Editorial Friday 9 October 2015: NHS in 'on course for widely predicted £2 billion overspend' shock

Monitor (in great detail) and .

No doubt an in-depth inquiry will relentlessly pursue the culprits to the long grass.

Unless Health Select Committee chair Dr Sarah Woolaston takes an interest: she has more than something about her.

What does a £2 billion overspend mean?
Once upon a time, a £2 billion overspend would have been something to fear and loathe. It's not really, now. As I noted yesterday, there will be some 'cargo cult' ritual slaughter once the full-year figures emerge.

So it goes: Una's time as permanent secretary was almost up anyway, and while Jeremy Hunt has been good on patient safety, it is quite clearly Simon Stevens' influence that drew the extra £8 billion in cash (which could have been £12billion, but there we go: mustn't grumble).

Mr Hunt has been a lucky politician, by and large. He was lucky in the generosity of Lord Leveson's interpretation of events relating to Fred Michel and the BSkyB bid from Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp.

Mr Hunt was lucky again at health, with the Francis Public Inquiry report offering him an agenda over patient safety (which to his credit, he took seriously); and in having inept Mascara Kid Andy Burnham as his shadow, whose shroud-waving of 'privatisation' didn't resonate with the public.

There were many better targets at which The Mascara Kid could have pointed his Maybellene.

So Mr Hunt - a medium-sized beast of the Conservative Party - goes from playing theDutch auction.

Nobody who's serious thinks for one second that the tariff accurately reflects either providers' costs or the increasing acuity of demand.

Our health system isrecent lecture pointed out the comparative spending of Sweden, France and Germany is significantly higher per capita.

As I stated yesterday, health's DEL will be breached. And the world will not end. Just a couple of careers. Rather mirroring what's happened to a fair few good NHS chief executives (and of course a few not-so-good ones).

Restoration-faced Chancellor George Osborne would like the DEL breach to be the equivalent of the Mexican stand-off that ends so many of Quentin Tarantino's films, where all the protagonists are pointing loaded guns at one another.

NHS system leaders can work together to deny Mr Osborne the pleasure, and should.