Mild? What do you know?
A fundamental failure. A failure of governance. A failure of imagination. A failure of compassion.
First of all - welcome to the new email platform! Yes, we’re now on Substack.
Why? Well, it’s a delightful platform and everything. Also, it’s free and we were edging ever closer to a massive bill for another year of MailerLite. SP is broke. Here we are!
Please make sure that you save this or something so it doesn’t end up in your spam.
If it looks a bit basic for now - I’m working on it!
Dear lovely people,
Parliament is back next week. I blooming love Parliament. I think the world is a better place when Parliament is sitting.
We’ll have PMQs. Kemi Badenoch will try to goad Starmer with her pledge to scrap Stamp Duty. Expect to hear a whole lot of that. Except… well so far she’s not been very good at landing anything.
We’ve got a few bills winding their way through (see below), but none of them are riveting.
It’s all a bit plodding. It’s all a bit sitting around waiting for The Budget. That’s not for six weeks!
What we will see is some accountability. There have been loads of government announcements that haven’t been made in Parliament. Finally, we’ll hear from the Home Secretary on her plans to reduce repeated protests (and criminal behaviour from the MET). We’ll hear from the Prime Minister on loads and loads of stuff. The Foreign Secretary on Gaza.
Right now, this appears to be where Parliament can add its best value. It can’t create ambition in the government, but it can needle away, asking interesting and useful questions.
Also this weekend, we’ve got the Plaid and SNP conferences. Both parties are looking to take advantage of the Labour vote collapse. Both could be in power come May.
The SNP are almost certain to be the biggest party in Scotland. Can they win the 65 seats needed to have a total majority? That’s tough. Labour are still the major hurdle here. Reform aren’t the force north of the border that they might be elsewhere.
If they do get 65 seats, will they continue to push for another Independence referendum? It’s tricky because, really who are you if your the SNP and you’re not fighting for Scottish Nationalism. That said, there is little evidence that I’ve seen that suggests much has changed since the last one.
In Wales, nothing is certain. Labour have been in charge for years and years and years. Since forever, in fact. Now, they look destined for third place. Reform are coming in hard. Also, Plaid are in the mix.
A Plaid leadership used to be unthinkable, but Diane spoke to Rhun ap Iorwerth, the Plaid leader, this week. He was bullish and pretty certain big things are coming. You can catch the whole interview on YouTube when it’s live a little later.
And so… we look forward. We look to the Budget. We look to the May elections. We look to the Ashes.
Peace and love,
Tatton
Why’d you take it as final when you’re starting to spiral
Girl, why can’t you see?
You know I know you can do it
And I’ll help you get through this
Whether it’s
Once or twice or again- Let’s Eat Grandma
They just don’t get it.
Simple Politics exists because I had a breakdown. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when things started to go seriously off the rails, but maybe 2013.
By 2015, I couldn’t work. I went part time at the school where I was working, but ultimately had to leave. SP was a lie which I told myself. No, I am working. Look, I’ve got this thing.
All of which means that I’ve been following closely - really really closely - mental health policy and political debate for over a decade now.
Do you want my deep insight? It’s dire. It’s dross. It’s entirely performative.
To have a deeper look, I need to take you on a trip round a few of my own personal experiences. It’s World Mental Health Day and the focus in the UK is about accessing services. I’m going to focus on services.
The first time I really realised how awful things were was when my GP (a lovely, kind and caring man) saw how bad things were going. He didn’t have the power to diagnose anything (a bit of SSRI anti depression action is pretty much his reach), so sent me off to Secondary Services.
The night before I went, I was so hopeful of some help. Desperate. I didn’t really know what I wanted, but I wanted something.
At a pleasant and modern surgery in Herne Bay, I was welcomed into a consultancy room and told, carefully and deliberately, that this service was only for people with ‘serious mental health issues’. I didn’t cut it.
I’m reminded of this every time a politician talks about ‘mild’ depression. Nobody should be doing whatever it is, or claiming whatever it is if they have ‘mild’ depression.
How can anyone, anyone possibly tell how mild something is.
I know the crushing, impossible, awfulness of a depressive episode. I can’t leave the house. I can’t sleep. There is no joy, no energy, no respite.
