Column

Beware the Hypocritic Oath

Eric the Heretic has been casting a cynical eye over recent political antics

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ Not if you’re a politician you don’t - allegedly. In these fevered times the knives are out for the one-rule-for-you, one-rule-for-me brigade. You know the ones. The ones who preach that we really should send our kids to the local comprehensives, the schools that make south-central Los Angeles look like a tea party in Surbiton, and then send their own kids under UN escort to a middle class safe haven 20 miles away.

And it gets worse. Take the health service - would anyone really be prepared to tolerate the sort of degradation that is now a daily routine? Does anyone seriously suggest suggest that members of the government would be prepared to tolerate the same barbaric fate as pregnant female prisoners being manacled to NHS beds during labour? Of course not. Tory MPs wouldn’t stand for any of that - they’d go private. In fact, they’d pay a lot of money to be shackled to beds with muscular women in uniforms standing over them.

It is impossible to imagine that the squalid catalogue of indignities foisted on those unable to buy their way out of the NHS would be tolerated for one minute by our legislators. What about lying on a trolley in a corridor for hours on end, barely clinging to life - do you think they’d stand for that? Of course not, they’ve got much better trolleys to prostrate themselves on. Like drinks trolleys at private health insurers’ hospitality parties, on which they’re quite happy to lie slumped in oblivion, untroubled by any attempts to revive them.

Let’s face it, those who can avoid it never put themselves in a position where they have to depend on the NHS. When it really matters they take flight to the sanctuary of the private sector. Of course, there are occasional moments of genuine emergency when it is reassuring to see politicians turning to the NHS - for example every four or five years, when the emergency blue light of an imminent election flashes into view and they rush to embrace the true values of the NHS, reciting the Hypocritical Oath lath..