"Major was also responsible for introducing PFI - effectively putting the ownership, infrastructure and buildings of new hospitals into the hands of his private sector buddies."
Not really the whole story is it lusty. The idea first saw the light of day under the Tories in 1992 certainly, but by the time they left office in 1997 they had not signed up to even one single PFI scheme. The Labour government could have flushed the entire initiative down the toilet and no harm done, instead they ran with the idea far more enthusiastically than the Tories ever did, and the financial millstone round the NHS neck grew ever heavier.
Trying to pin the eyewatering PFI debts, still crippling the NHS today, on the Tories, is a tad disingenuous mon ami.
Nice one sinkov. It is easy to put things in perspective when you have no allegiance to any political party and, as you stated previously, the big PFI push came under Blair et al and the Labour supporters used to sing his praise from the rooftops because he did so much for the country and things were much better under a Labour government etc., etc., etc.
I now await BT decrying everything that Blair did, telling us how much better Labour functioned under Corbyn and trying to explain why many Labour Party members are now jumping back on the Blair wagon to reflect on his huge success. Bloody politics stinks!
Back to the sacred cow thing. Whoever finally sells what's left of the NHS off will be committing political suicide but it is the ideology of the NHS that is sacred i.e. free medical care for anyone who needs it.
So if the goal is to dismantle the NHS by the back door, the logical next step is take measures to push people who can afford it to go private and take out healthcare insurance by e.g. chipping away at NHS funding and giving incentives to the predominantly foreign -owned private medicare giants who will attract the best staff - which will eventually lead to a lower quality skeleton NHS service for those who can't afford it.
Already happening in dentistry to some extent.
This is how Simply Health's Denplan division are selling their services to dental practices: https://www.denplan.co.uk/dentists/m...m-the-nhs.html
The NHS is more likely to die from increased competition and the thousand cuts approach.