There is something deeply hypocritical about Prime Minister Theresa May’s sudden discovery of the crisis in mental health services.
In her speech to the Charity Commission this week, she pledged to challenge the stigma that surrounds mental illness and improve support for service users.
As a volunteer for two mental health charities part of me wanted to punch the air. Having our most senior politician speak about an issue that is so often side-lined has to be a good thing.
Then the cynic in me wakes up and smells the coffee in a world where nothing significant has changed.
The new money on offer isn’t all that new; it’s not all that much either. It has mostly been shuffled from elsewhere and won’t do more than plug a few holes in a fast sinking boat.
The rest is really just so many honeyed words, if you’ve been around long enough you’ll have heard most of them before.
Parity of esteem is a nice thing to talk about, it is a lot harder to achieve. Doing so requires joined up thinking and serious funding invested over the long term, neither of which are in anything other than short supply.
As for the ‘shared society’, this is a remix of a tune we’ve heard before.
I’m long enough in the tooth to remember John Major promising to create a ‘classless society’. That turned out well, didn't it?
Tony Blair and David Cameron both played variations on the same theme, with the same results. Their words warmed the air for a while; but there was little in the way of significant change
This is suggestive of a deep-seated hubris in the political elite. They believe all they have to do is touch a few tired bases and they can distract the public from the mounting problems in our society.
Those of who have seen into a darker reality know that something is going seriously wrong.
We see the lines forming at the food banks and the patients piling up in hospital corridors and know things are getting worse. Those with children see them saddled with debt and struggling to find somewhere to live and fear for the future.
The sugared sentiments and cynical positioning offered in response by Mrs May and her increasingly out of touch government are both irrelevant and insulting.
They are certainly no barrier against the rising tide of populism by which the political elite are both terrified and, bizarrely, still treat like a passing fad. The populists by contrast are not troubled by facts, common sense or decency; instead, they provide a parade of stereotypes and scapegoats.
People struggling with mental illness present a tempting target for bigots, letting them whip up threats that don't exist through amplifying difference into deviance.
If it were just a matter of the political class capering along the path to oblivion I’d treat Mrs May's posturing this week as just so much chaff thrown out to deflect criticism of the mess her party is making of the NHS.
Unfortunately they ignore the extent to which the policies of this government and the one before have made them complicit in excluding vulnerable people, worse yet they could lead to their being further marginalized; that is unforgivable.
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