Something to keep an eye on is the US & NHS issue. In recent days we had Dispatches reporting on this and whilst I didn't see it the media have picked it up:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...de-deal-report
So, it seems Trump is trying to push countries to commit to overpaying on meds so he can subsidise his own country. Who will buy from the US then when they can get it far cheaper elsewhere?
The Labour party are latching onto this and there is much floating around about this being a Tory sell off of the NHS. But the drug trade is already private and we export & import meds.
I can't se how that could be achieved without pumping a lot more cash into the NHS.It also cited new research fromDr Andrew Hill, a leading expert on the drugs industry and adviser to the World Health Organisation, that a transatlantic trade treaty could send the NHS’s drugs bill ballooning from £18bn to £45bn a year.
Just looking at NHS England alone is around £18.2b.
Budgets:
NHS England = £139.3b (2019/2020)
NHS Scotland = £13.1b (2018/2019)
NHS Wales = £9b (2019/2020 I think)
NHS NI = £5.3b (2018/2019)
So, what Trump appears to want would wreck the NHS budget big time. It could be a starting place in a negotiation though hence could drop.
For this to ever work I can only see two possibilities:
a) we pump shedloads more into the NHS and sacrifice other areas to offset.
b) The US trade deal brings in more than this additional cost to allow an offset for the NHS.
Currently we are hysteria mode with people saying this is a NHS sell off when all that is happening is Trump trying to take trade away from other countries we import from. NHS sell off would be more about the hospitals and bringing in US style insurance companies so we lose free at the point of access care. The NHS already has to buy it's drugs from someone anyway.
Hopefully we tell Trump to forget it unless his trade deal brings in more profit for us so we can offset that increase but even then I'm not keen on propping up US citizens for their drugs when those companies need sorting out to lower prices anyway.