EDITORIAL : THE GUARDIAN, ENGLAND

         

 

Turkey: admiration and apprehension

While other European politicians battle to avoid the blame for economic downturn, Mr Erdogan claims the credit for economic success

Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, boasts an election-winning record of which other European leaders can only dream. Sunday's general election victory for his AKP party was not just his third in a row. It was also his most emphatic yet. When the AKP first won power in 2002, it got 10.7m votes and a 34.3% share. On Sunday, on an 87% turnout that puts other countries to shame, Mr Erdogan hoisted those figures to 21.4m (double his 2002 support) and a 49.9% share. Bizarrely, under Turkey's idiosyncratic proportional representation system, this means the AKP now has 326 members in the 550-seat parliament, compared with 363 in 2002. But this decline in AKP seats, though politically very important, should not detract from a stellar electoral achievement.

Mr Erdogan commands the Turkish political scene thanks to one factor above all – the economy. Turkey continues to grow at around 9% a year; GDP per head has nearly doubled since 2002; and Turkish exports have nearly tripled. In particular, the AKP has delivered a transformation in life chances for the largely rural, predominantly religiously conservative but highly entrepreneurial Anatolian Turks who form its power base. Life across many parts of central and eastern Turkey is incomparably better today than 20 years ago. In the election campaign Mr Erdogan promised major new public works to carry the momentum further. While other European politicians battle to avoid the blame for economic downturn, Mr Erdogan claims the credit for economic success and as a result surges onward politically.

This is where admiration elides into apprehension. The AKP's reward, it now hopes, will be the chance to rewrite Turkey's constitution with an enhanced presidency (which Mr Erdogan is eyeing) and a diminished parliament and military. This may not be as easy as it seems. The AKP's chances of achieving this goal are enhanced by Sunday's vote. But half of Turkey's voters remain opposed to the AKP, and the traditionally Kemalist army and courts are unreconciled too. The AKP's lack of a two-thirds majority means that other parties – including the renewed Kemalist centre-left CHP, which increased its share of the vote by 5%, and the independent Kurds – will have to be consulted. These constraints matter, not least because of Mr Erdogan's imperious ways, which include the jailing of journalists and a punitive approach to media organisations with the temerity to criticise him. There is much to admire, internally and internationally, about the new Turkey. But peaceful revolutions can overreach themselves too, and it is vital that Turkish society is able to place some limits around Mr Erdogan's formidable ambitions.

 

NHS: Field theory

The bill is not the danger to the NHS that it once was, but the service is more of a liability for the coalition than ever

The prime minister and his deputy yesterday took a tip from the Dodo and agreed that everybody has won. After unprecedented brokering over a half-passed bill, both Nick Clegg and David Cameron had to have NHS prizes to brandish in front of their respective backbenchers. As professor Steve Field, the GP with the dubious privilege of conducting the listening exercise, reported back yesterday, Mr Clegg proclaimed victory for taming competition, while Mr Cameron let it be known that he had salvaged the substance of the Conservative vision by retaining the stress on choice.

This useful ambiguity was easier to maintain than it might have been, since the fit between the various proposed consortiums, boards and regulators is so obscure, especially now that "clinical senates" and a new "citizens' panel" are being thrown in the mix. But dig into the detail, and it is possible to establish a clear Lib Dem victory on points. With sharper accountability, with the responsibilities of the secretary of state reaffirmed, and – above all – with the demolition of Andrew Lansley's dream of a proactively pro-competition regulator, the bill that will take shape in the coming days will have to be an entirely different animal from that before the pause. It may even prevent some forms of privatisation that Tony Blair flirted with, such as the wholesale outsourcing of commissioning. No matter that Mr Clegg was once content with the first draft, his party refused to wear it. And if the recommendations are confirmed as accepted today, then he will have seen to it that his party prevails.

The messy manner of this victory, however, will come back to haunt both coalition parties. The Field report acknowledges an urgent need to address various problems, without explaining how they can be fixed. It promises, for instance, that private providers will be barred from cherry-picking profitable patients by unspecified "additional safeguards". Well, we shall see. The report also relies heavily on words with many meanings, such as "integration". To some it conveys state planning, to others GPs connecting with hospitals, and to others again the unification of health and social care. The latter is currently being entirely separately reviewed, and yet this huge additional problem is now potentially being piled into the body of a bill midway through emergency surgery.

Meanwhile, a coalition that promised to end top-down reorganisations could now preside over a second before its first is even complete. Mr Lansley's oft-repeated boast is that while the BMA carps, most family doctors have been quietly settling themselves into consortiums to pick up the NHS purse strings. But now Professor Field is suddenly saying that these embryonic consortiums, which were not meant to be tied to particular areas, must instead share their borders with councils. Managers who have spent the last year running primary care trusts under sentence of death must now steer their amalgamated successors into an uncertain future, while also organising recruitment into consortiums that are changing shape before being established. Think of them and weep.

The bitterest irony is that Mr Lansley had hoped his bill would take the politics out of healthcare. He has achieved the polar opposite in more than one sense. Assuming the Field report is enacted, the crunch question about the extent of competition will not be settled by an independent regulator, but instead by a board of bureaucrats who will work to a "model" proposed by the secretary of state. The House of Lords might well take exception to an approach of legislate first, decide later.

The coming expenditure squeeze is the most severe in NHS history, and the government's best hope was quietly muddling through. But after so much chaotic activity on its own part, any such hope is gone. The bill is not the danger to the NHS that it once was, but the service is more of a liability for the coalition than ever.

In praise of … Stirling Moss

Sir Stirling has decided to stop racing at the age of 81, after realising during practice at Le Mans that he was scared

There have been lots of great British racing drivers. But there has only ever been one Sir Stirling Moss. None of the others, though their achievements were often greater, became synonymous with the sport in the way Moss did in the 1950s, and none has retained that status for so long. On the face of it, news that Sir Stirling has decided to stop racing at the age of 81 – retired driver retires almost 50 years after quitting Formula One – ought not to be a story at all. But his announcement, after realising during practice at Le Mans that he was scared, touches a chord with anyone old enough to remember his career or who recalls the more innocent, daredevil sporting age in which he was a household name. The police officer reprimanding a motorist with a "Who do you think you are – Stirling Moss?" may be apocryphal, but it sounds authentic. Perhaps it was just his name – surely no one called Simon Moss could have been such a legend. Perhaps it was the era – the postwar but not yet postcolonial time in which the British hero still seemed to rule the world. Perhaps it was the danger of what he did, and which twice nearly killed him. Perhaps it was simply Sir Stirling's readiness to connect with the public – do Jenson Button or Lewis Hamilton trouble to write individual replies to fan letters or to send postcards from circuits around the world to admirers, as Moss once did? Whatever he did, he did in style, as his retirement interview yesterday proved. Stirling Moss was a bit special. Happily he still is.