Hannan: yes, I'm shaping the Tory manifesto

"Does that include Hannan's thoughts on the NHS?"

I certainly hope so. He certainly smashes the Left's lies on health care.

At the moment, government-provided health care is a monopoly product paid for by the taxpayer.

Consumers might be able to "choose" whether they want mediocre service -- at least at first -- but every single one of us will be forced to buy it, under penalty of prison for tax evasion.

It's like having a new cable TV plan with a "yes" box, but no "no" box.

In a truly free world NHS Ltd wouldn't stay in business. Other companies would scream from the rooftops about their competitor's shoddy business practices, and customers would leave in droves. If only customers would be given a real choice! We don't because of excessive government regulation.

The only real way to protect patients, is to give them the power to say, "Stuff you, I'm taking my business elsewhere."

Wonderful. So having a life threatening disease is like wanting cable TV?

Health care is is a 'product' only for elective surgery and minor matters. Your whole consumer model fails at this basic level of rational choice. We don't get to choose our diseases.

That's why patients can never be pure customers in a market sense, and in many many cases don't have the power, time or wish 'take their business elsewhere'. In this regard, Primary Healthcare is a public service, like policing, defence, administration, and basic infrastructure. Every civilised country recognises that, and even the dysfunctional US has Medicaid and Medicare.

So please, apply your economic models of monopoly in more appropriate areas. There's a lot to be done to meet burgeoning clinical needs and make the NHS more patient focused and efficient. But trite and ill thought out free market dogma doesn't help anyone with anything.

Well put, Peter.

This comment speaks for itself.

It's so self-evidently silly that I need say nothing more.

Exactly. The rational choice model of 'consumerism' fails in healthcare on many fronts: why, because while you might rationally choose which car or fridge you can afford according to your needs and ability to pay, you can't choose whether to have a cheap in grown toenail, or years of chemo, surgery and radiotherapy for cancer.

Sounds like a tory has invaded a labour website. Firstly, the NHS is not a product. It is a service. The people of thr UK are not consumers when it coms to the health service. The NHS isn't there to 'stay in business', as it is not in business. We live in a democracy, if we lived in a truly free world there would be no laws. People who have the means already go private. The NHS was put in place for people who can't afford private care or health insurance. Andrew I suggest you go private in future and leave the NHS to the population who really need and deserve it.

Yet another Labourlist contributor making assumptions about peoples political leanings. I have had the right to vote since 1986 and have never voted Tory on any occasion. Hardly a staunch Thatherite am I?

"Firstly, the NHS is not a product. It is a service"

[yawn] Well then replace where I've inserted "product" with "service". A service is a kind of product.

"The people of thr UK are not consumers when it coms to the health service. "

Well then what are they if they not consumers? Clients? Customers? End users? Patrons? Vendees? They are using this service that makes them consumers, yes?

"Andrew I suggest you go private in future and leave the NHS to the population who really need and deserve it."

That would suit me down to the ground if I wasn't coerced into subsidizing the likes of you.

Dan Hannan has been writing his blog for years now. He has written a book called "the Plan" which you can buy on Amazon for a few quid - it is excellent and all about democratic reform. Although he is an MEP, he is excellent, too, on the EU. Before you mention that he hates Europe, I want to remind you that he is fluent in French and Spanish and good in German.
But - hey! - I'm a Tory Troll!
So, of course, like Trotsky, Hannan is the ANTI CHRIST, he is also, no doubt, Gay (like Mr Purnell) greedy (like Sir Richard Dannatt) and, worst of all, more popular than the Prime Minister (like Mo Molam).
Luckily for him, he doesn't know too much about Iraq (like Dr David Kelly).

So what if "hannan is shaping the tory manifesto", when it's published before the next GE it can be reviewed and the voters can decide if they like it or not, unless it contains many lies like the last Labour manifesto!

Alex, have you actually read The Plan?

You should do so.

Judging by the immense support Hannan received by Tory Bloggers and the immense lack shown to Dave, I think Hannan is leading the Tory party, at least in spirit. You can't blame the Tories though they want a leader who actually shares and stands by thier beliefs, not a watered down Blair worshipping toady like Cameron. Should the Tories win the General Election David Cameron will have a very difficult time trying in vain to keep the reins on his "eccentric" party and like John Major will be kicked into submission by treachery and rebellion...or be left having to make poor excuses for thier ill conceived and badly thought out policies at a time of recession.

To be fair to Cameron I think he is between a rock and a hard place at the moment and if the Tories aren't careful I can see them plucking defeat from the jaws of victory.

I think the likes of some in the Tory party (and I would include Hannan in that list) have assumed they are going to win next May and the ego's are now starting to spread somewhat.

How true is what Hannan is saying or is it just his ego taking flight after his (I have to say impressive) speach against Brown?

Personally I prefer Cameron's centre ground Tory to the right wingers, in the same way I can't stand left wingers - to my mind most extremists are in it for themselves.

My view on Cameron had gone up after the expenses issue as I felt he was more of a leader than Brown over it. Brown just seemed to dither and then copy Cameron and then got the likes of Harman to say "oh we thought of it first but never mentioned it".

