Blair and the NHS: Resistible Force Meets Moveable Object?

Abstract

The record of New Labour under Tony Blair’s premiership from 1997 to 2007 can be viewed from the vantage point of what happens under his successor, Gordon Brown. Was there a ‘Blairism’ which applied to health policy and the NHS, keeping in mind Ted Marmor’s wise aphorism that it is better to consider ‘politics in health’ rather than the ‘politics of health’ — given that the politics affecting health policy is unlikely to be unique to health. This is true even though politics and health policy are ‘mutually embedded’ (Moran, 1999), whereby developments in one sphere affect the other.