Will Lansley sink the Tories?

You couldn’t make it up. Andrew Lansley is ‘masterminding’ transforming the NHS. The only ‘real’ job the incompetent Lansley had before becoming a politician was at the DTI – the Department for Total Incompetence. Helping this idiot with his great plan are management consultants like McKinsey and KPMG, who were responsible for much of the waste of over £1 trillion under New Labour. And they’re going for what we call a ‘big bang’ change – rather than testing their ideas in a few areas, learning from these pilots and then rolling them out across the country – they’re imposing massive change from the top on all the country at the same time. Big bang change programmes are always disasters, but they earn the management consultants much more money than a more gradual approach.

Only a few things are certain. McKinsey and KPMG will pocket tens or even hundreds of millions that should have been spent on patient care; the changes will cause chaos and cost billions; and the whole thing will end in tears while Liar David Cameron’s spin doctors will claim it has been a massive success. And with people seeing their hospitals closing, A&E services cut and appalling stories of unnecessary deaths from poor care, the Tories will lose millions of votes. One of Lansley’s MP colleagues confided in me that Lansley was a blithering idiot – maybe Lansley, more than anyone else, will be responsible for the Tories losing the next election.