I'd like to see Cameron ditch the rabid right wingers and take the centre ground as I think he'll then take the GE next May as I trust Cameron to a degree however I have no trust of faith in Brown.

Ralph,

You can't judge anything by the levels of support you have seen - because you have no idea what the editors have chosen to hide from you.

Alex,

This anti Hannan thing is getting ridiculous.

It is time that LabourList did the subject justice and took each policy area in turn from "The Plan" and 'fisked' it alongside Labour's "Building Britain's Future".

Come on. Put your money where your mouth is. Examine it properly. Since you raise the NHS - then let's start with Chapter 6 of The Plan - "Putting Patients In Control".

Why fisk 'The Plan'? It would require being constructive and tackling opposition on a matter of policy rather than personalities.

I'd love to see a fisking of 'The Plan', I really would.

Dan Hannan is clearly mentally ill. The little guy's language is almost as risible as his personality. How can anyone who uses words like "miffed" and "wallah" in the twenty first century expect to be taken seriously?

I almost feel sorry for David Cameron who, after spending years trying to give the heartless Tories a thin veneer of illusory decency and compassion, now stands by helplessly as his Party begins to implode like a deflating balloon at the hands of an idiot like Hannan.

Oh well.

This is the proof that one small insignificant prick can burst any bubble!

So it is alright to call someone metally ill just because they use old words? But I assume you think it is wrong for the ranters on Guido to call Gordon Brown 'bonkers' and to assert he is mad or autistic.

One thing you can not deny about Hannan is his command of the use of English. If Labour had frontbenchers as eloquant as him then you'd be lionising them, even if they drifted off the party line from time to time.

Dan Hannan isn't even thirty eight years old and yet uses words in casual speech that date back to the days of the British Raj in India! He is clearly a poseur of the first rank who deliberately employs archaisms for effect within his own political Party, most of whose members mentally, emotionally and politically (if not physically) hark back to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries... or... well... this diminutive Lilliputian is deluded in respect to his own meagre abilities and pixelated in respect to his plagiarised ideas!

"The Plan"

*guffaw*

Corked wine in new bottles; nothing original there folks.

Personally I would not advise anyone to "lionise" any politician, whatever his or her political persuasion, lest Dan Hannan and his hunting wallahs be tempted to follow their spoor, cannily stalking and pursuing them, before attempting to bag them with a Remington rifle from the back of an elephant while nattily apparelled in puttees and topees.

God save Queen Victoria!

Hannan at the Tory conference will be a remarkable moment. I would like to wish him well....and yes one can feel for dave. He has given us his all. Unsure what he will do next.

What more can I add. You've summed it up perfectly. The fact that so many Tories on this site push 'The Plan' like they were Jehovah's Witnesses pushing 'The Tower' only makes it more extraordinary.

Oh. I can add one more word. Dan Hannan on Iceland

In the ten years that I have been travelling to Iceland, I have watched an economic miracle unfold there ... Today, Icelanders are absolutely rolling in it. A people two generations away from subsistence farming have become international tycoons.... Icelanders understand that there is a connection between living in an independent state and living independently from the state. They have no more desire to submit to international than to national regulation. That attitude has made them the happiest, freest and wealthiest people on earth.

Watchout Singapore. And be forewarned Britain.

Since Hannan has been proven to be wrong about almost everything he says, all have to do to get valid predictive foresight into the future is to reverse every word that Hannan says as if he were some kind of anti-prophet!

Thus Hannan's loquacious attack on Gordon Brown must be reinterpreted as an intimation that Brown and the Labour Party will storm to victory in the next general election rather than the opposite as Danny-boy would have it!

And there I was thinking that this peculiar little chap was good for nothing!

singapore has peaked. Though it will get a lift as the east rises. I will be watching it's progress with interest. Wonder what it will learn from the demise of the country that it like to model itself on. see man-in-the-news. saturday FT.

Have you read "The Plan"? No, thought not.

I have and I read Hannan's thoughts on current Tory policy-making too - he has a point.

I suggest you do read it because Brown will be embellishing bits of it for Labour's manifesto too.

Do we know what Hannan's thoughts on the NHS are other than that he wouldn't suggest using it as an exemplar for the United States, which seems to chime with the US President's opinion too.

I suspect that you should be making more of Cameron's cuddly anodyne conservatism rather than highlighting Hannan's radicalism which, coming after the managerial years of vision-free New Labour, seems quite attractive and refreshing.

Have a look at some of the other articles on the subject on this site where some people have posted sections from his book. Basically Hannan wants to allow everyone to have access to the NI that they pay and then use this to pay for their health care. He clearly cannot add up since the total NI receipts do not cover the total bill for the NHS *and* your NI contributions give you an entitlement to the state pension and unemployment benefits. From the excerpts posted it is not clear where Hannan thinks the extra money will come from for the short fall between the total NI receipts and total cost of the NHS. Nor has anyone said how Hannan will pay for the pension or unemployment benefits. Nor what Hannan says the NHS will survive on while people who do not need healthcare have not spent the money in their personal account. Nor is it clear what someone with a huge "personal account" (ie they pay a lot of NI contributions) will do with the money.

