Every so often (and it doesn’t happen often enough for my liking) the British public remind us of the yawning gap between received wisdom and wisdom.
Ever since the 1940’s it has been a core article of faith among the left (and more than a few Conservatives I might add) that services like healthcare and education can only be provided for the masses by central government and funded by general taxation. They even have the gall to denounce alternative models as ‘unworkable’.
Well, if the results of this survey are anything to go by, that canard may be reaching the end of its shelf-life:
Voters are prepared to pay for health insurance if it guarantees them better and faster care, according to a ground-breaking new poll that suggests the public is far more open to radical ideas than politicians realise.
The survey finds strong support among taxpayers for a range of controversial policy alternatives, including giving parents the right to choose private schools for their children and American-style “zero tolerance” policing.
I wonder if there is still ‘strong support’ for British-style “zero tolerance” for self-defence?
The poll appears to contradict the Prime Minister’s claim that voters are opposed to health and education solutions that allow individuals to decide where their money is spent.
And it would also appear to contradict my long-held belief that the British public would never relinquish their single-minded devotion to the National Health Service. The day when consumer expectation finally outstrips the ability of the state to keep up with it may be closer than I had imagined.
David,
I keep on banging away at this, but the Conservative Party is the only party that can reform the Welfare State. Reform means privatisation allied to the principle of services being free at the point of us, the latter being the real public shibboleth here. Blair has given us gesture politics instead of real solutions. His lasting achievement is the booming Guardian Society pages. But by comparison Brown will/would be positively recidivist, the Mick McGahey of New Labour. There’s only one hope and it’s in opposition.
Guessedworker,
Yes, I know. I cannot honestly say that I like the Conservatives but I do recognise that they are the only alternative we have.
I am trying to figure out how you reconcile “privatisation” with “services being free at the point of use.” I guess this means that the recipient of the services doesn’t pay for the services they actually consume, which seems awfully socialistic to me. If the recipient doesn’t pay, who does?
T.Hartin,
Well, you can’t be trying very hard to work it out. No one says that if utilities are private hands that needs must preclude payment from general taxation through the medium of the state. Where appropriate, as for example in state education, vouchers can be used. Where that is not practical, as in Health, some combination of insurance and state funding may be required. The point is that we have to be practical about this, and not too puritanical from a libertarian perspective. The reality is that any reforming Tory government must confront deep public (small c) conservatism on the issue – and a smokescreen of self-serving smears from the left. The first step will not travel the whole distance perhaps. But it is still essential that the first step is made.
We can only hope.
“No one says that if utilities are private hands that needs must preclude payment from general taxation through the medium of the state.”
I guess as an American I am spoiled on this point. We never really nationalized much of anything on this side of the pond, so when we talk about privatizing, we are referring not to the storefront where services are delivered, but to getting the state out of the business of paying for it at all. From an American perspective, what you described wouldn’t be privatization at all, but I can see how it would be progress in a state that has actual fully-nationalized health care, etc.
Not the first time I have been ethno-centric on these boards.
Guessworker:
T Hartin was right first time.
David Carr’s post is not directed at whether voters are prepared to countenance the private delivery of State-funded healthcare (a largely technical issue of how the Welfare State is organised).
It is directed at the fact that voters are apparently prepared to countenance privately paying for healthcare – a much more radical and important development.
Cydonia
In general privatization is a good thing, surely. (Though we can do without tax-farming, and self-supporting regulators, thank you…) But it can be a question of degree: indeed, there’s scarcely ever a stark choice between total state control and zero state involvement.
The French health system looks wildly statist to Americans (despite the vast US budget for socialised healthcare), but adopting it in Britain would be radical privatisation.