If David Cameron had told us that he intended to
flog off our blood plasma supply to Mitt Romney, then Labour would have won the
2010 Election outright. No one can possibly doubt that.
What if, as was admittedly always improbable,
Romney had won in 2012? Our blood plasma supply would now be owned by the head
of a foreign state.
But on the NHS generally, after a week of
hysterical efforts, the Tories have lost. They always do. They always will.
All that anyone ever hears is the Tories trying to introduce the pre-Obama
American healthcare system into Britain. It doesn't matter what they are
actually saying. That is all that anyone ever hears. Or ever will.
Despite the fact that Margaret Thatcher was
indifferent towards the NHS, leaving it alone so long as she herself did not
have to use it, while John Major was positively sentimental about it and really
rather committed to it.
The Conservative Party's and (if you read The
Orange Book) the Lib Dems' opposition to the NHS is an expression of
Blairism.
Blair was the first major Party Leader to have been opposed
to the principle of the National Health Service since 1945 at
the latest, when it was in all three manifestos and would therefore have
happened regardless of who had won that General Election.
Let Cameron and Clegg be the last.
Ah, the old fallacy that the only choice is between the pre-Obama US system and the NHS (have you people even heard of the Singapore system, which vastly outperforms our own in every way?)
ReplyDeleteRead P.Hitchens recent post on that NHS fallacy.
The lack of imagination in this country is astounding at times.
All that anyone ever hears is the Tories trying to introduce the pre-Obama American healthcare system into Britain.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't matter what they are actually saying. That is all that anyone ever hears. Or ever will.
Thatcher and Major used to be assumed to be doing that even though it was the opposite of the truth.
Never mind this lot, flogging off our blood plasma supply to Bain Capital.
Indeed, it is all anyone hears.
ReplyDeleteThat was what I meant about our "lack of imagination"-the British are unfortunately renowned for it.
That is why we're still stuck with Labour and the Tories.
There is no lack of imagination in what the present mob is doing to the NHS. Would that there were.
ReplyDeleteA lack of connection to reality, yes. But no lack of imagination.
With her trademark patriotism in practice, Thatcher used to export "surplus" British blood.
ReplyDeleteThis government has absolutely no imagination-all it ever does is administer our decline, it never attempts to reverse any aspect of it.
ReplyDelete