Editorial Wednesday 8 February 2012: Oh dear, OSAL. The 'save Andrew Lansley' campaign misfires.

The 'save Our Saviour And Liberator Andrew Lansley' campaign is not blessed with conspicuous media-savvy.

The BBC is being briefed that the NHS Future Forum made no difference (which they could have read about here at the time).


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There is also clearly someone in Number 10 who wants him gone.

This is clear from Sam Coates' piece in today's Times, following up on yesterday's Rachel Sylvester evisceration by an un-named briefer.

Coates recounts how Number 10 got ex-Guardian journalist Julian Glover to draft a 'why the NHS matters to me personally'-type speech. On receipt, "Mr Lansley started personalising the speech further as only he knows how: he began inserting paragraphs about the new NHS "outcomes framework". Now the speech read: "Outcomes depend on integration across services. Opportunity of NHS/public health/and local authorities together. Like they do in Sheffield. This will be the first opportunity in new system to demonstrate how we can bring together services. GP/community/acute/LAs/safeguarding/children's trusts. Not structural integration but integration around families and children. Marmot (universal proportionalism) — early intervention".

It's only painfully funny because it's painfully true.

Elsewhere at The Times, comically-touted-by-Number-10-sources Lord Milburn of Coalition points out (accurately) that "We need a new wave of reform to replace the existing model of how we deliver care. It should be based in the community, not obsessed with the hospital; focused on prevention rather than treatment; and it should put power into the hands of patients rather than providers".

Amen to that. Transforming care will need planning. Which the Bill makes essentially impossible and probably illegal.

Elsewhere, fans of inept ad hominem attacks can chortle at Independent Whitehall editor Oliver Wright's splendidly ill-informed attack on God (in the Gospel according to #SimonBurns4SOS), AKA Dr Clare Gerada, RCGP chair.

Wright suggests that Gerada opposes the Bill because she fears future competition for her Hurley Group practice's contracts.

Yes, that does mean the contracts the Hurley Group won in competitive tender.

No, me neither.

The paper's lawyers seem to have insisted on the line "there is no suggestion that the Hurley Group would lose NHS contracts in the face of greater competition, or that they do not provide effective and reasonably priced services" - which does rather piss on Wright's chips.