Andrew Lansley was plainly uneasy, questioned this morning on his Times front-page "commitment" to an extra 2% of GDP in health spending.

"I have made no public spending commitment", he insisted on air - clearly mindful the leadership will likely look askance at his treading on George Osborne's toes.

Lansley protested the actual quotes are not what Sam Coates and Francis Elliott have dressed them up to be.

Read through the whole interview though, and much of it seems rather ill-advised. In particular, Lansley will regret allowing himself to be drawn into talk of cuts in other areas of public expenditure.

"It's tough," he is quoted as saying. "It means there are places where the future of public expenditure is for it to decline as a proportion of GDP, or indeed in some cases in absolute terms."

"I just think we are being realistic here," he insisted. Well quite. But his shadow cabinet colleagues may be encouraged to abstain from such "realism" in their own future media utterances.

UPDATE: Sam Coates has now published an extensive transcript from the interview. I must say, that far from being "drawn into" talk of specific figures as I had thought he might have been, it seems Lansley plunged in, feet first.

Comments

[The Morning Mail 29 Feb 2008 09:41:58]

Effie,

The Conservative right is apparently not a simplistic beast; at least one part campaigned last Summer for David Cameron to be replaced; one part is seemingly happy to control David Cameron and at least one other part is not certain that the messages of the right are what should be followed and that the party should be modernised in the image of Tony Blair.

Posted by: Peter, Fife 28 Feb 2008 12:29:55

Absolutely Peter, with so many splits in the Tory Party it will only be a matter of time when it implodes. There is a very fragile unity which will evaporate if they make no further progress.

A collegaue of mine was prepared to give Cameron the benefit of the doubt and support him but has now decided that Cammers really stands for nothing apart from spinning another line or following another Band Wagon.

[The Morning Mail 29 Feb 2008 09:35:12]

The NuCons look like they are getting more gaffe prone as the months go by. Poor Lansley will get pelters for not 'sticking to the script' from Giddie Osbo. I wonder if Flashman Cam may be considering a Shadow Cabinet Reshuffle.

[Effie 28 Feb 2008 15:26:39]

EFFIE, I take that as a no about coming over the the Open Sky Discussion Boards.
Mentor - Northumberland 28 Feb 2008 12:29:15

Why?..MMM... NO, the last time you asked me that, you were Maurice of Northumberland, the time before that you were John of Northumberland now I notice you are Mentor of Northumberland.. AKA John AKA Maurice of Nothumberland (formerly UK)
Then poor old Maurice remembered Northumberland was still in the UK and dropped the (Former UK)
It is nice he still knows where he lives and that the lable I suggested has not dropped off his collar. Shame he has forgotten he is Maurice or John but still!!
I could not make up my mind if the family wished to lable him or just send him out and hoped the lable would drop off and he could not find his own way back!!!

[Khalid 28 Feb 2008 13:26:29]

Sir Joey
Until such a time that the party gets elected, any figure they churn will be met with the quality the paper attracts and as such I'll take [All the Things She Said] with a pinch of salt momentarily. [Tatu]

[Peter, Fife 28 Feb 2008 12:29:55]

Effie,

The Conservative right is apparently not a simplistic beast; at least one part campaigned last Summer for David Cameron to be replaced; one part is seemingly happy to control David Cameron and at least one other part is not certain that the messages of the right are what should be followed and that the party should be modernised in the image of Tony Blair.

[Mentor - Northumberland 28 Feb 2008 12:29:15]

EFFIE, I take that as a no about coming over the the Open Sky Discussion Boards.

Why?

PS. were people able to be buried during the Winter Crisis you chose to refer too?

They weren't during the Infamouse Winter Of Discontent, were they?

[Philip, Bristol 28 Feb 2008 12:16:26]

Mentor

Don't take Effie's comments such as "don't you dare mock" to heart. It's one of her well known ways of muting comment....trying to take the moral high ground. You will find that most NuLab supporters don't like you bringing up things like the Winter of Discontent because their Leader (Herr Bottler) has decreed it didn't happen. Bottler's history of Britain over the last 20 years is not the same as reality......

PS. Watch out for that 4 am knock on the door.....

[neither/niether 28 Feb 2008 12:05:06]

until the old right brigade die off, or banished to the lords where they can sleep and do them selves, and all of us no harm. The tory party and what ever leader they elect has no chance of winning a general election, im sad to say, because we need respite from this lot. The best the country can hope for is a hung parliment. They are not usualy a good thing, but I hope neither of these leaders have overall control.

