Dido Harding’s NHS job hunt must sink without (test and) trace

Ms. Harding first came to prominence during a disastrous tenure as CEO of TalkTalk. That’s the mobile phone provider, not the 1980s band of the same name, although Ms. Harding might have been better suited to turning out portentous art-pop anthems than running a phone company.

Modern audiences will know Ms. Harding best for having blown cash on a Covid  Test & Trace app, which did neither. Fresh from this success (because when you’re as well connected as Ms. Harding, everything counts as “success”) she has thrown her hat into the ring (or at least in the vague direction of the ring) to be the new chief executive of NHS England.

Given that Ms. Harding will probably get the job (because it’s their country and we’re just living in it), it’s disturbing to read that she has, apparently, pledged to “end the NHS’s reliance on foreigners”.

Around 15% of NHS employees are from overseas, and we’ve never been able to recruit and train up enough native Brits to fully staff the service, so the only numerically feasible way to “end the NHS’s reliance on foreigners” would be to reduce demand on the NHS by reducing the population. But how could an administration pull a Thanos unnoticed?

Perhaps if there were a sudden outbreak of a virulent disease, the administration and its associates could seize this opportunity by mounting a response so inept as to result in the avoidable deaths of thousands of…

Oh. Oh dear.

BIG SWING OF THE WEEK

It’s certainly been an enlightening week for anyone who, like me until recently, had no idea where either Amersham or Chesham was, or, if asked to speculate upon what The Blue Wall could be, might have said either the Chelsea back four, or perhaps Pink Floyd’s unreleased album of dirty jokes.

It’s hard to draw any concrete conclusions from the Conservatives’ loss of this hitherto safest of seats, other than perhaps this: if a party were to decide that its best
bet is to pander to those who don’t really care what happens to the country as long as it makes liberals cry, and started to gear all their policies towards pleasing
that particular demographic, then its nicer supporters, who do still care what happens to the country, might choose to take their custom elsewhere.

The fact that the constituency’s Labour voters appear to have switched unbidden to the Lib Dems in order to help bring their victory about, raises the tantalising prospect of progressive voters forming an anti-Tory electoral pact on their own, even as their respective party leaders refuse to grasp this particular nettle, or any nettle, or indeed, reality.

SNOOZEFEST OF THE WEEK

There was great news for insomniacs all over the country this week, with the Labour Party‘s publication of its magnificently soporific ‘Stronger Together Roadmap’; not so much a policy statement as a rose-scented wish list pledging Good Things in so broad and abstract a manner as to make Tony Blair’s 90s conference speeches sound positively cagey and forensic by comparison.

Among the delights promised by the document is “Britain in the World“, presumably to placate those jittery voters who were worried the party was planning on relocating the country to the moon (which, let’s face it, wouldn’t cause much more upheaval than Brexit has anyway)

Speaking of which:

CRY FOR HELP OF THE WEEK

Lord Frost, Brexit minister and upper class X-Man, took to Twitter last Saturday and posted thus:

“We are recruiting for the Director of the Government’s new Brexit Opportunities Unit.

We’re looking for a visionary, inventive and dedicated leader to help us shape the future policy direction of the UK.”

So: five years after deciding to leave the EU and eighteen months after leaving the EU, the government is now – NOW – looking to hire someone to tell us AND THEM why leaving the EU is a Good Idea.

After five years of promising their supporters unicorns, the government just posted an ad saying “Unicorns Wanted”.

It’s enough to make a satirist question his vocation.

POEM OF THE WEEK 
Switching on the telly
I see the football’s on
It’s the Euros 2020
Although it’s 2021.

I try to get excited
And to understand the fuss
We don’t know who’s going to win it
But face it, it’s not us.

Why build your expectations?
It only hurts more when
Inevitably we go
Out on penalties again.

But we’ll cheer them while they’re winning
And we’ll cheer them when they fall
We’re used to disappointment
We’re British, after all.

What do you think? Have your say on this and more by emailing letters@theneweuropean.co.uk