[Image: The Skwawkbox blog.]

Now they feel – wrongly, I think – that the ‘plan which must not be named’ can come out of the closet. But they won’t just announce it as government policy all in one go. The idea will be trailed, tested, toes dipped in the water – all with the aim of gradually introducing it into mainstream thought.

And so it starts – the beginning of the end-game, when the Tories finally put into words what they’ve intended all along. All couched in plausible deniability, of course.

Yesterday, in the House of Commons, Conservative MP Sir Edward Leigh was the person designated to chip the first breach in the wall:

As we are unlikely to reach my question on the Order Paper, perhaps the Minister could now direct his attention to the east midlands where we have problems with A&E, particularly for people in rural areas. For those of us who rely completely on the NHS, this is obviously a matter of vital concern. I just wonder whether we should not have an honest debate about this and recognise that we have an ageing population. Our A&E times are stressed and we may have to either tax people more or even think the unthinkable and charge people for—[Interruption.] See, it is unthinkable, but we have to concentrate on the essentials. Let us have an honest debate about the finances of the NHS.

Of course, ‘honest debate about the finances of the NHS’ is the last thing the Tories want. They’ve spent too much time and assiduous effort constructing and maintaining the fallacy that they’ve increased NHS funding and have provided the ‘money the NHS asked for’ – defending it even when officially rebuked by the UK Statistics Authority and the Commons Health Committee.

Source: Endgame: Tories bring NHS ‘unthinkable’ out of hiding | The SKWAWKBOX

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