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Reflections 44. Something dangerous is happening, and we need to tell everyone.

Call To Action

Dr Julia Grace Patterson??

Feb 11

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I’m not very interested in internal party politics…

But this week I want to give you my personal experience of working with some of the hardest-working politicians I have come across in my life as a campaigner, and talk about how, in the run up to a UK general election, they are likely to be ostracised by a Labour party who feel assured of victory.

This might surprise you given that I work in political campaigning. Part of my role is to lobby politicians; I’ve run over 25 parliamentary briefings and our team built a coalition of over 100 MPs during the pandemic to fight for changes. As Chief Exec of EveryDoctor, I’ve taken the government to court in partnership with Good Law Project. My job involves working out politicians’ priorities, and trying to identify ways to convince them to push for things that matter to the public. During the pandemic, that meant things like safe PPE, or sick pay for temporary staff, or death-in-service benefit for the families of many workers who had died of COVID, and which they’d likely caught in their workplaces. After the major waves of the pandemic died away our focus broadened. We now campaign to advocate for NHS patients and staff in an increasingly difficult environment, an environment that is increasingly political, and where many politicians say one thing and do the opposite.

Working out the relationships, the factions, and reading between the lines of press releases is all important. Ten years ago, if I’d read a press release from the government about the NHS I might have felt concerned about its content, but I wouldn’t have been able to join up the dots and work out why a politician was saying that particular thing, at that particular time. Now, I often can. But on a personal level, this party politics doesn’t interest me. I don’t like the backstabbing, the grinding resentment, the interminable committee meetings. I don’t like the attitude of people who join a party, not to help, but with the sole ambition of attaining power, or status, or a seat at the table. I’m sure these people are a minority - there are a huge number of people who become local councillors, for example, who care a great deal about their communities, and rumble in the background – but others who have a different agenda and are pursuing power for the sake of holding power, are ever-present, and often in the forefront.

I find it off-putting. The attitude and the process of creating power. How many decent people must have been put off entering party politics because the structures are so archaic, slow-moving and difficult to understand? The motions and counter-motions committees, the conferences and the fringe events, and all of the rest of it. I often think about this; the very structure of political institutions, which are presumably intended to keep the project moving forward, only ensure that things remain stagnant.

There’s also a strange paradox to joining a political party or becoming a politician for one party or other. How many enter politics with a clear ideology, things they’d like to advance and change, and then become silenced by the compromises made by the leadership? How many want to make a stand for something important, but are silenced by the party whips? A fact made even more concerning when we know the power of political donors influencing these policies. Especially after 14 years of leadership from many politicians who have taken decisions which will not benefit the public, but instead will benefit themselves, or their friends and allies.

For all these reasons I’m not very interested in the internal push and pull of party politics. The whole thing needs a shake-up. But today I do want to speak about internal party politics, because something is happening within the Labour Party that I think is incredibly concerning, and I think we need to tell as many people as possible. Many of our boldest, most responsible, most compassionate politicians look like they will face de-selection ahead of the next General Election because Keir Starmer wants to kick them out.

I’m going to focus on describing my own experience with these MPs during a national crisis, and so I’ve popped a few pieces below which explain what’s currently happening, and some of the emerging perspectives:

Politics Home on ‘rebel’ labour MPs

John McDonnell on the ‘purging’ of left-leaning Labour MPs

Owen Jones on the censure of off-message labour MPs

One reason I feel so concerned, is that I come from a professional background entirely at odds with what is happening at Labour. One of the things that makes me proudest of the medical profession is that, during a crisis, everyone steps up to make whatever contribution they can. There is little ego involved; the process is understood and done automatically by every member of the team. If you arrive at an emergency, a leader is designated, and they coordinate the team. Each person is valued for the input they can offer. As a very junior doctor this might involve a simple task such as taking the blood samples and sending them to the lab as quickly as you possibly can. Compared to the actual resuscitation attempt, these tasks are minor, but in a medical emergency team, that’s not how it’s viewed. The success of the team is dependent on the smooth operation of every element of the emergency response. The blood bottles matter as much as anything else. If there’s a debrief afterwards, everyone attends. Not just the senior doctor who made the decisions. Not just the people who administered CPR. Everyone.

When the pandemic ramped up, doctors could see what was happening. We are well-trained in evaluating new information, assessing it for its merits, and presenting it to others. It’s an essential part of our training; as a junior doctor, you take part in a “journal club” regularly. This involves being assigned a research paper, analysing its methodology and outcomes, and then presenting it to a large, assembled group of other doctors, who ask questions and critique your understanding. I’m not going to lie; this experience can be highly stressful. Senior doctors put you through your paces and are looking for gaps in your knowledge. This culture teaches you a lot in terms of processing information and explaining it to others. In March 2020, doctors took these skills and used them to inform others about what was going on.

