Too soon to write off Labour. If we learn our lessons

There seem to be frequent reports at the moment of the death of the British Labour Party. I’m inclined to consider them greatly exaggerated.

Listening to a recent programme on the BBC – What’s Left, chaired by the Observer’s Andrew Rawnsley – I was amused to hear speakers declaring the 2015 results the worst for Labour since 1918. Two of the panel were Labour MPs, the rest journalists or academics. Even the MPs shared the doom-laden view.

It just feels way over the top to me. Certainly, it was a lamentable result. We were beaten, and still worse, we weren’t even able to prevent David Cameron and his Tories winning an overall majority – right up to polling day, the opinion polls were suggesting he would at most emerge as leader of the biggest single party in parliament, only able to cobble together a minority administration. Instead, he took a small but working majority.

So it was lousy. But the detail suggests things were less dire than the prophets of doom claim. Perhaps I should say, like to claim.

Labour’s share of the vote was actually up on 2010. By only 1.4%, it’s true, which is anaemic, but that was marginally more than the Tories managed – they only increased their share by 0.8%. That still left them 6.5% ahead of Labour, which is certainly a sound defeat, but hardly catastrophic.

The biggest failure of Labour was to protect its Scottish heartland. From 40 seats in Scotland, it feel to just 1. Hugely damaging. On the other hand, overall it lost only 24 seats – in other words, outside Scotland it added 15 seats to its tally. With Scotland still heading inexorably for independence, Labour was going to have to wean itself from its reliance on Scotland in any case. The fact that it has been able to increase its number of seats in England and Wales is a necessary step towards guaranteeing its long-term success.

And let’s not forget that Labour hadn’t put itself in the best possible position to win. Ed Miliband is principled, insightful and probably great company. But he’s virtually unelectable: he’s accident-prone, constantly making disastrous gaffes, and with his lieutenant Ed Balls, apparently unable ever to get off any fence. They would repeatedly dodge the hard questions, preferring to appear a little Tory to Tories, a little socialist to lefties, and convincing nobody.

Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, Mary Creagh, Tristram Hunt, Liz Kendall
Will one of them turn Labour's fortunes round as the next leader?

Peter Mandelson rightly points out in today’s Observer that, under their leadership, they failed to answer such opportunistic policies as Chancellor George Osborne’s proposal to devolve more authority to local government in the North of England. That was a policy Labour should have adopted before the Tories, but it failed either to adopt it or to respond to it. The result? Losses to the Tories in the North, another heartland area, including Ed Balls’s own seat, and deep inroads by another adversary, the far-right UKIP.

If despite these self-inflicted handicaps, Labour could still improve its standing outside Scotland by fifteen seats, and marginally improve its popular vote, what could it do with a more effective, more dynamic and, above all, more assertive leadership?

It strikes me that this is no time to throw one’s arms up in despair and talk about defeat on a historically unprecedented scale. Instead it’s time to take stock sensibly of where we stand, without understating the scale of the debacle but also without ignoring the more reasons for encouragement. And make sure we never again saddle ourselves with leaders so hopelessly out of touch with the needs of the day.

Because if we shoot ourselves in the foot like that again, then we would indeed be in serious trouble.

Good for the L&D hospital: leading the way again...

It does the heart good to find your local hospital doing really rather well.

The L&D: glad it's my local hospital

More than once, I’ve commented on the silent ward initiative being pioneered at the Luton and Dunstable hospital just up the road from me. It has the merit of focusing nursing effort on nursing – as opposed to answering phones, completing paperwork or dealing with administration generally. Equally admirable was the investment it was making in Discharge Planning (where my wife worked for a while): hospital nurses, district nurses and social workers worked out of a common office in the hospital, to ensure that patients could be discharged quickly but safely, with all the necessary support services in place.

Now it seems that the L&D is leading the way in another key area. I wrote the other day about the work being done by University Hospitals Birmingham, under the leadership of Chief Executive Julie Moore, on keeping up permanent staff numbers. So I was pleased to see a report on ITV about how the L&D is at the forefront of this kind of work too.

It quoted Chief Nurse Patricia Reid:

It doesn't matter how good an agency [nurse] is – and some of them are absolutely brilliant. The fact is the way they work they are in different hospitals some days, on different clinical wards, and that impacts on the continuity of patient care and undoubtedly impacts on long term quality.

