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In the second edition of the latest series of Leader Conference, Andrew Rawnsley was joined by Ruth Sunderland of the Daily Mail, Ben Chacko of the Morning Star; Caroline Daniel of FT Weekend; Edward Carr of The Economist; and Callum Baird of The National.Ìý

We discussed:

Slithering in the black stuff ÌýÌý

The 70% fall in the oil price over the last eighteen months has been remarkable – even in today’s increasingly volatile commodity markets. Its effect on the UK economy is already being felt. But it is the changes it will bring about in the global economy and in geo-politics that will matter even more. Will all these be for good or ill?

On the plus side, a fall of this speed and intensity encourages consumption in industrialised economies. This is welcome not just to George Osborne in Britain but to the other finance ministers in the G20, especially those in heavily oil-importing Europe, as signs of slower global growth have been increasing, most markedly in China. It will also keep inflation subdued and push back the date when interest rates will rise. For this relief much thanks, the rising number of indebted British households will feel.

But there are adverse effects too. Already this week BP has announced 600 further job losses in Scotland’s beleaguered oil and gas industry and other major oil companies will need to re-assess the viability of their higher cost production and exploration. Shareholders must decide whether Shell’s planned takeover of BG, initially proposed when the oil price was much higher, still makes sense. We note the argument some nationalists make for Holyrood to have greater control over Scotland’s oil industry but are not persuaded that it is a panacea: no government is capable of countermanding the market’s plunge.Ìý

If the corporate sector faces tough decisions, the implications for oil-producing and exporting countries are even more profound. Saudi Arabia is already trimming its government spending and mooting the partial sale of the world’s most valuable company, Saudi Aramco. For Russia, the fat years of bulging oil revenues are over. Now for the lean ones. They may make President Putin more circumspect but few in the West will hold their breath. For Venezuela’s President Maduro the oil glut and low prices aggravate his largely self-inflicted woes.Ìý

We should not exaggerate the downside risks of this oil price shock but rather welcome its upside potential for helping to sustain global growth – at least for so long as it lasts.ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý

Taking patients for granted

The first – and we hope only – strike by junior hospital doctors in England for more than forty years hurt those who least deserved it – NHS patients. But if neither party to the dispute – the government or the doctors represented by the BMA – emerges well from this week’s stand-off, it prompts the question: why has it come to this?

The public has very high expectations of the NHS which it can struggle to meet. Not all such expectations – universal availability of very expensive drugs, for example – are either desirable or practicable. But for patients to expect a genuinely comprehensive, 7-days-a-week NHS in England is reasonable and a long overdue reform which both NHS managers and politicians have avoided for too long.

We fear, however, that in seeking to achieve this change, the negotiating strategies of both the Health Secretary for England, Jeremy Hunt, and the BMA have been crude, poorly communicated and, above all, self-defeating. The public is unclear why the negotiations have dragged on for so long and why the two sides seem incapable of recognising that it is the interests of patients rather than those of administrators or clinicians that should prevail. As the frustrations of the public expressed this week to junior doctors on picket lines have made clear, denying care to patients is not something either the doctors or NHS England should be proud of achieving.

The breakdown in trust between politicians and managers on the one hand and healthcare professionals on the other is not unprecedented. But it clearly makes further changes to the NHS in England much more difficult to achieve. Doctors need to accept that what patients want is something they should embrace, while the government needs to recognise that an overly ideological approach to change will make that objective impossible to achieve.

Chariot of fire ÌýÌý

It is time the English celebrated their national identity, as their Scottish and Welsh counterparts do, by singing a common anthem. As competitors at sports events, schoolchildren in assemblies or as part of ad hoc groups, there are occasions when such an anthem would be more appropriate than God Save the Queen. Toby Perkins MP has made the proposal and we urge the Westminster Parliament to take up his suggestion. But what should the anthem be? Jerusalem may be indelibly associated with the WI but we regard that as a strength and, in any case, an anthem must be easily recognisable and often heard. Blake’s poem may not describe today’s England but it powerfully evokes a distinctive vision of the nation. And, besides, without a sense of irony is anyone truly English?