Another day, another opportunity for the prime minister to single out Ed Miliband’s supposed pledge to ‘weaponise’ the NHS as an election issue.
Set aside any questions of why, if the Conservatives hold the NHS so dear, David Cameron has not made the health service one of his key election campaign themes.
And just forget the fact that, according to his biographer Janan Ganesh, the concept of ‘weaponising’ election issues, was minted by chancellor George Osborne and is used by prominent Tory bloggers.
Whether Miliband actually said it or not, this daily repetition makes Cameron appear not just increasingly shrill, but as if this is the only thing he has to say on the nation’s healthcare system. Why should this not be the subject of contested political debate?
(Or, as the Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow put it: ‘Never take a politician seriously when they complain about someone politicising an issue. It’s like a sportsman complaining about his opponent being too competitive.’)
More fundamentally, however, this is not just about Labour’s right to talk about the NHS – and the threat the Tories pose to its future. Or the fact that we want to make it a key election issue, precisely because it is vital to millions of people who use and work in the NHS every day.
Labour should be on the offensive here not simply because of the essential importance of the NHS but because there is a fundamental question of political trust at stake.
Everyone remembers ‘those’ 2010 election posters. A photo of smooth-skinned Cameron smoothly promising to ‘cut the deficit, not the NHS’.
Moreover, the then leader of the opposition had consistently made clear that he would not reorganise the NHS. As far back as 2006, in his party conference speech Cameron said: ‘So I make this commitment to the NHS and all who work in it. No more pointless reorganisations.’
Then, in a speech to the Royal College of Pathologists in 2009, he promised that ‘with the Conservatives there will be no more of the tiresome, meddlesome, top-down re-structures that have dominated the last decade of the NHS’.
And what did Cameron’s government do as soon as it got in? Plan, legislate for and implement a huge NHS reorganisation, which touched pretty much all of the service in one way or another. Voters must be reminded that it was completely contrary to what was promised by the Tories at the election.
It is the same with promising not to put VAT up, backing Sure Start and pledging not to scrap educational maintenance allowance.
Before anyone quotes Keynes (‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?), let us bear in mind that these were all commitments made and broken in 2010 – within the space of a few weeks or months.
It is this issue of political trust that Labour should be ‘weaponising’. Not simply the threat to the NHS, but the fact that the Tories broke pledges without so much as a by-your-leave, let alone an acknowledgment, apology or explanation (even Nick Clegg apologised for his heinous U-turn).
While this is a partisan point, it speaks directly to the corrosion of trust in politics and politicians and it is an argument we must not hesitate to make.
If we are happy to criticise parts of our own record in government, we cannot fail to call the Tories out on this cavalier approach to making and breaking promises.
Failure to do so would itself be a betrayal of the public’s trust.
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Mike Katz is a member of Progress. He tweets @MikeKatz
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