Speculation that Andrew Lansley will be sacked has been growing for weeks and this morning’s papers will do nothing to diminish it.
In her Times column (£), entitled “Is Lansley the exception to the no-sacking policy?”, Rachel Sylvester quotes one Downing Street source as saying that the Health Secretary “should be taken out and shot. He’s messed up both the communication and the substance of the policy.”
Sylvester reports on an “intriguing idea” circulating in No 10: that Alan Milburn should be offered a seat in the Lords and his old job as Health Secretary. It’s not hard to see why Cameron, who, by his account, picked up the baton of reform from Blair, might be tempted by this option.
But as Sylvester notes in a less conspicuous passage:
Both Mr Cameron and George Osborne are remarkably loyal to Mr Lansley, who was their boss at the Conservative Research Department.
Elsewhere, today’s Daily Mirror reports on comments by James O’Shaughnessy, formerly one of David Cameron’s No 10 advisers and now a lobbyist. “Actually, if you look at where we got to on the Health Bill, the fundamentals of what we were trying to do are still there,” he said. This isn’t news. Indeed, Lansley himself has boasted that the “fundamental principles” of the bill remain. But more damaging is O’Shaughnessy’s admission that last summer’s legislative “pause” was merely a “tactic” to get the bill through.
However, it’s precisely because the “fundamentals” of the bill remain that it’s hard to see Cameron either sacking Lansley or abandoning the reforms. He missed his chance to do that last summer. As the bill re-enters the Lords, the likelihood is that Lansley will live to fight another day.
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