After originally deploying Sayeeda Warsi against ConservativeHome’s anti-Health Bill sentiment, David Cameron is now doing his fighting for himself. He has an article in today’s Sunday Times (£) that says, with no equivocation, ‘I am at one with Andrew Lansley, the reform programme and the legislation going through parliament’. And, aside from that, it’s also an unusually spirited explanation of just what the government plans to achieve by these reforms. Much better than Cameron’s wavering performance in PMQs on Wednesday.
For all its spirit, though, this article doesn’t come across as angry. There is a mention for ‘today’s opponents of reform,’ but nothing that could really be interpreted as a warning against the dissenting ministers on Cameron’s own side. What’s clear is that the Prime Minister doesn’t want to exacerbate Tory tensions, only face them down — and it’s understandable why. So long as this story is about some Tory ministers talking in secret, while the Bill’s supporters back it in public, then Lansley’s reforms have a better chance of survival.
But it doesn’t end there. As I said on Friday, the politics of the situation are now extremely difficult for Downing St. Next time the NHS reforms are raised in PMQs, Ed Miliband will be able to say that around a dozen Tory ministers want to kill, or at least incapacitate, the Bill; he will be able to point towards the swelling discontent among doctors and nurses; and he will be able to ask: who does support this legislation? For his part, Cameron will need a better response than those he has given in the last two weeks.
Little wonder that Tory strategists, looking at the latest poll numbers*, are concerned about the damage this could wreak upon their party. And while they appear to have decided that pressing ahead is less harmful than dropping the Bill, I still wouldn’t be surprised to see some sort of change as the political pummelling continues. Whether that would mean a new Health Secretary — as proposed in an insightful article by Paul Goodman — I don’t know. But, for a minister who has had a safety harness wrapped around him by No.10, Lansley’s position still looks strangely precarious.
*In today’s YouGov poll, 50 per cent of people reckon the Health Bill should be dropped, against 23 per cent who reckon it should stay. Some of the fieldwork was done before Friday’s blow-up, though.
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