Much the same point as Julie Moore was making: she reported that their own studies found that as soon as there were two or more temporary nurses on a ward, care quality suffered. You need your own people, used to working in your own teams, who know the patients and the processes on specific wards.

In addition, and the ITV report makes this clear, interviewing Jeremy Hunt, Health Secretary, on the subject, expenditure on agency nursing is far too high – twice expected levels. It must be cut for financial reasons, which makes it all the more satisfying that the result is likely to be an improvement in quality, not a loss.

That’s a real case of win-win.

Like University Hospitals Birmingham, the L&D is working deliberately and resolutely to cut its dependence on agency staff.

Now, I’d rather not have to go there if I possibly can. But just in case I really can’t avoid it at some time, I’m delighted to know that my local hospital – alongside Julie Moore’s – is right up there in the forefront of enlightened thinking.

Let’s hope that all the other hospitals soon follow in their wake.

On a bleak anniversary, a tribute to two souls from the Little Apple

Way back in the early eighties, visiting old friends in South London, I was introduced to a visitor from the States, a certain Jeune Kirmser. There followed three hours of some of the liveliest conversation I’d ever had, ranging over any and all subjects. I remember she spoke of cases fought up to the Supreme Court about prayer in schools, she spoke about the pleasure she took from visiting London, she spoke about the wonderful people she knew back in her home town of Manhattan, Kansas – the little Apple, to distinguish it from its big brother, Manhattan, New York.

I later learned that many of these wonderful people were victims of misfortune, some of them immigrants, who’d she meet living in dire circumstances, and take under her and her husband’s wing.

Jeune Kirmser: remarkable and from Manhattan, Kansas

She also put me firmly in my place. I smoked in those days and she gently, but firmly, explained that my never-ending chain of cigarettes had given her a headache. It was the first time, I think, that I learned to be ashamed of that appalling habit, not for its effect on me, but for its effect on others.

She was good at that. She knew how to use words effectively, without aggression, but so that one understood precisely what she meant. 

I’ve since found out that her skill with words, as well as her openness to other nations and other cultures had deep roots in her. When she was twelve, she wrote:

I walked the street that night alone 
Fearing I should be seen or known. 
I’d not meant to do any wrong,
But that is always the bad man’s song.

Did anyone see me take that pear? 
The devil thrust upon me a dare 
That made me go against my will. 
But he, the Devil, is laughing still.

Said God, “My son, you must take care 
Lest you walk into the Devil’s snare.” 
The Devil whispered “Don’t take heed 
you know you’ve got yourself to feed.”

I pondered. “Let the pear decide.” 
I brought it from my coat inside 
And held it up to see it better.
Then ’twas done. I wasn’t God’s quitter.

I took it back to Toni’s stand 
But Toni grabbed me by the hand 
“I did wonder if you’d bring it back.” 
He gave me the pear and an apple in a sack.

I went home that night to my bed of straw
And knelt upon my knees before my God, 
And felt I had been saved from a quitter’s mission 
By Italian Toni. Who wasn’t a Christian.

Many years later – in 2009 in fact – I started blogging and enjoying it. And I began to notice that I was getting a few comments from another inhabitant of the Little Apple. This was how I came to know Bob Patterson, the man who could, for instance, mark his forced early retirement through ill health with the remark:

Retirement has changed my world in so many ways. Before I retired, I would set the alarm clock for 7 a.m., but I'd rise at 5:30 a.m. Now that I'm retired, I set the alarm for 8 a.m., and I rise at 5:30. It's a brand new world.

After many exchanges on Facebook, Twitter or simply by e-mail, I felt I really ought to ask Bob about the other person I knew form Manhattan, Kansas. It was probably my desire not to be taken for the kind of person who asks “you live in New York? Do you happen to know Mark?” that had put me off enquring before. However, the Little Apple doesn’t have the population of the Big one, and civilised people probably gravitate together.

“Jeune?” he said. “Of course I know her. Or knew her. She died a few months ago. She went to the same Unitarian Church I attend.”

I’ve never been to Manhattan, Kansas and don’t know the Unitarian Church. But I felt better for knowing that such a place existed, and that it had contained two such people as Bob and Jeune. Even though I’d discovered rather too late that they knew each other.

Sadly, Bob has gone too now. One of his final posts was “Popsicle sticks are made from the wood of the white birch. Go back to bed,” showing that his taste for the whimsical, the off-beat never deserted him. His last words to me were “…you shouldn't take this as a sign of anything but my fatigue, but it's time for a pre-prandial nap. Thanks to you and Danielle for getting in touch.” There was nothing to thank in the concern my wife and I both felt – rightly as it turned out – but Bob always made sure that friendship was properly recognised.

