Miliband's Refusal to Work with the SNP is a Huge Mistake for Labour and the UK

  Ed Miliband has dodged the question over whether he would be willing to work with the SNP since the fallout from the Scottish independence referendum catapulted the nationalists to UK-wide prominence. Now, a week before the general election, he has made a seemingly definite promise that he will not.

  This, in short, is ridiculous. Miliband is either lying or a fool.

  For context, the SNP is set to win a significant majority of the Scottish seats in the House of Commons. There are 59 seats in Scotland; the various election forecasts predict they will take anywhere between 49 and 56 of them. An Ipsos-MORI poll a few days ago even predicted a complete wipeout for the other parties, with the SNP holding all 59, though this seems unlikely. However, a seat total of around 50 seems eminently doable.

  This will make Nicola Sturgeon's party the third-largest in the House of Commons almost without doubt; the Liberal Democrats would have to hold almost all of their 57 seats to maintain third place, something which no poll almost since the last election has suggested they will do. The SNP will, therefore, be in a pivotal position of power.

  Nicola Sturgeon has confirmed that the party will not support a Conservative government under any situation. With the Tories and Labour neck-and-neck in the polls, this was Ed Miliband's lifeline. The loss of Labour's Scottish fiefdom to the SNP surge mattered little in Parliamentary terms as long as the option of a deal with Sturgeon's party was on the table. Labour could afford to come a few seats behind Cameron's Tories, because they would be able to call on a healthy 50 or so SNP MPs to support their Queen's Speech.

  Now, however, he has a serious problem. His statement to the Question Time audience last night ruled out not only a coalition, which hasn't really been on the cards for months, but also any 'deal' with the Scottish Nationals. His argument centred around not wanting concede things like scrapping Trident or holding a second independence referendum to Sturgeon's party, but it leaves Labour without their largest possible ally in Parliament. 

  Before last night, Miliband could have struck an agreement with the SNP to support the Labour Party on confidence and supply bills - i.e. budgets and votes of confidence in the government. In doing so, he would have had to concede some things to the nationalists, of course, but Sturgeon had made it quite clear that neither scrapping Trident or holding another referendum were red lines. On most other policy areas, the SNP aren't so far removed from Labour that making some compromises would really have been an issue.

  But Miliband, presumably running scared from the rhetoric of the Tory press that a Labour-SNP deal would threaten the very future of the country, has now ruled this out, with the result that any Labour minority government will now be completely ineffective, not to mention far less likely. 

  Now, the Labour party will have to beat the Tories in terms of seats, and win support from the Liberal Democrats if - as seems likely - the margin of victory is narrower than the 25-30 MPs the Lib Dems are likely to hold. And that is just to be able to form the government.

  Once Miliband is inside No. 10, he will find it almost impossible to govern effectively. The SNP would support a Labour Queen's Speech to stop the Tories getting back in, but once Ed is installed in Downing Street the Scottish Nationals will hold him to ransom over every single vote. The pressure they will exert in such a situation will be far greater than if Miliband had formed a pre-determined deal, and will result in an unstable government which will struggle to pass laws.

  The only saving grace is that the Conservatives will find it even more impossible to govern should they have the edge on May 7th, meaning a Cameron-led government will be prevented from implementing the harsh further cuts to public spending and draconian welfare reforms which have been promised. The SNP will simply vote down any Conservative bills they disagree with, and since there is far less Tory-SNP common ground than Labour-SNP, they will block far more Tory legislation than Labour. Silver linings, and all that.

  That, however, would have happened even if Ed Miliband had not made this monumental error of judgement. The SNP would never have worked with the Tories. Now it looks as if they will be prevented from working with Labour as well. This is one of the few occasions where I actually hope a politician was lying. Otherwise, Mr. Miliband has been very, very foolish indeed.

The NHS - A Matter of Life and Death

  Yes, ironic though it may seem, the good old National Health Service is ill - very ill. Since 1948, this mammoth organisation - the largest single employer in the UK and the best health service in the world - has provided care to the injured and the ill of this country. It's not been perfect, and we grumble, groan and complain about it like true Britons - but let's be honest, none of us would want to see it go.


Doctor! Doctor!

  Unfortunately, we're looking at that as a very real possibility unless we seriously get our act together. The Coalition insist again and again that the NHS has been ringfenced from austerity (as well they might - the NHS has been described as England's national religion and surveys show that 71% want to see increased, not reduced, funding) but they are lying through their teeth. What they actually mean is that NHS spending has not been cut, and it hasn't - but the NHS, in order to function, needs more money every year.

  The reason for this is pretty obvious - every year there are more people to treat, with the average age going up and diseases like heart disease, HIV and cancer steadily growing. There are also more and newer medicines to buy and new technologies to use - things which the public expect the NHS to have and have to be paid for, often at exorbitantly high prices due to the unscrupulous and predatory nature of the pharmaceutical industry.....but that's a topic for another time.

  The point is, between 1950 and 2010 NHS spending increased by an average of 4% per year. This was necessary to keep up with increasing pressures on the service. Since 2010, however, the increase has been slashed - to just 0.5% per year. This is, quite simply, unsustainable. At that paltry rate of increase, the NHS will crash and burn within a few years.


Action Plan

  There are basically three ways the current funding situation can be assuaged:

1. Cut Spending Elsewhere: A typical Tory idea, this just cannot happen. The deficit in health spending over the last four years now stands at £16 billion, and will rise to £34 billion by 2018 if current spending trends do not change. Not only would such cuts to other departments be devastating, they are just not possible: The Tory-led coalition, as ideologically committed to spending cuts as it is possible for a government to be, spent £85 billion more this year than Labour did in 2009 at the height of the financial crisis. If even the Cameron/Osborne/Duncan-Smith trinity can't slash spending in four years of government, it can't be done
2. Introduce Patient Charges: This won't happen. The Royal College of Nursing has suggested the introduction of £10 charges to see your GP, but the Department of Health has come out and said this is not on the table - "We are absolutely clear that the NHS should be free at the point of use, and we will not charge for GP appointments." It would be electoral suicide for Labour to go against the Tories on this, so it's not even an option
3. Raise Taxes: Always a scary prospect for any government, this is nonetheless the only way forward. Labour's Frank Field has proposed a 1% increase in National Insurance, but the Labour leadership - having made much of the 'cost of living crisis' in their propaganda output - is reluctant to go ahead with this. However, as mentioned above the public are overwhelmingly in favour of an increase in NHS spending, so National Insurance is probably the one general tax they could get away with raising

  At the end of the day, the NHS budget has to go up - there is no choice. The 4% annual increase is not an extravagance, it is a necessity, and without it the service built by Clement Attlee and Aneurin Bevan will collapse. The privatisation of the best health service in the world has already begun  - and let's not forget who's profiting from that - and it will continue as long as the NHS is starved of the funds it needs. The 2015 election will include the NHS as a central battleground, but unless one of the main parties steps up and admits that tax increases are the only way to preserve the 'English national religion', then it will soon be just another constituent of the nostalgic past. 

  It's very much like the Church of England in that respect, I suppose.