Monday was a day of shame, the day they denationalised the NHS. Yet at the second reading of the Bill in the House of Commons the main line of defence of the increasingly isolated Andrew Lansley, who is clearly out of his depth, was that the Tories are only carrying on where Blair left off and completing the job he failed to finish. That is of course true inasmuch as New Labour converted NHS trusts into independent businesses (foundation trusts), introduced ISTCs (private treatment centres paid by public funds irrespective of the number of patients treated), gave NHS work to private hospitals and clinics and encouraged NHS patients to choose them, and developed HMO-style commissioning as in the US. But it hobbled the Labour response because there was clearly no Shadow Cabinet cover to give the obvious retort that these were Blair’s own pseudo-Tory policies never sanctioned by the Labour Party and that now we, the real Labour Party, are promulgating a very different, public NHS shorn of all its privatisation liabilities. Continue reading →