By Sunny Hundal  

 

David Cameron is due to make a ‘big speech’ today in a bid to rescue Andrew Lansley and avert the car-crash that are the NHS proposals. But even his own supporters aren’t convinced by the tough-sell. Only 2% of Tories said improving the NHS would attract more support. And it gets worse.

 

 

Originally published by Liberal Conspiracy

The poll, by Lord Ashcroft, also found that on the NHS voters were found to be “very sceptical” of controversial proposals.

 

Comres yesterday had similar bad news. It found that the cornerstone of Lansley’s plans is rejected by a majority of people.

 

“The Government must rethink its plans to hand over most spending decisions in the NHS to GPs/family doctors” – Agree: 62% Disagree: 15%

 

And that figure includes 51% of Conservatives. According to the Guardian, Cameron will return to his familiar pitch today:

 

Alluding to his young son Ivan’s dependence on the NHS before his death, Cameron will return to a familiar formulation: “It’s the most important thing to my family. That’s why, over four years ago, I got up on a platform like this and said that you could sum up my priorities in just three letters, N-H-S.”

 

There are problems here for both sides.

 

For Cameron, even if people see his intentions as benign, it’s not spelled out why these proposals are needed. Consequentially, there is no appetite and people aren’t convinced the plans will improve things anyway.

 

The harder Cameron pushes to save Lansley and deflect criticism – the more any deterioration in the NHS will be tied to him.

 

For Ed Miliband, its still not clear how he plans to make political capital from this. Sure, they want NHS reforms ‘ripped up’, but the party is doing little to spell out why specific reforms are bad.

 

Worse, there seems to be no opposition research going on. It was Political Scrapbook who highlighted that Cameron’s recently appointed advisor had said the NHS would be shown “no mercy”. It wasn’t the Labour party. The party needs to sharpen up its attacks.

 

This week the health unions should also announce whether a nation-wide protest on the birth-date of the NHS (in July) will go ahead. That should offer activists a focal point nationally. But in the meantime, Labour has to ensure with every fibre of its beings that Cameron does not avert this car-crash.