The dust is settling on the Government’s U turn on NHS reforms (referred to by my old boss Alan Milburn as the biggest car crash in NHS policy history). As the view becomes a little clearer it’s possible to see what was there before the winds blew dust in our faces.

I had thought that the important date in the NHS reform story was in early April 2011. That was when the new strategist at No 10, Andrew Cooper, by polling the opinion of the electorate on the NHS proposals saw that the reforms would be a political disaster for his boss the Prime Minister. Cooper is the strategist that helped David Cameron develop his original political position and had seen in 2007/8 that it was necessary to ‘detoxify’ the way in which the electorate understood the relationship between the NHS and the Conservative Party..