Things Can Only Get 32

Two things I have spoken about at length over the years and mentioned in these daily articles:

• Statistics are more important than individual stories. What ’people are saying on the doorstep’ is meaningless. You cannot use vox pops (small numbers) to contradict polls and stats (big numbers).

• Labour governments always have a heart for the poorest but do not get elected if they say they have.

Today I will tell you my third pillar of wisdom. Politics is about who dies.

We don’t emphasise this enough. Sometimes political decisions seem to be at such a distance from casualties on the ground that complacency can set in. But crowded A and E departments with patients on trolleys in corridors have caused some excess deaths recently. As have tooth infections, mouldy houses, gang related knife crime to name but however many that was.

A massive generalisation—health issues that happen to you before the age of seventy are a matter of environment. Health issues after age seventy are down to genetics. Where did I get it? It is a working assumption used by one of our devolved parliaments and an insider told me.

When you make youth workers redundant, food more expensive, homes harder to heat, rents unaffordable, water polluted and lengthen hospital waiting lists it is the poorest who suffer. It’s a change in environment. You have chosen to allow more poor people to die. The wealthier can buy their way out of trouble, or their money helps them avoid the mess.

People standing for office should have to answer a very basic question. Who dies when?

Further pillars may be available.