It became clear early on, even before a lockdown had been imposed, that politicians were not being informed about the latest information. A network of UK doctors was speaking to counterparts in China and Italy, hearing the latest developments, and making internal plans to try to keep people safe. Bizarrely, there were no streamlined forums in place to link the frontline with the MPs, and many politicians did not have access to the same information, and so EveryDoctor stepped into this gap. We ran weekly briefings to update every MP who wanted to attend about what was happening on the NHS frontline. In this way, we raised the alarm about broken and warped PPE that was arriving with NHS workers, warned of the mental health crisis among NHS workers, and raised many other pertinent issues in real time. It was a huge undertaking; each weekly presentation involved hosting frontline NHS doctors, each requiring an accompanying briefing document, and each session involved us contacting all 650 UK MPs.

I remember being told by a campaigning expert at the time that non-profit organisations might usually attempt one of these briefings every year. We were doing one a week, and we were doing it remotely, via Zoom, for many MPs who’d never used teleconferencing before. Doctors didn’t just step up by attending the briefings and giving MPs the facts. We built a small team of doctors and others who, on their days off from NHS work, would telephone around every single MP office in the UK. We would create a calling script and map the phone calls on spreadsheets. It was a huge operation. If you’re undertaking something like this during a national crisis, you learn an awful lot about individual politicians. After all, we were sending invitations to 650 elected representatives every single week, and watching the responses come back. We saw which MPs would turn up to the meetings, who would ask for the briefing notes, and who would send a stock response, full of errors and nonsense, which we presumed had come from a central press department in Westminster. We learnt which politicians would attend themselves, and who would send a staffer. We learnt who would follow up afterwards to ask more questions, or draft PMQs with us, or write a letter to a minister. We learnt who was on which committee and would be willing to go into bat for NHS. We also learnt which MPs seemed wildly supportive of the NHS, but were doing so because of their own agenda; being associated with our campaign made them look good, and so they aligned their interests with our own for as long as it took for them to benefit from that association.

One group of politicians stood out, and yet I did not know at the time that they had a name. Around 30 or 40 MPs were steadfast in their support, their attendance, their personal interest and their efforts to stand up for NHS workers and the public, time and time again. These MPs would share information about our campaign, involve others, and take our message further. They helped us to raise public awareness and to create urgent, necessary change. They didn’t stop when the first wave of the pandemic died away, they continued. When later we ran further briefings about NHS privatisation, or about the humanitarian crisis occurring in the NHS in Winter 2022/23, many stepped up yet again. They have reached out to me separately on other occasions, to offer words of advice or support when our campaigning has been incredibly challenging. I speak with some of them, and I watch the rest on social media. They are not solely concerned about the NHS. If you watch them, whenever an issue affecting peoples’ safety and well-being comes up, this group of MPs will show up, speak up, and do the right thing.

Then, I didn’t know these hardworking MPs had a name. Now I know they are called the Socialist Campaign Group. I didn’t expect to feel emotional while writing this piece this morning, but writing down everything these people have done for their constituents, and the decency they have shown genuinely brings tears to my eyes as I write this. I am crying because this is so important - we cannot lose these MPs.

There were times during the pandemic when UK doctors were desperately scared, and felt helpless and alone. There were phone calls I received from doctors whose colleagues were dying, whose friends were dying, because they were not protected with the PPE they needed. There were emails I received in which you could feel the pain on the screen, the confusion and the anguish and the terror. But they continued to go to work, day-in, day-out, because that is what doctors, and nurses, and all healthcare workers do. They endured PTSD and relationship breakdowns, mental health problems, and enormous personal sacrifices. Some of them died in the course of their work because they put others first.

Because of our work, not one MP can claim they weren’t informed of these truths at the time. Every one of them should have stepped up and helped NHS staff and their patients, but many did not. Labour’s campaign group of MPs did though. I am certain that as events unfold in the coming months, if Starmer concocts reasons to pick them off one by one, or as a group, the mainstream media will be sympathetic to his decisions. They will be referred to as “the hard left” or “militant” MPs; rhetoric that makes this group sound warmongering, insensitive, a fringe group of radicals. In fact, this small group of people step up when it is important. They stand up to be counted. I know that, because when people were dying, they did everything they could to create change to safeguard lives.

If they are ousted, we need to get very, very loud. These are minority who genuinely reflect exactly the sort of people we need in UK politics; they care deeply, but they are ostracised and attacked. The Labour party will suffer enormously if the current leadership decides to oust them to eliminate dissenting voices.