Circumstances Have Changed

When it comes to government policy, of course, context counts for a great deal. Kidnap, torture, bombing of civilians and industrial-scale robbery are criminal, mistaken or meritorious depending almost entirely on whether or not they are carried out by one's own co-religionists. A similar logic applies in smaller matters, as the New Labour spiv Randy Burnham demonstrated today. Privatisation of the NHS, which was accelerated with great enthusiasm by the ugly right-wing government in which Randy served, has become simply awful these days because it is now being accelerated with equal enthusiasm by an ugly right-wing government in which Randy does not serve. Randy admitted that Labour went a bit far in stealing services from the taxpayer and handing them to private companies, but he hastened to add that he had nothing against private companies. Instead, Randy is against "the market in the NHS", viz. the involvement of private companies. Clearly, Randy is going to be more than a match for his Conservative straight man, Jeremy C Hunt, whose government has unleashed a massive upheaval on the NHS after promising not to do so, and who today extruded a spokesbeing to criticise Labour for a "promise of massive upheaval in the system again".