It would be so much easier for Ed Miliband to attract headlines if he could shout in Andrew Lansley’s face. As it is, the Labour leader has had to make do with giving a speech today attacking the NHS reforms. Within the parameters of what he might say, it’s an okay effort. The predictable lines about ‘creeping privatisation’ are leavened by the admission that ‘the question is not reform or no reform. It is what type of reform.’ And he adds, by way of a cross-party sweetener, that he would ‘get round the table’ with David Cameron to discuss ‘the future of the NHS’.
But the substance of the speech, rather than its rhetoric, is a little more questionable. There is, for instance, a heavy emphasis on what was one of the main policy ideas of Gordon Brown’s terminal premiership: legally-binding ‘guarantees’ for public service users.
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