The Tories have been put on the back foot, but don't expect permanent damage

Ray

Beware, Mr Cameron. Daniel Hannan speaks for a good many more people in your party than you suppose!

Peter from Maidstone

I don't want more money spent on anything. I want at the very least that the same anount is spent better. How is throwing more money than socialists on a bloated public service any sort of conservatism?

Peter

Ray: and for a lot outside it who may be thinking of voting Conservative but see too many in the Tories still looking like they're caught in the New Labour headlights.

TrevorsDen

ROy - lets be clear anoput one thing, I am unquestionably a right wing conservative. I believe in less state not more I believe in hanging I believe that the bankers who have ruined us should be flogged.

But I am appalled and disgusted with Hannan and would happily give him a massive piece of my mind if I were to meet him (perhaps Duncan like he will invite me - I promise not to bring my camera).

The key fact is Roy that you are totally totally wrong. The great swathe of the Conservative party is nothing like what you speculate.

The issue should be not the existence of the NHS but how Brown has poured money into an unreformed NHS and has got bad value back out of it. NICE has nothing to do with excellence and more to do with rationing. this allows the US Right to attack the NHS.

The tories should counter attack by abolishing NICE and thus stop putting a price on life. Where the US attacks have a grain of truth the conservatives should offer a solution.

paracelsus

Daniel Hannan speaks a lot of sense, and rarely lets go of a campaign once he has started.

The NHS is a complete mess. It costs most UK taxpayers thousands each year, is effectively means tested, costs extra for prescriptions, offers poor service and value for money, and penalises those who choose to opt for private care in addition.

How is that a just and fair service? How can we really crow about such a 'fantastic' service? Isn't it rather strange that this model has not been adopted else where in the world.

Dan Hannan is right, and Cameron is wrong. I understand Cameron's reluctance to engage in the debate at this particular juncture, but Brown's posturing needs to be countered with cold, hard facts about the current inadequacies and failures of the service. It is not wonderful, it is a mess that is sapping much needed funds and resources from this country.

Ryan Roberts

An actual conservative in the mould of Barry Goldwater voicing conservative opinions in the Conservative party? How very eccentric.

Something must be done to maintain the Conservative parties social democratic credentials.

NS

"So yes, we will spend more on the NHS, but we will also improve it so that it is more efficient and responsive to patients."

What were they doing for the last 12 years?

Chuck Unsworth

It's not a race really, is it? I don't know about beating Cameron to the punch - what's the point?

What this is about is Brown seizing on any opportunity to raise his profile. The fact that Sarah Brown seems also to have been 'involved' is just simple electioneering. This is a false and unnecessary war generated largely (I suspect) by the NuLab machinery. Cui Bono?

But has Brown or anyone on the Left stopped to consider his (now crumbling) relationship with Obama?

MattsDad

Maybe I've missed something (and no doubt someone will put me right). Dan was stating that as a nation which prides itself on its ability to keep the state out of individual affairs (in comparison to our own!) why would they opt for a health service that will be inherently centrally controlled (i.e. politically), rationed, and one-size fits all?

I know I have a lot to be grateful for with the NHS but I know, as a rational thinking being, that it has limits. Our different health care systems have pros and cons. At least in the US, you have choice. Don't be kidded into thinking that we have a choice here. That all depends on where you live.

Don't get me wrong, I think that a lot of the anti-change rhetoric in the US is misguided at best, or blatantly misleading. But our healthcare is not free. Never was, never will be. At the point of need, the NHS is there, but at what cost? A vast budget, frontline services struggling, a political football...need I go on?

There is an opportunity for change. The NHS was created at a time vastly different to now. What "choice" we have is deemed by our PCT's. Co-payments are barred due to the socialist nature of the NHS. If another can't have it, then niether can you.

It's nonsensical to think that we have the perfect system. We don't. Niether do the US.

Keep the debate in context. It is about what we can and cannot afford. There lies the need an opportunity for change.

Johnny

IF the Tories are like this before an election, what the hell are they going be like after it. God help us.

Simon Stephenson

"Cameron has just described Dan Hannan ... as "eccentric"."

Personalised, character-assassinating rubbish!

He hasn't described Hannan as eccentric, he's said that he "does have some quite eccentric views about some things" which, quite properly, is a comment about what Hannan has said, and not an attempt to tag him with a blanket lack of judgement.

