Spinless Tories

By David Beeson

Some commentators out there seem to suspect me of engaging in spin. Now if they were talking about the government, I could just about understand: there have been occasions when Labour has done things which might indeed, on a strict interpretation, be classified as spinning. But you can imagine how hurtful it is to a blogger who aspires to Socratic levels of integrity and balance, to be the subject of such accusations.

Fortunately, of course, I have no such aspirations.

Even so, I was interested to find out what it’s like to write without spin. Since some of my critics seem to imply that the Conservative Party has eschewed spin, I thought I’d go and take a look at the spinless Tories and see whether I couldn’t learn a thing or two. So I read ‘An NHS Information Revolution to save lives‘ at conservatives.com.

I don’t want to blow my own trumpet or anything, but I have to say there weren’t a lot of laughs in this document. On the other hand, there’s no arguing that it’s good solid stuff. But then my attention was caught by a statement at the start of the second full page: ‘… the actual outcomes of NHS care (e.g. survival rates for cancer) are now amongst the worst in Europe.’

Now there’s an indictment of a government after twelve years in power.

Of course, I remember when that kind of statement was being made by champions of objectivity and balance like the ‘Daily Telegraph’ and the ‘Daily Mail’. But now it’s being endorsed by the spinless Tories. It needs to be taken seriously.

The problem is that when you look at the statement a bit more closely, it’s not as easy to interpret as you might think. It seems to be talking about all outcomes of care – the bit in brackets is just an example. But in fact the original report concerned only cancer survival rates, not outcomes generally.

Even that more limited statement isn’t easy to understand. What do we mean by a cancer survival rate? Cancer Research UK argues that there are many factors that vary from country to country and may or may not (note how balanced I’m being) affect the outcome. You want to check? Take a look.

To see how careful one needs to be with these figures, I read a 2005 review in the ‘British Medical Journal’ of a study with the title ‘UK cancer survival rates are no worse than rest of Europe’. You need to register to read the article, but if you’re interested you can do so here.

The review concludes with a quotation from the original report:

“The British rates for mortality from cancer, which is the ultimate criterion by which the success or failure of any system of care and therapy for patients with cancer has to be judged, are not generally worse than those in other economically comparable European countries, and, indeed, are sometimes better”.

Curious, isn’t it? Perhaps we’re not “amongst the worst in Europe”. But I suppose that the statement “UK cancer survival rates pretty much the same as in comparable countries in Europe” doesn’t have the same ring. It doesn’t support the Conservative position so well either.

Am I being ungenerous in suggesting that the spinless Tories might themselves actually have been choosing material, not so much to present a completely unassailable version of the truth, but to support their own position? I hardly dare say it, but have they been indulging in a little spin?

For me personally this whole experience is a great relief. If the sainted anti-spinners of the Conservative Party can resort to such practices, why should I feel any compunction at doing the same in my frothy ephemera?

In fact, if Conservative supporters accuse me of spin, perhaps they’re bestowing their highest accolades on me.

In any case, the clue to the whole story may have been in the title of the paper I chose to read. It talked about an “Information Revolution”.

Revolutions are made by things revolving.

Sounds like spinning was in the title itself.