No alternative

Martin Ivens in the Sunday Times hits the nail pretty squarely on the head on the subject of whether the Conservatives are actually offering alternative NHS policies to Labour.

If Lansley tells an audience of doctors and nurses that the Conservatives will no longer fiddle with the NHS like new Labour, he will get easy applause. Health workers are truly fed up with obtuse management and endless Whitehall directives. But after the clapping has died down he should ask that room whether the NHS should continue as it is...
 
...David Cameron, you present yourself as the future, the new politics. If you don’t offer the prime minister a challenge on health reform then another decade will be wasted. By not rocking the boat you think you will get more votes. Maybe. But you’ll be passing up a great opportunity and we will all be the losers.

It's not just health policy where the Conservatives are offering a policy of "the same but better". Here's the Shadow Education Secretary, Michael Gove:

Tomorrow, parents across the country will find out if their children have got into their first-choice school. I vividly remember last year when I, like thousands of other parents, faced a nerve-shredding few weeks to see if my daughter had got into her preferred school. She was lucky and now she's enjoying a superb education at a fine state primary. But the experience reinforced my conviction that parents shouldn't have to endure this anxiety and a good state education shouldn't be a matter of chance. It should be a right.

What makes this year's admissions roulette even more tense is the pressure by the Government to micro-manage the process. Schools face new rules and parents new barriers when it comes to exercising choice. Head teachers have been warned not even to talk to parents lest those who are committed to finding out more about a particular school secure an unfair advantage. And the bureaucrat in charge of this process is threatening even more lotteries to come. As someone who believes totally in state education I understand why it's important to do what we can to make opportunity more equal.

If even the Conservatives can't see that it's the "state" bit of "state education" which is the problem, heaven help us.