It's a comment about the issue, not the person - a distinction that I would hope non-tabloiders would understand.

Moreover, just as "normal" doesn't always mean "good", so "eccentric" doesn't always mean "bad". In fact, many (most?) developments that are widely regarded as being good have only happened because eccentrics have had the courage to question the status quo.

JONNY

'Daniel Hannan speaks for a good many more people in your party than you suppose!'

Sadly true.
But that won't prevent Hannan and his like blowing the Election.
Maybe Ray, like Hannan, you're so bloody rich you don't need the NHS.
But it saved my life last year.

Knut

Does anyone ouside the Westminster bubble really notice or care about this? It seems to be a storm in a teacup to say the least.

One Tory puts his foot in his mouth (in June no less) about expenses and another voices his opinion on the NHS. Big deal.

Wilfred

Beware, Mr Cameron. Hannan is another swivel-eyed Vulcan of the Redwood stripe, and you encourage him at your peril. It's precisely because he "speaks for a good many ... people in your party" that more outbursts from him will ensure a fourth Labour term.

YouCannotBeSerious

Peter - I think there might be more permanent damage than you fear. This week alone will have provided quotes aplenty for Labour leaflets and party political broadcasts about the same old Tories on the NHS. Cameron must be fuming!

Pete Hoskin

Simon Stephenson: I wasn't trying to engage in "character assassination". But - you're right - my update above wasn't clear enough. I've now changed it to include Cameron's full quote about "some of" Hannan's views.

Edmund Jerk

Daniel Hannan is far from 'eccentric', his brand of Conservatism is far more appealing to myself - and I would imagine most right-wing voters - than Cameron's progressive (wet, centre left) 'conservatism'.
I'm starting to wonder whether it's worth voting Tory at all.

Josh

How has a country that built on an empire on which the sun never set and kept Europe out of the chains of the Nazi tyranny has been reduced to a debate where one side screams 'I love the NHS more than you,' in which the reply is, 'No, I love it more than you.

chris

The point is that the US are not proposing a system like the NHS, a government managed monopoly. What they are trying to do is to keep down the cost of their system whilst at the same time allow access to everyone whether or not they can afford it. (That's the socialist bit)

Witness the way their democracy works, where there is plenty of discussion, misinformation and freedom of speech. What they don't want is TO BE TOLD WHAT TO DO BY THEIR GOVERNMENT. They also don't want their government to mess about with what they like about their system.

Hannan is entitled to his opinion, and it has given Cameron a good opportunity to express his party view.

David

I just love how the runp right of the party feels it aceptable to do as much damage as they can simply because the current direction of the party isn't as ideologically pure as they want. There is no acknowledgement from them of a Conservative tradition pre-Thatcher which is more centrist and moderate.

They are like the loony left that prevented Labour from winning for so long. Grow up and accept that in a FPTP party system, a succesful party will cover a range of viewpoints, and that to win must present the most centrist. Any other approach leads to oblivion, and comments like Tony Benn's marvellous response to 1983 "It was a wonderful election as for the first time in history 8 million people voted for a purely socialist platform."

AAE

Not "eccentric", but logical, legitimate and compelling arguments about the subject under discussion, rather than intellectually shallow personality attacks. Let's put the NHS to one side for the moment and look at another service upon which daily, all our lives depend - food distribution. Can you imagine a state monopoly for this? How much form filling would every visit to the StateSupermarket entail? How many quotas would we have to fulfill according to gender, sexual orientation or ethnicity? Would they only be open between 9am - 11am, and 5pm - 6.30pm and not on Saturdays or Sundays? Would we have to make an appointment? Why shouldn't this essential service also not be free at the point of delivery? At present, this vital distribution service costs the state nothing, and we can shop when we want for what we want. Those nasty profiteers provide the cheapest, best quality food we have ever had and patently nobody is starving! (Though the elderly can and do die of dehydration or starvation in our envy of the world NHS hospitals because our dedicated NHS staff don't know their own job - why can't Cameron get angry about the realities?) The Spectator, rather than be little more than Cameron's ragmag, would do better to look to the times when it was founded and start to properly enlighten, but thankfully, Brown's tenacity in hanging on to his full term is exposing Cameron and his coterie more and more as another elite who are given the reins of power by the trust of their party or the country. Usually, it is only later that good people see how they have been manipulated through half-truths, obfuscation and all forms of trickery, but we still have nine months before the election - enough time for good people like Dan Hannan (and The Spectator if it chooses) to breathe honest life into public debate.