Two fine people, whose lives touched and enriched many others. Today, 4 June, is the third anniversary of Jeune’s death, which struck me as a good occasion to remember them both, and salute the Little Apple which nurtured them and which they graced. 

There’s no better way to close than with another of Jeune’s poems:

Death swept in, graceless and arrogant, 
Taking from me a gentle love, 
While snapping that I couldn't have the world.

Angered, I reminded him 
That he emptied not my world 
By snatching bodies. 
That for every stolen love 
I would cherish another.

He looked at me and smiled. 
I turned from him and cried.

Charles Kennedy: a loss for us all, not least in the Labour Party

There have been a great many tributes paid to Charles Kennedy since his death, as there are when any leading political figures die. But, and many people have commented on this fact, in his case more of them seem to be sincere than for most others.

Charles Kennedy:
witty, fun and right on at least two great questions...

This owes a great deal, no doubt, to the fact that he was a lot more likeable than most. He could be funny, and entertain on TV comedy shows, as effectively as he could outline an argument on more serious ones. He conjured up smiles, in others as well as himself, despite having much to cry about: a long, painful battle with alcohol in the course of which he lost the leadership of his party, the Liberal Democrats, as well as terrible family losses, the most recent the death of his father just weeks before the 7 May General Election.

And at the election, he lost the parliamentary seat he’d held for 32 years.

An appealing character, beset by tragedy. No wonder his death has attracted widespread, genuine sorrow.

To me, though, there are two particular aspects of his life that are most to be regretted. Two major issues on which he proved himself right, when so many others around him, were wrong.

The most significant was the Iraq War, which he consistently, outspokenly opposed. At a 2003 rally in Hyde Park following a great demonstration against the war he said:

It's no wonder that people are scared and confused. I say this to you quite seriously as somebody who personally happens not to be a pacifist but has the utter respect for anyone for grounds of conscience who is. As somebody who is not actually anti-American but is deeply worried by this Bush administration. And as someone who is under no illusions about the brutal dictatorship and the appalling regime which is Saddam Hussein.

The event has proven him entirely right. What we were scared and confused about has been more than verified, as ISIS runs amok across Iraq and Syria. George Bush and Tony Blair may well have rid us of the “appalling regime” Saddam Hussein led, but they have allowed it to be replaced by something far worse still. Of the major parties in the UK, only Charles Kennedy’s Lib Dems stood out against the pressure for war.

He subsequently led his party to its best ever election results, taking 62 seats in 2005. But then the difficulties with alcohol caught up with him, and he was forced out. In 2010, it was Nick Clegg who led his party and, though he took fewer seats, he nonetheless won enough to force the Conservatives into dependence on him.

And again he got things right. The Lib Dems were, alongside Labour, an anti-Tory party. A coalition with Labour was conceivable; a coalition with the Conservatives was a betrayal of everything that a large number of the party’s supporters believed, and for which they had given it their support. Charles Kennedy was the leading voice inside the parliamentary party to oppose entering that coalition. But Nick Clegg took the party into it, and the results were as catastrophic as expected: it has been reduced to just eight MPs at this year’s election. Kennedy was not one of the small number to hold on to their seats.

It will take a generation for the party to crawl back from that debacle. Though I’m in the Labour Party, I regret that: under Kennedy, the Lib Dems were often able to prick Labour’s conscience, and not just over the Iraq War, even on our constantly eroding civil liberties. The loss of that spur will be felt by us all.

Charles Kennedy embodied the Lib Dem voice at its best. Witty, likeable, intelligent, and right on at least two great matters, his death is a heavy blow. We’re all the poorer for it.

How the NHS can address its own problems

Employ two people for one job? As a way to improve productivity? And cut costs?

A curious notion. And I’m grateful to my wife for recommending I listen to the latest episode of Evan Davis’ BBC Radio 4 programme The Bottom Line to hear it.

The speaker was Julie Moore, a nurse by training, and Chief Executive of University Hospitals Birmingham. She had me on her side as soon as she stated a principle which can’t be stressed too much: though we keep being told that the NHS employs too many people in administrative, non care-related roles, the reality is that we need more, if only to free up nursing time.

