Does it matter whether or not Rishi Sunak uses an NHS GP?
Does Rishi Sunak use a private GP?
I suspect many will share my instinctive eye-rolling at the genre of question posed by the BBC’s Laura Kuennsberg yesterday. ..
Still, you can decry the inanity of the question while also despairing at the way Sunak dealt with. At first he seemed to be answering a different question, replying that ‘my dad was a doctor’, before pivoting to ‘as a general policy I wouldn’t ever talk about me or my family’s healthcare situation’ and then saying his personal arrangements were not ‘relevant’.
Mr Sunak is Prime Minister - he could do rather more than merely decry the inanity of the question. It is worth reading the whole piece, as Ashmore gives Mrs Thatcher's response to a similar question.
It’s also instructive to compare Sunak’s slightly shifty response to how Margaret Thatcher responded to the same question back in 1987.
‘I, along with something like five million other people, insure to enable me to go into hospital on the day I want; at the time I want, and with a doctor I want. For me, that is absolutely vital. I do that along with five million others. Like most people, I pay my dues to the National Health Service; I do not add to the queue… I exercise my right as a free citizen to spend my own money in my own way, so that I can go in on the day, at the time, with the doctor I choose and get out fast.’
Of course Mr Sunak isn't Mrs Thatcher. He may be Prime Minister, but that hasn't given him Mrs Thatcher's status. The status of Prime Ministers has slipped since 1987.
6 comments:
Yes, an excellent piece. One of the main differences between Rishi and Maggie is that she could actually master a brief, and one gets the impression that she and her advisers (and probably Dennis!) used to sit around and rehearse positions and answers. Rishi looked as if he had no idea the question was coming. He isn't an ideologue, taking up a position based on gut feeling and then hammering out the details of policies and how opponents would object to those policies.
Admittedly, his task would have been a bit harder than Maggie's. He would have had Kuennsberg asking "How do you know the depth of the crisis if you don't use the NHS?". But that's not that difficult a question to answer if you have had a chat with your advisers beforehand, and are properly caffeinated.
It's a pity that the little chap's globalist handlers don't give him a crib sheet on every policy area. If they want him to do their bidding, they need to keep him in power...
He could have answered: "Ms. Keunsberg, * I use the same facilities as you do."
Apologies for getting the wrong mountain, or misspelling it.
Did she ask if his kids went private as well - like most politicians...
It's such a waste of time asking banal questions like this, because, as you point out, politicians these days never bother with the truth and some basic facts - like Maggie's!
"I exercise my right as a free citizen to spend my own money in my own way"
Wow! If only that were true. i could stop paying into the NHS and go private myself...
If anyone were to ask me where I go for medical treatment; I would soon tell them that only two people know the answer. Me and my Doctor.
Sam - it's remarkable that his handlers didn't prepare him for the question. Of course it's possible that both he and they did, but he forgot the best response.
Doonhamer - "I use the same facilities as you do" would have been an excellent reply. He could have added "and many other senior BBC staff."
Scrobs - yes, such questions are banal and politically backward too, because we should be moving on into an adult debate about the NHS.
Bucko - we'd certainly do that for education too.
DAD - and that's all he had to say.
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