Victor Southern

Comments such as those made by Hannan and Duncan damage our cause.

Relatively few Tories want the NHS abolished - we simply want it to work rationally and with far less wastage.

Many of us would like also to see the training of British doctors and British nurses stepped up. That will enable us to cease propping up the NHS at the expense of such countries as India, Bangladesh and South Africa.

It is all very well for such as Hannan to voice his thoughts but they now appear as those of the Conservative Party - they are not. Hannan is one-trick pony and he has shown us his trick.

Duncan is just plain silly and infatuated with his own voice.

There is an election to win and stupidity won't win it - smart will.

Owen Morgan

Cameron really does think he is the heir to Blair, doesn't he? For years, Blair's ministers, Frank Field excepted, were untouchable, no matter how manifest their incompetence, because their dismissal would have reflected badly on the idiot who had appointed them. Cameron seems to have the same mindset regarding his shadow cabinet. He has effectively told Andrew Lansley that he is fireproof, for the sake of striking debatably "popular" poses about the NHS. The unfeasibly stupid Lansley now makes ever more extravagant promises to his new best mates in the medical profession and Cameron is obliged to defend Lansley and all his works. Similarly, Cameron can't acknowledge what is blindingly obvious to everyone else: Alan Duncan is quite hopeless, an utter embarrassment every time he speaks, self-evidently incapable of usefully occupying a future cabinet role. Cameron is trying to look strong by retaining these two clowns, but he is really demonstrating weakness.

David

"why would they opt for a health service that will be inherently centrally controlled (i.e. politically), rationed, and one-size fits all?"

They aren't. Not that Hannan appeared to actually know what was being proposed.

Gina K.

It seems to be as if most of the Twitter commentators are on the young side and possibly don't have that much real experience of the NHS. That we are now in the situation where in going into hospital you now take your life in your hands is completely shocking and the treatment of old people who seem to have a fairly low chance of surviving hospitalisation is more than worrying. You only have to look at the scandal of the death rates at Stafford hospital (my nearest- rather frighteningly) and many others like it all over the country

The system that has worked reasonably well for many years is now completely out of date and in huge need of a major rethink but will we ever get it whilst any sensible debate is immediately stifled?

The system only really works well for the huge army of bureaucrats who run it & whose jobs (rather than front line staff) always seem to be protected when there are any cuts at all. It is yet another mega gravy train for so called- public servants

Verity

And Daniel Hannan speaks for a good many more people in the party than does David Cameron. How dare Cameron dub him eccentric when Hannan's views are perfectly normal? It's the chimera of the welcoming arms of some universal big daddy in whose gift lies good health for all that is eccentric. Cameron has a trite, unimaginative mind. He's also very greedy.

Edmund Jerk, you're only just starting to wonder whether it's worth voting Conservative with Dave the lad at the helm?

Dan

Why all the fuss about Hannan? He is an irrelevance - it's not as if he's in the shadow cabinet for God's sake! The NHS issue will simply not be an area of weakness for the Tories, not least because of Cameron's personal experience. People should calm down.

MarcoPongo

This was the week the Tories, the Party I have always supported, lost the next election. When in 1997 I saw the mess the deranged right-wing psychopaths (espousing the views of many postings here) had caused the Tory Party in 1997 I predicted the Party would now lose five elections in a row. And I still don't see any reason to change my mind. Despite everything, Labour is staying firm and united. The ravings of Tebbit, Heffer, Hannan, together with the sheer breathtaking mindless stupidity of the great bulk of Tory MPs such as Duncan, and the utter unelectability of most of the Tory Party, just make most normal people feel sick. Every Party is a coalition; the right-wing psychopaths want to win every argument and they will end up by losing everything. With regard to unelectability, just consider this: everyone laughs at the antics of Labour women (Harman, Smith, Blears, Flint), but at least Labour have women; now that Widdecombe is leaving, the Tory Party does not have a single female of any significance. Women notice that sort of thing you know. The Tories have only one chance: Cameron. There are a few good vote-winning eggs around him (Hague, Hammond, Ken Clarke), but the rest are unelectable dross.