Basically Hannan does not understand how insurance works, nor understand the concept of spreading risk.

If Cameron wants to adopt policies that cannot work, then good luck to him, because it would be that much easier to persuade the public not to vote for him.

I'm no Hannanite - quite the reverse. But from your text...

"He clearly cannot add up since the total NI receipts do not cover the total bill for the NHS *and* your NI contributions give you an entitlement to the state pension and unemployment benefits."

...it's also a reasonable observation to say that our Government cannot add up, and indeed to observe that this basic failure of mathematics has been going on for many years. Basically, unless we increase the amount of revenue from general taxation and NI, this country is headed for ruination. I'd prefer that we all pay more now to maintain existing benefits while not going bust - the Tories would prefer I think that we all pay the same or less, but get less and don't go bust. The difference between my position and the Tories is not the financial stability of the country - we both want that - but that millions of us receive a reasonable pension and medical care to allow us to enjoy our retirement to a reasonable natural age. And for that vision, I am prepared to pay more now and forego my flatscreen TV.

So you agree with me that the idea of giving everyone a "personal account" which contains their NI contributions is a silly idea and cannot work? If so, then please say so and we can get away from this idea that Hannan has any ideas that have any chance of working.

As to the rest of it, this idea of "austerity years" is a dangerous one, and we should avoid thinking about it. Remember that a big chunk of the debt is in preferrential shares uin the big banks, and that the government has said that they are not in favour of nationalisation. That is, within the next decade, the government will sell off those shares. The likelihood is that the government will make a profit on those sales (which will offset the interest payments the government has made on that part of the debt).

I think we really must split up the national debt into two components - the part that is simply a loan to the banks and *will* be repaid, and the other one which is not asset backed. It is only the second one that we should give our attention to.

It has to be said that the last time we have "austerity years" the national debt was some five times greater (in real terms) and we had a country devastated by war with huge reconstruction projects to pay for in addition to the war debts! Contrast the situation we have now where we have a country with new infrastructure (unlike the Thatcher/Major years, in the last decade there has been maintenance and new investment in motorways, railways, hospitals and schools) and (in real terms) a proportionally far smaller debt.

Insurers only accept premiums from clients who they calculate will be unlikely to make any kind of a claim; insurance companies have no interest in offering cover to people that they know will definitely be claiming against their policies at any time in the foreseeable future.

The insurance scheme posited by Hannan would fail all manner of categories of citizens, e.g., the elderly and chronically ill, who require ongoing treatment, nursing and care possibly for many decades. Consider how impossible it would be for anyone on average wages to pay enough national insurance to fund procedures as complicated, for example, as a heart transplant coupled with all subsequent nursing, aftercare and medley of anti-infection and anti-rejection drugs that will be needed to maintain their health in the future?

(Ever heard of anybody having a kidney or liver transplant funded open-endedly by BUPA or Clerical Medical?)

I am amazed that anyone give any credence to Hannan's regurgitations of very, very old high Tory ideas dating back well beyond the Thatcher era; poor old Patrick Mitford et al used to bang on endlessly about such things during Maggie's glory days. As far as I can see Dan Hannan has yet to have one single original innovative idea.

Does that include Hannan's thoughts on the NHS?

Well the Tory health policy is on their web site, but it is a bit policy free. They like Darzi, they like Foundation Trusts. And they will "ring fence" to current funding. It all sounds like they are saying "we will do the same as New Labour". The two new ideas are the NHS Board, which is centralising (ie against the idea of Foundation Trusts) and the unworkable idea of "value based pricing" for drugs. Their other "ideas" are either minor or are just Labour's ideas renamed. If you discount "value based pricing" (since it is unworkable - no drug company will accept the UK government telling them what the prices they should charge - it means any new government will drop it pretty quickly), that only leaves the NHS Board. At best this could be benign (just a quango, like all quangos, ie jobs for the boys). So, on the surface Hannan's influence cannot be seen in those plans.

However, the centralising effect of the NHS Board means that Cameron does have the power to change the structure of the NHS later on. Remember that the so-called "ring fencing" is not a permanent guarantee. At best, it is merely a two year promise (but even that is doubtful since in his interview with John Harris, Osborne merely said that he would "try hard" to achieve it).

The problem is what will happen after that. Hannan's Plan is never likely to occur in the first twelve months of a Tory administration, but after Cameron has restructured Parliament to give him his dictatorial powers (which cutting the size of Parliament surely will) then Hannan's Plan is certainly a possibility.

The bottom line is that the Cameron leadership has been shown to the public to be the sham that it really is.

From here on in he is at the mercy of every rabid right winger who puts pen to paper or opens his or her mouth in public.

"The bottom line is that the Cameron leadership has been shown to the public to be the sham that it really is."

Its lucky Gordon Brown is so competent, well-liked and successful then.


We're really screwed aren't we?