Quote of the day 5th June 2015

"Take the hugely important issue of the health service. Labour still insists that it sees a government set on privatising the NHS. But they are simply wrong. Jeremy Hunt is essentially managing what he has inherited. He is not making the mistakes that his predecessor, Andrew Lansley, made. But that’s about all. There is no radical reform plan from the government. The NHS will still be very recognisably there in 2020 at the next election, better in some ways, worse in others, but still generally venerated."

"It might be better if all of us started from the assumption that Cameron means what he says, rather than meaning something else, let alone the very opposite. Cameron’s one-nation talk may be a bit banal, but it is the non-Thatcherite language with which he is most comfortable. When he says he wants the economy to work for everyone, or to bring people together, cut him some slack and allow that he means it. On balance that’s good not bad. Get over it."

(Martin Kettle, writing in the Guardian, tells the left "Let's have a reality check: the Tories aren't all wicked and wrong.")

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