The right wing does the NHS

I realise that Douglas Murray, associate director of the Henry Jackson Society and polemic Spectator columnist, may have ideological even political reasons to bemoan the “perils of a socialised [healthcare] system”. That’s hardly going to come as a shock. What is surprising is that such an elevated journalist as he is willing to let so many innacuracies stand in this careless denigration of the health service. But it’s a useful exercise – it proves that certain stripes within the right have set out to manipulate the truth about the NHS for ideological means. And why they’re wrong. (Incidentally my own writing on medical politics appears mainily on the New Statesman). Murray believes that “George Osborne refuses to seek savings in [the NHS] budget and promised an unbudgeted further £9 billion”. Perhaps he is not aware of the fact that the Simon Stevens’ plan to which he (presumably) refers, and to which the government is committed, also calls for £22bn worth of cuts as a quid-pro-quo? Much of the NHS has already been cut, drastically in fact. Not least Public Health -a fact, surely, he should be happy about. After all, most of his piece is taken up by a loathing for the role of the state in tying to educate the public about the perils of obesity, smoking and other killers, which he considers paternalistic sermonising. Murray says that the NHS is the “only untouchable force in the state”. Perhaps he is not aware of the implications of the Health and Social […]