Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The NHS bus pledge could have a sting in the tail for the Tories

Today’s newspapers have managed to catch up with our cover story from last month: Theresa May has agreed to a massive cash splurge on the NHS. Rather than wait until the spending review to announce this, there will be a political stunt presenting the cash as a 70th birthday gift to the health service. But it is instructive nonetheless: it underlines how this is not a serious assessment of the health service’s needs but a politically motivated gesture.

Once it would have been opposed by the fiscal hawks in the Tory party but now these people tend to be keener the Brexit bus pledge of £350m a week for the NHS being honoured – which, by the time of the next election, it will be.

The biggest question is how to fund this. Philip Hammond is dead against this and was briefing (at the time of our cover story) that it was not true and that nothing had been decided.

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