Tories muddy the NHS waters

Across the country today, Conservative target constituencies held an "NHS Action Day". Parliamentary Candidates were asked to hold street stalls and ask voters to sign petitions to protect the NHS against Gordon Brown's "cuts". This NHS action day forms part of a clever and carefully thought out strategy by the Cameron leadership.

Since the early 1990s the NHS has been one of the biggest Achilles heels of the Tories - with voters believing that Conservatives wanted to either cut or privatise health services. The Tory high command have decided to tackle this head on - early in the electoral cycle - by shrewdly turning the tables on Labour.

First Cameron declared heartfelt support for the NHS (witness his conference speech). Second he pledged that the NHS would be run like the Bank of England and would be taken out of the control of politicians in Whitehall. Third, the Tory leader noted that the Chancellor's increased spending was primarily being spent on the bureaucracy - meaning real cuts in frontline services and staff.

By getting in early the Tories are purposely muddling the waters. The aim is to convince the public that they do not want to slash and burn our public services and that Labour are in fact the real cutters. The signs are that this approach is working: In some polls, the Tories now lead Labour over the NHS.

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