The Sunday Mirror’s leader column this week took aim at Theresa May’s 10-year NHS plan, however their prescription is probably not what you’d expect from the Labour Party’s required reading: marketisation of the NHS. The paper calls for an end to the NHS being free at the point of use with wealthier patients now being forced to pay for their healthcare. Despite the fact they’ve already paid higher income tax and national insurance towards it…
“Mrs May’s 10-year plan for the health service is another opportunity for fundamental reform. The NHS has only been truly free at the point of use for three of its 70 years. Consideration must be given to the well-off contributing.”
Despite Labour’s perennial claims that the Tories are plotting to privatise the NHS, it’s the leftie Mirror that’s calling for marketisation of the health service first. Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary Jon Ashworth even had an op-ed of his own in the paper. Surely Labour can’t be plotting to privatise the NHS too…
That’s not to say that it would necessarily end up being a bad thing for the NHS. Charging rich patients to pay for non-vital procedures on the NHS could trigger an explosion of market mechanisms in UK healthcare, forcing the NHS to undergo marked-based reforms to keep up, or even catalysing a wholesale shift towards a more efficient European style social insurance-based system with improved patient outcomes overall. However, this would require broader liberalisation of the healthcare market to ensure genuine competition instead of a rigged and overly-expensive market. Not a caveat likely to make its way into the Mirror any time soon…
Guido hears the Daily Mirror are looking for a new political editor, with incumbent Andy Gregory set to join the Sunday Times as health editor Still the biggest selling left-of-centre paper in Britain, the paper has always been Corbyn sceptic. Could it really jump a generation and to the left with a new pol ed? As ever we bring you your runners and riders…
- Ben Glaze: Tipped by insiders as the early favourite. Is he too well-liked by the Tories to run the red Mirror?
- Keir Mudie: Sunday Mirror man, popular with Team Jezza, should be in with a strong shout.
- Niall Sookoo: Former print and broadcast journalist, currently works in LOTO as an aide to Corbyn, rumoured to have been considering a jump back over the fence.
- Jen Williams: Smashing it at the Manchester Evening News, move to the big time well overdue.
- Kate Devlin: Top Lobby hack and Sunday Express de facto chief. Time for the Mirror to have a female pol-ed?
- Steve Hawkes: Wants a pol ed job and is a former Mirror reporter.
- Matt Chorley: How would he handle the vast increase in readership?
- Steve from Skwawkbox: Surely time for Steve to sell out and join the MSM to exploit his direct line into Corbyn’s office?
Good luck…
The lefty / Remain papers do write some nonsense about their bogeyman Boris, but today’s Mirror splash has to be most tenuous BoJo attack story ever. They are having a pop at the former Foreign Secretary for not having yet moved out of his Carlton Gardens residence. The Mirror copy says their story “is bound to infuriate homeless charities” and hint that Jeremy Hunt is unhappy Boris is still there. Labour say it is “shocking” and “extraordinary”, “taxpayer-funded squatting” and “it’s high time the Government take back control of this property”.
Back in the real world, it has been just 10 days since Boris resigned, it is completely standard practice for an outgoing Foreign Secretary to take a few weeks to leave their official residence, he has permission from the government and Jeremy Hunt to stay there until the end of the month, and Boris is paying all his bills so there is no cost to the taxpayer. So all of the key points of the Mirror and Labour attacks completely fall apart. A front page so “shocking” and “extraordinary” that no one has yet followed it up…
The latest ABCs make grim reading for the Mirror, whose daily and Sunday circulations are both down around 19.5% year-on-year. The decline is so steep in part because foreign and bulk sales were scrapped for both the daily and the Sunday. But are some lefty readers also being drawn away by the proliferation of new Corbynista sites? The old Labour Mirror cracking…
The usual suspects who raise a hue and cry about media plurality seem strangely silent about the Mirror – Express merger. Print sector media plurality is being dramatically reduced from four major media groups to 3 plus the also rans. The new group will have about a quarter market share of the UK dead tree press. As the print market withers it is turning oligopolistic…
Tom Watson is silent, the usual gobby ‘media plurality’ campaigners are also mute. The Guardian isn’t going on about the hackers at the Mirror not being fit and proper to take over the Express. There are genuine public interest concerns; plurality is being reduced and the distinctive political voice of the Express is being put at risk. Are plurality concerns only applicable to Rupert Murdoch?
Research by Women in Journalism has found that between 5 June and 22 July the Independent and the Mirror were the worst news organisations for gender byline equality. 91% of Indy front-page bylines during the period were male, just 9% of stories were written by women. The Mirror wasn’t much better, their gender byline ratio was 90% was 10%. The Mirror might be bro-cialists but the Indy spends its whole time lecturing on gender equality, so this is pretty damning for them. In the same period covered by the survey the Guy Newsroom was 25% female, a similar result to The Times…