Hysteria

what AAE said.

further - watching the Town Halls here in the US is a complete revelation (don't know how much airtime they are getting back home). The point being that the average Joe is realising that "Change we can believe in" has been exposed for what it always was - clever electioneering - and they are having a real opportunity to vent their anger. Not pretty, loud, rude etc - but that's the people talking folks - not the smooth, polished performance of the lobbyists and professional classes.

The concern those of us on the right (and perhaps libertarian) "wing") have is that the centrist Cameron/Blair approach will lead us nowhere.

Nowhere good, anyway....

JONNY

I couldn't possibly imagine a worse time than now to launch a major Tory Rethink on the NHS.

Voters will simply assume they just want to kill it off.

tilly williams

The NHS does need reforming Labour have ripped the heart and soul out of it. I have been attending the same hospital since 1993 and believe me it is not very good now no one cares like they used to a german doctor told me that it should not be like it is a conveyor belt that is what Labour has made it now . There are forms to fill in about your food about your doctor treating you about your nurses in fact about eveything they came to see me over three times with different forms to fill in. The foreign nurses leave a lot to be desired giving wrong doses of pills etc you have to watch all the time. and it is not free I have worked all my life and paid into to the NHS via tax there are too many foreigners using it and jumping to the front of the queue while we are asked if we have been in the country more than 12 months and are we white british and we must of course bring ID eg passport bills etc. to make sure that we are entitled to the service. there are too many managers who do not know what they are doing it should be run by medical people. I have seen the despair of the doctors over the years Labour has been in so the likes of Prescott Brown Bradshaw Burnham do not dare to tell me what you have done to the NHS they have meddled with it as usual. people who come here should have health insurance.

David Ossitt

Wilfred.

"more outbursts from him will ensure a fourth Labour term"

Wilfred; the party that you follow, will not only not have a fourth term, but will probably be out of office for many many years.

It made me feel so good writing that last bit.

Ray

To all those Coffeehousers saying that Hannan should be sat upon (or worse) so as not to rock the boat and sink the Tories' election prospects I say: whatever happened to being straight with the British people and telling it like it is?

This is a debate that needs to be had, not least because thanks to Brown's credit-card whacking spree whoever inherits Britain plc will have to at the very least freeze NHS budgets in order to get national indebtedness under control.

So the real debate is: which party is going to be able to improve the nation's health by be able to do more with possibly less? As such, blindly pumping money into the NHS as it stands is not an option.

The truth, as in 1979, is that the British people need to be addressed as adults and told bluntly: no pain no gain. Unless Cameron wants to be heir-to-Blair in the truly pejorative sense he had better learn that lesson fast.

Ray

JONNY - as it happens I'm certainly not rich and have a chronic illness that requires me receiving long-term treatment by the NHS. However, in truth it is the British taxpayer (of which I am also one) that funds this treatment.

I would only ask whether the NHS as it stands is delivering that treatment at the best possible value for taxpayers' money. In fact, rather than indulging in petty 'I owe my life to the NHS' twittering, I happen to think it's the question we should all be asking.

Wilfred

David Ossit: "[Labour] out of office for many many years"? - oh no they won't be, not if the Redwood/Tebbit/Hannan tendency are allowed to speak out and tell the electorate what the Tories really really want.

By the way, has anyone (except me) noticed that most of this blog has been about how the Tories can spin their way out of this, and keep their real intentions hidden from the electorate?

Deceptive spinners, all of you. You're a disgrace. And Hannan should be ashamed of himself, attacking the NHS on Fox. It's a form of treason.

Stay in the USA, Daniel, we don't really want you here, whingeing about the NHS.

David Ossitt

Wilfred.

I think the word is deluded; in that even after 12 years of the most corrupt goverment in living memory, for some of you on the left, they are still the good guys.

Hannan did not attack the NHS he does not think that it works as well as it should.

Treason; is what Blair and Brown ase guilty of.

Archie

If Cameron doesn't KNOW that the NHS is in dire need of a root and branch overhaul he is completely unfit to be PM.

Verity

Wilfred, I am afraid I am going to have to award you low marks for reading comprehension. Most people here seem to abhor David Cameron's strategy of committing to nothing but spin. The main body of the Tory Party appears to feel the same, as there is no enthusiasm for Cameron anywhere except among the Bullingdon tendency.

Hannan is to be praised for shining a light on the dreadful NHS. I'm assuming you have no experience of the health services in other countries, including our close neighbour, France? So you have nothing to compare the NHS with. Am I correct?