The Jeremy Hunt conspiracy theory

A conspiracy theory is doing the rounds, well at least the rounds of the North London chatterati, that Jeremy Hunt’s woeful performance as a minister is actually a subtle long term plan to privatise the NHS. Put simply, the idea is that he will prove that the current NHS arrangement is unworkable by stumbling from one crisis to the next, so that getting rid of it will seem like a blessing. My political memory goes back a long way but I cannot remember a senior minister who has so startlingly created such a poor record for themselves another. Worse still, in this case it all seems to be of his own making. There was the case of Labour education minister Estelle Minister who ‘outed’ herself in 2002 as ‘not up to the job,’ but she was not in post for very long and did not perpetrate any major single gaffes. Specifically her department missed its numeracy and literacy targets and she promised to resign if this happened. Well, if ministers resigned when their department missed its targets, the government benches would look pretty empty most of the time, not least George Osborne’s seat. If we go back to the sixties, Frank Cousins, a prominent trade union leader, was found a safe parliamentary seat for Labour and elevated into government (as technology minister - a strange appointment as trade union leaders were notorious at the time for obstructing technological advances on the grounds that they cost jobs). Cousins proved to be incompetent and lasted only twenty months. The Conservatives, too, have appointed a number of ‘business leaders’ who have failed as ministers. It is always difficult to know whether dismissed minister has lost his or her job because they have fallen out with the PM or they simply aren’t up to it, but there has undoubtedly been a cavalcade of poor tenures as long as the list of failed England football managers. Hunt, though, takes the biscuit. Since taking office in the last government he has consistently missed targets, the performance of several key aspects of the NHS has declined, he has failed to secure from the Treasury anything like the funds needed to maintain the service at its current levels, there are now chronic staff shortages, and, of course, he has succeeded in provoking a war with his own loyal employees. By any standards it is a dismal record. Hunt is, I suppose, unlucky in that he compares so badly to a number of ministers who have considerable experience and who have gained the respect of parts of the political community; I mean May, Osborne, Duncan Smith and the like. Beside them Jeremy Hunt increasingly looks like the hapless schoolboy who has forgotten to hand in his homework...again! Before you accuse me of being anti-Conservative, I should say that, when I look over at the Labour benches, I am not sure much better is available. Certainly Andy Burnham was not exactly a roaring success. So what is going on? Certainly Hunt’s survival seems to be largely about the fact that he is a close ally of the prime minister. Cameron needs allies at this difficult time and Hunt is as staunch as they come. But what about the conspiracy theory? I am not normally a fan of such phenomena. I do think that Kennedy was shot by one or two left wing fanatics and not the Mafia, I do believe that man landed on the moon in 1969 and that it was Islamic extremists who flew the planes into the World Trade Centre in 2001 and not the CIA. In this case, though, the Hunt Conspiracy that is, I have to say it seems to hold more water than most of the other theories.