I was walking home along London’s Embankment on Thursday night when I saw, stopped at the lights, a 1980s vintage DeLorean sports car just like the one in classic film Back to the Future.
The owner of the vehicle had also gone to a great deal of effort to add affectations so that it did, indeed, look exactly like the one from the film in which the car has been turned into a time machine (see below).
“Already developments have moved on at a pace we have not seen in Westminster for a while”
Continuing my walk, I reflected on time and travelling through it, and developments over the last six or seven days. A lot of things have changed but there have been some blasts from the past too.
It is now around a week since the result of the 2024 general election was announced and already developments have moved on at a pace we have not seen in Westminster for a while.
We have a new health and social care secretary, Wes Streeting, and four new ministers at the Department of Health and Social Care. We don’t know which has the nursing brief yet but it’s a start.
Clearly, not wanting to waste any time, Mr Streeting has already commissioned a major review into the NHS, about which he has grabbed headlines by stating is “broken”.
This “raw and honest” review, as Mr Streeting described it, is expected to inform the new Labour government’s 10-year plan to radically reform the health service.
All of this very much sounds like the future. But there is a massive nod to the past in the person chosen to carry out the review, leading surgeon and former Labour health minister Lord Ara Darzi.
Anyone like me, who has been around health policy long enough, will associate Lord Darzi with his previous investigation, the NHS Next Stage Review, the findings of which were published in 2008.
Likewise, there have been a number of headlines in national newspapers suggesting that the former Labour health secretary, Alan Milburn, will be getting a role supporting Mr Streeting in some way.
Added to that is a flurry of other names that used to have jobs in the old Department of Health – for example, Lord Hunt and Jacqui Smith – who have now returned to government in other guises.
The result is that, for me at any rate, everything is clearly very different due to the passage of time but lots of things feel familiar too. And it’s not just the people that is sparking this in me.
Problems that would have been familiar to the incoming Labour government in the late 1990s, like long waiting lists, corridor care and crumbling estates, have made an unwelcome return recently.
So, possibly with good reason, it seems our new government is, in some ways, looking back to find the people with the answers to the problems of the present and to secure the future of the NHS.
Unlike the DeLorean Motor Company, which folded in 1982, Back to the Future went on to generate two sequels and an enduring franchise, with a stage show version currently playing in the West End.
Hopefully, the revitalised energy and attention now being focused on the NHS means it can once again look forward to a successful and bright future that builds on its brilliant past achievements.
Steve Ford, editor, Nursing Times