I leave my colleague Diane having to do almost everything for SP. I leave my wife, The Wonderful Katie, lonely and isolated.
Now, I am officially recognised as having a ‘serious mental health condition’. Perhaps I do suffer those lows harder than other people. Maybe. I don’t know.
The point is, how can any assessor begin to tell how bad it might be? I can’t work when that hits. If I didn’t have the unparalleled Diane on board, SP would be sunk. If someone says they can’t work because of depression, how can we tell?
It’s the same with anxiety. I often find walking down the road impossible as I jump at everything. Flinching as anyone walks by, reduced to tears by a barking dog three miles away. If someone presents with that, can they be sent back to Tesco or McDonalds?
Now, the counter argument here is that we need to deal with things. We need to get a grip on money. We’ve just got to stop paying people money when they could be working. It’s not just about the money, but allowing people to opt out of society is damaging for them.
Maybe that’s true to some extent, but we do need to listen to people, too.
Then we get to the line about parity between mental health and physical health.
David Cameron (remember him?) used to say it. That was followed by Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak all agreeing. I’m not sure Truss was around long enough to get to mental health policy. Now we’ve got Starmer saying the same thing.
The problem here is that it doesn’t mean anything - and if it does it def hasn’t worked.
In 2019, things were going quite badly. There’s this thing called the Crisis Line. You call and leave a message and someone calls you back. It’s there for last resort.
Sometimes it works. In 2018, a lovely lady called Jeanette called me back when I needed her to. I was in a heap on the floor. I spoke to her for an hour. She was amazing.
In 2019, when, again, things were suboptimal, I called and nobody was there. Nobody called back. I was left alone. I was in danger.
What would parity be? If I had tripped at home and was in a bit of pain, I could call and they’d send an ambulance. Well, probably, I’m aware there are issues there, too.
You can take yourself off to A&E if you're struggling, but I’ve heard so many stories of people not being treated with much kindness by stressed, tired and over-worked staff.
In the end, I discharged myself from Secondary Services. The hope of support and care that was never realised was worse than no support at all.
This is no system at all. It’s a mess that needs to be completely rebuilt from the ground up and it’s a mess that needs money to sort out.
It doesn’t work for the, usually young, people who need help to get themselves straight and into work. It doesn’t work for people who need longer term support. It doesn’t work for people in crisis.
Starmer likes to talk about the 14 years of failure of the Conservatives. I think we can add one more onto that for his time.
Oh, and then I’m not sure Gordon Brown did much. There was speculation that he was on head meds, but that was about it.
Tony Blair? Please. Blair gave an interview *this year* that said ‘Life has its ups and downs and everybody experiences those.’ In effect, he was telling people to pull themselves together.
The reality is we’re looking at systemic and chronic failure. This has never been sorted. Never been forensically examined and certainly never had an effective (and funded) plan put in place.
And so, we have to say… c’mon Wes Streeting. C’mon Keir Starmer. Pull your finger out. Let’s do this.
Next Week in Parliament
House of Commons
(This new platform doesn’t allow me to make this a nice green, so you’ll have to imagine it)
Monday - Loads of statements and Urgent Questions. Expect to hear from the Prime Minister and more.
Tuesday - The administrative and unlikely to change very much Mental Health Bill potters through today. Oh, and the PMQs you’ve been psyched for.
Wednesday - The administrative and unlikely to change very much Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill potters through today.
Thursday - The administrative and unlikely to change very much Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Bill potters through today.
House of Lords
Borders. Buses. Citizenship. Renter’s Rights. Covid fraud. Crime.
It’s another busy week in the Lords!
And that’s that. This new world of Substack has been interesting to use.
Did I get carried away on mental health? Maybe. I think on World Mental Health Day that’s allowed, though. I hope.
Be well x
Thanks for the account of your mental health struggles and the woeful services. Keep producing the excellent writing and work, it's a big part of my thinking and I look forward to reading it when it arrives.
You should say as much as you can about mental health, having suffered for over thirty years with a number of mental problems I know just how hard it can be to get help. This government needs to listen to people with real experiences to see how things need to change to get people the help that some so desperately need.