Matthew Taylor, one of Tony Blair’s former top advisers
He first called for pandemic-era restrictions to save the NHS, months after Britain’s war on covid was effectively declared over.
Now Matthew Taylor, one of Tony Blair’s former top advisers during his decade at number 10, wants you not to get drunk for exactly the same reason.
Urging the public to drink sensibly on the radio today, the head of the NHS Confederation, a group representing hospitals in England and Wales, argued that this week’s strike advice against getting drunk was a “message we should always have”.
Taylor, a former Labor councilor who failed to become an MP in the 1990s, said: “It’s important that the public use the NHS in the best possible way.”
In an extraordinary intervention on the eve of the biggest ambulance strikes in 30 years, NHS officials urged the public to “drink sensibly”. Ministers feared that any “risky” behavior would put unnecessary additional pressure on the health service.
Asked about the guidance on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Taylor was asked: “Is that the sort of thing we should be thinking about, not just on strike days, but ongoing because of all the pressures on the NHS?”
The 62-year-old, educated at the £7,000-per-term Emanuel School in Battersea, replied: ‘Yes, that’s a message we should always have.
The 62-year-old was educated at the £7,000 per term Emanuel School in Battersea.
He was brought back to the front lines a few years ago by former Prime Minister Theresa May, who asked him to lead an independent review on the rights of the self-employed and the new ‘gig economy’. The couple is pictured together in 2017.
Between 1998 and 2003 he directed the Institute for Public Policy Research. But Blair brought him back to head policy unit Number 10. Pictured, Blair meeting supporters in Glasgow in 2002.
“And of course we should also send a message to people not to indulge in behaviors that are unhealthy and risky.”
But Mr Taylor, who studied at the University of Southampton, added: “But we can’t ask the public to get by day in and day out without having the services that the NHS wants to offer.”
It is not the first time that Taylor has used her influential position within Whitehall to call for a change in public behavior.
In April, just days after the government abandoned all remaining pandemic-era restrictions in search of a “living with covid” regime, Taylor’s NHS Confederation advocated for the return of “mitigating actions”. and accused number 10 of wanting to “wash his hands of responsibility.”
He said at the time: “We need to implement whatever measures are necessary to try to ease the pressures on our health service as this virus continues to attack.”
Before his public call for ministers to return to some kind of economically crippling strategy, Taylor said in February: “The government cannot wave a magic wand and pretend the threat has completely disappeared.”
And during the winter of 2021/22, just as the public consensus on how to deal with covid had shifted due to the success of the vaccines, Taylor once again called for covid to be stopped. She called for a ‘Plan B’ to prevent the NHS from being ‘overwhelmed’.
Mr. Taylor is the son of sociologist Laurie Taylor, whose antics as a college professor in the 1960s and ’70s inspired novelist Malcolm Bradbury to write The History Man.
Chris Snowdon, from the right-wing think tank Institute of Economic Affairs, said: “Matthew Taylor is the embodiment of an attitude that has become worryingly common in recent years, that the British public exists to serve the NHS.
‘He calls for mandatory face masks and Plan B restrictions at the drop of a hat and now wants permanent behavior change to ‘protect the NHS’.
You wouldn’t expect the NHS to endorse drunkenness and it seems prudent to avoid risky activities when ambulance workers are on strike, but every man, woman and child pays £4,000 a year for medical care in this country.
‘If we get sick or have an accident, we want the NHS to pick us up and send us on our way. He is not there to give us orders.
Taylor is the son of sociologist Laurie Taylor, whose antics as a college professor in the 1960s and ’70s inspired novelist Malcolm Bradbury to write The History Man.
The novel tells the story of a promiscuous self-proclaimed revolutionary academic who believes that his genius entitles him to do whatever he wants.
Known for being a rare supporter of Labor at his private school, he once bragged after winning the English prize that he would refuse to receive it from special guest, then-Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher. But when the crucial moment came, he accepted the token from her book.
After school, Mr. Taylor worked for an Australian bank before studying sociology at the University of Southampton where he earned a first.
There, Taylor was such a supporter of Socialist MP Tony Benn that he fell out with the president of the students’ union, future BBC journalist Jon Sopel.
He began a long-term relationship with lawyer Claire Holland, with whom he had two children, before they separated in 2007. Three years later he settled in with Tony Blair’s former director of government relations, Ruth Turner. The couple have a son.
In 1992, Taylor ran unsuccessfully for Labor MP for Warwick and Leamington. Two years later, after Blair’s election as Labor leader, he was put in charge of the party’s quick rebuttal operation.
During the 1997 elections he was campaign coordinator and policy director, helping to draft the manifesto. After the election victory, Taylor briefly became General Secretary of the Labor Party. He supported a higher income tax and limits on donations from parties which he later considered too left-wing for the Premier.
Between 1998 and 2003 he directed the Institute for Public Policy Research. But Blair brought him back to head policy unit Number 10.
But a year after the 2005 general election, he left politics again to become chief executive of the Royal Society of Arts, a prestigious 250-year-old institution.
In 2016, he was brought back to the front by former Prime Minister Theresa May, who asked him to lead an independent review on the rights of the self-employed and the new “gig economy”.
In other related news…
Six-figure salaries of far-left union barons behind ambulance strikes revealed: one is an ex-communist, another was kicked out of Labour, and a third says he’s ‘open to working outside the law’
NHS will spend £100,000 on a scheme that teaches staff how to be inclusive of pregnant transgender men… and could encourage them to say things like “breastfeeding”.
Up to 30 THOUSAND appointments and operations canceled due to NHS nursing strikes… So how bad was the impact on YOUR hospital?
