Politicians must start telling the truth: the nhs is failing, grammar schools work, and jeremy corbyn is worse than useless | thearticle

My excellent Polish cleaner didn’t turn up last week. She was on her way to Warsaw with her husband. They have lived here for 20 years without renouncing Polish citizenship, but are British

subjects. He was going to get his dodgy knee sorted by the Polish health service, after two years of dither and delay by ours. Papers were lost by the NHS. Appointments were cancelled or

postponed. Waiting lists for his simple operation were growing ever longer. They are coming back this week with his knee fixed. Job done. I have long accepted the sorry truth; the NHS has

been in crisis almost since its creation. A creaking failure compared with today’s insurance-based systems of, say, Spain or Israel, Germany or France. Or even Singapore. Or almost any

advanced nation except the US. But when Poland, still recovering from decades of poverty and oppression under the Nazis and then the Soviets can outdo us, something must be seriously wrong.

All the comparative statistics, from treatment of cancer and heart conditions to relatively minor problems such as hernias, confirm that our monopolistic, state socialist,

bureaucrat-dominated, choice-free system, does not deliver. Insurance-based systems usually do. This is because they offer “consumer” choice and “producer” competition. And that increases

efficiency. Yet no British politician dare do other than repeat the untruthful mantra: “The NHS is the envy of the world”. Nye Bevan, the Labour Health Minister, who created the NHS in 1947,

claimed it gave us “the moral leadership of the world” and that “people would come here as to a modern Mecca” to wonder at it. Bollocks, as the refined Lib Dems might say. Until politicians

are prepared to tell the truth and recognise the institutional nature of the sickness afflicting the NHS, they will be unable to find a cure. This refusal to face up to embarrassing truths

is not confined to the NHS crisis. It infects much of the political debate. Take this year’s spate of knife and gun attacks, presented as a crimewave involving young men. Not what the

figures show. It is a crimewave involving, disproportionately – overwhelmingly, disproportionately – some young black and Asian men, usually attacking each other. They seldom attack white

youths. (Of course a handful of young white males commit appalling atrocities. But to repeat, I am talking proportionality.) Politicians are scared to admit this for fear of being labelled

racist. The only public figure brave enough to make this crucial point has been Trevor Phillips, former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commision, himself black. Until we can accept

that this violence is very largely black on black (more accurately perhaps BAME on BAME), we will not find a solution. Why do these black and Asian youths want to kill or maim, each other?

Unless this is addressed, all the waffle, from liberal demands for more youth clubs to hard-headed demands for more stop and search, will be proved useless. Education is another area where

the truth scares gutless politicians. The few grammar schools which survive are oversubscribed. Parents, in particular working class parents of bright children, are queueing up to get their

offspring into them. They believe that education is crucially important, and that their academically inclined offspring will achieve more in competitive, selective schools. Most – though I

accept not all – research supports their common sense view. Yet politicians shy away from the issue, with weasel words condemning meritocracy and elitism. Hard-working people (another phrase

beloved of weasel politicians) don’t. They rather like like such concepts. After all, our footballers constitute an elite, picked on merit. Likewise, I suppose, our rock stars. And, I hope,

our brain surgeons. A sane political class would be looking for ways to identify and encourage, in short, to educate, meritocratic elites, in the national interest. Instead they shuffle

their feet and change the subject. Unless we have once again a grammar school in every town, many bright kids who are not able to get into good private schools will continue to suffer.  The

treatment Jeremy Corbyn receives from most politicians and much of the press is yet another example of mealy-mouthed cowardice. He is usually criticised as a bit thick but well-meaning; a

nice bumbling, old buffer. Look at his uncertain shuffling and shifting over Brexit. Hardly the smack of firm Opposition. He is pathetically inadequate, they say, but his heart is in the

right place – though that place is probably tending his veg, on the allotment. And that, they say, sadly, is why he is unfit to be Prime Minister. The truth is less pleasant. Ok, he is a bit

thick, but he is also a conniving, obsessive old Bolshie, in love with the Cuban dictatorship and the Venezualan shipwreck. A relentless, tough-as old- boots, Third World Marxist, and has

been so since he entered politics in the 1970s. He does not advocate revolutionary violence – oh dear me No – but he is one of those very British creatures; the quasi-pacifist terrorist

groupie. Ask the IRA. Ask Hamas. Ask Hizbullah. He used to have their big boys round to the Commons for a nice cup of tea even before – metaphorically speaking – the blood on their hands had

dried. He is not an anti-Semite, he says indignantly. But he spent decades sharing platforms with those who are. Now he enables the Jew baiters who have flooded into to the Labour Party on

his watch. Of course he makes the right critical noises and slaps the occasional wrist. But ask Margaret Hodge. Ask Louise Ellman. Ask the other Jewish MPs threatened or driven out by his

foot soldiers. His protestations are worth little more than zilch. As for Corbyn’s court, it is stuffed with squabbling Stalinists, Trotskyists, Maoists and others – many of them more

intelligent (and therefore more dangerous) than him; extremists of a kind who for decades were not allowed within spitting distance of the Labour Party. Meanwhile members of Momentum,

Corbyn’s Red Guards, harass and try to purge moderate constituency parties.  These are the serious charges against Corbyn. They need to be made loud and clear in the general election

campaign, if he is to be kept from Downing street. It may be wildly optimistic to say the truth shall make us free. But without a stiff dose of it, none of our current problems will be

solved.