Working with the private sector to export British healthcare expertise abroad is nothing new. But history suggests that if the NHS is to be used as an expansive form of soft power and export earnings for 'Global Britain', more adequate safeguards and transparent avenues of public scrutiny need to be in place to ensure this process prioritises mutual healthcare improvement over revenue raising.
US think tanks, as intermediary organisations that have become highly efficient at funding themselves and marketing their experts, potentially offer lessons in how historians in the UK might communicate more effectively with policy makers. Yet American think tanks would themselves benefit from more actively harnessing academic expertise, as closer association with universities would help alleviate their financial vulnerabilities and enhance their public credibility.
The Government may succeed in 'taking back control'. But its ability to combine this with a new economic model of high real wages and improved productivity, heralded in the Prime Minister's speech to the Conservative Party Conference last week, appears more doubtful.
Forged in crisis, Ulster unionism has been suspicious of British governments for more than a century. How the Johnson government responds to the recent unrest will help to determine what Loyalist leaders do next.
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