When facing an audience of ambulance workers in a speech last Friday, Andrew Lansley had the ideal joke to warm them up. ‘People always imagine politicians are a bit brain dead,’ he said. ‘Well I am — and I have the MRI scan to prove it.’ He was being absolutely serious. In a freak medical incident while playing cricket in Kent 14 years ago, the shadow health secretary became one of the 150,000 people in Britain to suffer a stroke.
While he has made no secret about his condition, few in Westminster are aware of it. Yet plenty of clues exist for those with an eye to see them. Mr Lansley chairs the all-parliamentary group for stroke, and has bombarded ministers with questions on the subject for years. Even when he was a backbencher it seemed to be a preoccupation for him. Reclining in the chair of his sparsely decorated Commons office, he explains how his near obsession with the subject has been fuelled by more than professional interest.
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Lloyd Evans on the latest Spectator / Intelligence Squared debate
Our current financial turmoil is not the fault of greedy bankers, says Dennis Sewell. In fact, the banks were bullied into lowering their lending standards by left-wing idealists intent on equal opportunities at any cost
Millions travel to Medjugorje each year but, says Simon Caldwell, the world-famous pilgrimage site may soon be exposed as a fraud
Swearing and shouting are underrated, says Giles Coren. Four-letter words can be immensely satisfying and extraordinarily effective
The failure of the $700 billion bail-out has driven her former City-boy chums to despair, says Venetia Thompson. But they must rally soon to keep the market moving
Fraser Nelson meets the shadow schools secretary and finds him bracingly radical and disarmingly polite: a recipe for success in government
Fraser Nelson says that the Tory leader must not be tempted by a ‘safety first’ strategy at his conference in Birmingham. The global financial crisis has transformed the political context and left an opening for the Conservatives to promise true radicalism and to be proudly bold
Andrew Tyrie says that root-and-branch reform of the Treasury will be needed when Brown is gone, including weekly minuted meetings. Past friendship is not enough
Amid global financial turmoil, and on the eve of Labour’s conference, Fraser Nelson and Peter Hoskin reveal the true extent of the nation’s debt — equivalent to £26,100 for each British household — and Brown’s scandalous manipulation of the Private Finance Initiative
The PM’s claim to have created three million British jobs is a grave deceit, says Fraser Nelson. Strip out immigrants from the picture, and Labour has barely dented the problem of British worklessness. Over to you, Mr Cameron
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