Gawd blimey, you could have knocked me down with the proverbial feather when I saw the social media exchange between prime minister Andy Burnham and Liberal Democrat leader ‘Sir’ Ed Davey. Burnham wants to be the PM who finally sorts out the mess that is social care, Davey hopes “the PM’s door is open” to which he replies, “It most certainly is, Ed. Let’s work together to find some common ground.” Politicians working together for the public good? It will never catch on, will it?
Well, I hope it will catch on. As the older population grows exponentially, it would be helpful, would it not, is we had at least some kind of plan to deal with it, because as of today, we have nothing even vaguely resembling joined-up thinking.
Nationally, it’s a lottery for the infirm and demented as to what happens when people are unable to care for themselves. There’s no plan. In the main, there are privately run care homes, run entirely for profit and if you are daft enough to have worked hard and played by the rules all your life, that inheritance – your home – that you’d like to hand down to your children will be sold in order to find the money to pay for people to put your food into a blender, feed it to you through a tube and later deal with your personal lavatory requirements when you are unable to deal with them yourself. If you have no home of your own, the state will pay it for you. Isn’t that something to look forward to?
I am hoping that other political leaders will move to a consensus position on social care. While the latest Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, can start an argument in an empty room, you would like to think, despite suspicions to the contrary, that she might just see the case for politicians to set aside their differences for the greater good. I have to say at this point that Badenoch will do no such thing because to her politics has nothing to do with seeking solutions to problems and everything to do with conflict and division. She would give any invitation for consensual politics short shrift and then attack those who rather like the idea. And of course it’s not even worth asking the Fagash Fuhrer Nigel Farage to participate because he does not agree with state involvement in anything and, of course, his entire political shtick is founded on hatred and the aforementioned division.
So it could be the Labour government and the normally malleable Lib Dems, who would normally say anything for votes, but this time, I would like to think, would act to fix social care, yes, for The Greater Good.
I suppose it does come down to whether you think the state, as the right calls it, has any right to do anything that would be better dealt with by the private sector. You know, like water, gas electric, the railways and all the other sectors flogged off by Thatcher that provide shit, overpriced services. I suppose that. if the only thing that matters to you is the accumulation of money, the very notion of public service is anathema. I happen to think – and I know this is an old fashioned view – that public service matters, that people matter far more than share prices and company profits.
All of which is why I want social care fixed. And why I would like the state, the government, to ensure that it does and that people do not end up losing all their inheritance to care home bills and, more importantly, get the (love and) care they deserve as they get older and are prepared for slipping off their mortal coil.
The Lib Dems did climb into bed with the governing party back in 2010 when, shamefully, they helped enable David Cameron’s hardline austerity-heavy government trash public services and throw millions into poverty on the pretence that “we’re all in it together”. Davey still declares himself to have been “proud” to serve in what he subsequently called a “grown-up government”, which is why I could never, ever vote Lib Dem nor indeed forgive them (and him), but if they set aside party politics to fix the hole that is social care, I suppose it shows they have learned something.
