But, went the old narrative, it is Labour that is the party of the NHS. It is Labour that created it in the first place, against opposition from the BMA and the Tory Party. It is Labour that, the last time it was in office, nearly trebled health spending.
So, given that it is the very people Labour claim to represent and defend – those who are not affluent enough to be able to afford their own private health cover – who are likely to suffer more from the widely acknowledged drop in standards at weekends, surely it is Labour who are at the vanguard of this brave new all-week NHS?
No, not really.
Ever since Cameron announced his initiative, the reaction from the Opposition has been somewhere between muted and unenthusiastic, though stopping carefully short of hostile. The party’s focus has been on supporting NHS staff whose terms of employment may (but may not) be adversely affected.
From a party founded and funded by the trade unions, that’s hardly a surprise. Nevertheless, despite the political benefit that might have accrued from a wholehearted and unqualified support for Cameron’s vision (if not for the detail of that vision), Labour equivocated.
On the Daily Politics show yesterday, a debate over the strike by junior doctors took place between Tory backbench MP Mims Davies and Richard Burgon, the Shadow Minister for the City (no, me neither). When asked by presenter Jo Coburn if Labour actually supported moves to a seven-day NHS, Burgon refused to answer. “An agreement should be reached between the junior doctors and the government,” he announced to a dazzled nation. He may well have added that it was better, on balance, not to be cruel to puppy dogs, but by then I’d switched over, having had more than my fill of honest, straight talking politics for one day.
Why the reticence? Does anyone truly believe that Bevan would have cavilled at such a proposal? Of course not. He, perhaps more than anyone, would have recognised the grotesque inequity of a system that shortened the odds against the working man or woman’s survival based on something as arbitrary as timing.
And what does it say about a party so proud of its historic legacy that after only a few short years in opposition, it fears to support an imaginative, bold reform for fear of being seen on the same side of a Conservative Prime Minister? Does it imagine that the public who use and pay for the NHS will respond to such prevarication with gratitude?
Perhaps Labour’s constant shaking of its head and fretting about this will have the desired effect – to undermine the public’s desire for, or even understanding of, the necessity of this change. After all, the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s grasp of negotiation techniques seems to be less sure than Jeremy Clarkson’s handle on the tenets of feminism. The junior doctors have a genuine case and voters love doctors, especially the young good-looking ones, so better to be seen on their side, right?
If so, job done. But what a calamity for the party of the NHS that it risks leaving the field clear for the party that opposed its very creation to be cast as the only one with a vision for reform.
Source: http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/579309/s/4ccd933f/sc/6/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cnews0Cpolitics0Clabour0C120A947370CLabour0Eis0Ebetraying0Epatients0Eby0Esiding0Ewith0Estriking0Ejunior0Edoctors0Bhtml/story01.htm