Thread by @JenWilliamsMEN

After a good sleep (and an even better curry) and in the full knowledge I’m probably going to have to work today, have been thinking about the past couple of days. So, a thread

First thing: the anger here is real - it’s not confected. It comes down to the sense people have that they’re being treated with contempt. They are very, very, very angry.

Second: could understand why eg Hancock might have been frustrated by Mcr in recent weeks. While Liverpool etc have been fairly clear about what they’ve wanted, GM has struggled to get consensus - while still being vocally critical of govt.

It can look like Manc exceptionalism at times. Can imagine that being frustrating, esp when Andy Burnham is on tv every 5 mins.

But. The *rage* of the past few days was entirely avoidable. It wasn’t necessary to brief the Times half a story. It wasn’t necessary to give MPs half a briefing.

And it wasn’t necessary - and this was the final straw - to have a housing minister read a load of public health data to leaders and officials who almost certainly knew it considerably better than he did; then refuse to say anything about what govt was proposing.

Then shut down the call after (entirely foreseeably) being challenged.

One of the leaders had been health secretary not too long ago, after all. But regardless, these politicians are v intensively and regularly briefed. They don’t want - or feel they need - a lecture. They want an adult conversation. They also have their own evidence and analysis.

‘They automatically ruled out some measures, failed to provide any proper analysis of the measures they clearly want to impose, which quite frankly won’t tackle household transmission, and didn’t ask us for our analysis of the situation,’ as one local official notes.

By the way, it’s not just GM that has public health departments with their own views that run counter to the government’s.
chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-eas…

All this also has to be set against the backdrop of the past 6 months. Local areas have found themselves battling govt every step of the way, going right back to April. Things have regularly been done to their communities with no notice, especially in GM.

They had to fight for months to get basic testing data that was legally owed to them, just so they could do their jobs.

They’ve repeatedly made sensible arguments that have gone ignored, from integrating pillar one and two to localising contact tracing. We’d probably be in better shape now if some of those points had been heeded.

It also has to be set against the backdrop of the last 10 yrs. Councils face horrendous budget cuts in March. There was no CSR, so they have no idea if substantial £ is coming. Mcr has already cut ~£400m since 2010. It’s now looking at another £100m-plus, in one go.

So when I read that govt wants a ‘reset’ with local areas...well. They want that too. Local systems - including highly experienced public health depts - are exhausted, underfunded and sick and tired of not having their expertise heeded. They’re at the end of their tether.

What govt has *actually* done in the past few days is exacerbate all that resentment, turbo charging it at exactly the moment when it needs local leaders here on side. /ends