‘The stroke could have killed me’

Fraser Nelson

05 July 2006

So there may not be a Conservative health policy, but we can have individual Conservative health campaigns designed to give a flavour of what that policy would be when it arrives. The NHS failure to catch up with other countries in treating stroke, Lansley says, is indicative of its bureaucratic culture which a Conservative government would change. ‘Nobody is rewarded for being enterprising; you just do your thing and travel in the middle with everyone else. You don’t want to be an out-rider, you just keep your head down. And I think that’s a real shame.’

But how would a Conservative government act differently? Here Mr Lansley is at a disadvantage. Until Oliver Letwin’s policy group reports by the end of next year, he will have no idea. He indicates that he will not necessarily adopt the findings of the health review group, and has been developing ideas of his own in the last few months. This is another indicator of the crunch that will come when Mr Cameron’s policy groups publish results which will clash with each other, and with the views of their relevant spokesmen.

When asked why he made the transformation from right-winger to mod, Mr Lansley looks almost offended. ‘I still believe in the free market,’ he says. But he dates back to 2001 the speeches he started giving in support of the modernising cause — he had backed Kenneth Clarke in the leadership race that year and refused to serve under Iain Duncan Smith. He also remarried that year, and his fifth child was born last year. Pictures of his children are one of the few adornments on his wall. ‘I’m doing my bit to defuse David Willetts’s demographic time bomb,’ he laughs.

It is an unusual trait of the present shadow Cabinet that most wish to stress how much they want to keep their jobs until the next general election. Mr Lansley is no exception, saying he asked both Michael Howard and David Cameron to be put in for health. ‘People say politics is about that greasy pole and you don’t climb up it unless you move jobs. Well, I’m not interested in all that. I find health endlessly fascinating,’ he says. He declares no ambition other than to do the same job in government.

It was not always thus. This time last year Mr Lansley was being encouraged by people like Mr Letwin to stand for party leader and was giving it serious consideration. ‘I was not sure that David Cameron would physically be able to demonstrate that the party had changed,’ he says. But he decided against standing, thinking that his strengths would be better championed by other candidates.

‘If you wanted the purely intellectual approach, you would have David Willetts — if not him, then me. If you wanted a moderniser, then you’d say David Cameron. If not him, then me. And if you wanted a social liberal, you would choose Ken Clarke — if not Ken, then me. I was the second choice on each of these parameters.’ But as a future Tory health secretary, the man who escaped death that summer afternoon in Rochester seems ideally qualified.