Could Cameron really make the NHS a "Tory" issue?

There was no mention of "sunshine" in David Cameron's keynote speech to the Conservative conference this afternoon, which was probably just as well. I still can't believe that a political leader with apsirations to be taken seriously ever came out with the comment which he came out with last Sunday.

But leaving that and Gideon's "autistic" gaffe aside, it has been a reasonably good week for the Tory leader, although the "row" over tax cuts versus economic stability was far too manufactured ever to rank as Cameron's Clause Four moment.

His speech today provided few further clues to the make-up of the next Tory manifesto, but it was nonetheless notable for one rather breathakingly audacious move - an attempt to steal Labour's historic mantle as the party of the NHS.

Normally such an initiative would be doomed to failure. The NHS is "one of the 20th century's greatest achievements," Mr Cameron reminded us in his speech, neglecting to mention that it is, of course, a Labour achievement for which, historically, Labour has always reaped the political dividend.

But these are not normal times. As I wrote in my last column for the North West Enquirer - the one that didn't actually appear because the paper went bust the day before publication - a Government which came into power to "save" the NHS has ended up closing hospitals.

The prospect of this, in the tenth year of a Labour Government, offers a stark illustration of the gulf between the hype and the reality of Tony Blair’s administration which Mr Cameron is right to seek to exploit.

Don't get me wrong. I still think DC is essentially a jumped-up PR man who deserves to be smashed out of sight in a style v substance election against Gordon Brown in three years' time.

But by highlighting the NHS as an issue on which Labour is now deservedly vulnerable, he has done his cause no harm at all.

Tories still don't get the English Question

To be fair, they are not alone. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have demonstrated in recent months that they don't really get it either. But David Cameron's comments yesterday indicating support for the ultmately unworkable concept of "English votes for English matters" is a real missed political opportunity in my book.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have long advocated an English Parliament as the only way of answering the so-called West Lothian Question, although I prefer to call it the English Question as it is England which is the missing piece in the federal jigsaw that the Blair administration has created.

I don't want an English Parliament because I want to create another layer of politicians, but simply because I want to see the four nations of the UK treated fairly and equally. Any English Parliament would have to be accompanied by the abolition of the iniquitous Barnett Formula that gives the rest of the UK a huge inbuilt advantage in public spending-per-head that is no longer justified by their relative levels of need.

More than that, I believe the idea could have great electoral appeal in England. Labour's stubborn refusal to address the issue is a sitting duck for the Tories - especially in view of the overwhelming likelihood that the next Prime Minister will either be the MP for Kircaldy and Cowdenbeath or the MP for Hamilton North and Bellshill.

Mr Cameron's comments appear to have pre-empted the conclusions of the so-called "Democracy Taskforce" which has been set up under Ken Clarke to look at this and other issues arising from Labour's half-baked constitutional reforms.

It now appears that the king of the Tory blogosphere himself, Iain Dale, is going to launch some sort of campaign to get his party to take the issue more seriously. The very best of luck to him.

George Osborne should be utterly ashamed of himself. And so should Mary Ann Sieghart

Gideon "George" Osbourne, Tory toff and Shadow Chancellor, wants to have a debate with the Tory right about tax cuts because it will show that the party is changing. What he doesn't want to do is have a debate about his use of the word autistic as a term of political abuse towards his opponents, in this case Gordon Brown.

It wasn't all Osbourne's fault. The word was put into his mouth by the Blairite journalist Mary Ann Sieghart who has penned her own piece justicative HERE.

Sieghart, who was once so close to Mr Tony as to aspire to a job in the No 10 policy unit, gaily reassures us that "autistic" is an epithet that "plenty of politicians and journalists" have used about the Chancellor. "He does, after all, have an obsessive personality and rather low emotional intelligence. That is why the audience laughed: Mr Osborne’s joke resonated with them."

In other words, because it's Gordon Brown we're attacking, that's okay then.

For my part, I prefer the verdict of Nick Hornby, father of a 13-year-old autistic son, who said: "George Osborne doesn't seem to have noticed that most people over the age of eight no longer use serious and distressing disabilities as a way of taunting people."

If this is the "modern, inclusive" face of the Tory Party, it is clear that it still has a very long way to go.

October 5 Update: Sieghart has now written another piece in defence of her actions in which she blames the whole thing on Evening Standard Political Editor Joe Murphy, one of the finest reporters in the Parliamentary Lobby.

I know who I'd rather believe....