Dido Harding: The Perfect Embodiment Of The Irremediably Corrupt Political System

Dido Harding. The perfect embodiment of the irremediably corrupt political system. 

It’s fair to say she didn’t grow up in the same world as most of us. Dido Harding is the daughter of the late John Charles Harding, 2nd Baron Harding of Petherton, an Army officer and hereditary peer.  She went to a private school, obviously,and the University of Oxford, where one of her dear friends was none other than former Prime Minister, David Cameron. 

Coincidentally, Boris Johnson and Sir Simon Stevens (CEO of NHS England) were presidents of the Oxford Union in 1985-86 and 1986-87, while Dido was slumming it in Oxford. Small world, isn’t it. 

A Harvard MBA set her up for a few roles within huge corporations, before she was appointed as CEO of TalkTalk in 2010. But why have just one megabucks job when you can have several? In 2014 she became a non-executive director of the Bank of England’s Court (she chairs its Remuneration Committee), and a director of the The Jockey Club which runs Cheltenham Racecourse. 

One might ask if she made any money from this year’s Cheltenham Festival going ahead, and if so, how much? Harding had direct influence over the Cheltenham Festival, as well as indirect influence through her position with the Jockey Club.

More 250,000 people were packed into a field in Gloucestershire, while Covid-19 was spreading through our communities like an uncontrollable wildfire. Did Harding profit from this grotesque failure to protect the health and wellbeing of not just British people, but others who travelled from across the globe to watch the festival? 

While a majority of the world enforced travel bans, border controls, and quarantines, we put a bottle of Carex hand gel at each Heathrow terminal and hoped our bulldog spirit, and our stiff upper lips would get Covid done. Fucking obscene.

The Jockey Club’s astonishing and disastrous decision not to cancel the Cheltenham Festival has never been justified by anyone beyond a few right-wing hacks. Presumably, as a director, Harding had a part to play in the Jockey Club’s decision, and possibly in its earlier lobbying of the government to allow the Festival to proceed. 

Scientists claimed that the decision to allow the Cheltenham Festival to go ahead caused extra coronavirus deaths across the UK – and a cluster of cases locally in the Cheltenham are. Professor Tim Spector said the number of infections ‘increased several fold’ around the area because of the pre-lockdown event in March. ‘They’ll have caused increased suffering and death,’ the epidemiologist, of King’s College London, told Radio 4’s File on 4.

Dido Harding has remained silent on the matter, which undoubtedly helps with one’s future career prospects. 

Harding’s well-documented record at TalkTalk was undoubtedly the catalyst for her elevation to being a regular on the public payroll. During her time, Talk Talk lost the personal and banking details of about four million of its customers. Talk Talk were fined £400,000 for ‘abdicating its security obligations’. TalkTalk lost £42m and over 100,000 customers. Harding was widely criticised for seemingly not giving a shit about her multiple failures as the CEO - another quality appreciated by those in government. She finally left Talk Talk in 2017.

But it didn’t matter. Oxford University pal David Cameron made her Baroness Harding of Winscombe, in September 2014. She took the Conservative whip. Her position at Talk Talk was protected by her friendships. Any other CEO would’ve been gone the moment 4 million of their customers details had their personal details ‘lost’. 

By October 2017, Harding emerged as the Minister’s ‘preferred candidate’ for the new post of Chair of the Board of NHS Improvement - a position which carried a salary of £62,000 for 2-3 days a week. It was recommended that in light of her new position, Harding should give up the Conservative whip in the House of Lords.  

Of course she didn’t. 

Then we come to May 2020, and Harding is appointed as the person to direct the new ‘world-beating’ coronavirus ‘test and trace’ system in England. 

The test and trace system isn’t run, as you might expect, by the NHS or another public body, but by Tory-favourites, Serco - the company that has benefitted from innumerable privatisations and public contracts.  Serco has built a strong reputation over the years for inefficiency, money-wasting and law-breaking, making them the ideal contractor for the Conservative government. 

So why would you put Dido Harding in charge of the operation of the project, which includes the ill-fated Covid-19 app, swab and antibody testing, contact-tracing, and national surveillance and immunity certification? Was it her stunning track-record at Talk Talk? Possibly not. 

You will know that her husband is Tory MP, John Penrose. He is an adviser to the free market think-tank, 1828, as is cabinet minister Liz Truss. They have published articles calling for the NHS to be replaced by universal social insurance, and just 4 months ago they called for Public Health England to be abolished and the private sector to be handed a key role in testing.

Seems like they are getting exactly what they want. 

Harding’s test and trace catastrophe is also well documented. When she was questioned by the Health and Social Care Committee, Harding refused to reveal what proportion of people who tested positive were contacted by tracers within 24 hours, what proportion of them were successfully contacted, what proportion were willing to share details about their close contacts, and what proportion of the contacts were willing to self-isolate when they were asked to do so. 

In other words, she didn’t have a clue, because she doesn’t really give a shit. 

Test and trace has now been declared inadequate, which coincidentally would be a word that you can associate with the Baroness, and those who have promoted her to the position which will ensure she plays her part in selling the NHS to the United States of America.

So we move on to today. Matt Hancock has just dismantled Public Health England, much to the delight of Harding’s husband, Penrose - and Harding herself has been put in charge of PHE’s replacement, the National Institute for Health Protection, which will be charged with preventing future outbreaks of infectious diseases, despite the fucking abysmal performance of NHS test and trace, which she has bossed since May. 

Public Health England will become the scapegoat. This is obvious to anyone who has watched the last 6 months unfold. The government have already got much of the public blaming each other, they’ve blamed scientists, teachers, Hancock even had the cheek to blame nurses for using too much PPE, the Daily Mail even blamed former Corbyn adviser, Seamus Milne, for giving the virus to Boris Johnson. They’ve blamed anyone and everyone but themselves for their disastrous and deadly handling of the pandemic. 

As mentioned in the superb blog that inspired me to rattle off some thoughts, Harding’s story is...

“the perfect case study in how those who control contemporary Britain maintain their power, wealth and connections, at the expense of the interests and even the health of most other people.  The main lessons she teaches to the eager ranks of young Tories lining up behind her are: make good use of the education and social connections your parents have bought you; exploit your networks ruthlessly; collect as many jobs and other positions as you can, even if they conflict; ignore failure and criticism; never apologise; make yourself indispensable to those in authority; and, last but not least, always behave as if your good fortune is the result of your natural genius.”

The corruption, the jaw-dropping unapologetic cronyism, the blatant contempt in which the establishment hold you in, it is nauseating. 

They constantly elevate privilege while sticking the boot in to the poor, disabled and vulnerable people who pay their wages. Harding is simply another case of a multi-millionaire being promoted to a prominent public health position for which they have no experience, no track record of success, and no real idea why they are actually there beyond continuing to protect the wealth of the elite. 

This matters. Your NHS could be about to go even further down the path of privatisation, but this isn’t through the back door, like much of their past deceit. This time they are marching through the front door, with Harding held aloft on her throne. 

They are trolling us. They are sneering at our inability to stop them. They know the media won’t offer much in the way of accountability. Maybe a few lines on page 26 of The Express. 

And this is why independent media and activism matters more NOW than it ever has done before. 

Until next time. 

Rachael x

Follow me on Twitter - @Rachael_Swindon 

Huge thanks to Andrew Green for allowing me to use parts of his fantastic blog to help put this one together. You can follow Andrew on Twitter - @gwallter

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