Ever since Margaret Thatcher began to vandalise Britain’s public goods, her heirs and successors have loathed the NHS for three reasons. First, because it demonstrably gives the lie to their creed that the market always knows best. Secondly, because the British public love the freedom from the market that the NHS affords them in the case of their health. And, thirdly, because their “associates” lose mountains of cash due to the remaining barriers to the commodification of health services and data.
That these barriers to commodification are still standing is a feat largely attributable to the brave staff working in the NHS and the public’s passion for it. But decades of concerted assaults by privateers, under the political cover provided by the Major, Blair, Cameron and May governments, have left these defences rickety and full of holes through which the rats of privatisation manage to smuggle out increasing amounts of value extracted at the expense of public health.
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