Julie Moore with an acquaintance of hers

That’s a point I learned from an inspired initiative that my local hospital, the Luton and Dunstable, has been pioneering: the silent ward. 

It’s possible to keep wards quiet by employing a lot more word clerks, who take all the phone calls and deal with the paperwork, in rooms kept separate from wards so they disturb no patients. It’s a win-win arrangement, because if frees up their time, so nurses can constantly move among a small number of patients assigned to them, and it’s possible to eliminate call bells too – a nurse will be around to see you as part of the routine of work more quickly than if summoned by a bell – and, of course, with less noise.

Julie Moore talked about the application of the same principle in another context:

One of the things we have done is look at the various roles. I have a great concern that all we measure in the country at the moment is nurse staffing levels. What we did a while ago, was say we don’t want qualified nurses putting away stores… [and similar general work] … so we created housekeeper roles, storekeeper roles. That really did help productivity. You had someone whose job was to keep all the store cupboards stocked up with everything the nurses needed, make sure they’re not overstocked and, all the rest of it…

The results were excellent, though that should surprise no one. After all, the principle is simple. They had:

… qualified nurses looking after patients, and storekeepers looking after stores, and it worked very, very well.

But how about the counter-intuitive notion of appointing two people for one post? How can that work?

One of the major problems in the NHS is its over-dependence on temporary staff, agency or bank staff, to fill shortfalls. Since the Francis report into the disastrous failures of care at Mid Staffordshire hospital, there has been an obligation not to let staff numbers fall below certain levels, and that often makes it necessary to take on temporary staff.

Simon Stevens, Chief Executive of the NHS in England, pointed out recently that spending on agency nursing was running at twice the expected levels.

Here’s Julie Moore’s take on the problem:

It’s far more important to have permanent staff for your own staff than employ temporary staff like agency staff. We see productivity go down when we do that, but most importantly from our perspective, quality goes down. So we’ve run a policy in the past three or five years now of over-recruiting staff. So that the mantra is, if you interview two good people for one job, employ them both. And we’ve found productivity, every which way you want to measure that, not just around patients, but actually sick time, morale, the questionnaires that staff fill in, have all got better as a result of that, and we spend far less on our overall nursing bill.

The bill goes down, and quality goes up. As many have often argued, the best care is often the least expensive care. But it’s particularly striking, and highly refreshing, to discover that over-recruiting in the NHS can help.

The principle for Julie Moore is: “Don’t let a good person go unappointed…”

The results have been staggering.

The first year we did that our pay bill went down £850,000.

Julie Moore was made a dame (knighted) by a Tory government. On the other hand, the chair of the Trust that runs her hospital is Jacqui Smith, former Labour MP and the first woman to hold the post of Home Secretary. Julie Mooore’s approach is non-partisan.

It shows what can be done in the NHS. When you have leaders bold enough to take effective decisions, even when they’re counter-intuitive. And when politics is kept out of the equation.

Military force: limited, however great it may be

It’s hard to understand what prevents the United States understanding that, faced with a popularly supported insurrection of a majority of a population, even the most powerful military force on earth can only ever gain a temporary advantage.

What happens is that an occupying military force tends to alienate even those who are initially sympathetic to its aims. Foreign soldiers aren’t good at distinguishing between their enemies from their friends within a civilian population. They tend, therefore, to treat them all as hostile. And treating people as hostile generally means treating them badly, imposing martial law, for instance, denying their rights, even confiscating their property, and generally being arrogant, high-handed and brutal.

The result is that disaffection grows. What might have been a relatively small, localised antipathy quickly spreads, so that ultimately large swaths of the population are at least passive opponents, so that even if they don’t join the active insurgents, they don’t resist them and may even succour them. This affects every part of the occupied nation. Even those who are drafted in to support the occupiers, in some kind of locally recruited military force, lose their stomach for the fight or even worse, turn against their erstwhile allies.

They’re often quick to spot what’s happening themselves. Here’s a comment from one officer in a locally raised militia, on the behaviour of his supposed allies, and its effect on alienating the support they were initially offered.

… the people in general are becoming indifferent, if not averse, to a government which in place of the liberty, prosperity, safety and plenty, under promise of which it involved them in this war, has established a thorough despotism.

What’s got me thinking about these things?

