ABSTRACT
For Howe the moral of this tale was that politicians, despite their noisy protestation, don’t listen to the voters. In Kidderminster Dr Richard Taylor beat the Labour candidate at the poll because he knew what people wanted, and furthermore he knew what they did not want. They did not want a new private-sector hospital that was being built in Worcester at the expense of downsizing their old facility in Kidderminster. The decision’, Howe pointed out, ‘ignored the needs of local people. The planners executed their plans because they knew what was best and the masses did not. They had their comeuppance’.