[Effie 28 Feb 2008 11:51:14]

the same Andrew Lansley who was one of Norman Tebbit’s boot boys at the Department of Trade and Industry in 1984, his private secretary; it would seem that the old right of the party are
Peter, Fife 28 Feb 2008 10:34:00

Peter have you read the ferocious attack Tebbit has made in the Observer about Cameron.
I also believe he is doing another in the Specatator.
Tebbit has also attacked the other Tory alien Gove.

[Effie 28 Feb 2008 11:26:00]

Winter Crisis, would that be the Winter of Discontent?

Posted by: Mentor - Northumberland 28 Feb 2008 11:09:35

No what the winter crisis meant was to be called out in the middle of the night by a terminally ill Mother to tell you your father who suffred from Alzheimers has got up and wandered off into the night damp.
To have get up jump into different cars to go in different directions to find him, then when found cold and frozen not knowing who he was take him to hospital. Then to sit in a dirty freezing corridor watching my Father on a hospital trolley shivering with one blanket and my sheepskin coat over him
Dont you dare mock that it was just after 11am next morning before we got him into a hospital bed.
We were there alsmost an hour before a half asleep doctor even looked at him and told me he needed admitting.
Dont you dare mock that we lived through it!!

[Mentor - Northumberland 28 Feb 2008 11:09:35]

EFFIE - can you come onto the 'Discussion' Forum - please?

You're hilarious!

Winter Crisis, would that be the Winter of Discontent?

[waine uk 28 Feb 2008 11:02:06]

I have been following the election fiasco in the US, where the electorate have a choice of take it or leave it from both parties. We here in the UK are in exactly the same situation, a choice between rubbish and trash. If the cons and labs are not seeing who can be the hardest on single families and the sick and disabled they are in smokey rooms seeing how much they can claim back in expences. It's time for a clean sweep. Come back Guy Forkes.

[The Morning Post 28 Feb 2008 10:56:18]

Joey

I doubt he was referring to defence spending which Gordon is reducing as a proportion of GDP although he keeps lying through his teeth by claiming that its actually going up! And all this whilst our guys are fighting and dying on two fronts. Lets have a debate about that scandal please Joey!

[Peter, Fife 28 Feb 2008 10:34:00]

Yes Effie, the same Andrew Lansley who was one of Norman Tebbit’s boot boys at the Department of Trade and Industry in 1984, his private secretary; it would seem that the old right of the party are springing up everywhere.

David Cameron: “...I am determined to move the Conservative Party into the mainstream of debate so that we can win elections again. I want to do that. I've only just begun the process of modernising the party...” Andrew Marr interview Sunday 15 January 2006.
September 2007 Blackpool, lurch to right.

[Peter, Fife 28 Feb 2008 10:05:11]

Conservatives denied plans for £20bn cuts in public expenditure, now plans supporting such policies have surfaced again.

Individuals complain about Labour spending but the cuts that would come from a Conservative Chancellor, should they ever be elected, would produce a negative effect in the lives of all working individuals and families, those who have to do a real day’s work.

Clearly Mr Lansley was taken to a place where the Conservative PR machine had prohibited comment, the Shadow Chancellor’s calculations; like all of George Osborne’s mathematics, they just do not add up, either because the statistical base is incorrect (non doms), or an element of the equation has been withheld (cuts to other public services; police, defence, transport, etc, etc)

Cuts in public services to fund tax breaks for the most affluent individuals and families in our society; Conservatism you know it makes sense for the few.

[Effie 28 Feb 2008 10:04:18]

Oh Dear is this the same Andrew Lansley who was plainly uneasy, questioned this morning on his Times front-page "commitment" to an extra 2% of GDP in health spending.
Never.

Could it be the same Andrew Lansley that made a right horlicks saying that this that and the other hospital was going to close and had even one Colonel Blimp of a Tory MP from Norfolk up in arms because Lansley and Chameron got it all wrong and the Hospital in his constituency was not closing along with a few others?
Never.

Or is this the same Andrew Lansley who told Adam Bolton that if any hospital was to run out of cash and overspend it's budget he was going to see to it that it went into recievership he would not prop it up?
I think he must have a crystal ball has he never heard of 'Flu epidemics etc which would put a run on hospital beds in a crisis.
But then people in this Country have forgotten what it is to have a winter crisis here. Thanks to Labour that is a thing of the past!!!