Gove should go to Health

As a second footnote to my column about young king Cameron, I should elaborate on my speculation that Andrew Lansley may not be Health Secretary much longer.

My gist is that the Government makes a mess of a lot of things, but on saying No to Fiscal Union and on the benefits cap it has two big things that everyone understands and with which most people agree.*

What David Cameron urgently needs, though, is something similarly easy to understand and popular as a distraction from the disaster of health service reform. I have no idea what that might be, but I know a man who could do it.

Michael Gove might be able to turn round the impression that Lansley is changing everything in the NHS because he wants to make life difficult for everyone who works in it and even more expensive for everyone who pays taxes to fund it.

He has the charm and courtesy that could win round the royal colleges and possibly even the British Medical Association, although that is the most ruthless and hard-faced sectional trade union in the land.

More than that, though, he understands politics, and realises that the problem with the NHS is that Tony Blair’s reforms to extend choice were broadly right but that public opinion is deeply suspicious of “privatisation”. Lansley’s response was to muddle the first and to reinforce suspicions of the second. A change of Secretary of State is now a condition of changing people’s minds, and only Gove could get it right.

Interesting to see, therefore, Paul Waugh noting that the Prime Minister “positively coos with pleasure” when Gove speaks at Cabinet.

Photograph of Michael Gove reading the book: Martin Godwin

*Over the weekend a third big thing came up that everyone understands, and on which few people approve of the Government’s position, namely bonuses for the bosses of state-owned banks. Stephen Hester just about saved Cameron’s face by following his “no-claims bonus” advice.

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