Party Lines: December 20th

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

Douglas Alexander was on the Today Programme this morning, and echoed the accusation made in a leaked Labour memo over the weekend – that this isn’t a coalition, this is a Tory government:

“I think people generally like the idea of parties working together and inherently coalitions can involve compromise, which is not always a bad thing in politics.”

“The curiosity of this government, however, seems to be that the give seems to have been from the Liberals and the take seems to have been from the Conservatives. If you look at the totality of policy, what you really seem to have is a fairly familiar Conservative government with a commitment to an AV referendum.”

“In that sense it’s not in any way a normal type of coalition, it’s one in which one’s giving and the other’s taking.”

Andy Burnham said he was willing to give Michael Gove “one cheer” today, after the government u-turned on school sport cuts:

“I’m prepared to give Michael Gove one cheer today. Let’s not forget he has spent weeks trashing school sports with dodgy statistics and finally he’s had to give up on that today and that’s obviously welcome.”

“I am still worried that we are going to see the number of children playing sport decline in the run up to London 2012 and I’m also concerned that there is no answer to what happens to school sport after 2012.”

And John Healey responded to the publication today of the ‘NHS Outcomes Framework 2011/12’ (note the repeated mentions of Tory-led government – not a coalition in sight):

“This is a licence to let the NHS run down. Andrew Lansley has lost sight of patients. He’s taken away the treatment guarantees Labour set out in waiting-time targets, and he’ll put no other commitment on treatment for patients in place for 2 years. The Tory-led Government is building in the incentive to run down the NHS to make things look better after that. It is a signal to let waiting-times and treatments slip.”

“Basing better service planning on “outcomes” is a good principle. But what the Tory-led government is proposing is dishonest. It is dropping current NHS service targets now, and only setting up the measurements next year, with fresh service indicators the year after that.”