Social Care Reform: Damn-the-consequences, easy options don’t exist like they did for Covid. It will take a very different kind of politician to accept and see the complex solutions through

The god-like status that government deliberately engineered for the NHS and its frontline workers to silence, then de-popularise one set of problems that Lockdowns created, served only to create many more. Just one of them is the further complication of issues surrounding Social Care Reform that will make even the wisest politician think twice before embracing it as a necessary cause.

Just yesterday, the front pages of newspapers carried headlines telling us that while politicians have blustered, lack of action to address the Social Care problem has already cost individuals and families some £14 Billion to support our elderly. Meanwhile it has long been accepted that with the exception of cases where people could afford to do otherwise, the public sector should make provision and cover the cost.

It is important to recognise the creation of the cult-like status of the NHS within this debate. Dua Lipa’s intervention at the Brits earlier this week aside, the way that healthcare professionals are paid and the service they provide is managed and funded is no small part of the problem that makes up the Social Care question.

Until those that lead us are prepared to face up to both the complexity and counter-popularity that a range of very significant issues wrapped up in the way that care for the elderly is paid for and managed, the only solution on the table will continue to be the fire-hosing of public cash at a black hole. This comes at a time when both the British and the World Economies are moving perilously close to crashing over the edge – despite Establishment statements suggesting that we are about to experience the most rapid period of growth since the end of World War 2.

The word-twisting that has become today’s cultural norm has enabled many left-wing and labour progressives to argue that the problems facing the NHS are merely about privatisation. But it has allowed them to deviate away from using the other side of their forked tongues to acknowledge the role of employment rights and incendiary threat of industrial action that has made the private-sector provision of so many of the staff that allow the NHS to function such an easy, popular, yet very expensive way to prevent our prized health service from otherwise closing its doors.

It is the protectionist culture that exists at the very heart of all parts of government and the public sector that has led to the creation of a complex and disparate system of diversified responsibilities for the key area of healthcare for old age. It sees hospitals burdened by bed-blocking, whilst local authority based social services glare at the seemingly ever-smaller size of their budgets and work on the basis that they simply have no choice.

This itself Is just the tip of a very large iceberg, looming large across the depths of public policy, whilst reaching out in many different directions like an octopus, giving self-focused and fearful politicians excuse after excuse and reason after reason to believe that if they want to remain an electoral force, all these issues can be talked about, but never actually touched.

The Social Care problem will not be solved until it is something that government can afford.

The government cannot afford the Social Care bill without there being top-to-bottom NHS and public sector reform.

There will not be top-to-bottom NHS and public sector reform until employment rights, union influence and policy governing the terms of private contract services and supplies for public services have been unpicked and appropriately revised.

Employment rights, union influence and policy governing the terms of private contract services and supplies for public services will not be unpicked and appropriately revised until politicians focus on carrying out their responsibilities instead of keeping their jobs – no matter the cost.

Politicians will focus on keeping their jobs without care for the cost for as long as they believe that dealing with complex problems like Social Care is something they can avoid.

We will not have politicians or leaders in government who see the issues otherwise until events force the issues or better still, we have proper political reform.

There simply is no quick fix. The nebulous Social Care problem has been created because successive governments and generations of politicians have continually sought to take the easy way out.

Politicians have been and continue to be motivated only by vote-winning policy making whilst they avoiding facing off the different forms of self-interest that are ever present in these issues that should always be addressed honestly and in the way that considers the wider consequences and what’s best for everyone – as public policy always should.