Talk Elections

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/mar/20/nhs-reform-bill-health-passes?newsfeed=true

And thus begins the great leap backwards...

This government is beyond disgusting. I can't describe how angry the Liberals and the Conservatives make me.

Gained a new found respect for Andy Burnham for his speech in the Commons today.

*facepalm*
The Lib Dems may as well merge with the Tories.
At this rate you'll have America's health care..... my condolences.

The LibDems are a bigger joke than UKIP.

Cameron and Clegg are basically David Owen and David Steel from Spitting Image

Oh, Labour have pledged to repeal the bill should they win the next election, if it matters to anyone.

They also pledged to renationalize the railways if they won the 1997 election. Their promises aren't worth the paper they're written on, and I say that as a Labour member.

My greatest condolences.

Doesn't affect me. Which will of course will allow comparisons between the two systems to be made in order to judge it's success.

Of course, it helps my party a great deal that Labour offer no effective opposition to anything anymore.

Just looking at the new structure, you can tell this is a dumb idea.

It's more complicated than the NHS is now.

And slightly deviating from the subject, but i'm assuming we have PMQs before Gideon's budget statement tomorrow, right?

That's the most depressing thing. I wouldn't mind the Tories having their day out, privatising everything in sight etc if I thought it'd ever get reversed. I seen an interview yesterday where Miliband was asked about what he thought regarding the proposals for the roads, and he said "he'd have to look at the details", and didn't think it was the best thing for the moment whilst families are squeezed or some such, begging the question: are they to be simply opposed (in the most milquetoast fashion possible) under these bleak conditions?

There's more support for nationalising supermarkets than there is for privatising the NHS the last time I looked, and yet here we find ourselves.

Elective dictatorship. Public opinion only matters in a moral context when parliament is sovereign.

This whole situation raises important questions about our democracy. No one voted for this and it was not part of the so-called Coalition Agreement. It cannot be seriously argued that this is emergency legislation of some kind either (even allowing for an extremely generous definition of 'emergency') as the NHS is not in crisis. So...?

Beyond that - and as in all things this government does - this seems mostly a question of picking up where the Major government left off. You also have to wonder what the LibDems think they're doing, because there's really no way this could ever reflect well on them...

I'm not sure that the Lib Dems collectively think anything at the moment...

The Lib Dem leadership is, I think, doing this because most of them actually agree with what Lansley wanted to do.  They seem to have a bizarre desire to turn the Lib Dems into our very own FDP, which might suggest that they haven't looked at many German opinion polls recently.  (And I suspect most German FDP supporters would be Tories in the UK anyway.)

A large part of the Lib Dem rank and file is clearly opposed to the bill and has twice produced conference votes against it.  One thing this has exposed is that the Lib Dems' claim to have more democratic decision making processes than the other parties is dubious.

That leaves the parliamentarians.  Some of them will be in the leadership's camp anyway, but certainly not all of them, so the mystery for me is why the rebellions have been so small.  I suppose the likes of Farron and Hughes, who are supposedly standard bearers for the left, have positions which make it hard for them to rebel, but in that case they ought to have considered resigning them.

That Orange Book has murdered the Liberal Democrats. And you're right, most of them probably do want to be like FDP and probably do agree with the Conservatives - no one's physically dragged them down the Aye lobby, after all. That, or they just love their ministerial limos too much.

And if the Liberals actually are holding the Tories back like they say they are, i'd hate to imagine what a majority Tory government'd be like. Bloody hell.

So, how far do these reforms actually go? Do they substantially alter the essence of the NHS?

I think we can safely call them the most radical reforms since its inception.

What's bizarre is one of the Liberals, even the most right-wing neoliberal sort, raison d'etre is pushing the argument for coalitions and yet have done wonders in utterly discrediting the notion (the idea a majority Tory government wouldn't be doing much the same is fanciful).  

I suppose since we're comparing FDP, the small rump they'll be reduced to could exist as a natural partner to the Tories. Are there many parts of Germany which are solely CDU-FDP battlegrounds? As that's the case at the moment in much of the South of England - it's difficult to believe they're that right-wing down there, but then wonders never cease.  

From what I know about this bill, especially in its watered-down form, it doesn't really do anything meaningful at all, which makes the hysterical reactions to it somewhat amusing.

The Lib Dems are suffering a case of coalitionitis (junior partner always gets hammered in the polls), so the Tories can get them to vote for anything by threatening to make it a confidence vote.

A lolbertarian would say that.

The Tories are utterly reliant on the Liberals for anything passing, so it's the Liberals themselves who've opted to slavishly allow everything, rather than the situation. If they'd caused the government to fall over saving the NHS from the Tories forcing a policy on them which they neither campaigned on or had as part of their coalition agreement, they'd hardly be punished for it!

I doubt than FDP-CDU battlegrounds exists. The nature of the German electoral system makes than parties aren't trying to build themselves in specific areas, but are trying to get votes everywhere.

If some areas like that exists, I would search in Baden-Württemberg, which was ruled by FDP in the 40's-50's.

The (apparent) risk register's (apparently) been leaked:
http://origin.library.constantcontact.com/download/get/file/1102665899193-912/Health-Bill-Transition-Risk-Register-NC-15-Oct-10-Dept-Bd-Version-v1.pdf

Probably the worst week this government's had so far, surely.

Cheap but hilarious:

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Yay, B3ta.

:D That's great.

Nice find, Al!

I was amazed when my dad seemed optimistic about the coalition after the election. He lived through the Thatcher years and that's where the family hatred of the Tories began - yet he thought the Lib Dems would balance them out.

I honestly think they've given up all hope of survival by this point.

Anyone who looked at what Clegg and Cameron were like with eachother even during the campaign could see all this sucking up coming from a mile away. Why they never went for confidence-and-supply, i'll never know, but the Liberals will have their poorest result since '79 in 2015, probably even 1970 anyway.

They deserve it, whole-heartedly.

I can see 2015 being a major realigning election.

Naturally.

Win or lose, the left will be united to an extent that it hasn't been since the gang of 4.

Hoping this will be another 1945!

A highly-respected incumbent against an underestimated underdog.

Well. Cameron isn't highly respected anymore. TEN POINT LEAD. I still can't believe how unbelievably incompetent the budget was.

Probably "over estimated" is a better choice of words.

This has been the worst week for the Tories in a long time. I just hope Labour don't lose this momentum, they've got a massive opportunity on their hands. There's been a change of narrative on the Tory's position, but not so much Labour's.

They need to take a "Are you better off than you were two years ago?" route, because it'd be difficult for many people to say yes to that question.