin
Mary," you say? I think we have a story, lads . . .'

Of course, unless you're a particularly toady
Labour MP, Leo Blair is not the son of God, but two millennia later the press
are still as hungry for any detail about celebrity babes. This week's bit of
snooping (masquerading as an important social debate about immunization) has
been the demand to know whether or not the youngest Blair has had his MMR
injection. As
Guardian
readers
will have observed from

seeing all the
newspapers read by the builders doing their kitchen extension, the tabloids
have been hammering on about this story all week. The Blairs have refused to
say one way or the other. Cue a hundred articles on Cherie's duty to be a model
mother and provide definitive answers to all the complex parenting questions of
the day. Does Cherie use disposable Pampers or are there dozens of re-usable
nappies hanging out to dry in the cabinet room? Is it right to breastfeed a
baby in the workplace, or would that distract the jury? The fact that both
Leo's parents are lawyers is one of the reasons that they are refusing to budge
on this. They understand the concept of precedent - once you start responding
to personal questions posed by the tabloids you are always going to regret it.
Because the inquisition wouldn't just stop with the infant. 'Prime Minister,
when you were away in the Middle East, did the boys have a teenage party at
Number Ten and trash the place? What did Kathryn's teacher say at parents'
evening apart from "Can I have more money?" Is Leo walking yet, or
does he have another toddler to drive him about in a little plastic car?' Or
what about 'Has Euan ever tasted alcohol?' Sadly these are questions to which
we will never know the answer.