Skipping through the news, and what passes for news on social media these days, I came across a clip from Sky News in which presenter Trevor Phillips was interviewing Labour’s excellent shadow health secretary Wes Streeting, who was pointing out the sorry state of NHS dentistry after 14 years of this Conservative government. Phillips was pressing Streeting on whether it was the state’s job to encourage children to learn how to brush their teeth. “I wish it wasn’t, ” replied Streeting, who added that tooth decay among children was taking more of them into A&E departments, causing enormous misery. for children and yet another burden on the underfunded and struggling NHS. At the foot of the screen was the heading, “Is Labour embracing the nanny state?” To which I can only reply, “I hope so.”
So what is the nanny state, then? It turns out it’s not about nannies at all. It’s about having access to decent public services. You know the sort of thing: the ability to make an appointment with your GP, your children having a decent state-funded education, leisure facilities like parks and sports centres and it’s about libraries. So something as basic as good public services is reduced to being referred to as “the nanny state”.
That’s free-market Britain for you, the world as dreamed of by the likes of today’s Conservative party, where public service is an obstacle to making more money. In their eyes, the NHS is essentially denying private healthcare vultures the ability to make money from sick people. And make no mistake: this is the aim of the political right and it always has been. If you want me to provide you with an example of where this all ends, I give you … NHS dentistry.
Much of the talk about the nanny state comes from people who were literally brought up by nannies themselves, people like the filthy rich faux posh boy and simpleton ‘Sir’ Jacob Rees-Mogg, who was born into a life of wealth and privilege. To them, the state is a burden. The money spent on our NHS, in their eyes, could easily be handed to people like, well, them, by way of tax cuts instead. There’s no money to be made in the NHS, but imagine how much could be made from a private service? In their world, the paramedic rushing out to help you when you’ve had a heart attack would not be looking for your pulse. He’d be trying to find your credit card. “Triple heart bypass? That will be £30,000 sir, payable in full before surgery.” No, that would never happen, would it? Well, it does in America.
There are excellent old quiz questions that run like this:
Q. How many Brits went bankrupt last year due to medical bills? A. None.
Q. How many Americans went bankrupt last year due to medical bills? A. Over 500,000. And over 100 million Americans have some form of medical debt.
Having an NHS that is properly funded and free at the point of use, having good schools so our children get a good education, making sure people can go to the local park and sports centre and having local libraries are nothing to do with some kind of nanny state: they are what keeps us a civilised people.
Nanny state is also a distortion of language, just like the term “do-gooder”, as if you’d rather have “do-badders” in your life or being “woke”, which is actually a very good thing to be. The so-called nanny state is, according to the free market zealots, a very bad thing and in their worldview, people with no legs should be left to stand on their own two feet.
Just look at it this way. There IS such a thing as society and we don’t have to be wild-eyed socialists to believe that. We see merit in being kind to others, while at the same time trying to live our best lives. There’s no contradiction in that. Call it what you like, even the nanny state if that’s your preference, but let’s not see that as a bad thing. It’s actually very good.
