Can this government really continue?

I'd be very surprised if the cleaning hadn't been privatised long before Labour came to power.
Housekeeping had previously been "in house" and now it is again.

Point is the NHS wasn't free of privitisation and problems in labours term. Same goes for eduction

Tony Blair and the Labour government enthusiastically privatised the NHS.

Some of this worked well - using private hospitals for routine surgery - other areas were a disaster. His own wife was involved in a private healthcare company hoping to benefit from NHS contracts.
www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/kailash-chand/moment-of-honesty-is-required-new-labour-began-dismantling-of-our-nhshttps://www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/kailash-chand/moment-of-honesty-is-required-new-labour-began-dismantling-of-our-nhs

The NHS is constantly subjected to 'reform' - is it safe in the hands of any politicians?

I do not understand why almost everyone is in thrall to the two party system - other Parties and Independents are available.

Consider the Scottish Parliament where there has seldom been an overall majority for one party. Consequently the support of other parties/independents is required to get anything agreed. This leads to amendments and modifications to legislation until it can command the support of the majority of MSPs. Sometimes one other
party, sometimes another, sometimes there is a free vote with support from all corners of the spectrum.

It is harder to achieve this in Westminster, but when the party in power has a small over all majority the smaller parties can, by combining forces amend or reject proposed legislation.

I have never missed a vote, nor have I ever voted Labour or Tory. I have been lucky in that there has always been a decent SNP candidate in my area. The one time when there was no candidate for our LA , I stood myself. DD2 when faced with this dilemma when she was a student in Newcastle, voted Green and was delighted when the Green won the Council Ward.

If only people would support the alternative parties, rather than voting for the lesser of two evils, then through time we would achieve a more representative Parliament. It does work in a single seat by election and can work in a GE as happened in the post Scottish Independence Referendum GE, when the SNP took all but 3 of the seats in Scotland, thus becoming a force to be reckoned with at Westminster.

The Tories got us into Brexit and they should be the ones to get it sorted. I feel Corbyn is making a mistake if he wants to grasp this poisoned chalice.

However under LABOUR the provision of cleaning staff was a private contact.

I worked in hospitals in the 70s.The first 'tranche of privatisation' was under Thatcher and was the 'hotel services'. i.e. Cleaning, catering, laundry etc. I'd be very surprised if the cleaning hadn't been privatised long before Labour came to power.
The government doesn't actually run the NHS itself, you know. It's all delegated to Health Service professionals and private contractors. Conditions at individual units are down to local management, not the government (of either colour)

Sorry, Luckygirl, I am willing to vote Labour but not until the incompetent Corbyn and the vile McDonnell are kicked into touch.

I can't see the point of another general election at this point. Not just because of the lack of real leaders.
I think Parliament should continue to debate Brexit as they're doing now. And hopefully come to some more sensible proposals. Ideally shelving Article 50 for the time being.
Perhaps in the process better leaders will come forward. There are some good candidates, especially on the left.

Can anyone join this bunfight?
I wonder how many of us support their MP or belong to a political party and are working for change and to improve both the system and the policies?
We hardly have any Tories in the Scottish government but do we have better health and education systems? Marginally yes I believe we are slightly better off as regards waiting lists and schools than the rest of the UK . Knife crime is down and we got our famous baby boxes!!
But when things go wrong the blame is always with the others either predecessors or Westminster.
Imagine if we blamed someone else, like our parents, for all our ills.
Does anyone still support the current Tory government? I never did.

And by the way privatisation is a broad church.

A local maternity unit currently has a private contract that provides upskilling to the NHS midwives so they can offer women more choices.

However under LABOUR the provision of cleaning staff was a private contact. The contract was so BADLY administered that the cleaners could only clean the toilets at fixed intervals and were not allowed to clean them inbetween no matter how bad they got at busy times

So there's privatisation and there's privatisation...

As Labour have committed to stopping privatisation I would have thought this was something you would support.

Thats nice in theory
However they are not offering any alternative to privitisation, i.e. an opposition party that could efficiently run the NHS as a public body.

So they would have no privitisation of the NHS because it just wouldnt exit! They would put the final nail in it!

The above was an answer to Jalima

But we have to.....otherwise we just get more of the same and we owe it to those at the bottom of the heap not to let that happen. And we owe it to all our public services to make sure that the policies that have sabotaged them are knocked on the head.

Project Fear is well and truly on the advance as regards a Corbyn government, but it is not real. Any labour PM would find him or herself in the same bind as TM is in - bolshy backbenchers who rein them in.

What I fear more is the collapse of our public services and the dangerous effects of condemning great swathes of our fellow country people to lives of misery.

However there seems to be a lot of Labour condemnation and very little Tory criticism
I have posted several times that I think the Tories are awful.

But you carry on writing off everyone who is labour critical as a Tory toff.....

Privatisation of the NHS does not mean it would not still be free at the point of contact to all.
However, some privatisation in other fields has recently proved to fail catastrophically probably due to lack of stringent regulations and lack of vigilance - and sheer greed.

Luckygirl I cannot vote for a party led by Corbyn et al just to get out another party.

It is a dilemma

Mmm so much for not making personal remarks!!
I don't know (or particularly care) which party you support (or not as the case may be)
However there seems to be a lot of Labour condemnation and very little Tory criticism in your posts. As Labour have committed to stopping privatisation I would have thought this was something you would support.

Are you reading a different thread? Where have I said that the NHS is in safe hands under the Tories? I have been clear over and over that I am no big fan of the Tories!

Are you that far gone down the JC rabbit hole that you think that the only people who would criticise JC are die hard life long Tory adorers?

The Torys are not "safe hands". They're awful, however the alternatives are more awful making the Tories the best of a bad lot!

notanan You claimed They are the ones that set it up to fail, ripe for privatisation. They ran it into the ground with wastefulness so that it looked unsustainable when the Tories inherited it back from them
Which is of course personal opinion with no actual figures or evidence. In any case if you are against privatisation and really believe in the NHS and that it is safe in Tory hands surely this Conservative Gov should have reversed that trend and kept it a public service?
Instead as I posted at 13.51 they have overseen more privatisation than ever and more is in the pipeline. Why is it wrong for Labour to lay the grounds for privatisation (although I don't believe they did) but right for the Tories to privatise?

So notanan no comment on the money which has been given to private companies at the expense of the NHS?
I have commented on NHS pivitisation

Aren't most young people socialists until they have responsibilities and bills to pay?

Sweeping generalisation there, Day6?

'Responsibilities' didn't make me into a tory. Nor did they change the thinking of many of my contemporaries. They still vote Labour.

I don't think there has ever been in history a governnment that was taken to court and lost because it insisted on introducing a system of benefits that it had been warned wouldn't work properly. The costs of the ruling and its application will be huge because each case will have to be adjusted individually by someone, because the system in use can't do it. It's not just terrible for the individuals involved. It's the biggest bloody cock up ever, but never mind target Corbyn instead. How can anyone support this bunch of muppets?

How could Corbyn negotiation better? Any comeback and we would hear ‘ I was there but I don’t think I was involved ‘

So notanan no comment on the money which has been given to private companies at the expense of the NHS?
If we must look at Brexit surely anyone would negotiate better than a government that mucked up universal credit and that never listens.

According to today's Times, machinations are in progress to bugger Brexit. If any one tells me again it was "the will of the People" I shall scream; yeah 11% of the Population and it was Advisory. Give it up and grow up.

Beammeup JC says that if there was a GE he would win and would negotiate a better deal. Pigs flying....... I am sure the same civil servants would be doing the negotiations as have been doing it for the last 2 years.