News from the New Party

Clueless Cameron's NHS con-trick

You've got to hand it to David Cameron. He may be short on policy and principle, but he's got plenty of brass neck. At a conference in Nottingham the leader of the outfit formerly known as the Conservative Party announced that the Tories are going to save the NHS. This miracle is to be achieved by "putting professionals back in charge", by scrapping targets and pointless reorganisations, and by "putting people back at the heart of the NHS". How quaint.

Whatever the failings of the current government, you can't fault them for trying where the National Health Service is concerned. Gordon Brown has deluged the NHS with fantastic amounts of money beyond the wildest dreams of any NHS executive of the Thatcher era. And what is the result of this generosity? NHS trusts with the largest deficits in history. If nothing else New Labour has proved beyond reasonable doubt that the NHS cannot be made to work. It is a "vast, inhuman machine", to use Cameron's words, not because of anything the Labour government has done, but because that's what it always was, and can only ever be. What nationalised industry over the last sixty years or so has ever been a cuddly, people-centred concern? British Rail? the National Coal Board? British Steel? British Leyland?

Cameron's delusion is that by a bit of tinkering and smooth talking he can ease the furrowed brows of nurses and junior doctors sufficiently so that the entire service will suddenly start to function perfectly in every respect, thereby producing millions of happy, smiling patients and staff in idyllic hospital surroundings. He is insulting the intelligence of the British people.

He is, incidentally, apparently immune to irony:

"If last year was all about change, then this year is more about grit - the gritty determination to say where we stand on the big issues, to stick to our guns, to take tough decisions... And when the right thing to say is unpopular, to say it anyway, because it's right."