Labour unsure about health policy its own councils support

The announcement today that Greater Manchester will receive full control of health spending – worth £6bn – has left Labour in a rather interesting position. On the one hand, it is easy for Andy Burnham to say that this sounds ‘like yet another NHS reorganisation’. But on the other, Greater Manchester includes a number of Labour councils who appear pretty happy to sign up to the provisional deal. Indeed, one of those councils is Wigan, which covers Burnham’s own constituency.

Now one of the reasons that spending has been devolved to this area is that councils in Greater Manchester are keen, forward-looking and ambitious. George Osborne has long been a big fan of Manchester Council, and the Labour-run authority is savvy enough to work with any politician who’ll give it the powers it wants.

But it is still a little awkward that these Labour authorities seem to be doing so much business with a Tory-led government while their national party criticises the plans and says they amount to the wrong sort of health reform.