thetorydiary

Yesterday it was retaining the hunting ban which was to be a "key plank" in Labour's election strategy.

In today's Sunday Telegraph, the Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, declares that a Labour pledge on health will be a "key battleground" at the general election.

The pledge in question is Labour's promise to give patients the legal right to free private care if they don't get the treatment they need from the NHS within 18 weeks - with cancer patients getting funding for private treatment if they haven't seen a specialist within two weeks of being referred by a GP.

It would appear that Labour's tactic is to pass a law enacting this pledge shortly before the general election in order to enable the party to scaremonger during the campaign by suggesting that an incoming Conservative Government would abolish it.

Says Burnham:

"This is about embedding patient rights and will prevent a return to the days when people languished on waiting lists under a Tory government... Will the Tories row back on measures that give patients what they have a right to expect?"

But Andrew Lansley has hit back, and accused Labour of using the NHS as a "political football":

"This is the latest in a series of unaffordable and uncosted pledges that have more to do with electioneering than improving the NHS. It will be treated with contempt by NHS staff and rejected by patients because it does not put them in charge.

"They claim that these will be legally enforceable new rights, but are Labour really planning to put the lawyer in the operating theatre? Do they trust the doctors to do their job or do they want judges telling surgeons who they should operate on first?" 

Jonathan Isaby

I thought that the "Tory split" story about the NHS had run its course by the close of play on Friday: it was then that Sky News's Peter Spencer made the eminently sensible observation that it was "palpably absurd" that David Cameron agreed with Daniel Hannan on the NHS and rightly dismissed it as a silly season story.

As Tim pointed out on Wednesday when the media began to get excited about Dan Hannan's comments, he is  a backbench MEP who has zero influence on Tory health policy.

Yet by the most spurious of means, Labour and their allies in the media (some of whom aren't even allies, but just desperate for copy at this time of year) have managed to ensure that the "story" is still live, albeit I suspect gasping its last breaths, in today's papers.

And today's coverage (see, for example, the Telegraph and Times) is based on this Labour press release in which Health Secretary Andy Burnham makes a series of preposterous demands of David Cameron. 

Mr Burnham wants any American politician who disagrees with David Cameron on the NHS to be barred from attending the Conservative Party conference; he says the Tory whip should be withdrawn from Dan Hannan; and says that shadow ministers should be forced to resign from a group (Cornerstone) which once published a pamphlet calling for reform of the way health services are delivered.

That the so-called debate has come to this pathetic level on the Labour side suggests how desperate they have become.

Will Labour be refusing entry to its conference to the assorted dinosaurs who are fellow members of the Socialist International? Will the Labour whip be being withdrawn from backbench politicians like Jeremy Corbyn, Frank Field and Kate Hoey who regularly dare to question and vote against the party line on any number of issues? Similarly, will ministers be banned from being members of any group or faction which may have, at some point, allowed views to be aired which challenged party policy?

No, of course not, on all three counts.

All political parties are broad coalitions where there is room for those with differing viewpoints - and the same is inevitably even truer of international alliances.

It is preposterous to suggest that every politician in a political party should have to agree 100% with every word his party leader says: not only would it be dishonest if they did, but it would also stifle debate in what should be a grown-up democracy.

Jonathan Isaby

John Prescott is attacking Dan Hannan MEP as the "true face of 'caring' Conservatism" after Dan made criticisms of the NHS during a visit to America. 

I agree with most of what Dan said about NHS inefficiencies but John Prescott's attack is irrelevant.

Dan has zero influence on Tory health policy.

Z. E. R. O..

The Conservative leadership is committed to keeping the NHS more-or-less as it is. We don't use the statements of Stephen Byers or Dennis Skinner to say that's what the Labour leadership believes. Trying to say that Dan speaks for the Tories on this issue is dishonest and desperate politics.

Mr Hannan's remarks begin after 1 minute 20 seconds into the video below:

Tim Montgomerie