English Labour's "Change" is more neoliberal crap
Published in the October 17th edition of The National.
Errand boy for private healthcare Wes Streeting has hit the streets running. His magic bullet for getting overweight people back to work is to shoot them monthly with Zepbound, an Eli Lilly weight loss drug costing $1000 per month.
Streeting has agreed with US-based Eli Lilly, in partnership with Health Innovation Manchester, that it will invest £279m in a 5-year clinical trial on 3000 overweight and unemployed people in the low-tax, low-regulation Manchester Special Enterprise Zone (SEZ). Â
Streeting presumes obesity is the reason people aren’t working, when the real problem is decades of government policies that have deprived large areas of the UK of investment in industrial capacity, transport and skills training, as well as failure to regulate an industry that pumps out vast quantities of sugar-filled ultra-processed foods, policies English Labour seems intent on continuing.
Zepbound’s side effects include nausea, vomiting, constipation, diarrhea, acid reflux, pancreatitis, gallbladder disease and worsening of diabetic eye disease. Its active ingredient, tirzepatide, can cause thyroid C-cell tumours in rats and could cause medullary thyroid cancer in humans. It’s not clear whether the drug causes depression or suicidal ideation. To keep weight off, users need to stay on the drug forever.
That’s a nice little earner for Big Pharma and puts a huge strain on the shrinking NHS budget. But that’s all part of the plan. Since 2023, Starmer’s cabinet has received more than £500k from lobbyists, hedge funds and private equity firms with links to the private healthcare industry. Global PR firm Weber Shandwick that represents Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline and Roche, provided free staff to Anneliese Dodds, the Minister of State for Development.
(BTW, Swiss firm Roche, which recorded a 2023 profit of $4.1 billion, refused to offer drugs to treat cancer and neuromuscular conditions at NHS prices.)
Rachel Reeves got a free campaign advisor from lobbying firm FGS Global between February and June 2024. The firm’s clients include Optum Healthcare Solutions, a subsidiary of US-based United Health and Ernst and Young, which has charged the NHS £2,343 per day for its consultants. A former FGS client was Accord Healthcare, a UK drug company that was fined £155 million in 2021 for overcharging the NHS for hydrocortisone tablets between 2008-2018.
Streeting received free hospitality from FGS to attend the Glyndebourne opera in 2023 and £2,100 from Craig Legiton, a FGS Global partner. Now Streeting is bringing back the dreadful ex-Blairite Health Minister, Alan Milburn, who has made over £8m from private health consultancy work.
For those who don’t remember, Milburn championed NHS outsourcing and the disastrous Private Finance Initiatives that have cost Scotland nearly £30 billion. Milburn will be a Non Executive Director (NED) in Streeting’s department.
English Labour’s ‘change’ is to heap more of the same neoliberal crap onto the failing UK, rather than address the root causes of that failure.
How much more of this will Scotland take?
Great demolition of Streeting's plans for the NHS by Richard Murphy on his podcast recently, though he does not mention this plan, which is unlikely to get those concerned into work but will cost the NHS a lot once the side effects become apparent and the bills for this medication rise.
He'll probably not be an MP by then but enjoying a lucrative job in Big Pharma as a reward.
That A.Dodds is from Aberdeen but an MP in I think Cambridge? When I hear her talk I hear a very forced non genuine Aberdonian accent, it's cringeworthy I wish she would just speak her normal posh English. Labour's 'UK' is really on a dangerous path, forcing people to take medication of any sort should be a crime. Being poor is not an illness, but government imposed poverty creates all sorts of ills in society, and that is the intention, to make money out of keeping people poor, it's very lucrative and profitable after all.