Does the coalition know what it’s doing?

On the morning of the March for the Alternative, a friend alerted me to the brilliantly angry Andrew Lansley rap (chorus: “the NHS is not for sale you grey-haired manky tosser”). Admittedly not the most sophisticated political polemic, but as agit-pop goes, pretty effective.

Andrew Lansley’s health reforms are fast become a deep embarrassment to the government. The Liberal Democrats hate them. The country is suspicious. Nobody quite understands how David Cameron took his eye so spectacularly off the ball on this one and now he is left with a policy nobody wants.

I have always been mystified that the coalition decided to reform and cut at the same time. While there may be a logic to getting potentially unpopular legislation through in the first years of a new government, this only makes sense if you are convinced by the reforms.