It could have been the fall of Ramadi in Iraq. Units of the national army, exhausted and their enthusiasm worn thin, eventually collapsed in the face of the advance of ISIS, which occupied the large and strategically vital city earlier this month. There are reports of a counter-attack making some progress, but there’s clearly a hard battle ahead. Meanwhile, the civilian population is suffering the brutality that comes with ISIS rule. The Dubya-Blair assumption that all they had to do was overthrow Saddam Hussein by military force, to usher in a friendlier and democratically-inclined regime in Iraq, has been exposed as massively misguided.

The ruins of Palmyra: memento of an Empire
Now occupied by ISIS

Alternatively, the fall of Palmyra in Syria could have prompted my thoughts on this theme. Palmyra is one of the great cultural centres of the world. At one point, it stood at the heart of an Empire which for a time resisted the power of the Romans. The remains of that culture are a precious world heritage. ISIS have occupied that city too and, though they’re promising to respect the ruins, there’s no guarantee that they will. And meanwhile the civilian population is suffering the brutality that comes with ISIS rule.

But in fact it was neither of these events that got reflecting on the hopelessness of using military force to crush an insurrection.

Amazon’s streaming video service is currently offering viewers a series called Turn: Washington’s spies. Well acted and constructed, it also opened my eyes to an aspect of history that I knew little about: George Washington’s highly professional use of a spy ring against the British in the American War of Independence. It focuses on the so-called Culper ring that spied on the British in occupied New York.

Jamie Bell in the role of Abraham Woodull
a key figure in the Culper ring of spies

As it happens, the series, though entertaining, also suffers from some of the flaws of any soap. A narrative that would have been far more believable had it stuck to the historical record moves increasingly away from it as the series advances, until it becomes frankly implausible. So I’ve turned to the book on which it’s based, Alexander Rose’s Washington’s Spies. And I’ve found it fascinating.

You may have noticed that the remark I quoted earlier was a little archaic in its style. it comes from the book, and the person quoted was a loyalist – i.e. pro-British – officer in a Militia unit. He voiced his complaint in 1779, and what he was lamenting was the way the British, then probably the most powerful military nation on Earth, were driving loyal supporters like himself into the arms of those they regarded as rebels.

Benjamin Tallmadge
As a younger man, he ran the Culper ring, reporting to Washington

Which is why the Americans really ought to know better. They’ve been on the receiving end of the alienating behaviour of military occupiers. And they were able to turn it to their favour, to gain the ultimate victory.

The British, too, who lost their colonies through their own blundering actions, ought to have learned their lesson. Over two centuries ago.

And that brings me back to the intervention of both nations in Iraq.

What on earth were we thinking of?

M&S: good marketing. Or was it?

It’s always fun when Marks and Spencer’s decides to offer tasters of some exciting new line in its Food Halls.

The other day I was introduced to its latest pork pies. First I was offered a sample topped, as far as I could see, with chutney.

“The topping really enhances the flavour of the pie,” the friendly woman dispensing the goodies pointed out, and she was right. “And the crust is just right, exactly crusty enough without being hard.” And she was right about that too.

“What about these ones?” I asked, pointing to samples topped with something more golden in colour. “Apple sauce?”

“Indeed,” she replied, immediately offering me one to try, “and I think you’ll find the slight sharpness of the apple is exactly the right complement to the meat.”

She was right again. She knew her stuff. And so did M&S which had made, in my view, an excellent choice in adding these products to its already impressive range.

Now, it’s often said that you should never go to a supermarket when hungry, because you’re bound to come out with far more than you need. I knew what I was looking for from M&S, and it didn’t include pork pies. On the other hand, I’d been at a meeting which had taken me a long way into the lunch hour. Something to eat? Struck me as a good idea. Something appetising? Even better.

M&S Food Hall: far too temptation-charged for a hungry visitor

Oscar Wilde could resist anything but temptation. Like him, I succumbed.

“They’re excellent. I think I’ll take some. Where are they?”

For the first time in our conversation, I saw her uncomfortable.

“Ah,” she said, “we don’t actually have them in the store yet. We just wanted you to know about them.”

Know about them? It’s always seemed to me that the only reason to get a potential customer to know about a product is in the hope they’ll buy it. Adding to the general store of human knowledge? I’m really not sure that’s a grocer’s role.

M&S remains one of my favourite shops and I’ll keep right on going there. But it’s clear the initials really don’t stand for Marketing and Sales. In fact, it feels like Marketing had given up on communicating with Sales at all.

The were good and I want to say the tasting was good marketing. But marketing that doesn’t lead to sales? That sounds more like good effort, wasted.