The government's veneer of Cameroon compassion is now cracked beyond repair. Weeks after minister Greg Barker smiled at his US audience as he told them: "We are making cuts that Margaret Thatcher, back in the 1980s, could only have dreamed of," a leaked email has shed another chink of light on the true intentions of our new governing class: to steer democratically accountable public services into the abyss.

Appealing to fellow chairs of commissioning GP consortia, Doctor Jeremy Munday planned to write a letter to David Cameron via several newspapers with the objective of arresting the growing clamour against Andrew Lansley's health reforms. Deploying his best bedside manner, the text expresses wholehearted support for an NHS overhaul about which patients should feel comfortable.

In a twist Robert Louis Stevenson would recognise, however, the reassuring bedside manner of Doctor Munday quickly gives way to the distinctly Thatcherite strains of (former) Councillor Munday, Conservative mayor of Kensington and Chelsea.

His leaked covering note to GPs is instructive, calling for maximum flexibility and independence in the marketisation of health services:

"I feel that GP consortia, who have most to lose from the Press listening to vested interests in the rest of the medical establishment, must take some urgent action to take back the political initiative within the pause and to enable the government to proceed with the reforms with the maximum flexibility and independence for GP consortia. There is obviously some political urgency about this as the climate is getting worse daily."

Munday goes further in a 2009 piece for ConservativeHome, which shows the driver of reform is (you guessed it) small state dogma:

"Ideologically, we dramatically reduce the size and reach of the State and free our economy to respond to this second Depression."

Counselling a bill to jettison such unnecessary legislation as equality laws, he writes:

"I propose a Great Repeal Act a one-clause bill listing the repealed statutes and sections of statutes Do not worry about what will replace the repealed Acts, the State will have stopped controlling peoples lives. Freedom and personal responsibility will replace the Acts."

Is his austere freedom and personal responsibility going to look after our elderly parents? Or send our teenagers to college? Or protect disabled children?

Ravenous for cuts after 11 years of Labour rule, ideologues are now having a field day under cover provided by the economic slump. Forget the yellow, the coalition and its cheerleaders are deep Thatcherite blue.