Lansley takes unprecented hit over NHS reforms

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

Today’s Ed Miliband press conference was always intended to heap further press on Andrew Lansley. Clearly times to end as the Royal College of Nursing no-confidence result was announced, Ed Miliband and his team were keen to stress that such a vote against a sitting health secretary was unprecedented. Yet not even they could have been prepared for just how bad this result was for the beleagured Lansley.

The fact that there was even a vote taken is in itself unprecedented. Lansley had already lost then before he began, and as one Labour insider noted this morning, we as a party weren’t always popular with nurses while we were in government either. Yet today the health secretary has managed to make his Labour predecessors look hugely popular by comparison.

For weeks now we’ve been watching as the health secretary became increasingly isolated, as Cameron and Clegg try to cut him adrift without going the extra mile and abandoning the plans outright. While it looks difficult for the health secretary to hold on to his job, a change at the helm of these plans would not suffice. Cameron and Clegg are, as John Healey stressed this morning, “up to their necks” in these reforms. They are just as culpable as Lansley, and must share in his shame.

98.76% is a truly remarkable result. Totalitarian regimes rarely acheive such dominance in rigged elections. It is the kind of result that is barely believeable in its size and scope. It’s as close to universal condemnation as it’s possible to acheive.

Lansley was struggling for breathing space before, he surely has nowhere to go but out of the cabinet now.