Now, with their case heading to the courts, Health Secretary Wes Streeting has intervened, ordering Darlington Memorial Hospital to give the women their own room.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Remember the absurdity of Braverman's Nov., 2023 Times piece were she seemingly had to resort to writing a newspaper column to complain about rogue bureaucrats running amok in setting policing policy in a government the Tories were nominally in charge of? 😳 It is the central theme of Reform: the bureaucratic, professionalized, quango regulated state has become democratically unaccountable irrespective of which party is in power.
Because of this, the SC case is actually an issue of the highest importance on which UK political history pivots -- for Labour to survive the coming Reform onslaught it must demonstrate it can tame the sprawling state apparatus for which it was the chief architect, and make it democratically accountable, and subject to the rule of law. How Starmer handles this will answer the question: is Britain governable or does the existing structure run by elites need to be smashed, as Reform suggests?
In Biden's case this question was replied in the negative and the result was the sledgehammer Trump and Musk are now taking to the entire US federal government.
Starmer's reputation for ruthless efficiency (or efficient ruthlessness) will be put to its biggest test to date. And by having dispatched Streeting to fire the first shot across the first shot across the bow, it seems Starmer come to this conclusion too.