Depleted Urine

The day on which Sir John Chilcot exonerated the Reverend Blair, at least in the eyes of the Reverend Blair and his chum Jesus, was always going to be significant in the Conservative Party mainly as an opportunity to bury bad news. As usual, by leaping at the chance with his hob-nailed mouth Jeremy C Hunt has managed the remarkable coup de merde of making himself look even more toxically depleted than he did before. Hunt has announced that he intends to impose a contract on NHS staff, evidently in blissful ignorance of the fact that imposing an agreement makes about as much sense as warring for peace. Hunt has brought matters to this pass by using dodgy statistics while accusing his enemies of bad faith, almost as subtly as did the Reverend Blair during the Posturing Prelude to the onset of the Iraq crusade. Best of all, Hunt claims to be driving staff out of the NHS in order to save the NHS: a peace plan lifted more or less whole from the Bush-Blair strategy of de-Ba'athificatory purges which contributed so much to the peace, freedom and democracy of Iraq's post-liberation environment. Of course, it is unlikely that the casualties of Hunt's war on public health will achieve quite the same levels of collateral damage as the Iraq crusade; at least, not without a considerable stroke of luck. Nevertheless, it does take a very special kind of Stupid Party to try burying bad news by becoming it.