Substantial Alterations

In today's Daily Telegraph, Andrew Lansley professes himself open to "substantial alterations" to his barking mad Blairite scheme to dismantle the NHS in England, while today's Daily Mail front page denounces both private equity and the privatisation of care services (in fact, like so many of these things, merely the issuing of the nastiest of private companies with licenses to print public money).

When will there be a political party to give voice to the opinion of most Telegraph and Mail readers, of most habitual Tory voters, and of most Tory councillors and activists, out here in the country at large? Previously confined to Neil Clark's column on the Morning Star, as of today it is apparently the editorial position of the Daily Mail. That newspaper might start campaigning against Loony Right councils, as once it campaigned against Loony Left ones. It could start with Birmingham, which is outsourcing municipal jobs to India.

There are those who, since even the forced nationalisation of several leading banks could not convince them, are certainly not going to be convinced by the nationalisation of a network of care homes whose bills are already paid by the council. But even so, how much longer is the swivel-eyed privatisation, globalisation, worker-bashing and war-mongering of the lost generation that began with the death of John Smith going to be presented as "the centre ground"?

Ed Miliband, over to you.