News from the New Party

Oooooh!

Andrew Lansley has announced that the Conservatives intend to increase health spending by £28 billion (an extra 2% of GDP).  This enormous sum of money is some way beyond what even the Government has planned.  It is to be hoped that the absurd profligacy is met with the lack of enthusiasm it richly deserves.

If there is one idea that Gordon Brown has tested to destruction in the past eleven years, it is that throwing vast amounts of money at the NHS will result in significant improvement.  Nobody has thrown so much money at the health service to so little effect.  If cash was what was needed to fix the NHS then nobody has tried harder than our present prime minister.  It is therefore profoundly disappointing that the Tories, far from having learned the lessons of the past few years, are actually planning to play the same pointless game - rather like joining a competition to build the largest bonfire of twenty pound notes.

Worse still, it seems that this additional spending will be provided within an overall framework of reduced government spending overall.  Not that reduced government spending is a bad thing, but the swingeing cuts necessary to fund this lunatic scheme will cause horrendous difficulties elsewhere in government.  Unfortunately Mr Lansley won't tell us exactly where - apparently it's not his job to decide.  So much for joined up thinking from the official Opposition. 

The Conservatives presumably calculate that by attempting to waste even more money than Gordon Brown has managed to do they will demonstrate to voters their commitment to a National Health Service which is still the object of national idolatry in spite of its manifest faults.  It would be nice to think that a forward looking party seeking to change the country for the better could see a bit further than the end of its own nose - but the Conservative Party is still not fitting the bill.