Spiv Uses Pandemic To Attack NHS

For some of those out there on the right, no opportunity to attack those institutions which do not obey their ideological world view can be allowed to go to waste, no matter how opportunist or callous they appear as a result. So it is with Mark Littlewood, head man at Astroturf lobby group the IEA, who has used the Coronavirus pandemic to kick the NHS.

Mark Littlewood, inheriting a fine tradition ...

Taking as his starting point a BBC report that told “Analysis by the BBC shows Covid-19 deaths and excess deaths have been proportionately worse in the UK”, he goes on to assert “There will be more data to crunch. But this is more evidence that the NHS is pretty much the worst healthcare system in the Western world. Once we look at all the info, there may be a good case for going for an EU-style more marketised system”.

... of spivvery, plain and simple

Happily for Littlewood, this will chime with the IEA’s ideological orientation; it would have been most unfortunate had it come out any other way. But here a problem enters: the reasons for the UK’s poor outcomes are well-known, and do not feature NHS failings, including as they do the failure to lock down earlier, the abandonment of track and trace, and early adoption of a disastrous “herd immunity” strategy.

All of those failings can be laid fairly and squarely at the door of alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and his chief polecat Dominic Cummings. But with this no right-wing Astroturfer can agree, invested as they all are in The Adoration Of The Boris. So someone else Done It, and Littlewood’s perverse logic means blaming the NHS.

Moreover, he has already reached his conclusion, suggesting that when he and his pals have crunched all that data, the result will match the conclusion he has already reached. It is not only our free and fearless press that specialises in selective presentation of information which matches the headline already written.

Littlewood’s expertise in this area - as opposed to his ideological anchorage - is, sadly, lacking, as witness “I think social distancing is over. If you’re under 55 and okayish you can socialise. You won’t die” and “Social distancing is over, it seems. Probably a good thing. Most things with the prefix ‘social’ turn out to be pretty anti-social in reality”. Those who never attended an IEA social event may count themselves lucky.

The citation-free outbursts have extended to claiming “You can’t blame the medical staff. The NHS system renders them much less effective than their European peers though”. And the aggressive intolerance has extended to denouncing a neurologist, and health spokesman for the Lib Dems - a party of which Littlewood was once a member - by snapping “Yawn. What a tedious cretin. Muted”. Which is most revealing.

He does not wish learn about the NHS, or health provision elsewhere. It is the manipulation of data to serve the agenda, fit the already written conclusion, demonising the NHS and urging its dismantling. The role of the Government which he and his fellow Astroturfers so slavishly support in the UK’s Covid-19 response is therefore ignored.

Using the pandemic to attack the NHS is little short of wickedness. But that thought will not distract Mark Littlewood. He pretends to care about the less well-off, but does not. He feigns concern, but has none. The impression of cheap spivvery is inescapable.

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