At a time of relative directionless, Labour need to pick a fight. After the General Election, with no leader to keep them in tow, they picked the wrong ones. NHS Direct and Andy Coulson simply didn’t resonate with the electorate. They do, however, have one policy that does. The National Care Service.
Labour before the Second World War was driven by the goal of the Welfare State. When they entered government, Beveridge Report at their side, they revolutionised public services and provided a manifestation of the caring society governments new and old so love to talk about. These reforms, so long sought after, changed Britain for the better. However having built the dream, Labour lost their direction. They’d got what they’d always wanted, and didn’t know where to aim next. The Labour of the past fifty years has largely been one searching for its soul. Amidst the wrangling of New vs old they might not find it yet, but they can at least present an electable proxy.
A National Care Service would allow Labour to rebuild, not just because of the name, much of the feeling of 1945. Just as health was a crisis waiting to happen then, so the ageing population is now. True, as most of the electorate is so far from retirement, and without the imminent struggling of war veterans, the cause is much less emotive. Nonetheless, we all recognise the bill of retirement we will one day have to face, and the generations’ bills before us that we too will have to foot.
The Coalition has made some effort to make us feel better about this issue, ploughing an extra £2 billion into social care schemes. This stops far short of the sort of plan Andy Burnham kept afloat during the Labour leadership campaign.
Labour are more acutely now than ever in need of the dividing lines Gordon Brown was so obsessed with. They need an argument they can conclusively win, not just by opposing but by offering an alternative. If they want the “Nasty Party” label to stick on the Tories, and to once again resume that role as protectorate of the vulnerable, then an NCS could be the best way forward.
