“I am proud to be the first British Asian Prime Minister, but you know what…I’m even prouder that it’s just not a big deal.”
If you’re thinking the NHS cannot possibly appropriate any more of the country’s time, energy, resources and money, the Institute for Fiscal Studies warns otherwise.
It would be unfair to accuse Davey, the Lib Dem leader, of being dull: that is part of his task as he works out his election manifesto.
The Government needs to resist the clamour from ideological libertarians and give people the tools they need to lead healthy lives and address the culture of the nation towards food, activity, and looking after yourself, as they do in other healthier countries.
The second part of our series on reducing demand for government, in which we set out a programme for change – focused on families, civil society and government.
Public safety is the right basis for regulation, public outrage is not. Yet time and again, politicians have brought in new laws tailored to the magnitude of the outcry, not the facts of the crime.
Immigrants, too, get old. Assuming standards of medical care remain, or improve as the science advances, enormous movements of migrants would be constantly required just in order to pay the bills of earlier waves.
At the moment the Government takes the blame as the ultimate boss, whilst lacking many of the powers to put things right owing to the doctrine of independence.
Too often, British policy ends up in thrall to vested interests, who peddle a narrative that any deviation from the status quo is either reckless or impossible.
The Cameron Government showed that benefits cuts are acceptable, even popular, when they are perceived as fair.
Bevan’s cry that the Tories want to demolish the NHS was not heard on Friday when new private diagnostic centres were announced.
In the end, I’m with Nigel Lawson: these alternatives would produce marginal gains at best, and at worst decades of distraction from the real path back to a stronger health service.
The goalposts cannot be moved. We have a moral, legal, and economic duty to cut our emissions by 68 per cent of 1990 levels by 2030 and reach Net Zero by 2050.