Health Policy InsightEditor's blog Sunday 3 April 2011: Number 10 mounts The Calais Defence over the Health Bill
So, it's The Calais Defence for Number 10 (which, topically enough, is a political strategy only a mother could love).
My friend Randeep Ramesh, social affairs editor of The Guardian has picked up the Press Association's story on Downing Street's response to the latest Lansley furore over the Health And Social Care Bill.
PA reports that That Nice Mr Cameron will this week share a platform with That Nice Mister Clegg and Our Saviour And Liberator Andrew Lansley, to launch a consultation exercise and a series of listening events.
If PA have got this right, then this is a perfect example of The Calais Defence - 'this person does not understand what I am saying; therefore I must speak more loudly and slowly; and then they will understand'.
The Calais Defence is utter bollocks, of course. People are not and have not been objecting to the proposed legislation because they have failed to understand it. Many have said that its basic objectives are laudable.
No - people object because it has too many bad ideas, and is excessively risky.
They are not against the Bill because they have not understood it. Quite the opposite.
Cosmetic tweaks and a stage-managed Calais Defence listening exercise will not change that.
More to the point, without fundamental changes to the Bill, official Lib Dem party policy opposes the Bill. (The Lib Dems are, for now, the remaining main party which lets its members make its policy.)
And without fundamental changes to the Bill, the House Of Lords will kill it.
Yet fundamental changes do not seem to be on offer. Which is a shame, as I understood Liberating The NHS was all about being bottom-up.
The Bill proposes to take risks with the NHS that are stupidly dangerous. As such, it is dangerously stupid.
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