by Asa Bennett

As part of Labour’s attempt to use the American debate over socialized healthcare and by extension, Britain’s NHS, for political advantage, Health Secretary Andy Burnham has launched a broadside against David Cameron this morning in a Guardian article.

Nevertheless, Burnham has been engaging in a battle with the Conservatives to appear as the NHS’ protector, a politically lucrative goal since the service is attracting vitriol from across the Atlantic as “evil” by Republicans so some are trying to stand up for the British “institution”. Burnham sneers at Cameron’s “bland protestations of love” and suggests there is a gulf between the two main parties over the NHS, in this vein, he targets the Conservatives’ plans in his Guardian article like:

1. Overhauling the NHS’s management by handing over control to an independent board.

2. The scrapping by the Tories of "Labour's three flagship waiting targets”.

3. Proposing the reintroduction of local pay bargaining.

The Health Secretary dismisses the proposed independence for the NHS as the corruption of “Britain's best loved institution” into “the world's biggest quango”. All that can be said is Labour must be suffering from amnesia about its own history if it thinks that independence for a big important institution can’t be beneficial.

As for the other two points, it is bizarre that Burnham invokes Labour’s waiting list targets as if they were the standard service that the Tories would, by implication, sink below as it has been shown that the Government have not had the implied total success with hitting these targets in cutting waiting lists. Also, the “target culture” has led to an excess of bureaucracy and the NHS to jeopardize parts of their service in order to meet their expected targets.

Furthermore, introducing local pay bargaining instead of a national pay structures chimes with the Tory policy of localism and despite Burnham lauding national structures for providing “stability”, local pay bargaining would be fairer and take better account of local needs for that particular branch of the NHS.

Consequently we see that Burnham resorts to deceptive measures to tar Cameron’s political ideology as by glorifying the NHS, he attempts to portray Cameron as a villain for planning to overhaul this service. Yet the Health Secretary, who recently quipped that the NHS was second only to Everton Football Club in his mind, is rather disappointingly stifling debate about how the NHS can improve by talking about it as if it was already perfect. If that was the case, NHS controversies like the “War of Jennifer's Ear” and Rose Addis’ death should not have occurred.

Not only does Burnham fail in constructive debate about the NHS, but he falls short in damaging the Conservatives as by leaping on the story of Daniel Hannan MEP talking disparagingly about the NHS on Fox News, he has neutralised the danger for the Conservatives. After Hannan’s outburst, it appeared that the Tories were split and the story could have revolved around Conservative “in-fighting” over the NHS but Burnham’s hijacking of the story to directly attack the Conservatives over the past few days has turned it into a partisan, Labour versus Tories debate that in recent polls, has not helped the Government in any form.